Yes, I have lucid dreams. Not all the time, but some of it. I actually said to my mother in a dream, "oh, don't worry about it. This is only a dream" or words to that effect. I've also actually tried the thing about how, in a dream, if you look at a clock, turn away and look back, the time will change. It does work and it's actually kind of hilarious. I've kept looking away and looking back and making it change randomly. It does things like changing from 2:25 to 6:15 to 1:04.

The pinching yourself thing doesn't really work, at least not for me, because when it doesn't hurt, you're never sure if it doesn't hurt because it's a dream or if you've just done it too gently because you are subconsciously afraid of hurting yourself.

Another type of dream I have, and I think this is kind of uncommon is dreams in which I am not really present. Or I sort of am, but it's like I'm invisible and the scene plays out in front of me. And I cannot be effected by anything that happens. These dreams are usually sort of like I am watching a film of a story I am writing. I will sometimes stop and decide what should happen next. One I particularly remember from my childhood had me and my brother standing in the doorway of this sort of hall where a concert was taking place and then a bomb went off and my brother and I were discussing how many people should be killed by the bomb before the scene continued.

Brilliant topic, by the way.

2 hours ago, Margaret said:

Another type of dream I have, and I think this is kind of uncommon is dreams in which I am not really present. Or I sort of am, but it's like I'm invisible and the scene plays out in front of me. And I cannot be effected by anything that happens.

I've had that in dreams a few times, even more so recently. It's so strange. 

Honestly, I'm glad someone is talking about dreams, because I remember all of mine. 

I used to have this recurring dream, every day in September, from the age of 4-10. It was like a game, but very real, where you know you have to fight the "bad guy" to get to the next level. I'd do every level with ease, until I got to this one level. I still remember it today, it was in a cave, and it'd be total darkness except for these yellow eyes looking at me. I got terrified and tried running out, I'd tell 'them' (idk who they were, whoever was watching) that I couldn't do it, but they didn't let me leave. I'd never see this monster, because I'd always wake up before it came out of the shadows. 

It stopped when I moved house, I think it had something to do with the fact that I used to think there was a giant aragog hiding under my bed because I could see the shadow of something that looked like a huge spider. 

I love telling people the dreams I have, because they can either be really intense action plots, OR they're like murder mysteries, or soap operas. Like dull stuff, but all very intricate. But I remember most of them, or at least part of them. 

I have those dreams, where it's like not sleep paralysis, but I'm dreaming about sleep paralysis?  I'll dream that I'm awake and someone's in there, but I'm watching myself in bed - unable to move. And then when I wake up I'm in agony. Great stuff! -.-

I also dream a lot about going back to school as a teacher, but there being something wrong with the school and Nancy Drew over here has to solve the mystery. I never work it out, I'm a terrible detective.

3 hours ago, Margaret said:

I've also actually tried the thing about how, in a dream, if you look at a clock, turn away and look back, the time will change. It does work and it's actually kind of hilarious. I've kept looking away and looking back and making it change randomly. It does things like changing from 2:25 to 6:15 to 1:04.

that's so cool! the concept of lucid dreaming is so foreign to me because my dreams are so wild and i just sort of go along for the ride. being able to actually be aware of it sounds amazing

25 minutes ago, beyond the rain said:

I'd do every level with ease, until I got to this one level. I still remember it today, it was in a cave, and it'd be total darkness except for these yellow eyes looking at me. I got terrified and tried running out, I'd tell 'them' (idk who they were, whoever was watching) that I couldn't do it, but they didn't let me leave. I'd never see this monster, because I'd always wake up before it came out of the shadows

oh no that sounds like a pretty scary dream to have as a kid! especially multipme times! i'm trying to think about whether i ever had a recurring dream, but none springs to mind actually

27 minutes ago, beyond the rain said:

I love telling people the dreams I have, because they can either be really intense action plots, OR they're like murder mysteries, or soap operas. Like dull stuff, but all very intricate. But I remember most of them, or at least part of them. 

same tbh. i feel so cool telling them because my mind came up with all that when i was asleep, but it always sounds really weird as well because half of it doesn't make sense ?

28 minutes ago, beyond the rain said:

I have those dreams, where it's like not sleep paralysis, but I'm dreaming about sleep paralysis?  I'll dream that I'm awake and someone's in there, but I'm watching myself in bed - unable to move.

ooh i've never had this though. i don't think i'd particularly like to either, it sounds exhausting

i just remembered i once cried in a dream and woke up with tears running down my face. has anyone else done that? 

I don't have vivid dreams at all, except for a nightmare every once in a while. All your dreams sound really interesting haha.

One nightmare that I had when I was five (it was a really scary dream haha so I still remember it) was when my mother was handed a box of medicine, but I saw that it was really a box of nails. But she couldn't see that for some reason, so she swallowed a nail and then died in a flash of white light (5yo me was very dramatic), while telling me, "This death is all because you treated me badly. It's all your fault."

Another nightmare I keep having is where something is chasing me through a forest but it's like I'm running through molasses while the world around me is at normal speed. It's made me scared to be chased by people in RL.

