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Weird Dreams

I was looking through my dream journal, which I have kept since 2011, and was thinking about what great story fodder dreams can be. In general, I'm fascinated by dreams. I imagine that they must be some kind of key to a person's inmost thoughts and feelings. Anyone want to share their weird dreams? The weirder the better.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
One weird dream that has stuck with me since childhood runs thusly: I'm in my bedroom in the attic of my house, with my siblings and at least one cousin, when a giant chicken appears. He proclaims that he's going to make stew out of us, and blows on the ceiling (with breath that looks like that of the evil owl in this clip: Rock-A-Doodle part 3 - YouTube ) to make the attic flood. Then he sets the water on fire, but Mewtwo shows up and protects us by telekinetically forcing the flames away from us.

Yeah, it was *that* kind of dream. I still don't remember how it ended, or if it had an ending before I just woke up.
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
Weird dreams, huh? I remember a few. There was a recurring one when I was younger in which I was being chased by a giant wristwatch. There was also another one where I was in school and then in a canyon and got squished by a giant jack-in-the-box. That woke me up. Turned out my cat had jumped on my stomach. More recently, there was one when I was in college with my friends doing one of our hare-brained business schemes. We somehow acquired a lion and we were transporting it to the zoo in the back of my old Explorer, but we lost it somewhere along the way. Then we were either trying to get it back or to stay as far away from it as possible... And then we were in a crappy house in the middle of nowhere with no ceiling or doors. And then I mercifully woke up.
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
I have kept my Dream Journals since years ago.

This has been a wonderful experience to me, so good actually that I already have two notebooks full of written dreams and I am in the process of filling a third. I recommend the Dream Journal practice to everyone in order to have a richer life while you sleep, and also it can be a source of great story ideas for us Fantasy authors.

I'll tell you about this weird and a bit scary dream that I had a long time ago:

In the dream I was living at my place normally, but the entire world was in a state of terror and chaos because the Moon was going to fall and crash against Earth. The funny thing was that I was calm, not worried about it at all even after the TV News said that the Moon was going to crash against my city directly.

I would just go outside at night to look at that huge and yellow Moon as it was drawing closer to my city day after day...

Then, one night the Moon suddenly dashed against Earth like a comet while I was watching it, it impacted and the explosion was terrific. I knew I was dead, or at least I knew that I was supposed to be dead... However, I survived and life on the planet somehow continued despite the fact that Earth now resembled something like a bitten apple.

The post-Moon world was total madness in which people used cannons, motorcycles and arrows in order to survive and fight each other... Oh, and everything was just a scorched desert... Quite a pleasant dream that one was =)

Do you have experience with Fake Awakenings, Lucid Dreaming and WILD's?
 
I have kept my Dream Journals since years ago.

This has been a wonderful experience to me, so good actually that I already have two notebooks full of written dreams and I am in the process of filling a third. I recommend the Dream Journal practice to everyone in order to have a richer life while you sleep, and also it can be a source of great story ideas for us Fantasy authors.

I'll tell you about this weird and a bit scary dream that I had a long time ago:

In the dream I was living at my place normally, but the entire world was in a state of terror and chaos because the Moon was going to fall and crash against Earth. The funny thing was that I was calm, not worried about it at all even after the TV News said that the Moon was going to crash against my city directly.

I would just go outside at night to look at that huge and yellow Moon as it was drawing closer to my city day after day...

Then, one night the Moon suddenly dashed against Earth like a comet while I was watching it, it impacted and the explosion was terrific. I knew I was dead, or at least I knew that I was supposed to be dead... However, I survived and life on the planet somehow continued despite the fact that Earth now resembled something like a bitten apple.

The post-Moon world was total madness in which people used cannons, motorcycles and arrows in order to survive and fight each other... Oh, and everything was just a scorched desert... Quite a pleasant dream that one was =)

Do you have experience with Fake Awakenings, Lucid Dreaming and WILD's?

You know, when you write down your dreams and get in the habit of putting every detail on paper, you start to remember them much better. All the time I get ideas in my dreams, and get anxious to wake up so I can write them down, but when I wake up, they don't seem like such great ideas anymore...lol...

