Dreams: Introduction:
I have had an unusual dream life. My most powerful experience was a prophetic dream that resulted in a man quitting his job and moving to another state. That sparked my interest in dreams, and for a while I got in the habit of documenting and analyzing my most vivid dreams. I got out of that habit and lost much of what I had written. I can only remember a few of them now, and have lost my notes of what may have influenced my mind at the time. I will share what I can remember.
Though my research into dreams has been limited, partially due to the fact that I have a hard time finding good information not based in New Age theology, I have decided to study the subject a little more and will append this log as I learn more.
I seem to be what is known as a “lucid dreamer.” I am often aware that I am dreaming and use that to my advantage. Sometimes that means that I make a bad dream turn in my favor, sometimes it means that I consciously decide to enjoy the sensations of my environment. The most common element in my dreams is flight; it is almost an expected element, and sometimes I will fly or float just for the enjoyment of it.
I have proved and disproved several theories about dreaming. First of all, I sometimes read something and wake up remembering the exact words. I have heard that one has to train oneself to read in dreams so this is perhaps something that not everyone can do. I can verify that it is possible, however. Second, not all dreams are in black and white. I don’t know who came up with this idea or how they tested it, but I am conscious of colors. I rarely take notice of it since I don’t in the waking world think about how I’m seeing in color rather than not. However, I can name at least two particular occasions where I noted color, both of which I will describe in detail as I describe my dreams. One was the gold of some valuable items and one was the red of blood.
Perhaps the most interesting theory I’ve
disproved is the one about death. I
have heard for most of my life that if one dies in a dream one dies in real
life. The entire series of Nightmare
on
Now that you have some idea of what my dream life is like I will describe for you some of my most vivid memories. I will try to describe the dreams as best I can while adding context and comments in parenthesis.
Dream 1: The Prophesy
(By far my most powerful dream ever. I forget the date, but I believe it was in the early 1990’s. Still as fresh in my memory as any event in my life I can recount it in every detail without a glance at my notes. I won’t include last names of the people involved for some level of anonymity.) The setting is a cabin on the lake. (This is an old red building my family has used for generations. It is so old that I can remember a time when we used an outhouse rather than indoor plumbing. When my grandparents died my parents became the most frequent visitors. We would use the cabin for family outings, church picnics, and other small social events. The cabin sits on a small peninsula. A dirt drive leads past other cabins forming a loop in front of our door. In the middle of the loop is a grassy area with a cement picnic table. We would often set up tables along the backmost part of the drive since the cabin itself was too cramped for our parties. People would get the food from these tables and find a seat at the cement table, on the porch, or somewhere closer to the water.)
(The land slopes towards the water on the other three sides of the cabin. The left side is never used since the drop is steeper than anywhere else, is open to the most aquatic traffic, and is where the water pump for the plumbing is located. The back part is easily accessible but is extremely rocky. It is a great place for wading, but going out too far can be dangerous since there is a lot of boat traffic through the area. To the right is a slew. It is large enough for boats, but is too small for high speeds. Because of that and the fact that only those going to one of the cabins in the slew come through there it is a safe place to swim. This is where our pier is located. It is completely wooden and large enough to accommodate two small boats regularly with room more for short periods of time. There is room for several people to sit in chairs and places for swimmers to safely dive. We primarily swim on the right side since the ground is flatter, although the left side is safe for swimming as well. We are close enough to the end of the peninsula to see out into the main body of the lake to the left. To the right is the back of the slew with more cabins and piers. The bank directly across from us is accessible to an active swimmer, but is so overgrown we always avoided it for fear of snakes. Now back to our dream.)
My parents are hosting a Sunday school party at the cabin. There are numerous people around though I take little notice of most of them. Everyone is up near the cabin eating. I am standing near the tables of the food and happen to be the only one facing the water. I see something that turns my blood ice cold. Two long, dark shadows are swimming several yards past the pier towards the back of the slew. They are as long and thick as telephone poles. Despite their unusual size and shape, I know immediately what they are, stretch snakes, enormous python-like animals that do not kill their prey before swallowing it whole. They have an elastic pouch behind their heads where they can hold a large, thrashing animal waiting to be digested.
