# SF (actual) dreams and nightmares



## tegeus-Cromis (Jun 19, 2019)

I remember having this nightmare the summer I was nine. I should explain that my dad was really into UFO stuff, had Hynek's book, several of Von Däniken's, etc. I read them all and became terrified of ETs that, I don't know, would come and abduct us all? 

Anyway, the dream. I can remember two scenes. One is at night, near the bottom of a mountain slope, something like a volcano. Aliens in flying saucers are landing, military forces are trying to fight them back. Thing is, when they emerge from their flying saucers, the aliens look like these Weebles ("... wobble but they don't fall down") toys I had, modeled to look like clowns. And that was the most terrifying thing of all.

Second scene: my parents and I are hiding out at some friends', who lived in a fourth-floor apartment. The aliens have already attacked, or maybe taken over the city, and we're all huddling together in fear. I look out the window down to the street. On the sidewalk, a mother and child are walking hand in hand. The aliens zap them and they turn into big apes, like chimps or gorillas. Still hand-in-hand, they start bouncing higher and higher (because they're apes, after all), until I actually see them bouncing past, at the level of our fourth-floor windows.

That's all I remember. But I woke up screaming, and was too terrified to go to sleep for the next three nights. My dad, who's a doctor, had to give me sleeping pills to help me get over it.

Any SF dreams you want to share?


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## Narkalui (Jun 20, 2019)

Zombies. Only had these dreams as an adult and I always wake up before it's too late


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## -K2- (Dec 31, 2019)

So, yeah... dreams. Now you get to learn just how messed up my noggin is.  While looking for another thread I ran across this one, and considering I just had this dream... again, I might as well share it (in fact I'll just copy and paste from another site where I mentioned it). So, though not really a sci-fi dream, I suppose you could put a Twilight Zone twist to it. I have this dream every couple years or so. I know why I do and where it comes from. But, unfortunately it has never become a lucid dream where I can eject myself out of it.



Spoiler: Personal nonsense not worth reading



I've come to learn that I don't dream like most people, usually. For a number of years my dreams were just verbatim memories, every sensation and emotion relived in exacting detail. That was bad, but then I went through a stretch where I didn't dream at all which is much worse. I know what you're thinking, "I just didn't remember them." Well, that's not true. For about ten years my nights sleep was like if you blink your eye. Now imagine from that blink, you're physically fully rested, you continue the thought you had before you blinked, and it's seven hours later.

To this day, some 25-years later, I remember the first dream I had after that long drought. A massive dragon (and I didn't even know what dragons were) was chasing me. It's scales were like every jewel imaginable. When I couldn't run any further, it chomped me, and I woke up... Its was awesome, I lived it!

Now I have a few specific 'types' of dreams; vivid memories (which are the worst), dreams of places/people I have never seen ** (rarely fantastical), dreams where I'm hit with deja-vu and remember those previously dreamed about places** and events** like visiting a town you once passed through many years later... and finally lucid dreams-- you know, dreams where you realize you're dreaming and can wake up, fly, whatever you want.

To that end, once I began to dream it was awesome. Dragons chasing and eating you alive...KEWL!  Falling off a cliff...WONDERFUL! Good dreams, bad dreams, nightmares it didn't matter.  Loved em all, they were all great adventures, and even over time I would have rare moments when within the dream I would realize I was dreaming. That's when things became really spectacular as you can make almost anything happen.

So, I really dig on dreaming... However, then I have this one, of a select few I could do without.



(Excuse the poor writing. I wrote this many years ago and it's not worth revisiting to grammar/spell check it):
I find myself in a large dark room with a couple old couches and a desk.  The ceiling is barely visible though it's not that high. The room is lit by dim lamps and flickering greenish hued fluorescent fixtures on the walls. The walls have clearly been painted over many times in a very "institutional" green, though are now darker and aged.  A large old console TV is placed against the wall; the static image on it is of flowers, yet the color is bleached out, faded, almost unreal. The room is clean, though heavy with the smell of industrial cleaners. The smell is overwhelming, much like the cleaners were repetitively painted over the filth and never washed away. On top of that it smells 'old' and unused. There is old green institutional carpeting under my bare feet; it feels damp and sticky like the cleaners were never washed away.

No one is there. Yet, I know I've been told to wait there as my family (which I never had) will come get me... as though I was leaving, though I know, I just arrived.

