I used to always want to write horror. Someday I would do it. I had vivid dreams that would be turned into nightmares later, I thought.

And then five years ago I had a stroke and three brain surgeries.

My nightly dreams vanished. Entirely.

Once vivid dreams now a vacuum of dreamless sleep.

I wrote the first horror book.

Slowly but surely the memory of my dreams is returning. No longer vivid and cinematic, I can barely remember what happened.

But the fact that I am beginning to dream again, it’s very promising to me.

I myself believe that dreams are unconscious thought. But it shows the depth of the mind.

We are so convinced in them that they are real. Our minds are very powerful.

After retirement began to have recurrent disturbing dreams.
The Plant had hundreds of large Graco drum pumps, all going at different times.
These were 55 gallon drum pumps, 5 gallon pail pumps and larger units emptying out Tankers.
In the dreams these things were running in my living room. The sound was so clear.
I would try to ignore them but they got louder and faster, jarring me awake.
It went on for weeks, started dreading going to sleep.
Then one night, it stopped.
Avoid even talking about it in case it comes back.
Guess thats what 30 years of Manufacturing does to your psyche.

As a lifelong insomniac the only surefire solution that I’ve found that’s not some bullshit med is weed. I’ve always been a casual partaker but you know, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do for your wellbeing. The only downside to my smoking up every night is the fact that I have the biggest mind-fuck dreams/nightmares when I imbibe so every night is a new freak show adventure. Not a huge fan of these crazy adventures, but it beats the hell out of 4 or 5 total hours of sleep over 3 days. I’d also like to point out that if you have a lot of dreams where you’re drowning or getting choked out etc. that you should consider getting checked out for sleep apnea. Also agreed on the dead family and friends always making appearances on an almost nightly basis.

Years ago I used to be able to interpret my dreams somewhat and they were usually familiar places and people. Now, I have no idea where the stuff I dream comes from anymore. Here is one...

The setting is in space already, at the controls of a ship of some sort. Time dials were set. When they were we would appear in some type of suit, out in empty space with many objects swirling around and changing shape. It was very chaotic. I do not know what we were trying to achieve but absolute concentration was required to still everything and once everything was still everything hung on a tiny thread to remain still or things would become chaotic again. One time I had set the date dial incorrectly, the console would reboot to the main screen when this happened. I could not get the date set correctly, December 20 was the date we shot for. The error caused major chaos. My female partner said because of the error we had nowhere to go back to. Nothing had existed as we knew. When I turned around to head for the airlock door, she was a tiny size of herself. Maybe about 6-8" tall dressed in a simple nightgown hiding by the airlock door to space. Outside the window looked like broken up remnants of shapes, edges only outlined in white. I picked her up and she began to chew on my knuckle and said, "You ate all the chocolate chip cookie dough."

I was sort of freaked out by this one.

I’m moving into a 2nd floor of a 3 family tenement. Landlord says, “Whatever you do, do not ever go upstairs. Old lady hates visitors.”

I’m a friendly guy, moving in alone, sure…whatever. I go upstairs to my apartment. As I reach my doorway, I look at the stairs going up to the third floor. Covered in dust. Thick. Spider webs. Thick. Wtf?

I go into my apartment. I can hear footsteps walking above me. Erratic, but heavy. Sometimes dragging noises. Being a curious kitten, I go upstairs to investigate.

I trek through the dust and webs, smelling age, moisture, air undisturbed for years. I reach her door and go to knock, it’s partially ajar. “Hello?” I ask, my tone a slightly higher octave to come off as unthreatening. “I’m you’re neighbor from downstairs.”

No answer. I push the door gently as it creaks slowly wider.

I peer inside. Dimly light, even on a sunny midday such as this. Yellowed thick curtains cover the windows. The smell of old fills my nostrils as I step once inside. I can make out movement down the end of her straight hallway; looking like a slowly walking hunched figure towards me. Foot shorter if not more, hair disheveled and long, she stops shuffling towards me about 30 feet away and I can feel her stare.

“Hi. My name is…” but before I can finish she starts shuffling towards me again. The shuffle of a person racked with age and…something else?

I step forward to meet her directly, suddenly embarrassed by my intrusion. I reach out my hand to greet her. Still shadowy and in distinct, she has made no sounds other than an ever so slight raspy breathing. She stumbled and almost falls, I can make out a walker she is using. Despite my politeness up to this point and not wanting to come off as an intruder I stride towards her to catch her fall.

I catch her, she smells of old tree in ancient forests. The kind of age that sends shivers through the bravest and hardiest of us. Her weight is insignificant to my proportions. She looks at me. She is grandmotheresque. No other words come to mind. Gentle eyes that have seen the world and kind features; But weary and tired. Gray hair, filthy. 1/2 down her back. It covers my hands and arms as I support her and straighten her back up. “ Are you ok?” She smiles at me and suddenly her featured turn monstrous. Head expands three times it’s size. Arms turn to steel claws as she grabs me. I try to pull away but who’s out of proportion now. She bites my hand as I push away. I look down at my bleeding hand, a large fanged bite going across the back of it.

