13.11.19: Vorous and the world of hallucinations

I was chosen to take part in an exam.

A sinister, macabre exam where any signs of collusion, communication, revealing your answers or leaving without finishing the exam would spell death. 

Equally, the person with the lowest mark would also die. 

The exam hall was a large, austere, grey room with steps leading from the door to the exam floor. There were about 50 grey tables set in lines and rows and some people had already started by the time I got to the room. The questions on each exam paper were different to the next, so even if one person managed to ask another without detection it would be fruitless. I didn’t know whether breaking the rules led to an instant death or whether it would start a ‘timer’ so to speak but I wasn’t about to find out.

I was dealing well enough with the questions they were short-answer questions and didn’t seem particularly difficult. I decided to look ahead; my exam finished with an essay question which asked me to

“Explain why logical reasoning is wasted on human mortals”

From this I got a glimpse of the motives of the forces that made this death-exam.

As it happened, I didn’t feel like the question was unanswerable and started formulating whilst I worked through the rest of the questions. I was going to talk about extra-dimensional beings that were beyond our comprehension, like the Eldrazi, the Great Old Ones and the other ones that live among us undetected except for the slight shiver we get as one passes through us.

Aside from the harsh rules, the exam would also try and make us lose by transporting us to different locations (or giving hallucinations to that effect). I didn’t notice anyone else being taken but I was suddenly transported to a grassy field on a bright, sunny day. I was sitting at a picnic table decorated with a few blooms of lichen. There was a wooden fence to my right and a dirt path which crested over a small hill to my left. As I sat working, two walkers appeared from over the hill. They asked what I was doing and looked at the papers on the broad, wooden tabletop. They were looking at the questions I had yet to answer, which I thought wouldn’t count as revealing answers, so I let them look and made no effort to explain to them, lest it break a rule.

After this I was transported to a dark series of hallways with one or two other people. At parts the hallways snaked round or narrowed in to make passage more difficult but never enough to stop us being able to pass. At other parts the hallways expanded into open plan areas where groups of people stood motionless, phantasmal, in the middle. We passed through those crowds as inconspicuously as possible.

After we had explored for a while we heard a tremendous explosion ahead of us. A squat creature the size of a full-grown bull with the body of a frog, the head of a dragon and the limbs of a lion crashed through the wall ahead of us. The name ‘Vorous’ filled our heads. The creature was stunned from the impact but soon came to its senses and had us in its line of sight.

It gave chase.

We ran as fast as we could but soon found Vorous on our heels, it was snapping its large, body-wide jaws and slamming recklessly into the walls, pillars and other infrastructure in these hallways. I had the idea to bring it to the dim-lit plazas to feed on the motionless ghost-people and communicated it to the people I was fleeing with. They were horrified by my idea of killing other people to let us live but realised we were without other options, aside from being killed and eaten ourselves.

We came back to the quad of people and ran through them, hoping they wouldn’t grab us, or try to slow us down. We cleared them and kept running. I had no idea whether Vorous would stop and eat the unfortunate people I had brought fanged-death to, but in my mind’s eye I saw the creature tossing the poor souls about before ripping them apart, as would a crocodile, with its terrible jaws.

Whatever happened, we were able to put distance between us and Vorous and thought we were in the clear as we vaulted over a stack of trolleys that had been rolled out as a hurdle for us. Whilst we were mid-vault, Vorous slammed back into view, piling frenziedly into the wall, sending bits of plaster tumbling from the ceiling. We narrowly escaped its snapping, foaming, bloodied jaws by all cramming into a lift which took us away from that floor.

After this chase, I was back in the bleak exam hall. I thought that I had answered all but the 16-mark essay question, but it had disappeared off my paper and several other questions had appeared instead. The words changed positions and the letters seemed to shimmer in and out of existence, I could not read them. I recognised individual letters but could not form the words. It was at this point that I remembered you are not meant to be able to read in dreams so decided I would simply not finish the exam. If I didn’t finish it, I couldn’t die from having the lowest mark, it would also stave off the death of another who may have otherwise got the lowest mark. I would fold up the exam paper, keep it, and a pen, on my person always and become a mute.  