Your dreams sound very crazy. There was another dream thread you posted on where you told about a really awesome dream you had...

Fake awakenings, definitely. Lucid dreams, well, I typically can control my dreams, but there are limits to what I can do. I can't change a nightmare into a good dream (or vice versa, but why would I want to do that?) WILD's...what's that?

I do have very scary moments when I seem to be waking up, but I can't move or make any sound, so I'm kind of lying there paralyzed.
 

Gryphos

Auror
The only dreams I can recall are two I had when I was a kid. In one of them, my school was invaded by velociraptors. Luckily, though, Indiana Jones came to save everyone by pointing out a secret tunnel people could use to escape the building. However, the tunnel got congested and the raptors returned, so I ran down a corridor, got caught by a raptor, and woke up. Pretty neat.

In the other one, I was running down a slightly flooded mansion where everything's purple, and everything looked a little bit pixelated like in an old NES game. Then out of nowhere a giant purple cat pounced on me and said, "I own you." Freud would probably have a field day with that one...
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Hey Dragon of the Aerie. So you discovered my old Fantasy Dreams thread, great! I had almost forgotten about that one.

Yeah, the dream about the two princesses and their red castle was for sure the most intense dream of my life. Not even my WILD's have reached that level of clarity, realism and detail... Who knows what happened to me that night, but a part of me is convinced that I really traveled and visited that place as a spirit or something.

WILD (wake induced lucid dream) is when you wake up, usually during the morning, but you are not completely awake. Then, something in your consciousness changes and you pass directly into a Dream World, without the need to attain lucidity there because you do not really fall asleep to begin with.

It feels incredible, literally like passing through a magical gateway and entering a Fantasy world.

This has happened to me only a few times, and I keep trying to experience it again but it's really tricky to do. There are lucky people out there with the natural talent to do it as many times as they want, and I am so envious of that ability. They say that it's the most vivid type of dream possible, but my dream about the red castle was even more intense than my WILD's.

One of the most special powers of Aylars (one of my Fantasy species) is that they have WILD as their normal sleep, every night. They can also share the same Dream world in case their family or close friends are sleeping at the same time, and they have loads of fun and incredible experiences thanks to this.

What do you do when you attain lucidity during an ordinary dream?
 
What do you do when you attain lucidity during an ordinary dream?

Typically I explore. My dreams always place me in very strange, interesting settings, so I always want to have a look around and find out more about the place I'm in.

Once I dreamed of a library. I pulled off a book and started reading it. I still remember lots about that dream book--the font on the cover, the characters, the illustrations inside--I remember illustrations of a brightly moonlit desert at night. There was a young girl in pigtails wearing a grey and white striped dress, but she was the only human anywhere. Her name was Winona the Wolf Girl and I don't know what the wolf part is about, maybe she was a werewolf? The desert was inhabited by huge, maggot-like worms which were sentient. I really don't remember much else, but that dream helped inspire the short story I'm working on for Top Scribe. I knew I would have to write about it sometime.

Well, after I had put that book on the shelf, I realized I was dreaming. Then I thought, is this some kind of library of my deepest thoughts? Do all my ideas that I haven't unlocked yet live here? So I pulled off another book. I only remember the cover. It was a night sky dominated by a HUGE yellow moon and there was a trampoline, and four children were jumping up on it, silhouetted against the moon. I haven't been to that library again. But I might come back to it. I revisit places again and again in my dreams. Most of them don't actually exist, so I don't know why I revisit them. I actually remember dreams I had and forgot upon waking while I'm dreaming. Did I actually dream those things, and can only remember them while dreaming, or is it a dream within a dream, a compound dream? I dream a lot about a creek, which later grows into a river. I know the bridge that crosses it and the beaches along its shores and the woods it runs through. I think its source is somewhere in a forest glade I dreamed about when I was three or four. (That's another compound dream. I would never remember dreams that long ago if I didn't dream of that creek.) I used to dream all the time about a house I lived in as a child--very rarely I still come back there in my dreams. Some people seem to dream about events or characters, I always dream about places.

