I tend to have less recurring dreams and more recurring dream elements - aspects of a dream that insert themselves into several unrelated dreams. Anybody else get that? For reference, two examples: Inexplicably Terrifying Museum Exhibit: Attached to pretty much any building I'm in may be a museum exhibit. High ceilings, paintings on almost every surface, usually a spread of nice-looking furniture. I can't see very far into it, because there are two overlapping walls at the far end of the first room. Almost totally innocuous, except that all the lights seem to always be a degree dimmer than anything else in the vicinity. In my dreams people are usually coming and going from the exhibit, but I can never work up the courage to progress into the next room, or even get close enough to see it. The closer I get, the more I'm overcome with a sudden dread, as if something is going to attack me if I go any farther, or the place empties out into some horrible nightmare dimension or something like that. Urinal-Access Whitewashed Misogynist Utopia: Yeah tHIS ONE'S REALLY WEIRD. So it's like. Sometimes I'm at a urinal. And the wall slides up to reveal this lush garden leading up to a huge gate. You get screened at the gate, and if you pass the screening they let you in. Inside it looks like some really fancy country club, but infinitely huge. Everyone is white. All of the men act like snooty pricks. And all of the women are intensely subservient to any men they see and act/dress like they're from the 1920's. In my dreams I seem convinced I shouldn't have passed the screening process, which leads me to believe there's some kind of personality test associated with it, but I've also passed it twice now. The first time I didn't explore very far, and the second time I didn't even bother going in. So yeah bet money nobody's gonna post their own and everyone's just gonna make fun of my weird dreams EXCEPT I CALLED IT SO NOW YOU'LL LOOK LIKE A TOOL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Me somehow ending up falling from an insanely high height, not dying when the ground and I were finally introduced to each other and instead just laying there in a paralizing pain and a blood poodle. That, or a whole mob beating me up/shooting me with laser guns, both leading to the poodle stuff. I had those nightmares when I was, idk, 14 ? They happened so often I ended up realizing I was in a dream as soon as they began, thinking "screw this", and trying to willingly wake up. I got the hang of it eventually, succeeded to snap out of it two or three times in a row, and they never occured again.
A number of dreams I have that involve me being chased/trying to run away from something, in both the literal and figurative sense, have some form of Gothic architecture that I inevitably pass by. There was one time where it was in a friggin' airport and it felt like there was just a random explosion of 14th century France everywhere. I also occasionally either start off the dream as a character from a show or s/t, and gradually morph back into me while being aware "holy poo this is me" for a minute but then not caring, or vice versa.
Some of these happen to me, but at times, I feel I am able to predict/control the outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream It's not that the dreams themselves are weird... it's the spontaneous actions that occur out of no where. These two probably aren't as weird or creative as yours, but they are recurring. 1) The Kick drum: I will be in an average place. Be it walking home from work, eating out for lunch, or just waiting for a bus. People interact with each other, and nothing out of the ordinary happens until I hear a kick drum being hit in quarter notes. and whoever is around just turns and looks at me (Like in inception, when you become aware you are dreaming) and then other instrumentals join in as they begin charging right at me. From there, it's full out anime/action movie styled fights. It's violent, it's weird, but I love the musical accompaniment. 2) WTF: In some dreams, I may die, or appear to be falling to my death. From there, I wake up in my bed and feel very assured that I did not in fact die in my sleep. Now awake, I do my morning routine, walk outside and then pause because I think I forgot something. Then I wake up for real from my alarm.
In my dreams, a pretty big recurring element is school. I've gone to three different places, and I can be at any one of them, though they're usually huge and have a bunch of staircases spiraling downward. I'll see any number of people I've met in the past, or even complete strangers -- though I've heard you can only dream of a face you've seen, so whatevs -- and I usually end up getting lost in the never ending loop of running to and from classes. Also, all of the nightmares I've had in recent memory involve me getting stabbed or bleeding out. And even after I wake up, I can still feel whatever was getting me for a good five minutes. Thankfully, those are only once in a blue moon.