Yikes, that dream sounds really awful, just.a.willow.tree. I don't have nightmares much or at least not really scary ones. Even when I don't know I'm dreaming, the really dramatic ones, like ones when I was a kid and being chased by baddies, don't feel real. I may not consciously know they are dreams but I do sort of know they are in my control at some level.

I do have realistic dreams too, that seem entirely real. Bad things sometimes happen in those, but on the level of being turned down for a job or having a fight with a friend.

And of course I have had that almost compulsory nightmare for all Irish adults, being back doing the Leaving Cert. and not being adequately prepared. It's Leaving Cert. time now again, coming towards the end if it for this year's school leavers. And there are articles and all about people dreaming about it years and even decades later. Google "Leaving Cert. nightmares" if anybody is interested.

dreams are so fascinating, but for all of my vivid daydreaming, i can't remember any of them!! 

i do remember a select few though, and i actually did write down the story! i've edited it a few times since, and every time i read it, it just gets weirder and weirder. in this dream i remember that i was in danger, and apparently, i literally created a new country that i could move to to get myself out of danger. no one could find me there and at the very least, it was a very pretty country (my definition of pretty is modern buildings weaved into the very basics of nature; think tree houses but on a much grander scale). it was also apparently a utopia where everyone lived peacefully. man if only i could live in my dreams. my favorite stuffed penguin from my younger days (lovingly dubbed "pengui") was also a main character in the story as well. (i had this dream when i was nine, and i STILL remember it haha!!)

if nothing, i remember little snippets of my dreams. some of them have featured some of your characters (my brain likes thinking about fanfiction even when it doesn't have to be thinking about fanfiction. what is my life), and some of them have featured my own. in fact, it's how 'miracle' came by, haha!! other dreams have featured the people in this community, where i met all of you in person, and the fanfiction all of you wrote were bestsellers!! except... except for the fact that we all referred to each other as our usernames. so i was sunshine_locks. people were very confused as to why my name was sunshine_locks, as if dirigibleplums or just.a.willow.tree. or beyond the rain weren't weird too?????? 

other times, i don't really quite remember the dream, and the only traces left are my emotions. one time, i woke up smiling, and my mum asked if i was tripping on acid. my mum is so lovely. and then, i've woken up sad too, and i think it either featured someone dying, or me dreaming about the direction my life might go.

I dream often and quite vividly -- usually in the form of nightmares. I place the blame mostly on the large quantities of coffee I drink before bed [heh, go figure]. Then, of course, there's my love for horror films and books which probably doesn't help. I'm a scaredy cat but I love being scared, and I also hate being scared. [I mean, there are probably some other factors but I'm not one to poke a sleeping beast so I'll leave it be for now.]

Not all of my dreams are horrible, some are strange, but most are nightmares. They usually wake me up a few times each night. The most recurring ones are almost always happening in my bedroom (which are the worst, because when I do wake up I sometimes have a hard time discerning the dream world from the real world) and is also why the lamp is on Rumpels' side of the bed. There's the one with the large black dog that lunges at me. Basically, I dream that I'm laying on my side, facing the edge of the bed, and I open my eyes just in time to see a large, angry doggo who lunges at me in an attempt to bite me [he's not a friendly boy]. I wake up before it happens. That one is less scary than it is startling.

Another one involves demon children. Essentially I open my eyes (in my dream) but I'm laying on my back, looking at the ceiling. Demon children start scaling the walls and climbing across the ceiling, all distorted, spider-like limbs and rotating heads and black eyes. I hate that one the most. Creepy kiddos are the worst -- that's why I've always loved The Shining . 

Another one is one that either happens in my bedroom or in the forest and it involves a man whose face I can never see. BUT he's always wearing brown clothes, a hat, and boots. When he's in my bedroom, I usually "wake up" [dreaming, of course] with him standing over me and when he starts bringing his hands towards me, I wake up [for rea]. When it's in the forest, I'm always being chased. I don't remember anything before being chased, I just remember running through the forest with this man running after me. If I was more lucid in my dream, I might stop to ask what the heck he wants. 

I think the dreams that I have in my bedroom are the MOST frightening to me because it kind of ruins the sense of safety I have at home. 

It also causes me to be an extremely light sleeper which is not great when my husband comes to bed after I do. I usually wake up a flailing mess of Rumpels whenever he gets close to the bed and he always says in his exasperated tone-of-voice, "It's just me ." Speaking of my poor husband and nightmares and light sleeping, I flail a lot in my sleep mid-nightmare. So. He usually gets beat up a little and will wake me up if I get too crazy  . It's also the main reason I never coslept with my kiddo. 

Sometimes I have nice dreams. I remember one quite vividly from when I was [very] pregnant. I was in my brother's car with him while he was just driving around our hometown, and we were eating candy. The entire back seat was FILLED with candy. That was the whole dream and it [felt like it] lasted a while. Just driving and eating candy. I was also [very] pregnant in the dream...so, it was probably the pregnancy cravings. I had a lot less nightmares when I was pregnant [but I also wasn't hopped up on caffeine when I was pregnant], until after I had my baby. Then they were the worst I'd ever had because it was always about something happening to my newborn. It was most-likely new mom paranoia that was affecting me but that didn't stop me from getting up and checking on my little a thousand times a night. 