Before I can tell anyone they are out there Marvin, who has finished eating, darts down the hill clearly planning to jump in the water at full speed. I yell at him to stop, don’t go into the water, but it’s too late; he’s committed to his leap before I can get the words out of my mouth. He jumps off the bank to the left of the pier. If only he had run down the pier I could have stopped him. Instead, he went for the nearest jump-off point. Once he’s airborne one of the snakes shoots towards him like a torpedo. It is so fast that it is barely visible. The instant Marvin is submerged in the water he is gone leaving only a pocket of rising air bubbles where he hit. It is over so quickly I am not able to actually see the serpent swallow him.
The serpent reappears some distance out floating flat on the surface of the water. Marvin’s figure is outlined from feet to outstretched arms in the reptile’s pouch. He is reaching out trying to escape the lethal prison. His outline shrinks slowly as the resistance goes out of him and he succumbs to the bowels of the beast, crumpling into a fetal position.
Once he is gone the serpent submerges again and rejoins its counterpart. A pontoon boat bound for one of the docks in the back of the slew drives past me. I run to the end of our pier to warn them of the danger since one of the snakes has not eaten yet. The serpents swim slowly under the boat but neither seems interested. They act as if Marvin was enough of a meal for the both this day. (I was so disturbed by this dream that I went to my pastor about it. Try as I might I could not convince myself that this was just another dream. We decided I should talk to Marvin about it. This may sound fanatical to readers who do not believe in the spiritual realm, but we decided the serpent that ate Marvin represented his job while the other was Satan who was controlling and watching the events. In his current situation Marvin’s job would devour and destroy him if he continued on his current course. He had already been feeling like this was the case, and my dream was the final nudge he needed to take action. If memory serves he had quit his job within the week. For those of you thinking such a radical religious interpretation is silly, we will never know for sure what might have happened if Marvin had not taken action. I, for one, will gladly take the happy ending over any kind of irrefutable proof of the accuracy of my dream. To the best of my knowledge a good job immediately opened up for him elsewhere and he had little trouble making the move. I saw his wife and daughter a few years ago when they drove quite a long way to attend my wedding. They seemed to be doing very well.)
Dream 2: Shot in the Head
(This is one of my most vivid dreams. Though it was in October of 1994, and though some of the minor details escape me without the aid of my notes, I can still clearly recall the incredibly odd sensations I felt. I have never been able to satisfactorily describe what I felt because each sensation was so detailed. It is more memorable to me than anything I’ve actually felt physically.)
(I think the setting is supposed to be my house, but while it has some familiar elements it is not like the house I know. The furniture is the main point. The Lay-Z-Boy and large chair with a footstool are the same as is the small table between them. However the floor is hard rather than carpeted and is downstairs where my bedroom should be. The room itself is considerably bigger than either the real bedroom or the living room and has other nondescript living room furniture along the other walls. Outside is a large room that leads to my sister’s bedroom and a small hallway off of which doorways to the stairwell leading upstairs and the bathroom.)
Sometime before the events of the dream it was prophesied that I would be shot and killed. Though I do not actually experience that event it is a clear memory. Three men break into my house, and begin shooting everyone (I don’t remember specifically who was in the room). I duck behind the table between the two chairs, but it’s a pitiful hiding spot, and I know it. One of the intruders comes up to me and forces me to the ground. I’m lying on my side with my cheek on the floor when the man puts the gun to my temple. I know I’m at his mercy and the inevitable is coming.
The man says something about Judas betraying Jesus, and I come to the realization, even acceptance, that he feels like he is doing this because he thinks it’s right like a justifiable genocide rather than a robbery.