Later on, I was walking in a park. There were a series of fissures in the ground which meant certain parts had to be traversed with wooden platforms that moved along when a dial was spun; a la Legend of Zelda puzzles with the gust bellows, Deku leaf or gale boomerang. There was also a McDonalds in the park whose door opened using the same mechanic. I wasn’t interested in going in but saw someone from the choir I sing in, and a few other people sitting on a bench outside. They hailed me over.

As I was walking towards them, I saw someone swing a tremendous greatsword to trim a hedge and also take off a low branch of a tree too. I also saw that if you took an immediate right after going through the park’s gate you could scramble over a narrow bit to get to this part of the park without using any of the puzzle platforms.

Once I’d got to the group’s table the person stood up to tell me there was wasp and asked me to deal with it. I was mindful that this might still have been part of the exam and a trick to make me speak, but I spoke anyway. I told them that as a rule I didn’t kill animals and had a particular affinity to wasps; I would be no good to them. They went and sat glumly down again.

The scene now cut to a much nicer, more opulent hallway inside what I would later discover to be a hotel. Apparently, their wasp had flown into a ventilation duct and I was going to get it out. I looked around for a chair to stand on as the duct was quite high up, I found one and brought it over to the entrance of the pipe. I unscrewed the lid and peered in. There was a radiator-like grill directly behind the now-removed cap so I couldn’t look in very far. I grabbed a fibre optic cable with live imaging capabilities and fed it down the pipe. After a while I saw something very strange; there were black veins growing all over the inside of the duct, I thought they may have been streaks of dirt, but they seemed to be pulsating, as if transporting a fluid. I had not been looking at these veins for long before they moved towards the entrance of the duct and out of frame of the optic cable. I got the impression they knew I had discovered them and were coming to get me.

I don’t remember if the black veins actually entered my body (though if they did it was through my eyes) but soon after I was thrown into a world of hallucination. Not a single thing in my sight retained its real-world identity. I don’t remember particular details (except for one) but the walls, floor and ceiling were perpetually shifting. Things appeared larger, then smaller, and their colours swirled, changed and melded. Anyone I was previously with had now disappeared. I walked a while, lost in this fluctuating, unreal world. On one wall I saw a small, rectangular gap that, upon looking into, showed the stars in the night sky along with nebulae and solar systems. I grabbed the rectangle and took it with me. It still showed the space-scape.

The perspective then cut away to show me in the non-hallucination world. I had pulled a mirror off the wall, laid it on the steps of a grand staircase and was looking into it.

Later on in the hotel after I had regained my senses I was stood in a glass lift to get to my floor. The lift stopped at a modern-looking, well-lit bar. A couple got in and asked me if I’d like to join them for a drink. I declined, saying that I’d recently been drugged, they accepted that as a valid reason and left me to my business.

Later still, my group and I were leaving the hotel on the ground floor. The entrance foyer held many seats and tables to host a lot of guests. As we sat in the foyer we were brought food, likely pizza, on wooden boards, with a red-looking garnish on the side. Everyone else was presented theirs with the pizza as the closest thing to them on the board and the garnish the furthest away. However, mine was given to me with the garnish closest. I thought this was highly suspicious and didn’t eat it.

Author’s notes:
There are a lot of waking-world influences to this dream. Nothing is particularly untoward. 

The paranoia element comes from walking home from work. It’s very dark when I walk home from work now, so I'm careful not to be sneaked up on. 

The hallucinations and madness of the dream are likely a result of my reading a book called The Woman in Black by Susan Hill wherein a man is haunted by a ghost as he tries to sort through the estate of a dead widow.