19 hours ago, just.a.willow.tree said:

But she couldn't see that for some reason, so she swallowed a nail and then died in a flash of white light (5yo me was very dramatic), while telling me, "This death is all because you treated me badly. It's all your fault."

OH MY GOD  that's so bleak, especially as a five year old. 5yo you was piling on the angst

18 hours ago, sunshine_locks said:

in this dream i remember that i was in danger, and apparently, i literally created a new country that i could move to to get myself out of danger. no one could find me there and at the very least, it was a very pretty country (my definition of pretty is modern buildings weaved into the very basics of nature; think tree houses but on a much grander scale). it was also apparently a utopia where everyone lived peacefully

that's actually so cool and i would definitely live there. i've always wanted to have a tree house, but sadly, i never did ?

18 hours ago, sunshine_locks said:

if nothing, i remember little snippets of my dreams. some of them have featured some of your characters (my brain likes thinking about fanfiction even when it doesn't have to be thinking about fanfiction. what is my life), and some of them have featured my own.

now this is actually so cool!  i wish i could do this ngl. it's almost like watching a fic become a movie

4 hours ago, Rumpelstiltskin said:

I dream often and quite vividly -- usually in the form of nightmares.

oh my gosh, that's terrible! i read your entire post and the dreams all sound terrifying quite frankly so hopefully they die down. especially the demon children one gahhh. i absolutely hate horror movies because a) i'm usually up until 3am and b) i really don't like the creepy music. it's just a no from me ??

personally, i don't get many nightmares anymore, though i did have one the other day. it started off with my aunts dragging me to watch a horror movie in the cinemas which i absolutely hated and me explaining why i hated it somehow triggered the monster in it to enter real life and it began stalking me. i remember it was a wendigo and at one point, i stumbled across it in the house where it was in the corner, absolutely drenched in blood and wearing a blank white mask to cover its bloody face ??

(and then later when i ran to my friend's house, it took on the form of her little brother to mess us up psychologically as we tried to kill it.)

but even then when i woke up, i didn't wake up fully scared, it was more of a 'well, i probably shouldn't go back to sleep' realisation

i had another vivid dream last night, likely inspired by watching the ocean's 8 trailer, where myself and a bunch of friends used the cover of illegal drag racing to commit a crime while also exposing the owner of this big business for his own? something like that anyway

Okay so here's the dream that I had last night, which was the one that was probably inspired by your blog post.  I wrote it down as soon as I woke up, because you know how there's that little period of time when you can remember it so well before it starts fading? (How do dreams even work, man.)

Anyway I'm just going to copy-paste what I wrote down in my phone here:

Quote

Attending a class trip to a luxurious but slightly off resort, where we haul our luggage around with us through throngs of people. There are precarious balcony paths located stories above the bottom-most floor, and bathrooms that shift and bend into hallways without warning. At first it is a bathroom, but a minute later it turns into a cluttered hallway of random doors and pale teal colors. Very unfortunate when trying to hide in the bathroom to pettily avoid my friend due to some spat we are having (though he passes me during my search for the bathroom and refuses to even look in my direction, so really there's no need to even hide).

Lonely and disappointed and regretful of the misunderstanding between my friend and me, I go to the hotel's bar to drink. (Note that I am still very much underage.) The setting is tropical, bright, and colorful, much like the alcohol that they have there. For some reason, my mom walks into the bar, sighs a belabored sigh of exhaustion, and orders herself a drink with the air of someone who's experienced in bars. The bartender looks at me and asks me what to drink, and for a moment I feel delighted at how I seem to be twenty-one passing. But then I stumble while ordering ("Umm, I'm not actually sure, what's the best one you have?") and she regards me with suspicion before telling me no.

Flash forward to some rocky wagon trip, returning from some event out in the rural area. (My memory was foggy at this point; I'm sure something else happened before this but I can't remember.) My mom and two sisters are there. The details are unclear, but at some point the wagon crosses a watery pass, in which lives a sea creature of some sort (relatively small). In the process of defending my sisters and mother (who warns me, "As long as you're okay with losing your feet") from the sea creature, I end up losing the three smallest toes on my right food. As we reach safe ground and return home, I look at my feet and see the nauseating look of my toes being reduced to stubs.

Okay so um half-awake me wrote a lot I guess.  

2 hours ago, just.a.willow.tree said:

As we reach safe ground and return home, I look at my feet and see the nauseating look of my toes being reduced to stubs.

lmao this part just made me burst out laughing, the wording is just too good ??

6 hours ago, dirigibleplums said:

me explaining why i hated it somehow triggered the monster in it to enter real life and it began stalking me.

Oh my gosh -- this is a wonderful horror plot. The Wendigo that came to life for believing in it.  I love it!