Beside the TV is an archway, the thought of the waiting-room alone makes me so ill, I must leave it. Yet, as I look through the arch it simply faces the far wall of a long hallway going left or right. The lights in the hall are all flickering greenish hued fluorescent lamps. The paint on the wall is chipped, peeling, and stained from leaks, and not being cleaned. The floor is no longer the old carpeting of the waiting area, yet now, wore linoleum under my bare feet, and with each step it becomes more worn till the color is gone. I'm unable to go back into the reception/waiting room, as I know something horrible is coming for me there. So, I press on down the hall.

The decay grows ever worse. I can see it's the same the opposite way, yet it's slightly darker and more foreboding. So, I continue on. Finally one of the doors along the hallway is open and I look in.

A single green hued fluorescent on the back wall dimly illuminates a small room.  In the center sits a stainless steel surgical chair, fastened to the floor.  Dried fluids of blood, sweat, urine, chemicals, and such upon it have stained it in almost a clear-_ish_ lacquer of sorts.  Leather straps are fixed to it for wrists, ankles, waist, and neck... topped off by a rusted steel "halo" of sorts.  Shelves and cabinets hold dirty surgical insturments and syringes tossed back upon them.  The room reeks of chemicals and smells like an uncleaned bathroom in a slaughterhouse. On the stainless steel table beside the chair is a glass syringe, half filled with a yellowish brown fluid, the needle dirty. Beside it, a tarnished and slightly rusty scalpel with a bit of dried blood and hair on it.

I can't look away, it fascinates and revulses me all at the same time. I feel my belly roil, yet it is familiar. So, it's comfortable and comforting in that regard. And then it strikes me, I remember.

This is the first room of many down the hall, of many halls, of many floors. This room the easiest, the nicest, the most gentle. The last words I heard in this room when the victim was pleading with their tormentor, was the tormentor's answer of, "Because this is what I do here, just because," said with a blank expression of neither hate, nor pity, or even sadistic pleasure... just simply a total lack of empathy for the victim, they don't even grasp the harm they cause.

I then realize... I've not just arrived, I've always been here in this place as there is no way out once in.  Having cycled through the rooms, halls, and floors, for whatever reason, at some point I forgot all that I previously endured... and, I have been _"granted the opportunity"_ to go through it all again to remind me.

I "know," no amount of begging or pleading will help, or any amount of proving I remember.  So, I do what I know I'm supposed to do without a single person yet seen.

I slip off my clothes. Slowly walk to the chair. I turn around to sit, sobbing and shaking violently... and wait.
.
.
Monsters are a good thing, I'll fight dragons any day in my dreams.

K2


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## Stephen Palmer (Dec 31, 2019)

About 15 years ago I woke up around 4 in the morning having had a vivid dream about a sinking house. But rather than vanishing into the ether, the dream expanded into a story with a full plot, and I found myself actually preparing a book. At that point, I had to get up, find a blank notebook and get everything written down. Much later, I wrote the whole book, in the form of a children's story. It's never been published, but one day I hope it will be. It's the only time in my writing life this has ever happened. What was so strange was how the story multiplied and sophisticated in my awake mind after the dream finished and I woke up.
When I get asked about this sort of thing, I usually refer to Neil Young. He goes with whatever music or lyrics come to him first thing in the morning, when his unconscious mind is 'close' to his waking mind. I've done the same thing for decades. It works.


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## tegeus-Cromis (Dec 31, 2019)

Stephen Palmer said:


> About 15 years ago I woke up around 4 in the morning having had a vivid dream about a sinking house. But rather than vanishing into the ether, the dream expanded into a story with a full plot, and I found myself actually preparing a book. At that point, I had to get up, find a blank notebook and get everything written down. Much later, I wrote the whole book, in the form of a children's story. It's never been published, but one day I hope it will be. It's the only time in my writing life this has ever happened. What was so strange was how the story multiplied and sophisticated in my awake mind after the dream finished and I woke up.
> When I get asked about this sort of thing, I usually refer to Neil Young. He goes with whatever music or lyrics come to him first thing in the morning, when his unconscious mind is 'close' to his waking mind. I've done the same thing for decades. It works.


I used to write poetry, and even had some published (about 12 pieces, altogether). I once woke up with a whole (unrhymed) sonnet in mind, or rather I remember it forming in that period between sleep and waking. I immediately wrote it down, and didn't have to revise a word. I still have it. Never tried to get it published, though.


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## AlexH (Jan 4, 2020)

I remember a dream where I went to the cinema in a big shopping centre with a friend. I fell asleep during the film (has anyone else fell asleep in a dream?), and when I woke, no one else was in the screen. I was worried about my friend as he'd been on crutches. I left the cinema, and the shopping centre was dilapidated, like it'd been closed for years. Outside, the city was covered in a layer of sand. It was all from a cinematic perspective rather than my point of view. I may get around to turning that opening into a short story one day...