He pulls the trigger. I feel a sharp pain in my cranium, and everything goes black. My thought processes don’t stop, however. I begin thinking that any minute now I will die and wake up in Heaven. I lay there in darkness anticipating and contemplating – sad to be leaving Earth but excited that I’m about to meet my maker. Gradually physical sensations fade into my consciousness. I become aware of blood dripping from my temple onto the floor. Then I realize I can feel drops of the liquid running down the hole in my head. The air is chilly and the drops of blood become painfully cold as they run down.
I am still unaware of my surroundings aside from the temperature, in a kind of limbo, but over the course of several minutes I realize that I am not going to die so I begin to fight for full consciousness. When I finally awake there are no living beings around me. It take a great deal of effort to rise since my head feels like lead, but it’s not an excruciating pain, just a strong headache.
I hear something in the house upstairs and am scared that it is the killers. I go into the bathroom and look for a hiding place. There is a long bench on which my sister sits when she puts on her make-up. The seat comes off and it is hollow inside so I climb in it to hide (this is not a dream element, I really could have hidden in this stool if I had wanted to though it would be uncomfortable).
I hear an ambulance so I peek out to see paramedics looking around. I go up to one of them and tell her I’ve been shot in the head and need police protection. She puts her arm around me and leads me to the ambulance where she begins treating my wound. My mother comes up to me, but they have to tell me she is my mother. That’s when I realize I probably have brain damage. My mother doesn’t know what to do. She puts her hands on my cheeks like she wants to hug me but is afraid she will hurt me.
(The evening before the dream I heard about a boy that was shot in the head for no apparent reason. That could have sparked the images of the shooting. Also I had recently played the part of a boy that dies in a car wreck in a play, and a girl named Jayne was my paramedic. A short time after the dream I found dried blood on my pillow that I was sure had not been there before.)
Dream 3: The Possessed Daughter
(I was about 20 when I had this dream so it was probably early to mid 1995.)
I am middle aged (I don’t know exactly how old I’m supposed to be, but thinking about it later I decided I looked to be in my late 30’s). I have a wife and at least two kids. One of these is a teenage daughter (14-15 I’m guessing). She is tall, slender, and extremely attractive with long hair the same color as mine.
Our house is large, an upper-middle class house in the country. The banisters are stained wood with matching baseboards and furniture. Most of the rooms have a lighter colored wood floor except the kitchen which is white tile. The living room has a high vaulted ceiling with wooden beams that match the banisters. There are at least two floors and a huge attic with an enclosed staircase leading up to it.
My wife, son, and I are running from my daughter who is possessed by a demonic force and trying to kill us. We run through the bright kitchen to the dimmer hallway then into the stairway to the attic. I close the door, but it does not lock and is a flimsy door anyway. We have run out of places to hide. Even if we retreat into the attic we will be cornered. I realize it’s either my daughter or the rest of my family so when she comes through the door I shoot her under the chin with a shotgun.
I am immediately distraught over these events. I feel like I had no choice, but also feel like I should have been able to find another solution. Nobody is accusing me of doing anything wrong, but I feel like I’m under the scrutiny of every eye. It’s my own conscience.
I have gone into the kitchen needing something to drink to calm down. A moment later my wife walks in with her arm around our daughter who is fine. There is not so much as a mark under her chin. I’m overjoyed to see her thinking the evil spirit must have absorbed the blast keeping her free from harm. Then she calls me Bob, and I realize that her brain, while free from demonic influence, is scrambled.
Like cutting from one scene of a movie to another I am now 20. I no longer have a daughter, but the house is exactly the same. My family and friends have been attacked and lay unconscious. They all lay on the floor in the living room hurt but alive. The attackers are also out. There is only one person left, a huge man. He is so big I know that one punch will knock me out.