“SONOFA…” I yell and strike her…hard. She falls, hitting the floor crumpled, frail. An old woman crying in anguish and fear. Her features are normal again. She’s bleeding from her mouth where I struck her. Did I just break in and hit my neighbor?! My mind raced with fear not of the oddness up to this point but of my blatant disregard for her home and the violence I just inflicted. “Oh my God! I am so sorry!” And I help her up. An illusion? A fevered moment of the mind seeing what it wants to see? Thoughts race through my head as I panic and get ready to call for an ambulance. She’s crying now and so tiny and frail. So helpless against my horrible, vicious attack after I broke into her home.

I inspect her carefully for worse damage I may have inflicted, then her features morph again to that huge, fanged white eyed creature that overpowers me yet again and she bites me again, sharp teeth digging deep into my shoulder this time. She lets go and I feel the painful stinging of a thousand bees coursing through my injured shoulder. “BITCH!” And I punch her again, harder than the worst any boxer could endure. The anger of a lifetime hits her square in her face as her deformed figure flies back into her own hallway. Then I wake up.

Were you dreaming when you left the 2.8 rating for Godzilla?

If you are interested in dreams, I recommend you listen to the recorded dreams of somniloquist Dion McGregor. It is quite surreal to actually be able to experience someone else's dreams and may lead you to rethink how you interpret some of you own dreams.

The quick background is that Dion was a *very* unusual somniloquist. So much so that his roomate recorded him dreaming in their NYC apartment around 1960. He liked to sleep with the window open, so you can hear NYC traffic in the background as he verbalizes his dreams. The tone and volume of his voice also add to the experience. The content of many of the dreams was considered risque at the time, so they did not see any significant distribution. In 1999, five years after his death, additional recordings were released leading to release of 3 albums of recordings since.

Below is the AllMusic reference for Dion and his recorded dreams. See the discography. Amazon has one of his albums, other sources have the rest.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dion-mcgregor-mn0001808759/biography

Here's the first, much less risque, album:

Again, these are real recordings of someone subconsciously narrating their own dreams. Wild!

Oh, Johnny. I don't know if I have it me to read all this. Maybe we confess our dreams in the confessional thread. I confess my dream was.....

Could of left a much worse rating considering the flippers stopped working on my third ball. Felt I was being nice. Total hype-fest.

We've had many very large wild fires come very close to us. Four in the
last four years and know many that lost everything. We came very close too.
Had this very vivid and realistic dream a while ago;

I was in the local mall, at night with a large group of people on the edge
of panic. Then the lights went out and all you could see was an eery
orange glow in the sky through large windows that resembled those
you'd seen in a cathedral. An asteroid had hit the earth causing
lava to flow everywhere, resulting in massive fires all around the world.

So I'm in this crowd of survivors that is about to panic and this
young and attractive lady (of course!) next to me turns to me and says she
doesn't want to die here and her car is outside. Do I want to go
with her? Well yeah! The last scene was the two of us driving
north on hwy1 (next to the Pacific) in a convertable with that eery orange
glow in the sky.
Steve

That is a pretty crazy dream Underlord. I think it is interesting to hear about other peoples dreams. If I do not write my dreams down I will forget them. So most have long been forgotten. I can only remember very small bits, not enough to recall the dream. My dreams have always felt very real with a lot of detail. I would have really bad dreams when I was a lot younger. So much so that I did not want to sleep. I had to learn how to control my dreams, which turned out to be very difficult to maintain, though I was successful quite a bit. It is rare anymore but even now as an adult every once in a while I will have a dream that freaks me out. Sometimes it is just a strong ominous feeling in some place in my dream and not necessarily a physical threat, but that feeling could be so strong I will wake up completely on edge for a bit. I used to sleep walk when I was a kid. Thank God none of my kids sleep walk, it would freak me out LOL. My dad was always tasked with rounding me up and getting me back to where I needed to be. I remember being at my cousins house and sleep walking one time. I woke up with my hands pushing up against the second story window in the room we were sleeping in. My guess is the light coming in confused me and I though it was a doorway. Good thing the window was closed...

Wow. Sleepwalking through a window. Damn. That’s bringing dreams to another level. Truly scary right there. Especially for your Dad who had to be on guard.

This dream stuck cuz it was recent. I’m a worker and I don’t slow my pace. Haven’t for decades. I cannot recall any dreaming until a few weeks ago with this one. Funny thing is I dreamed the exact same one again a few days later. Every detail. Twice! Weird.

I had a dream the other day that Stern stuck a badge, a funny looking shooter rod and some different colour powdercoat on a $8000 Elvira pinball machine and wanted to sell 199 of them for $25,000 or more.

I woke up sweating!! What a wacky dream! $25 grand for a $8000 pinball machine! I must have gone crazy!

Then I realised. It actually happened!

And 199 people got sucked into it!

rd