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## the_philmarillion (Jan 4, 2020)

I used to try and write down strange dreams once I woke up. It lasted for a grand total of two dreams and this was the only SF-like. It started with me standing on a beach watching as several World Devastators (super weapons which appear in the Star Wars Rogue Squadron game on the N64) descended on the horizon. The devastators were filled with Borg, however (I know, I know, Star Wars technology and Star Trek villains, get over it, it was a dream  ). The rest of it involved running around, trying to escape the Borg with people I went to school with. It ended when I fell into a pitch black crater shouting "Mario, Luigi, help!"

Dreams are weird.


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## Parson (Jan 4, 2020)

Not quite the same thing. But I would often go to bed on Saturday night disgruntled by one of the pieces of Sunday's sermon only to have a good answer for the problem the minute I woke up on Sunday. It was so common that I got to the point where I didn't worry much about a whole on Saturday night because I was pretty sure something would be available to me on Sunday I had not thought of before.


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## -K2- (Jan 4, 2020)

Parson said:


> Not quite the same thing. But I would often go to bed on Saturday night disgruntled by one of the pieces of Sunday's sermon only to have a good answer for the problem the minute I woke up on Sunday. It was so common that I got to the point where I didn't worry much about a whole on Saturday night because I was pretty sure something would be available to me on Sunday I had not thought of before.



Divine inspiration perhaps? (I say that with warm intent , not mocking).

K2


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## Guttersnipe (Jan 31, 2020)

I once had a dream where I was pitted against a giant obese cyborg, and another where I talked to a big alien moth.


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## olive (Jan 31, 2020)

I've always had a very vivid dream life. I remember them so often. I also experience sleep paralysis sometimes and that's another show at night, oh my. I don't have any superstitious belief -or any other kind come to that- but nightmares or dreams of any kind are exhausting sometimes, and occasionally frightening, maybe even scary. 

My dream world has turned into a rich colorful theme park after high school when I started university. I've studied art history, and from student years onward I have been to paintings, murals; chatted with artists and sculptors and such, historical characters, or characters from myths and scripture... etc. in my dreams. I still get them occasionally.

I have certain themes repeating themselves, going away for years and coming back. When I was a kid I used to fly all around. Or make huuge jumps. Then I started to live in short movie dystopias wherein each I was running in streets at night bare feet in my nightgown and then get caught and convinced that everybody has to look like my dad but will have their own voices and personality. (Shut up Freud.) Then they changed into nightmares where people turn into zombies and robots. I've always failed to save anyone in these, not even myself. So many of them. I haven't had any of this after 30, I have been seeing war now. But more than the action I see burnt people and children around when we all go on living our lives. They are ordinary, straight nightmares.

I also have a few I had in spaceships I never forgot. They were just fun. Wohooo. Never had any since.

But the most interesting ones the ones I 'visit' Ancient Egypt or whatever that is. These dreams have evolved too. Long story short, first I was going around some colorful ancient sightseeing which was so much fun but then I started to find myself in huge, dark ancient tombs. Gods are walking around in dark, deep but I can barely see. That is scary. Watching 'Anibus' moving and speaking in Ancient Egyptian -think about the RA voice in Stargate- is scary. Last year it was Prometheus again in Ancient Egyptian tomb. I was hearing his voice in my head in the dark. He was huge and leaning towards me on to my head but I close my eyes.  I can see it, but I can't. It's not like they would harm me in the dream, it is that sense of extreme archaicness, the feeling of something so ancient is so powerful in the dream, you feel so insignificant that is scary. You feel like what I have done wrong.

Sleep paralysis is frightening a bit, but just for a moment. It's more like wrestling with an invisible being, sometimes it roars and grrs, it feels furry or sometimes like a human, sometimes you see things in light, an arm embracing you -although the room is dark of course- it is just in your mind. Your brain wakes up in a level, but your body cannot move, it is in paralysis. Probably when we had to sleep high places for safety for a long time evolution granted us this kind of muscle paralysis so we wouldn't harm ourselves. You just need to get out of it. Mine sometimes starts through a dream. Somebody catches you in a dream, pulls from your arm...etc.  I often wake up in that situation. Floating in the air is fun because you feel weightless in air. I have felt that twice. Once there were people touching my feet and arms and they were -supposedly- from different centuries. That was the weirdest dream/nightmare/sleep paralysis whatever it is I had in my life. They were laughing and speaking in foreign languages, I didn't understand them but I knew what they were saying. There was a woman with a hat that had a feather.