The claymore-wielding weed-trimmer is influenced by a videogame called Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and my favourite character: Ike, wields a greatsword named Ragnell. The motion the person used in the dream to swing the sword was identical to an attack in the game and even had the slow-mo effect.

Vorous and the whole chase sequence are likely influenced by a game called "Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion" where you get chased down narrow corridors by certain horrors that try to kill you.

This is kind of what Vorous looks like...It's also to make the thumbail nicer :p 

Hypotheon and the Centaurs of Mt Edgcumbe

I was walking along the coastal path of Mt Edgcumbe one day. As the path curved round and the woodland thinned a little I saw a colossal horse-like creature tromping around the coast. In the waking world, the coastline of Mt Edgcumbe slopes down to sea level but in this dream it was a daunting cliff that sheer dropped about 100 metres to the sea below. The horse creature was as tall as the cliff and freely stepped between land and sea. I halted my progress to watch the thing: it was moving rather aimlessly, along the beach at the bottom of the cliff. Then it started to turn around. As it turned, I saw its titanic animal body had the face of a human, equally as enormous. It paused briefly as if it had seen me, staring in my direction, but it continued its turn and jumped from the shore at the bottom of the cliff, into the sea throwing up pluming spouts of white water and sending forth powerful, surging waves.

I continued walking, knowing that to get to the path which would take me away from the titan, I first had to get closer to it. The creature was still very far away and I was confident that it had not detected me. 

I was wrong. 

As I walked, the giant moved, unseen, right to my location. The path was suddenly thrown into shadow as the creature craned its chimera neck over the trees above me, its human face staring right down at me. Here I got a closer, horrifying look at the thing's face. Its eyes were wide, blue, and did not seem to move or their pupils focus, I might have fancied they were unseeing. Its mouth was closed, neutral and impassive, but easily large enough to devour me, and the scenery around me, in a single bite. I was stuck to the spot, looking back at the creature like it would do me some good. The towering face pulled away and I hoped to hope it would dismiss me as harmless and go back to its tromping. 

It did not. 

Almost too soon did two prodigious human hands, attached to its brown horse limbs, reach down from the sky in an attempt to scoop, crush or otherwise capture me. I luckily evaded but watched as the hands moved straight through the earth as if the solid ground were not even there. They closed, and withdrew, taking the entire landscape within them cleanly away, almost with surgical precision. I looked at the newfound slope where roots and shoots, now exposed, jutted confusedly out. There amongst the soil was a human skull with a clean, scooping cut, showing the same fate as the terrain. I was not the first person this Goliath had attacked. I gathered my wits and fled. 

Later on, I dreamt (within the dream) of a symbol resembling the greek letter "Phi" but with two other lines within the character:

The symbol glowed in the dark with a steady orange, like fired metal in a forge. The name "Hypotheon" filled my head. Then the vision ended. 

I came back to Mt Edgcumbe, fueled by my fascination with the giant horse-human. Perhaps guided by the vision of "Hypotheon" I came to a low cave. I pressed into the stony dark and shortly came across a small wooden door bearing the symbol I had prophesied. I tried the door and it opened readily. Beyond the door was a small, dark chamber within the cave that had simple wooden furniture and a fire pit. It looked as though someone lived here, modest though it may have been. 

After a time the door opened and a hooded figure appeared quiet and dark through the doorway, not seeming to let the daylight in behind them. They were carrying a bundle of firewood that seemed to me too heavy for a human to carry. They did not start, or flee upon seeing me, it seemed almost like they were expecting me. The figure kept its hood raised but revealed to me its name was "Hypotheon"1.

Hypotheon explained to me that he was once one of three centaurs that lived at Mt Edgcumbe. Over time Hypotheon and his wife became more interested in the human world and had given up their wildness, becoming human in form but retaining some centaur traits, for example the increased strength. He then explained the third centaur had rejected his humanity and sought to become fully wild. This third centaur was the colossus I had encountered earlier. He explained that through seeking to be feral the creature had attuned to the power of the wild and grown to colossal proportions2. Hypotheon told me that he lived in this cave with his wife out of fear of encountering the colossus centaur. 