Once I had a dream I could fly and I was in a world where the sky was always a sunset, and I was flying over a village where the houses were made of the mattresses of dead people...That was strange.
 
A very strange thing I have noticed about my dreams: The sky decides what kind of dream it is. In the vast majority of my dreams the sky is overcast. This is a neutral dream. This dream isn't good or bad, it's just a dream. A bright, sunny sky is a good dream, an especially happy one. A black or reddish-purple sky means a nightmare. There are a few exceptions--a notable one was a flying dream where the song "Fireflies" by Owl City was playing in my head and it was nighttime and I was flying around and fireflies were lighting up all around me...loved that. But, since most of my dreams are neutral, the sky is almost always overcast. You'd think if it didn't mean anything it wouldn't be so consistent. And I always NOTICE that the sky is overcast. When i wake up I always remember the glow behind the gray undulations of the clouds. It's really strange.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
Are strangely ordinary dreams acceptable as well?

If so, today I dreamt about laying on the couch with a grilled cheese sandwich and fridge full of beer.
It went on for a very long time and nothing else happened, as far as I remember.

All in all. Best dream ever.
 
Are strangely ordinary dreams acceptable as well?

If so, today I dreamt about laying on the couch with a grilled cheese sandwich and fridge full of beer.
It went on for a very long time and nothing else happened, as far as I remember.

All in all. Best dream ever.

Why don't we ever have dreams like that? :p
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
Why don't we ever have dreams like that? :p

I fell asleep on the living room couch when I was home alone once, and dreamed about sleeping on the living room couch. Then I woke up in the dream and my family was there, but when I woke up for real no one was there. Made me kinda sad.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
I fell asleep on the living room couch when I was home alone once, and dreamed about sleeping on the living room couch. Then I woke up in the dream and my family was there, but when I woke up for real no one was there. Made me kinda sad.

Did your family give you grilled cheese?
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
The worst kind of dream is when dream that you woke up and did your morning ablutions and then you wake up and realise that it was a dream and you still have to do everything.
 
I have kept my Dream Journals since years ago.
?

This is such a good idea - do you find that different types of sleep affect how much you remember your dreams (sleeping longer, or less, eating before bed, interrupted sleep...

I used to have a recurring dream when I was very young

I owned airfix models, and the dream always focused on a specific building (an air control tower). I used to 'wake up' on the tower, and grew very familiar with a sequence of events. 1/ A tri-plane arriving, 2/ trying to find a place to hide as it attacked the people on the tower, 3/ dying.

Instead of anticipating the tri plane and hiding, dream me left the tower and went into the forest. There in a clearing was the tri-plane. Dream me burnt it and I never had the dream again.

A bit predictable maybe - but I do enjoy these hints at how our subconscious works!
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Hello everyone!

Dragon of the Aerie, it seems to me that you have a natural ability for Lucid Dreaming. Most people are very unfamiliar with the experience, and when they finally have one the most common reaction after attaining lucidity is so much excitement that they wake up and lose the dream.

Also, you can read in dreams!

I can do that too, but it happens very occasionally. I have read books, magazines and even chat conversations in computer screens while dreaming... The illustrations in books can be intriguing, indeed. I am not sure, but as far as I know most people cannot read anything in a dream because the text in question appears either blurred or senseless.

In my last Lucid Dream, I was exploring a sad and boring desert full of boulders and rocky hills. I climbed one of those hills, I discovered a great view of a valley with a road and houses below and then (for reasons unknown) I attained lucidity. At that moment the view and general perceptions became much more intense, and I could see every tiny detail of the houses and people in the distance.

It was strange that I just wanted to explore, not even a single attempt to fly or do something like that...

What I did was to keep repeating to myself: I am dreaming... I am dreaming... every few minutes. They say that doing this can help a lot to stay lucid and prolong the experience as much as possible, and it kind of worked. In the end, it was night in the desert and I was just jumping really high on the hill trying to reach a white full Moon in the sky.

My goal is to create any landscape that I want, and have my own castle and also fly a lot, but very few people ever attain that level of control over their Lucid Dreams.
 
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