It's perfectly understandable why human culture has built so many myths and beliefs around this. It's quite powerful. It would have been weird if we hadn't. I've talked to different people who experienced similar things and my conclusion is it is about your belief life and how your mind works. But there is nothing real or supernatural in it. A religious person feels/sees a djinn -or a demon according to the culture- I always feel/see a human being. Doesn't matter what you think, as long as you concentrate on waking up, you do. There is nothing to worry about. You could say a prayer or recite a poem or repeat timetables, they all work the same. You just need to get your consciousness. You need to really wake up and spend a little time awake or highly likely you'll get into the same paralysis again.


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## Parson (Jan 31, 2020)

Interesting and nicely reflective post. I have shared your dream of flying. It is such a rush! But the following line made me laugh. 



olive said:


> I started to live in short movie dystopias wherein each I was running in streets at night bare feet in my nightgown and then get caught and convinced that everybody has to look like my dad but will have their own voices and personality. (Shut up Freud.)



Well played Olive, well played indeed.


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## olive (Jan 31, 2020)

Parson said:


> Interesting and nicely reflective post. I have shared your dream of flying. It is such a rush!



Do you mean flying like superman in a dream or 'waking up' and finding yourself feeling like floating above your bed?


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## Parson (Jan 31, 2020)

Let me see, I'm not sure how to diagnose what you are asking. These are dreams, so no actual floating above the bed, but is that what you meant? Let me explain:

My dream is like this. I find myself running not toward or away from something, but simply running, and then between one stride and the next I don't come down. I just swoop and sway and go up and down at will, no restraints, no purpose, just the shear joy of flying. ---- Less wonderful is that I now understand that when I have very graphic dream like this (I sometimes see color and have felt like felt things) it is because I am seriously worn out and/or my sleep apnea is really active. ---- Yes, I have a machine, and when it's working well no such dreams.


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## olive (Jan 31, 2020)

So you are dreaming about flying. You are flying in your dreams. I used to have those when younger.

The other thing is a hallucination you can have during sleep paralysis. Probably the best one. You feel like you're floating above your bed, you are physically sure that's what's happening. Because although you think you are awake, you are actually not, just a little. When this happened to me I was 'awake' enough to think that 'if I was really floating in the air, my head would bump to my bookshelves'. Because at the right wall above my bed, there were bookshelves up to the ceiling in my bedroom. It's really weird.


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## -K2- (Jan 31, 2020)

@olive ; in some regards that somewhat applies to 'sleeping with one eye open.' For numerous reasons, that's how I slept until roughly 40. Though I might dream, I could also--at the same time--see and hear what 'actually' went on around me while I slept. Able to recount such events the following day, or even instantly awake and take action.

K2


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## olive (Jan 31, 2020)

-K2- said:


> @olive ; in some regards that somewhat applies to 'sleeping with one eye open.' For numerous reasons, that's how I slept until roughly 40. Though I might dream, I could also--at the same time--see and hear what 'actually' went on around me while I slept. Able to recount such events the following day, or even instantly awake and take action.
> 
> K2



Oh, it is not like that. Sleep paralysis is seeing and feeling something physically which is not there, not happening. You hallucinate in sleep paralysis. You have no idea what is going on around in reality. It probably occurs under stress. It must be coming from something survival because it is powerful. And it feels like a powerful physical struggle. You hallucinate that -you are sure at those moments- someone, a stranger is trying to dominate you physically, squeeze your body in a tight embrace, sometimes even it feels like some sort of a 'sexual' thing, but as feeling. There is nothing of course. It's just a feeling. You are trying to break through that and it feels like you are 'wrestling'. It can be pretty disturbing. You feel like you are in a physical struggle.

But there are various experiences. Like people seeing themselves from out of their bodies, the old tale of watching something kidnapping their bodies... Or floating in the air above your head, or being touched by several people out of different times...like mine,lol. That was funny actually. Sometimes it is not bad, sometimes it really is. My friend kept touching and palming some 'furry animals'.

At times I even felt I was embraced 'compassionately'. Because being human, we tend to give those hallucinations certain human characters and feelings according to what we feel. A few weeks ago I had one. Sometimes it feels like you can't shake it very easily.

I looked up, it says 'sleep demon' in English. The White Goddess culture has a lot of rich stuff about this. It is the original source of this kind of fantasy too. Night <->Mare.


