Dreams - TravelPUNK Backpacker College Student Budget Travel Message Boards!

**LiveFreeorDie** · 08-14-2005, 11:55 PM

So, admittedly this is a rather off the wall subject that I decided to open up since several people made some comments replying to my posts on my current trip to China because I had mentioned some strange dream experiences I always get. Hopefully, I will not come off as a wacked out nutjob after this!

Ultimately my question is....where do you think dreams come from and what types of external stimuli do you think may influence them? I ask this due to several experiences I or people I know have had. Here goes:

1.) Years ago I went on a fishing trip with a buddy of mine and we stayed in a cabin we rented up in Pittsburgh, NH (its on the Canadian border). The first night I had the craziest, most intense dreams ever......these aliens invaded and me and my family/friends were in this massive shootout - people were getting killed all around me - everyone was fighting for their lives. It was so intense that I woke up completely freaked out, heart pounding, sweatsoaked. I had to get up, go into the kitchen, get a drink, and calm down. Looking back, the subject matter sounds kind of silly to be scary...but it was really, really intense. I was talking to my buddy the next day and he had crazy really intense dreams too, that someone kidnapped his baby son and was searching frantically everywhere trying to find him.

So.....what caused us both to have such crazy dreams? My dream was probably one of the most intense dreams I ever had. Was there some weird magnetic field or other geological contributor? Food? We didn't watch any movies or have any related conversations the night before.

2.) My dad once rented a house with a spare bedroom in the basement that people would stay in. This house was also in a quite rural area, up on the side of a mountain, basically. He told me everyone who slept there had really crazy, intense, scary dreams. He and his wife slept there several times and it always happened. His wife's daughter came to stay for a week, stayed there one night, got freaked out and slept upstairs the rest of the week. So, what could cause that?

3.) This one is the freakiest. I have a friend who lives in Thailand and was in Phuket during the Tsunami. For a week before the Tsunami she kept having recurring dreams about lots of people swimming in the sea - and I remember talking on the phone a few days before Christmas and she was telling me about the dream BEFORE the Tsunami hit. Thai's are very superstitious and place a lot of stock in dreams...so it is not uncommon she will talk about dreams so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it...until after the Tsunami....

Any one have any similar experiences? Thoughts? What do you think can influence dreams? Do you think dreams can predict the future or is it all a bunch of superstitious nonsense?

**beergal** · 08-15-2005, 01:34 AM

i definately believe that dreams can predict the future as well as resolve problems that you may be having in your life, I also have the craziest dreams ever!

I once dreamt that i had returned to portsmouth where my best friend and i had lived when we were kids (she still lives there) anyway, in my dreami saw her walking towardsme with a pram and she had a baby in the pram but it was really small for the age that she was telling me and my friend was telling me that she was pregnant again. I thought this was a bit strange so i text my friend that day and said that i had a dream that she was pregnant...well that was as far as i got in the conversation because my mate butted in and said bri you arenever going to believe this but i just found out i was pregnant today! I didnt say anything else because i was too busy congratulating her the only thing was that i had a funny feeling about the pregnancy. 8 weeks later my friend had miscarried the baby as the baby was "too small" and hadnt developed enough!

So yeah dreams are freaky!

Im happy to say my best friend Kate now has a a 5 month old son called Charlie

**worldwidemike** · 08-15-2005, 02:01 AM

Not a whole lot to say about this other than that I seem to remember my dreams fairly frequently, but lots of folks can't ever seem to. And yes, I occaisonally have those hyper-intense, vivid dreams. And also, those who say you don't dream in color don't know what they're talking about: I dream in technicolor!

One weird thing, I just thought of. For awhile, I was working on being able to control my dreams while dreaming. Believe it or not, I was starting to get to the point where at least once a week I would have a dream where I KNEW I was dreaming. Most people wake up shortly after that, but I was working on extending it, and being able to -- in effect -- control it. I would be able to actually make things happen, by saying, stuff like "I want to go here and meet a certain person," and the dream would then unfold that way. I felt like Neo from The Matrix...it was cool.

Of course, now that I have to get up at 3:30 am, I don't have that time and luxury anymore...I'm usually working on sleep deprivation by the end of my workweek.

So, I don't have a lot of input other than those experiences. I'm not sure if I believe dreams are precognition, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. I've just never had a real prophetic dream, myself...

worldwidemike

**Elizabeth** · 08-15-2005, 02:11 AM

WWM my dreams are the same way.