I attack first. I hit him quickly and roll to escape his grasp. I am too fast for him, but I am not hurting him enough to make him back off. He backs me into the kitchen (the same kitchen that my wife and daughter had been in earlier). I realize I’m losing ground and need a moment to regroup. Besides the door to the living room and the hallway that leads to the attic there is another door. I go through.
I’m in a small square room with a door on the other side. I go through to another similar room. Through the next door is yet another room except this one has two doors, one in front of me and one to my right. The one in front leads back to the living room. I crack it open and look through hoping to get a glimpse of the big man. I’m paranoid he’ll see the door open so I shut it quickly. Then I get paranoid that he might be following me. I start to go through the door on the right when he enters.
I run into the living room just barely escaping his grasp, but now he has me cornered. As he closes in I begin to pray for help. A field of energy appears around me like a suit of armor. The man punches me. My head snaps back, but it doesn’t hurt at all. Seeing that his attack had such little effect, the man pulls a bottle from his pocket. It is evidently some kind of strong acid. He pours it on me, but it rolls off with no affect. It doesn’t so much as wet my clothes. Thus protected I begin punching the man until he gives out.
Rapture
(This was in October of 1995.) My friend Stuart and I are in a huge room. It reminds me of a showroom with dark, reflective surfaces and numerous round, raised platforms with edges accented by a blue glow. The blue reflects off the walls, floor, and roof giving the whole room a shimmering effect that reminds me of a pool.
The rapture is either about to take place in the next few seconds, is happening and time is frozen, or has just happened and we aren’t in Heaven yet. Satan is mad at all the Christians getting away from him and jealous that they are going to Heaven where he wants to be. He begins throwing a last-second barrage of temptations, doubts, and regrets of things never accomplished in life at Stuart and me.
When none of that affects us he decides to try a physical attack. He changes into Goro from Mortal Kombat. He’s large and ugly with 4 arms. He chases us down a passageway and into a small room like a closet.
Suddenly Satan as Goro is thrown aside like a rag doll. He is completely swept away and no longer a danger. A feeling of pride in the power of God, gratitude that he helped us, and excitement that we are so near Him washes over us.
Sniper
(I don’t have any idea whatsoever when I had this dream. It had to have been between 1992 and 1996, but that’s the most I can narrow it.)
I am a detective and know that I’m an excellent marksman. I am in a room that looks like a business office. There is a large oak desk in the middle, filing cabinets along the walls, and nice chairs in front of the desk. There is a huge picture window, and I can tell that we are in the city. I think we are about 8 stories high. The lights in the room are off, and the only light from outside are from electric lights on the street below.
I am with a girl of about 23 (I’m not sure if she was my client or my assistant though I’m pretty sure she was working with me because this was not my office). I see a red laser dot on the wall. Sniper! I duck and drag the girl down as the sniper fires. We duck behind the desk, and once I’m confident in our cover I begin searching for the sniper.
I look up and hear another shot. He is in the building across the street firing through an open window. I look up again, and this time he doesn’t fire. Assuming he’s reloading, I take the time to focus on the room he’s in. He is leaning on a bookshelf. I notice that one of the books on it is a high school annual. Somehow I know it is the key to catching the sniper so I commit its title to memory (I can’t be certain anymore, but I think it was my own high school annual). All of a sudden the girl and I are in my office in the daytime celebrating catching the bad guy.
Soulless:
(Again, I can’t remember when I dreamed this. I am going to guess that it was 1995 or 1996 since it deals with the movie Mortal Kombat. I had probably seen it recently. I had a hard time remembering it all even when writing it then. The main points stuck, but I know there was more detail that has eluded memory).
Like the movie Mortal Kombat a girl has been kidnapped and taken into a strange and dark dimension (in the movie it is Outworld). There is a hole in the floor that is portal to this world. I jump in without hesitation and am pulled into the other world.
The portal is actually a powerful tool that allows certain people to travel to various places in time. I’m am not one of those people so I can only go to the one place in the one time and only then because it was the last place to which the portal was connected.