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## tegeus-Cromis (Feb 1, 2020)

I used to have many flying dreams. Often I was swooping very fast over hills and so, but at a constant distance from the ground -- kind of like a SW glider, I suppose. Grassy hills, overgrown. I also was aware of my body position: head forward, arrow straight, both arms by my side. (None of that Superman arms forward nonsense!) In the most recent flying dream I remember, I was floating, in a standing position, above a street in Brooklyn (which is weird because, although I used to live in NYC, that was in Manhattan, and you could count the times I went to Brooklyn on the fingers on one hand.) I was not far above the roofline, and could see the entire neighborhood. All these dreams were beautiful. They seemed so vivid that I would wake up and couldn't believe that wasn't real. They're the closest thing that might convince me we live a different, but equally real, life in our dreams.


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## olive (Feb 1, 2020)

There is one dream I had, not like any other, I'll never forget. It affected me very much, it changed me or I had it because I was changing. I can see where all my dreams and nightmares come from, but not this one. I think that was the most powerful one I had. It's a short, complete, very vivid dream. I need to tell it.

I'm walking in a forest, it's dark and warm. I'm carrying white jug (?) like things. There are fires lit around there is this flickering faint light around. It's so cosy, peaceful in the open forest at night. You know this feeling, you are out there with people somewhere, everybody is scattered around and you are all doing something together, collectively working. There is this feeling of full safety, comfort being a part of that. That's it. And I 'hear' people talking and walking. It was an amazing feeling. I don't see people, just figures. The voices are benevolent, soft. I don't understand any of it but 'get' what they are talking about. 

Then I remember that I'm not on Earth. I'm on another planet and in a momentary panic, I try to remember. How long I have been here? (But not what is here, how did I get here.) And I think "I have been here for twenty years with Earth time...". Then I suddenly start sobbing because then it comes to me, I remember that Humanity has ended. Human civilisation is no more. I can't describe that feeling of loss, pain, and heartbreaking. The void tearing my heart. I'm crying right now writing this. And then I think to myself "All that destruction, wars, genocides what was it for... nothing ... now it ended." But then someone (?) touches my back (physically?) and says (?) 'It's OK. Don't worry.' I don't hear any voice, I just understand it. And I feel a very intense melancholia and then an incredible relief, peace. I feel/think like, "It's OK. It started, happened and ended." This happens in moments in the short dream. It feels like something very heavy was lifted from me. Then we arrive at an opening, there is an enormous tree. (It's a tree?) It's an irregular sphere-like shape. I remember its branches make small rooms like spaces in it with flickering lights. But I don't remember any detail. Nothing about the figures, that place. I woke up crying, I cried a lot but I was peaceful. 

I had this dream in my late twenties. I don't know if this was the way my mind telling me to grow up, to make peace with my species, the human civilisation or not to worry about things I can't change which are my sober interpretations so far but its effect is still as fresh as that night. It's like a little stab wound in my heart. I feel it sting when I remember this dream and think about it.


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## Danny McG (Feb 1, 2020)




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## tegeus-Cromis (Feb 1, 2020)

dannymcg said:


> View attachment 60072


I will admit that, based on my flying dreams, I've sketched a novel. Between a detailed treatment and drafts of various scenes, I have maybe 15,000 words of it.


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## Parson (Feb 1, 2020)

olive said:


> I had this dream in my late twenties. I don't know if this was the way my mind telling me to grow up, to make peace with my species, the human civilisation or not to worry about things I can't change which are my sober interpretations so far but its effect is still as fresh as that night. It's like a little stab wound in my heart. I feel it sting when I remember this dream and think about it.



All I can say is that this was a wonderful gift and whether its from you subconscious or from somewhere outside of you; you are doing the right thing by cherishing it and living a productive life.


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## tegeus-Cromis (Feb 1, 2020)

olive said:


> There is one dream I had, not like any other, I'll never forget. It affected me very much, it changed me or I had it because I was changing. I can see where all my dreams and nightmares come from, but not this one. I think that was the most powerful one I had. It's a short, complete, very vivid dream. I need to tell it.
> 
> I'm walking in a forest, it's dark and warm. I'm carrying white jug (?) like things. There are fires lit around there is this flickering faint light around. It's so cosy, peaceful in the open forest at night. You know this feeling, you are out there with people somewhere, everybody is scattered around and you are all doing something together, collectively working. There is this feeling of full safety, comfort being a part of that. That's it. And I 'hear' people talking and walking. It was an amazing feeling. I don't see people, just figures. The voices are benevolent, soft. I don't understand any of it but 'get' what they are talking about.
> 
> ...


This reminds me quite a lot of a dream that Dostoevsky wrote in at least three versions, and that he gave to three different characters (in _Demons, A Raw Youth, _and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man").