Authors notes: 

1: Hypotheon isn't necessarily a real name, but it does contain two elements that have meaning in Greek. "Hypo-" means "under" or "beneath" and "Theos" meaning "God". Put them together and you get "Under God", perhaps Hypotheon was a semi-deity, or lost his godhood in pursuit of attuning with humanity. This led me to affectionately naming the giant centaur "Hypertheon, "hyper" meaning "above" in Greek, though this was a decision in the waking world, not within the dream itself.

2: Hypotheon never made the transformation process clear, but I like to imagine the centaurs needed an element of humanity to transform, to have that kind of magic. As Hypertheon sought the wild and rejected his humanity, he lost his ability to transform before fully achieving horse form, meaning he was stuck forever with a human face and human hands. I never saw his hind-limbs but perhaps they were human feet. 

Night of 8.3.18: The end of humanity

It’s been a while! I think going back to work quashed the time I was able to spend in the morning writing my dreams out. I was discussing disturbing dreams vs nightmares with my friends lately and what distinguishes the two, for me, is when my friends from the waking world get involved. For example, I had a dream where someone got dragged into a room by an inhumanly long, bandaged arm, then the door closed and blood exploded through the keyhole and under the door, and that wasn’t overly disturbing for me to witness, but the dream I’m about to write concerns the wiping out of the human race and witnessing the subtle, chronic destruction of a number of my  friends.

I was walking along Eldad hill in Plymouth, or rather I was hurrying. I was aware that a contagion had been placed somewhere along North Road West and was seeping out, ready to explode. At the crossing leading to Wyndham square I saw the Incredible Hulk laying on his back on the ground, upper body on the pavement, lower body in the road and arms spread weakly out at his sides. I went to him but it was obvious he would be dead soon. I reassured him that he fought bravely and that he was the best Avenger and soon he passed, his skin paling once he did.

Upon his death, whatever was on North Road West finally detonated and a stampede of animals bolted across the road, breaking down the wooden doors and seeking refuge in the Plymouth College prep school. The sky had changed now as well: streaks and accents of purple now mottled into the sky, much as red does on a sunrise or sunset. The purple was localised over a small patch, presumably where the contagion was, but I knew immediately it would spread.

I followed the animals into the walled grounds, but it was no longer the prep school, it was a great landscape of rocks, trees, and a path which led down a grassy hill to a shore where waves swelled and crashed, and the horizon spread uninterrupted by other landmasses. I felt like it was relatively safe there but reckoned that the contagion was spreading in the air so went back to my house on Winston avenue.

The dream then cut to me being awoken at 3am by a phone call. I was worried a friend of mine was suffering from the contagion and answered, but as I did a message reading “connection not available” came up on screen. The call timer was ticking along however, so the call was happening, but from an impossible number. I put the phone down. Unsure what to think or feel I went outside and checked the road to see if I could see anyone in need of help. I had no idea what damage the contagion would cause, or over what timescale so I was on high alert. As I walked down the road and away from the house, a shadowy, silhouetted figure rushed out from the top of the road and ran into my house. I detected its movement as soon as it appeared, shouted it to stop and chased it back to the house, desperate to bar its entry. I arrived at the house a fraction later than the figure and reached out, in vain, to grab it as it bustled through the door and disappeared up the stairs. Was it in my room? The bathroom? My housemate's room? Had it gone and hidden in the loft? Had it gone to kill Kiki (my pet cockatiel)? These were all questions that were buzzing in my head and I had no easy way of answering them.

An indeterminate amount of time then passed and the three following passages may have happened in any order after any amount of time.