Mixed in with my crazy random dreams involving multliple TV shows/movies (I've been Iron Man, Murdock, Monk... Shawn Spencer-then Lassie-then back to Shawn Spencer all while fighting the gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer... That was a weird dream...) I have about seven or eight very detailed recurring scenarios, that either play out as a series or like a sci-fi second-chance type thing. A few examples: 1: On a road trip In this dream, my family is in our van, sometimes with other friends, sometimes with just half the family. We always drive along a certain highway that doesn't exist, stop off at a certain town that I've never heard of, and pick from the variety of restaurants there to eat lunch, usually waiting to meet up with somebody to join us for the rest of the trip. Sometimes we go to a drive-thru dessert shack, sort of like a Dutch Bros but with ice cream and cakes and things. This dessert shack is the earliest recurring dream element I remember. After lunch, we usually branch off into several different endings, the first of which I actually dreamed last night. A. We go home. Not to our actual house, but a variation of a house we lived in eight years ago. Every time we visit this house in my dreams, whatever changes were made in the last dream have taken affect here. Example: Last night when, in my dream, I returned to this house after the road trip, I was unpacking when I found, in my closet, a bunch of pairs of shoes. At that point, I remembered that "Last time" I was there, I had been going through a box of stuff, and had decided to keep these high-top boots with platform soles and covered in pink sparkly glitter. Why I didn't take them on the trip is the real question. B. We go on. Usually, when we go on, we go to a theme park. This theme park, like everything else, is very detailed, and every time I go, I remember some of the last times I've been there. That one time I got stuck in the log flume ride... Or when I waited three hours in line for my favorite rollercoaster only to find out it was closed due to the bad weather... When I went to the restaurant with my aunt and we found a secret passageway behind the booth... Every time I pass that booth, I remember it, and I'm always sure to go to my favorite coaster first just in case is closes later on. 2: The Mall Okay, so sometimes we go to this huge mall, like, so huge it's more like a city, and we're told to scatter. Usually, in the dream, I end up in the food court, 'cause really, it's amazing. But once, I ended up in this fancy dress-shop, and there was this other time I got lost on the staircase and ended up in the employees only place, and started getting chased around by this over-zealous security guard, and then there was one time when I was in charge of my baby brother (Another element of dream world, I have no infant sibling, and no brother) and I dropped him down the elevator shaft. He was alright, he landed in the conveniently-placed infant carrier one floor down. (Even the dream me was like "What!?" with that one.) 3: The Deck. This one gets a bit complicated. In this dream, I'm someone completely different. I'm this little boy, about ten years old. I live in a big house with a mom, a dad, and a little brother. There's a huge deck attached to the house, undergoing renovations, and completely off-limits to my brother and I. Underneath the deck is a wild rampaging river of death. The first few times I had this dream, my brother would go to play on the deck, I would try to get him to stop. He would taunt me for awhile before falling into the river, and when that happened, I would jump in and save him from drowning. At that time, my parents would show up and praise my brother for being so brave, and for jumping in the river to save me, after I'd fallen in. And no matter what I said, they completely ignored me as if I didn't even exist. The more often I had this dream, however, the more aware I became that it was a dream, until it would begin and the first thing I would do is think "Hey, I'm in that dream again," and I would try to set things up to get a different outcome. For the most part, the dream would change to undo any alterations I would make, so that the outcome was always the same, but one time... Actually, the last time I had this dream, I just didn't bother following my brother, I didn't bother going to the deck, I didn't bother saving him. He was still saved somehow, I don't remember how, but since I'd left well-enough alone, my parents didn't think he'd saved me. They didn't even like, bring me into things at all. He got reprimanded for going out onto the deck, and I stood by and left feeling accomplished, I'd changed the outcome. I haven't dreamed that one in a long time, now that I think about it. I must've conquered whatever I was supposed to conquer. So there you have it, three dreams (four if you count two of the variations of the first) That I have, that are recurring. Yeah, I have really weird dreams.
So I told Ma about my recurring elements and sHE SAID THEY'RE MY INTERPRETATIONS OF HEAVEN AND HELL... HOW'D I NOT NOTICE THAT BEFORE
Kinda. Maybe. My dreams usually involve some kinds of terrorism or invasion of sorts where I find myself desperately trying to stay alive. Like this one dream I had where I was at school and Darth Maul attacked the school, killed my family, and the entire dream I was going from place to place avoiding him to stay alive.