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## tegeus-Cromis (Feb 1, 2020)

Two more: in college, I was a fine arts major. I mostly did graphic art in b&w and didn't trust my sense of color. Then one night, senior year (which I spent intensely, almost obsessively working on my senior thesis, a series of nearly monochrome landscapes), I had a dream of the most beautiful, brightly colored painting I'd ever seen. I can still see it in my memory, but if I tried to paint it it would be just a poor approximation of what I saw in my dream.

For a long time, I had many nightmares of buildings -- dilapidated mansions or institutional buildings, with a vague whiff of the post-apocalyptic about them, buildings that probably went on forever and in which I was forced to live, which were otherwise occupied by just a few others to whom I had little to say... It was as if we had been thrown together by chance, like refugees. But even saying this much is shading off into secondary elaboration. The dreams were mostly the buildings (often quite different from each other) and a feeling somewhere between unease and dread.


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## olive (Feb 1, 2020)

tegeus-Cromis said:


> This reminds me quite a lot of a dream that Dostoevsky wrote in at least three versions, and that he gave to three different characters (in _Demons, A Raw Youth, _and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man").



Really? I should read them then. I've only read Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and Notes From Underground. And I was in high school, I guess. I know Demons by name but I don't remember others. I haven't read any Russian classic since ancient times. Thank you.


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## tegeus-Cromis (Feb 1, 2020)

Well, begin with "Dream." It's a short story. I should warn you that the narrative context in which the dream appears in _Demons_ (in the chapter "At Tikhon's"--which was censored when the book was first published) is very, very disturbing.


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## olive (Feb 1, 2020)

tegeus-Cromis said:


> Two more: in college, I was a fine arts major. I mostly did graphic art in b&w and didn't trust my sense of color. Then one night, senior year (which I spent intensely, almost obsessively working on my senior thesis, a series of nearly monochrome landscapes), I had a dream of the most beautiful, brightly colored painting I'd ever seen. I can still see it in my memory, but if I tried to paint it it would be just a poor approximation of what I saw in my dream.



20 years ago, I was writing some trivial kind of post-graduate thesis on Italian Renaissance sculpture. Hand details. I have no idea why but probably because it kept extended and I felt stressed, I kept running around in Disputa's upper part a few times. Why Disputa I have no idea. I don't even like Raffaello particularly. And it had nothing to do with the mural. In my dream, there were rooms behind the mural and some figures from Athen's School and some others I added (?) were there sitting at a table. Leonardo. I look at an old man and think it must be him. (?) I don't remember others now, I used to. What am I doing, chasing Michelangelo. LOL He keeps going in and out of rooms and I can never reach him. I can't even see his face. I clearly remember his painting like robes flowing, dark blue of course. Ha! I hear doors shutting. And it was like one of those dark movies which they can't manage the light and make a mess. It was stupid and agitating. That stupid text ate my 3 years for nothing, just to make my prof happy. It was ridiculous and meaningless as art history goes. And it was my idea to keep it easy. It sounds so funny now.

Studying Western art history, especially Biblical iconography returned me as a lot of silly, funny dreams. I have seen Jesus so many times in my dreams for example, I don't even know the count. Because I haven't seen any other character's image as many times as I have seen his. Moses just a few times and the last one was when translating The White Goddess. He was wearing the nine branched (?) deer horn, lol. Also, I saw Julius Caesar as Ciaran Hindus, lecturing me about general politics in his council robes with perfect British English on a wooden, big picnic table. And Freud as his old pic, in that horrid brown suit speaking English with a weird so-called German accent. Iyyyh. The last one was more of a nightmare.

Well, my highlights end here. That's all I remember about my dream life.


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## olive (Feb 1, 2020)

tegeus-Cromis said:


> Well, begin with "Dream." It's a short story. I should warn you that the narrative context in which the dream appears in _Demons_ (in the chapter "At Tikhon's"--which was censored when the book was first published) is very, very disturbing.



OK.


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## Dave (Feb 2, 2020)

My dreams must be very mediocre compared to these posts. As far as I can remember (and I think I would) I've never been able to fly, never met aliens, nor seen spaceships, nor travelled to alien planets. I've never seen the future. I wish I could. It isn't a lack of imagination. My dreams are more like that _Rick and Morty_ episode when they were locked inside a room, but new members of their family kept appearing, who they just accepted, along with whatever lame back-story they came with. I usually see real people in my dreams or amalgams (never talking animals or androids) but they appear in impossible situations or impossible places, and I never question this ever. My dreams are sometimes re-runs of events that have happened, but with a different spin and outcomes, and with other people. A sort of _Groundhog Day_. This is why I've never written them down. I really don't think they'd sell. Also, some people could sue me for libel. Other times they are cheap knock-off versions of books read or films watched. They would have copyright infringement issues.