I was sitting in my bedroom and my housemate poked his head round the door, he was looking restless and unwell and was shifting around uncomfortably. He looked into Kiki’s cage and stated that he couldn’t see her. I looked in the cage but she was obviously sitting on her top perch by her food dish. I said that there were some vegetables pegged up by that perch, which may have been obscuring his view but I felt like that was a weak excuse. My housemate then said he was suffering from something called ‘speciesosis (species-osis)’ where he confused animals as others, and simply couldn’t see some animals. I was very worried for him.

In another scene the same housemate and I were in a hotel somewhere, potentially in Cornwall. We wanted to go somewhere but didn’t know how to get there and were weighing up the options. He wanted to drive but I was cautious that he, and I, and everyone else, were being driven subtly insane by the contagion. I dissuaded him from taking the road as he was unsafe to drive and everyone else out there would be unsafe as well. We considered asking some of the other people in the hotel bar but ruled that they were insane as well and couldn’t be trusted. In the end we found a map in a nearby pamphlet holder and plotted a course that way. We went by foot and were vigilant for any “crazies” that tried to attack us.

I had been going regularly to the walled garden to see the animals and admire the scenery. There was a crow that I had befriended which would fly from its tree at the end of the path to my hand when I got to the bottom of the hill. Sometimes there would be multiple crows, sometimes it was just the one. But the crow would always come to my hand each time I went there. One day, as I got to the bottom of the hill the crow didn’t come. I walked along the path, puzzled by this development. I looked through the row of trees on my left and into the field beyond but it was empty. Not a crow to be seen. There was nothing in the field to my right either. As I got to the end of the path, by the tree that the crow would usually perch in, a tall woman, taller than 6ft and dressed in long, flowing black clothes came around the corner. I was under the impression that the crow had become this lady, but was still the crow, so I held out my hand as I would for the crow to perch on. The lady approached my hands and kissed my fingers, as the crow would have pecked at food I had in my hand.

(On reflection of this passage and the ‘species-osis’ that my housemate suffered from, it’s quite likely I too had developed that condition and lost the ability to distinguish between crows and people. This means that I would have perceived a crow as a potential mate which has impact in the final scene of the dream)

Next, a number of people from choir were at a party, as were two other stallholders from Mt Edgcumbe. The venue was a large mansion, similar to the wedding venue I played at in December. The morning after I had no memory of the party except seeing a long black coat on the ground, asking if it belonged to someone, and their denying it. One of the stallholders had taken a number of photographs throughout the night including me, a friend of mine, and someone else dressed up and decorated as living statues stood by a fireplace. Other photos showed choir members collapsed on the floor. I hadn’t been drinking so the only explanation could have been amnesia caused by the contagion. From this point I starting regularly taking pictures throughout the days to chronicle what I did as I didn’t remember it after a while. It seemed that my affliction from the contagion was amnesia. Which I considered fairly light, considering other people had been driven crazy, to the point of taking their own lives, others had physically atrophied and died that way. Others were killed by insane people and others had simply vanished. 

No matter what order the previous scenes happened in, the following was the final scene of the dream. 

I was back in my bedroom. The sky was now purple. The contagion had spread worldwide. There was a woman in my bed, I don’t know who they were but I was familiar with them in the dream and got the impression that we were a couple. We were watching a news broadcast on television saying that “the aliens were taking to the ocean”. They then showed footage of odd, grey, hybrid forms taking to the ocean. Some resembled oarfish, others were humanoid with webbed hands and feet. Others resembled merfolk, with the upper half of a person and the bottom half of a fish, or perhaps a shark. One creature was the size and shape of a whale. All of these creatures were swimming away from a shoreline and disappearing into the depths. The news reporter said that the human population was estimated between 5 people and 4000 people. I switched off the news, looked at the woman in my bed and reassured her that we’d won. I then went over to a clutch of black eggs and cradled one of them in my arms, holding it like it was my own child.

That was the end of the dream.