Along the lines of predicting stuff I had this dream like two or three days before the London underground attacks. In my dream I ws standing on a red double decker bus and I was bleeding. Freaky huh?

danny · 08-15-2005, 02:57 AM

Quote:

This one is the freakiest. I have a friend who lives in Thailand and was in Phuket during the Tsunami. For a week before the Tsunami she kept having recurring dreams about lots of people swimming in the sea

LiveFreeorDie i would of thought you were nuts saying this but i was staying on Patong beach Thailand back in Mar-Apr 05, and i had the worst night sleep ever, it was of people screaming going through an enormous amount of pain i couldn't sleep at all cause everytime i would try to i would wake up. The next mroning i had found out that the town had been evacuated due to another Tsunami scare. I thought i had lost it until i had meet another backpacker in Khao San that had the same kind of dreams and was there at the same time Wierd hay

**MeTurk** · 08-17-2005, 08:43 AM

I usually never remember any dreams I just fall asleep and wake up. Lately I've been having strange dreams, I blame the drink and not smoking as much.

In the last one my town was covered in cops and they where speaking to me and a friend. Then me friends dog attacked one of the cops and everyone ignored it. Once the dog was finished with him it went looking for someone else and picked me. Then I just said "fuck this I'm going to the shop" and the dog disapeared and I went to the shop and bought a bottle of lucazade. I thought I woke up but then relised I wasn't in the place I was supposed to be and woke up for real.

I just woke up confused.

**omisan** · 08-17-2005, 10:16 AM

The dreams that I can actually remember tend to be prophetic or revealing, but only in the most trivial ways. I kinda feel like Christopher Walken as "The Trivial Psychic."

**space virgin** · 08-17-2005, 10:36 AM

I hardly ever remember my dreams but I've had a recurring "theme" ever since I was a little kid -- breathing underwater. I don't have them very often and they're always different, but that seems to be my thing. What makes that even more interesting is that I taught myself how to swim when I was two and I've been a swimming freak ever since then.

Every once in a while I'll have a nightmare that will make me sit bolt upright, sweating with my heart pounding. But that's fairly rare and they're almost always about someone I love either getting hurt or dying.

**IDDQD** · 08-17-2005, 10:53 AM

ahahaha the Trivial Psychic, "You're going to be at home...eating pistachios. One will be particularly difficult to open...and when you finally get it open, its going to taste...very bitter."

The only time i dont wake up finishing a dream is when I've been drinking. Sometime they get too vivid and relevant to my life, so when I wake up I dont realize Ive been dreaming and continue on like in my dream. Not for usually too long, but I have woken up at 4:30 a.m., showered and start looking for notes to study a class I didnt have.

treacle · 08-17-2005, 11:59 AM

[quote]
I hardly ever remember my dreams but I've had a recurring "theme" ever since I was a little kid -- breathing underwater.

i've had that dream, for sure. and there's also the rotting teeth dream i've had numerous times, which is apparently common for females...

last night i had a weird one:

i was leaving a hotel to go on a trip (but i was i was just embarking on the trip, so i'm not sure why the hotel). as dreams have a way of doing, somehow i was running late, then, and rushed off to hail a taxi.

[there is this whole other subplot here, whereby i hail a cab that's heading the wrong way, as i'm likely to do in real life, and as he turns around he gets stuck in mud & another cabbie pulls over to pick me up. as i get into taxi#2, the driver of taxi#1 starts SCREAMING at me: all memorably occurring in shadowy shades of soderbergh greens... i think this section has to do with my overwhelming guilt for something or other in real-life. but i digress...]

it's somewhere during this drama that i realize i don't have my passport.

of course i rush back to the hotel to get it and, luckily, it's still there. but much to my stomach-dropping horror, there are certain things missing: my photo & info page, my UK working visa, my australian working visa (in reality, these two visas are in consecutive passports). but more awful is the fact the guy has stapled in some phony stamps cut from OTHER people's passports and he's left behind a bunch of personal photos. so, of course, i spend the rest of the dream frantically looking for this man, devastated that i can no longer travel abroad...

not being much of a dream interpreter, i can see that i get the passport theft theme from my friend who's leaving (who had a passport incident, recently). i get the not-being-able-to-fly-overseas bit from bailing on a europe trip with my bestie.

no point.
apparently i felt like writing some stuff...

