I had a dream, when I was a young teen, about being the single parent of a daughter (mother died in child birth). I remember the 18 years of raising that child better than most of my own childhood memories: taking her home from the hospital, first steps, signing up for elementary school, taking her to school every day, watching my child grow up. Getting into disagreements, teaching to bike, the panic of the first day of her period (she tried to hide it because she thought she’d be in trouble). High school, school clubs, prom, college applications. We got into a disagreement on her 18th, and she told me I was a terrible paren, that I’d failed even being friends with her, which was the opposite of how I thought it was going. She appeared in the front door with a suitcase, and walked out stating she’d never see me again, and the dream ended. To this day it still shakes me, but not as hard as it did when I woke up that day, broken for being a bad parent that I didn’t see.

Two! Both when I was between 10 and 13 or so.

The first I had walked down the street to my friend’s house, knocked on the door, his mom answered and I woke myself up because I spoke out loud “can Shane come out to play?” The sound of my own voice woke me up because I was talking in my sleep.

The second was more or less the same. I left my house intending to go down to Shane’s house, but I tripped off the curb and woke up.

I’ve also had a recurring dream since I was a child that I would wake up in the middle of the night, fall out of bed and instead of simply hitting the floor I fell miles and miles through dirt and rock until I landed in a weird prison carved into dirt. I would be deposited into a dark hallway I couldn’t see the end to in any direction, an along one side of the wall were jail doors of cells. I could hear moaning and screaming and felt intense fear. But I would always wake up there and never “explore.” Not really realistic, but I still sometimes visit this dream prison and it still creeps me the fuck out cuz I don’t know what it means or why it’s always the same except for the place my bed may be.

A “dream” (?) I had a month after my father was killed. A long story, apologies for the book.

To start with, for clarification, I have always been a lucid dreamer, going back to childhood. Not every night. Not every dream. But every time I had realization in a dream that I was dreaming, I could control circumstances and events of the dream the entire rest of the time I was having it. Every single lucid dream. Without exception. Likely a few hundred times by the time this happened, just shy of my thirtieth birthday.

I was dreaming of playing backyard football with my friends as a kid. It’s a happy memory, and I dream about it now and then. This particular night, I was in lucid mode. I was having fun doing whatever I wanted (throwing 200 yard touchdown passes, running around like an Olympic sprinter, what have you… I kind of return to my ten year old self in this one).

Before one play, the football suddenly deflates and goes completely flat. Weird, I think to myself… I don’t feel like I caused that to happen. But whatever. I tell my friends I’ll change the football out, and we’ll get back to it. In my mind, I summon up the equipment shed from my campus recreation officiating days back on campus in college.

I open up the shed and step inside. It’s just as I remembered, of course, but kind of dark, not much light is bleeding in here from outside. I do a 180 toward the door to flip on the light. And I felt everything change. Everything. And I didn’t cause it. I also hadn’t looked at it yet. But I felt it.

Instant warmth. Comfort. A sense of peace that I can’t really describe… language isn’t really sufficient.

I turn around and see that I am in the foyer of a beautiful house, full of warmth. It is pure wood tones through and through.

I realize that I can really smell the air… The woods, and the ocean, in a perfect balance. I recall never having a sense of smell in any other dream, lucid or otherwise. I’m not panicked or worried, this place is just too peaceful for fear to be. Just confused.

Lying on a table next to an open window is my favorite cat from my childhood, Pudding. I give him a scratch right behind the ears in his favorite spot, he purrs, rubs into me… like hey buddy, missed you. Almost like it hasn’t been almost twenty years since he died, the last time I saw him. Realization dawns.

Realization that I still know that this is a dream. Or at least I thought it was. But if this is still a dream, and I realize this is so, why is all this stuff happening without my control? That’s certainly never been a thing in a lucid dream before.

And why am I smelling the fresh air of a forest that is twenty feet away from the ocean? Why do I have tactile feel of my furry buddy who died years ago? It feels like reality. Crisp, sharp, full of senses normally non-existent or dulled in normal dreams.

I catch some movement to my side and turn. Walking down the stairs, with a smile, is my dad. He’s clean, unhurt, in perfect shape… not at all like he was in the hospital when I last saw him, beaten up and brain dead. Before I even know what’s happening, he’s got me in a hug. I’m too stunned to react much.

“You’ve always been too stingy with the hugs,” he says. The feel of him, the sound of him talking… so real. I realize fully, finally, 100%. This is no dream. I hug him back, delighted.

As I pull away, all I can say is, “Aren’t I dreaming?”

He gives me the look he has always given me when I ask a completely stupid question. “Are you?” he says, all good-humor-light-sarcasm.

“But how… where are we?”

“My place,” he answers. “I needed to talk to you. Let’s go in there.”

He leads me down a side hall into a study. The few seconds while we walk, I’m still trying to reassert control. Open the floor and have us plunge through. Have him start dancing a jig. Have the house catch on fire. Anything to have proof that this is all a dream. Nothing works. As we enter the study, he tells me, “Morgan, son, seriously. Let go and relax.” He gives me that wry smile he gives when I’m being ridiculously amusing. “You’re not dreaming. Sit down.”