*** Commentary! ***

This was a harrowing dream to recall, and I woke up feeling distressed. I am fascinated by these sorts of dreams that cover such a threatening event and over such a detailed timeframe, however, witnessing the end of the world and the mental dissolution of my friends and myself was certainly harrowing. On reflection of the dream I get the impression that the contagion acted by altering the DNA of either humans or every lifeform on Earth. I feel like people whose DNA was only altered got off lightly, other humans had their DNA simply destroyed, case in point, the Hulk. The Hulk’s DNA had already altered by gamma radiation, so the DNA altering property of the contagion might simply have destroyed his DNA beyond repair, leading to his death.

The purple colour of the contagion might suggest it was a kind of UV radiation but that was never proved in the dream.

Another way the contagion might have acted to reduce the human population was by altering our perception and making us see all other animals as humans, meaning we would mate with other animals and not produce offspring. This is hinted at when the crow I was familiar with suddenly became a woman, and in the final scene too, where I had a female partner but we had a clutch of eggs. Then again, it might be that the person’s DNA was altered so much that she simply laid eggs. 

Night of 5.2.19: Interdimensional swords and a bodyguard mission

I had been given a short sword with runes carved into the blade. I had in my head that it was a magic weapon that was able to strike –and strike from—different dimensions. I was unable, however to see into those dimensions so I wasn’t sure how it worked. I saw a group of people who couldn’t see me and, from a distance, swung at one of them. Their head immediately disappeared, and they dropped to the floor. There was no blood. I had no idea what just happened, but I was confident I had done it.

As I became more practiced with this sword I could begin to see into parallel dimension it struck from. It seemed it brought anything it cut off into that dimension.

 I was walking in this separate dimension when I bumped into a friend from real life. We haven’t met up or even spoken for a long time, so I was excited to see them in my dream, we exchanged a few words however they were fairly curt and weren’t interested in talking to me. Perhaps they had their own things to be doing. We parted ways soon after.

In a new location, but still in the same universe as I had my magic sword, I had been tasked with protecting a child from a series of killers, potentially attacking from this other dimension. I first had to collect her and this saw me pretending to work in a restaurant. The restaurant was part of a big complex spread out in multiple buildings and I was given a tour by a worker of similar age to me. Once they’d pointed me to the restaurant they departed. I looked around the site to see if I could spot any assailants, but it looked secure. I headed in to the very dark, very large restaurant.

Once I stepped through the door I had to walk down a flight of stairs and the restaurant supervisor was waiting for me at the bottom.
“Went to help somewhere else did you?” he asked, and I remembered there was a juice bar across the way from this building, I didn’t want to come off as suspicious and I could still play to my unfamiliarity with the place so I nodded quietly, still unable to see properly in this dark place.
“That’s alright” the man said, looking across the floor. “If you report to that person there”, he pointed to one of the waiting staff “they’ll show you what to do”.
Fortunately the person was nearby and I could more or less see them in the dark. “Alright” I started, “but I’m just going to let my eyes adjust first”. I was able to see perfectly well at this point, I was giving excuses to scan the crowd and check for assailants. The supervisor went off somewhere and I started walking the floor.

I walked straight to the furthest part of the hotel which tucked in behind a corner. There were 5 burly men with long, wild hair dressed in animal skins and thick cloaks hunched round three long tables that they had brought together. Among them was the young girl I was meant to protect. I figured these men were her bodyguards. I produced a notepad and asked if they wanted anything, they shrugged me off, after all I’d done nothing to distinguish myself from the other waiting staff so to make a statement I drew one their swords from its sheath and struck down into the table. I was more a sharpened hunk of metal than a sword, it broadened out towards the end, up to about 2ft and had a double spike at the end, similar to those used by the Uruk-hai berserkers in the Lord of the Rings films. They immediately knew who I was and filled me in on the mission so far. The girl got up from the table and came with me. I assured her that she would be safe and that I could even see enemies attacking from another dimension. I also told her I had a faithful lizard companion and a small green tree gecko crawled out of my chest pocket and moved onto my chest. The girl was thrilled by the lizard, “It comes with me when I go into other dimensions too!” I told her.