**kingcrazylegs** · 08-17-2005, 03:34 PM

I often remember my dreams, and then often go through a time period where I don't. I think usually my dreams are just lots of different bits of info thrown together - which proves quite strange indeed

However, I have had several experiences where I had "prophetic" dreams that were strange at the time. I had a reoccuring dream that I was in a prison and speaking to a guy in spanish - it was extremely wierd and bothered me because I dreamt the smae thing for about 2 weeks ever night. Then it stopped. About 8 months later I left for Malta, and anther 5 months after that I got invited to Spain to do volunteer work for a month....and wouldn't you know it I went to a prison and lived that scene I had dreamt over and over (I was doing counsleing work).

I've had a handful of simular experiences....

**Somnambulation** · 08-17-2005, 10:19 PM

Last night I had a dream that I was stuck in my grandmothers house with Charles Manson. He somehow got hold of my gun - we werent fighting or hostile to each other, but I wanted it back just the same. He loaded it and gave it back to me. He became suspicious of my holding onto the gun so willfully. I realize he loaded the gun with blanks. Cut to him chopping at my body with a meat cleaver while my conciousness backs away down the kitchen and out the front door. As it fades out he runs towards me, on bloody stumps for legs, and jumps ecstatically into the air.

I certainly hope its not prophetic . Its weird, the past few nights Ive been having very vivid dreams. The one from the previous night is not for mixed company.

**beergal** · 08-18-2005, 02:09 AM

oh my god you have a gun!

**TERI** · 08-18-2005, 07:01 AM

I love dreaming. I always remember my dreams. And when I realize I'm dreaming, I actually try to keep myself asleep longer.

I had a dream once about this old house. The next day i told my mom all about it. In incredible detail. Down to pictures on the walls , and the colour of the windows outside. My mom just looked at me with this shocked look on her face, and then she told me that I had just perfectly discribed my grandparents old house. I assumed oh darn, it was just a memory dream. Then she said I couldn't possibly remember the house, because the last time I was there I was only a year old.

My "theme" dreams change every couple of years. But I always have atleast one dream about an anceint place every month or so. The places are always different, but I always know where I'm going.

Ok, last one. I was in a car accident when I was 18, so I had a hospital bed in my bedroom at home. So the doctor gave me these crazy pain pills, at he warmed me that they may make me hollucenate. I thought wicked!! Anyways, I took two one night and went to sleep. I dreamt that I was lying in a hospital and long story short, there was a (don't laugh) demon baby sitting on my hospital bed and it bit dowm on my thumb. It hurt so much in my dream that I woke up, and that's when the pill's kicked in. I was now hullucenating the baby bitting me still. I screamed so loud. My whole family came running. My mom couldn't get me back to sleep that night. The next day I took two more, and flushed the rest.

Dreaming rocks!

treacle · 08-18-2005, 09:08 AM

neo citran (aka lemsip) is always good for some vivid, sweaty, tossy-turny, messed up dreams.
ask anyone who uses the stuff (i think it's the sugar).

the end.

**tecia** · 08-21-2005, 12:55 PM

Everyone in my family always listen when my Aunt talks about her dreams bc more than once they have come true. I remember when my cousin was in the army and during some training a truck ran over his arm and broke most the the bones in his arm. My aunt had a dream about my cousin and carrots breaking the next morning she got the call about my cousin and the men that were with him said that when the truck ran over his arm it sounded like carrots breaking.
Also I have been having these weird dreams that I'm not safe when I'm sleeping like I have to get up and make sure that the door is locked. I keep having these dreams and it is scaring the crap out of me bc the people that i am staying with leave in two weeks, and then i'm going to be alone in this big house in the country

I think i will be staying at my friends house in town most of the time

**bellelass** · 08-22-2005, 12:19 AM

I've had dreams from my grandparents house that I lived in when I was a baby until I was two years old. Did the vivid description thing to my mum and she had a similar reaction. weird.
My dreams are usually like thriller novels. Or someone I love is hurt or dying or hates me and I wake up very distraught. I have a hard time waking up and believing I am awake sometimes even for hours. When I lived by myself I actually called one of my friends two hours after I woke up so she could assure me that I was ok. I've heard I shriek in my sleep sometimes, which is worse than being told I snore and sleepwalk. gah. My dreams are just so real to me, I dream with all my senses.
Which is good when Im having dreams that I cant talk about in mixed company..

Oh soo good.
Sometimes I dream about places Ive been. Or.. well.. maybe this is a little xfiles but sometimes I'll be somewhere and it will feel so familiar and then I realize I dreamt it a few times.