The room is supernaturally strong with the smell of cedar. Of pine. On the bookshelves, I’m noting some of my Dad’s favorites. Tolkien. Stephen King. James Clavell. A light bulb goes off over my head. This house is pretty much what my Dad would build if you gave him a perfect house button to press to make it come into creation. In a way, it feels like a piece of him, as real to me as he was right at that moment.

I take a seat in a wonderful leather bound chair. He sits across from me and says, “after this, we are going to talk about some things, and you won’t remember any of it consciously. But I had to tell you.”

And we talked. I felt the hours. I don’t remember the specifics… he was absolutely right about that. But I remember some feelings. Happiness and relief that he is okay here. Some good times… I think it was a good talk. Some sadness. I remember him hugging me goodbye. “I love you son.”

I woke with tears pouring out of me. Things “awake” felt… less real somehow, but still as they always were. I spent the next couple hours talking to my wife about what happened, in the middle of the night.

In the following days, I went back over my experience in my mind, while it was fresh. I came to the conclusion that it was most likely not a dream, because it was so unlike any other dream I had ever had before (or have ever had since). I left a small chance in my head (like maybe 2%) that it actually was a dream, because I’d been grieving pretty hard, and maybe there was some weird chemical imbalance in my brain chemistry or something. I was even slightly miffed at dad that he used this experience on me, and not my younger sister (who was taking this as hard as I was, if not more so).

Then, in July the same year, my mom fell ill and passed away. And I hit the wall of pain all over again. But this time, with a sliver of peace that I didn’t have last time. I realized that this is why Dad shared this experience with me. He knew this was going to happen, and soon.

I’ll never forget the gift. The view into the other side. The transition that makes my grief for those who have passed into a selfish thing… that I trust that they are fine, and I’m really just sad that I’m not going to see them again for a long while.

Totally. A few actually. Some of them I had when I was very young such that the dreams themselves are really the only memories I have of the time. All nightmares. One of my newly born little brother in a pram on top of a hill being let go and me running to try to catch him before he hits a car. It was on a real hill that I occasionally see if I’m around that area again, but was so realistic that it’s my only/best memory of that hill.

Another was basically a zombie apocalypse and me being around while my dad turns (I must have seen some zombie film on TV or something). Another being chased by apes and spiders with the dream ending with me sinking under water and spiders jumping in the water and knowing how to swim downward to get me (eeek).

I stole my friend Andy’s plane, flew it and crashed it into the forest. I survived and hiked out, and he was extremely angry.

In real life, Andy doesn’t have a plane, and I don’t know how to pilot one.

Yup. I had this dream on May 8, 1994:

—start—

Reports are continuing to come in… they are confirming that the United States of America has just been taken over and is now under South African rule. “Control Panel Warfare” is what they are calling it. Rumors that the President has attempted suicide are circulating around the globe. “It’s all done through computers,” someone said. They have taken over with computers.

Everything will change. There will be no more homeless. Effective immediately this is now a police state. We were all in a room when my mom came in and announced this information. I think we were in a conference room at the hospital where she works. As she announced this terrifying news, the tone in the room went from joking to a stomach-turning sour in a matter of seconds. The look on my dads face… he was horrified. No one could believe their ears!

I thought an announcement this shocking would only come from the news that nuclear war has just broken out and we only had a few more moments to live. The news that the U.S. had just been taken over was incredibly shocking, yet at the same time I thought to myself that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. So I guess I was horrified and not surprised all at the same time.

—stop—

Two.

Once I dreamt I was stabbed, and I can still feel the sensation of a blade tearing my flesh, despite having never had more than a nick.

Plus a super real, super long dream that spanned decades. I lived an entire other life. I grew up with a best friend either named Emma, or Emily. I saw her every day. We grew up together, had families alongside each other, lived our entire lives. I still miss her, despite the fact that she never existed.

I had a dream about watching my dad die in a factory accident (he worked a lot of factory jobs in the 80s and early 90s).

I could smell the machine oil, hear the thump of the presses (feeling it in my feet, too), and even remember the brief bruised feeling in my shoulder when the paramedic shoved past me to get to him.

It felt so real and vivid, I felt very strongly for the longest time that I’d had a premonition about how my dad would die.

It somehow even sticks with me every now and then, despite him having passed from brain tumours 13 years ago this month.

Weird.

Yes, a nightmare I had as a child, many years ago (around 30ish). I was in a desert/beach…the air was dusty and orange-tinted. There was a gazebo made of wood, almost rotting or rotten, and a giant golem who trapped me in a wooden box. The whole thing was terrifying, and dry and hot.

This is gonna sound so fake it’s ridiculous, but at least it’s short. This was about a decade ago when I was about to go to college, so that factored into the setting, but the other part? No idea. Basically, I was riding around my college campus on the back of a raptor, saddle and all. I was having a blast, and everybody thought it was so cool that I had a badass dinosaur to ride around on, because obviously nobody else did. That was the whole dream, zero plot, nobody got eaten, just me and my raptor buddy having a grand ol’ time stomping around campus.

I once went to work, did all my normal work routines- Went to meetings, filled out my time sheet, requested time off for the holidays, rejected some code, etc. When I got back home I suddenly woke up and was pissed because now I had to actually go to work and do all that shit hahaha