It was a new scene, the girl and I were standing in a small quadrangle with a dirt floor surrounded on all sides by single-floor wooden buildings. The sky was red-yellow, like a sunset. I had my magic sword in one hand and was scanning the roofs of the buildings to see if the attackers were approaching. My lizard climbed out of my chest pocket again and I understood this to mean I should check in the other dimension. I don’t remember what happened after this.

21-27.1.19: Time control, Hunters and Tsunamis

Night of 21.1.19

I seemed to have some power over time and was able to bring future events forward so that they would happen sooner. I also had some control over how soon I would make them happen: this was expressed in ‘i’s and the lower the number of ‘i’s, the sooner it would happen, relative to how long it would take to happen without intervention . I couldn’t make something happen instantaneously, nor could I create new events, only bring destined events forward. I remember someone asked me to bring forward a life event of theirs to 4 ‘i’s, and I warned against it saying it was too soon and it would take too much power on my part. 

Night of 23.1.19

A friend of mine had become an eco-terrorist. She dressed somewhat like a druid elf called Nissa Revane from a trading card game called Magic the Gathering. Somehow I also got caught up in her schemes and was tasked with breaking into an important building. It might have been that the syndicate that she had been roped into had a Magic the Gathering theme because my face had been painted black and then the emblem of a guild called Selesnya (also from the game) had been painted on my face over the black. I actually got caught by a guard as I was being lowered down to the target floor by wire. The camera (so to speak) was pointing over the guard’s shoulder and I was in shot. I showed a look of surprise, then closed my eyes and lowered my head so that the emblem was clearly visible to the guard. The guard took a moment to look at the emblem, presumably quite confused. Then I was lifted back up to the roof and we escaped.

Night of 26.1.19

I don’t remember much of this dream very clearly, but I was walking in some untamed wilderness filled with crags and forest and plains, akin to the environment in Shadow of the Colossus only without the walls of mountains. I remember scrambling down a patch of boulders, perhaps seeing a small settlement in the basin of some small hills.

It later unfolded that me, and a group of other people, were being targeted by hunters/agents trying to kill us. In the closing stages of this hunt the forces after us had resorted to chemical/biological warfare and sent a cloud of chemical/disease, represented by a red line, harrowing through the forest we were resting in. We fled the forest but the red line was fast approaching and agents were waiting for us in the clearing. One of our group took their phone and threw it at the line, which promptly caused it to stop but that person dropped dead. The agents also disbanded. Once they realised the cost of their actions they stopped and left us alone. 

Night of 27.1.19

I was exploring what may have been a castle that lead down by a set of stone stairs to a beach. I went down these stairs and stepped onto the beach. The tide had gone out very far, revealing the underlying coast. I squinted towards the horizon and saw a band of white and a band of blue underneath. My stomach dropped as I realised I was looking at an approaching tidal wave. I hurried back up the steps just in time to watch the wave crash against the cliffs that-not 30 seconds ago-I was stood at the bottom of. I shrugged and commented that “I guess I’m not going down there then”.

I walked around the base of the castle and promptly bumped into Hobo Johnson. I told him that I really enjoyed his gig in Bristol, he thanked me and commented on the castle. I then said that we were going to the theatre that evening and invited him. He accepted and got into the car with my friends and me.

In the car I was trying to find things to say to Hobo Johnson, “I remember you saying that the type of music someone listens to says a little bit about them” I started, I was going to say next “do you think it might actually show a lot about them?” but before I had a chance to say the last part Johnson had jumped in to talk about, pretty much exactly the question I was going to ask. I figured I no longer needed to ask him.