I arrive in a world of dark, dank dungeons. It’s grim and nasty here. I find the girl almost immediately (I know there was a search, but I could not remember the details of it). I’m ambushed by a ninja warrior (similar to Sub Zero if you know Mortal Kombat). I defeat him.
I run with the girl back to the portal and we jump through just as some unknown thing is about to grab us. Whatever was chasing us jump into the portal as well, but I shove him back down before he can come all the way through.
Time passes and the girl is missing again. When I get there I see a girl that reminds me of someone named Rhonda, slender with curly red hair and brown eyes (I don’t think it actually was her because the body type was wrong, and I only made the connection to my friend after I had awakened. Making the connection just helped me remember what she looked like). I try to speak to her, but she doesn’t seem to hear me. I walk around a path to get closer to her because I’m starting to worry a little. She was once attractive but now looks vacant and wasted. She has a slump to her that is unnatural. Her button up shirt is hanging open, and her chest is so flat it looks deflated. I get the impression that her very heart and soul have been ripped out.
I resume my search for the missing girl concerned that this same thing might happen to her. However, when I can’t find her I decide I must have been mistaken about her coming here so I return home to look for clues.
The Cop:
(Once again, no idea when I had this one, though it’s a good guess that it was in 1995 or early ’96).
I am a cop in a big city. My partner is an attractive blond woman. She and I are chasing someone through a huge arcade set up like a flea market. I have an object that looks like a small space rocket. As we run through the arcade I pause at counters that have what looks like stove eyes, the round metal kind, on them. I set the rocket on the eyes and watch to see if it is sucked though the eyes into a pipe underneath. It never is.
We chase the man back onto the street. Thinking he went into a warehouse we sneak in. There are a bunch of men dressed in brown monks robes working on some machinery. One comes up to us and makes us leave. As we do so we catch the man and his accomplice hiding in a dumpster outside.
Later we are sitting on a sofa discussing the case with several other officers. A man that looks like Phil Heartman comes in drunk and stumbling. He whispers something in my partner’s ear. She tells him to get a life, and he leaves.
She then asks me if I’m dry as if we had been caught in a heavy downpour of rain then lays her head on my chest. I put my arm around her unnoticing of the other officers that were just with us, and we fall asleep.
The next morning we go back to the warehouse. I go up to the door and slide it open and shut several times. Everyone starts staring me, but I ignore them. Finally I get what I’m wanting: the ding of a bell above the door.
Satisfied I walk into the warehouse announcing that I intend to have a look around. I tell them if anything happens to me my partner will come in shooting first and asking questions later. A man offers to show me around. We come to four or five doors. He tells me where they all lead, but I want to see for myself. The first is a small, empty room. The next is a white tiled bathroom that I decide to examine later.
The next is an elaborate library. It is carpeted in dark red with large chairs. The bookshelves are huge and have a ladder for access to the upper shelves. At first this does not strike me as odd. Once inside, though, I begin to wonder why a place such as this has a library especially one so fancy.
My partner joins me and we begin searching the room. I find a small box behind one of the shelves. It contains two bottles of illegal perfume which convinces me that we will find drugs as well. The guide acts surprised and calls in another man to show him what we found.
The other man attacks me. He kicks at me and I block. He kicks again at my head. I catch his foot and shove it upwards stretching his groin painfully. He falls to the ground and moans.
I notice another man standing in the doorway. He’s been watching the fight, and now that it’s over he is trying to sneak away. It’s Michael Jackson. I yell for him to stop, but he keeps walking.
(I don’t know where Phil Heartman and Michael Jackson came from. I’m not a big fan of either one and don’t remember seeing anything during that time that would have put them fresh on my mind).
Vacation:
(This one was more like watching a movie. I don’t recall being any of these people. I don’t remember when this was).