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## olive (Feb 2, 2020)

@tegeus-Cromis I've just read The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. I think I get why my dream reminded you of the story -the similar elements- but this is entirely different. He is describing an Eden like twin world and he reaches there by some sort of an 'awakening', some 'divine revelation', some knowledge he has that sets him apart from other people and then he corrupts, shapes that Eden like world. He is talking about knowing some sort of truth and preaching about it. It's dark and distressing.

In my dream, I'm like a little child who figures out that her home can vanish forever and her parents can die that these will happen so it happens in the dream. That it is life. There is no intellectual or divine revelation, some awakening in any part of my dream or what I feel about. I'm not at some better place but just some other place. I certainly have no effect on it. Whatever the beings are there, they are not superior per se. I'm not in some special position. My dream is a result of defence mechanism if you ask me. I'm a vulnerable person who can easily be affected by a lot of things. I've also been depressed at most of my adult life. I won't read the following ones. This was enough now, lol.

@Parson The art history department at my university was founded by the German scholars hence, the German tradition. It's a strict, heavy detailed one. And the history of art education was evolved as limited -still is I think- to the Western history of art in a strict sense. (Apart from the dominant culture.) That means you are bombarded with the visual information of thousands of depictions of characters from scripture, scenes from the Bible...etc. And following an outdated sort of style of education, you are expected to 'memorise' them. I've always had a problem with it, I didn't do well, most importantly I found it wrong and obsolete. Recognising an altarpiece from one panel or a cathedral form an obscure detail is not art history. That's not how should the history of art be taught. They could have cut that half and introduced different cultures we would've learned much more. So I've resisted this -without even knowing exactly why at that age- as a student and later when I was at the university. It was an issue for me. So the dreams were about filtering out that unnecessary excess from my mind for sure. For a short period in my life, my mind almost vomited these images. So nothing surprising or even a bit interesting about me seeing these characters, lol.

I agree with @Dave that dreams have nothing to do with imagination but just simply about filtering out the unwanted and making sense of with any excess good or bad. Considering we probably remember a very little portion of it -fortunately- it is a very good recycling and cleaning system.


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## Karn's Return (Feb 2, 2020)

Well, when I was a young lad, I had a dream that my one-time neighborhood came under attack from werewolves. It was a two-part dream, which was very odd...I had the second part the night after I had the first, and to this day I feel like there was meant to be a third but it never happened.


What happened in the dream was, my family, being at the end of the road, were the last ones still around. My brother, for whatever reason, was out rescuing small animals from the beasts while the rest of us defended the property. The cliffhanger ended with a werewolf managing to find its way through the back door-which to be perfectly honest, sucked horribly with what the home was. That part ended just as the beast was about pounce on one of us, but I never found out which of us was its intended victim.


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## Ray Zdybrow (Mar 27, 2020)

Parson said:


> Not quite the same thing. But I would often go to bed on Saturday night disgruntled by one of the pieces of Sunday's sermon only to have a good answer for the problem the minute I woke up on Sunday. It was so common that I got to the point where I didn't worry much about a whole on Saturday night because I was pretty sure something would be available to me on Sunday I had not thought of before.


Then halfway through delivering the homily, you realised... you WEREN'T WEARING YOUR TROUSERS!?


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## tinkerdan (Mar 27, 2020)

Ha, that reminds me...


AlexH said:


> I remember a dream where I went to the cinema in a big shopping centre with a friend. I fell asleep during the film


...I went to one of the Star Wars films at the theater with a friend and he fell asleep half way through or somewhere there about. I really don't know how long he was sleeping; however if he hadn't been snoring I might have let him sleep right through.

As to dreams, mine vary and sometimes I dream every night for weeks. I often have dreams that seem to follow a plot; however just as often I have ones that seem to repeat the same things over and over--often with different results. In fact that makes me think of that saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the same unsatisfactory results. In my dreams it's more like doing the same thing over and over with consistently different yet negative results, that's driving me mad.


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## Parson (Mar 27, 2020)

Ray Zdybrow said:


> Then halfway through delivering the homily, you realised... you WEREN'T WEARING YOUR TROUSERS!?



No, that was never dreamed about, or (praise the Lord) never happened for real. I do know of a pastor who always wore waders when he baptised someone by immersion but one day he overfilled the baptismal tank and the water flowed over his waders as he and the one to be baptised stepped in. Water then over flowed his waders, and he had to take the off to get out of the tank. Revealing to the congregation that he had taken his trousers off so that they didn't get damp in the waders. Blessedly he did not go commando.