A family is on vacation in a winter setting. There is a snow-covered log cabin by a small frozen pond. Trees are thick in every direction. They are leafless and covered by snow. The mother and sister are inside while the dad and two brothers are throwing a baseball on the pond. Without warning the sister falls out of a window, through the ice, and into the freezing water. At the same time the two brothers, running for the same baseball, collide, fall, and break the ice. They, too, disappear into the water.
Once they are all three submerged they are transported to another dimension similar to the real world but different from what they know. They are in a small grass hut in an arid land. A pair of large women barge into the hut.
“Where is she?” one asks.
“Not here,” the other replies. “These are her kids. That may be why we were led here.”
A device they are using apparently tracks brain patterns. The kids, figuring the women are looking for their mother, follow the pair. They split up. The youngest boy is the first to find the women. They almost see him, but he gets out of sight at the last second. He sees them walk into a dense thicket after which he hears commotion and his mother’s voice.
Excited he runs though the thicket into a small clearing. On one edge is a podium with a small, strange device with a blinking red button. He realizes his mother has been taken in an alien spacecraft.
Doom House:
(Yet another one I can’t remember when it happened).
There is a big, ugly house reported to have gold hidden in it. It is a threatening looking place: big, weather-beaten, gloomy – the perfect place for ghosts and monsters. Some teens have braved the scary house to find the gold. They get scared (I’m not sure by what) and leave.
Then the murders start. One of the guys saves the girl from being drowned by two other guys. They fall in love. Shortly thereafter her ex-boyfriend is found dead in her car. The new boyfriend put something in the trunk and is afraid he left fingerprints that will cause him to get arrested. The car has a trunk split down the middle made so one half could open while the other half stays concealed. He hopes this will throw the cops off his trail.
The pair see the murderer and follow him to the spooky house. The villain reveals that he wants the girl’s necklace. It is a large half-moon with a diamond set above it. Once he has the jewelry he reveals that with the right incantations it has magical properties. He thinks this is the right piece because his book of spells described it as a “curved shape with something.”
He recites the incantation which brings the demons out of himself and into the open. He gives them full control over him. He begins to claim he is the savior. Someone asks if he means Jesus. He replies that he is and says he needs money. Then he says the world will end in 2 minutes.
When only 15 seconds are left the boyfriend begins to count down. He starts yelling out the numbers when he reaches 10. The demon controlled murderer begins to get nervous and reaches out his hand to remove the guy’s soul. He continues to count down, however, and when he reach 1 he casts the demons out.
Dream: Death and Giving
I am in an arena that reminds me of Laser Tag. It is dark with glowing LED and neon lights scattered about to create an otherworldly mood. There is an upper deck, circular, with a sunken center full of obstacles. Though the atmosphere is one of a game, we are in a battle for our lives.
Three or four people are fighting along with me. Spiders the size of large dogs are attacking us. We are running and shooting them with great success. I am confident we will win. As their numbers increase we let our guard down too much, and a spider hiding in a crevice in the wall springs down on our heads. It is aiming for the female member. I jump in and take the attack while firing on the monster. I kill it, but it gets me as well. Death is painful but swift.
When I open my eyes I’m outside of Heaven. I’m not really sure where I am because it is definitely not Heaven and not Hell. I guess it is purgatory or just a transitional plane. I am standing on a path looking out on fields of homeless people. They are huddled together in groups camped out in what looks like dead wheat fields. They look needy. I realize I’m on the path to Heaven even if I’m not there yet; I’m going to be fine, but these people need help. I have a large golden mirror in my possession. It gleams brightly against the dull brown and gray of the fields. It is extremely valuable, and though I don’t want to part with it these people need its value more than I do. I give it to one of them and realize I now have a golden goblet in my possession. It gleams even brighter than the mirror. I give it away. Suddenly I’m knee deep in golden items. I have to keep giving or I’ll be buried under a mountain of riches. I begin shoveling gold out into the crowd with both hands, and the people come alive. They are celebrating my generosity and thanking God. I smile.