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## Astro Pen (Mar 27, 2020)

Somewhere around 1985 I had an abduction dream . Paralysed and carried down the stairs. Would have been 'one of those' had my partner not woken up and said that she had just had a nightmare about - being paralysed and carried down the stairs !
Makes you wonder....


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## Boneman (Mar 27, 2020)

As a young teenager, I had recurrent dreams of being chased by an almost unseen shape, that was obese. In order to get away I would jump in the air and take an enormous stride. When I landed, it was akin to being on a trampoline, and I'd spring higher with each step. Eventually, when I was 50 feet in the air, I'd stay there, and 'swim' my way to safety.

Over many years this nightmare progressed, so I just had to take one step, and I was 50 feet up, home free. Eventually, I just spread my arms and flew. And at that point, I never dreamed of a pursuer again...  but I carried on flying. Any grassy slope appeared in my dream  I'd just step off and go. I truly wish I could go wingsuiting, my dreams are so like that.

Now, I try and teach people in my dreams to fly, just telling them to step off and trust themselves. Never recognised anyone I'm teaching yet... I always wake with a deep sense of wonder and contentment.


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## Extollager (Mar 27, 2020)

t-C wrote, "This reminds me quite a lot of a dream that Dostoevsky wrote in at least three versions, and that he gave to three different characters (in _Demons, A Raw Youth, _and 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man')."  Not really on topic, but I wanted to say that *Demons* is, for me, an essential book.

As for the topic -- I've almost never had dreams that I remember that had a definite sf element.  I dreamed many years ago of being at my grandparents' house in rural Grants Pass, Oregon, and looking out the window at a tyrannosaur walking around.


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## Ray Zdybrow (Mar 28, 2020)

I dreamt I was riding along a deserted road with Batman. The Batmobile stalled and I had to get out to hand-crank the motor. I was finding it difficult, I couldn't turn the crank fast enough to get the engine to catch, and Batman was standing there, arms folded tutting and sighing and making sarcastic comments. Then suddenly Superman flew down, wrapped his strong arms around me and carried me away into the sky... I had the dream not long after my father died.


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## Ray Zdybrow (Apr 5, 2020)

-K2- said:


> "Because this is what I do here, just because"



I don't think I'll forget that. 

Also I can see that green paint. And the smell!


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## -K2- (Apr 5, 2020)

Ray Zdybrow said:


> *I don't think I'll forget that.* Also I can see that green paint. And the smell!



I know I wish I could 

K2


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## Danny McG (Jun 9, 2020)

I woke up very early today (dawn breaking) and shook my head at the dream.

A man with a clipboard turned up from the local council and insisted I had to have a tree in my front garden.
This was because my house was the only one without a tree, I looked up and down the street and they all had large trees!

The back of his van opened and a number of very brightly dressed workmen carried a tree out (it was much bigger than the van)

They began digging a circular hole in my garden but they were also dancing - at this point I realised they were Showaddywaddy


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## Hugh (Jun 9, 2020)

Great dream!


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## tegeus-Cromis (Jun 9, 2020)

I had a dream a couple of nights ago that back when my then girlfriend/fiancée (now spouse) and I lived in NYC, we lived for a year in Brooklyn. That's pure fantasy (horror?) for me, because back then we were totally Manhattan creatures and we would *never* have considered moving to Brooklyn.


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## Astro Pen (Jun 9, 2020)

dannymcg said:


> I woke up very early today (dawn breaking) and shook my head at the dream.
> 
> A man with a clipboard turned up from the local council and insisted I had to have a tree in my front garden.
> This was because my house was the only one without a tree, I looked up and down the street and they all had large trees!
> ...



Worrying that in some parallel universe that is probably a documentary


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## Parson (Jun 9, 2020)

Astro Pen said:


> Worrying that in some parallel universe that is probably a documentary



The Stepford trees?


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## Ray Zdybrow (Jul 9, 2020)

dannymcg said:


> I woke up very early today (dawn breaking) and shook my head at the dream.
> 
> A man with a clipboard turned up from the local council and insisted I had to have a tree in my front garden.
> This was because my house was the only one without a tree, I looked up and down the street and they all had large trees!
> ...


Unusual to see Wolverine and Bananaman in the same pic.


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## Guttersnipe (Jul 9, 2020)

Not sure it's 100% science fiction, but I once had a dream in which I could travel through outer space and to different planets by flying; no suit was needed because there was breathable air everywhere and it was lukewarm. The planets were basically giant plastic spheres without inhabitants of any kind. I'd imagine that it would get boring after a while if it were real.


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