The next scene was at the theatre, I don’t remember if it was this theatre or not, but the room was triangular with the stage at the point. There were three sections of seats: two which followed the edge of the triangle down and a middle set that was also shaped like a triangle. The theatre was very full and we were fortunate enough to find seats together. A while after we’d sat down, two people appeared at our aisle. I looked up and it was Jessie and James from Pokémon! They too were looking for seats so we invited them to sit with us. They did, but true to form they also sent out Weepinbell and Ekans. This meant we needed two more seats which weren’t there anymore. In the end I think Jessie, James and Ekans all shrank down and sat on my shoulders. I don’t remember about Weepinbell.

Night of 20.1.19: The Spectral Hall

I was exploring what would best be described as a building that resembled a cross between a monastery and a mansion. Whatever purpose the building served it was giant, and now abandoned. I was stood in a square/rectangular courtyard which had six dilapidated pillars jutting up in a 3x2 formation. There may have also been a time-crumbled fountain in the centre, but I don’t remember clearly. As I was stood I saw a glimmer of something spectral, a flutter of a ghost, or some hint of the supernatural. I was spooked, so decided to leave the place for the day (strictly speaking evening) and come back another day (evening).

I came back to the courtyard again and the spectral something was more formed this time; or at least, its formlessness was more present: a slender being totally masked by a crumpled cloth that floated, faceless and silent, above the ground. I decided to follow it and it took me inside. I entered into a great hall with a lower tier in the middle and a step down to reach it. There were many side rooms and a large room at the far end. Similar in architecture to the Romanesque buildings I have seen in previous dreams, though this one seemed a bit more gothic. The whole place was desaturated too; the colour in this place was pale and dull and not like that of the courtyard outside. I started to hear whispers and hints of people and movement and got a strong sense of malice towards me.

I came to and from this spectral dimension a few times, each time exploring more and more and the whole thing becoming more and more real. One night I heard a voice resonate throughout the entire building that all subjects were to make their donations. The residents all mustered around a door leading out of the mansion. I followed them to a narrow path with a shear drop on each side. The path came to an abrupt end where a heaving, flesh coloured mass awaited us. This was the source of the voice we had all heard. The residents sequentially threw their offerings into the maw of the creature. Every now and then the thing would declare that the offerings weren't sufficient and that it required more from them. Some subjects would toss more gold into the thing's mouth, but others who had nothing left to give simply fell into its awaiting gullet. I got to the front of the queue and saw the hideous form more clearly. It had no eyes, nose or other sensory organ, it was simply a fleshy bag with a yawning gap cleft into it. I tossed some gold pieces down into it and its voice flooded my head:
"that was not clever, now you cannot leave, you will be forever my subject and I will forever require donations from you, I hope for your sake that you do not come up short". 

I came back again, this time with someone else. However, upon arrival at the courtyard, it was the same washed-out grey as the inside of the building was. I could now clearly see the spectre that I could only glimpse previously. It was hurtling around the courtyard telling me that I had stepped too many times into their world and that I would now be taken into it with no return. “the more you drink of our world, the more you live in it, the more you will live in it, and you shall not return to your own!”, that sort of thing. I asked my adjacent friend if they could see the flying spectre and they said they saw no such thing. Daunted, but not dissuaded we pressed into the hall.

Inside, there were phantom flames burning atop each of the now-repaired pillars, and ominious glows from many of the side rooms. My associate could not see any of this; it seemed this oppressive nightmare dimension was only perceptible to myself. We walked into the hall, them on the lowering step, and myself on the entry level floor. I then saw a great host of people, some with glowing red eyes, but all with their bodies in the same monochrome as the building appear in front of me. A leader of sorts sat up in the rafter and demanded that I be captured for sacrifice. The spirits, entities-whatever they were- gave chase and I fled. As I ran, more of them appeared in the side rooms and flooded out after me as well. Their leader jumped about in the rafters, keeping tabs on my location, cackling my movements down to the uproarious spirits that pursued me. Again, my company had no inkling whatsoever that this was happening, to them I was panickedly running around the hall for seemingly no reason. I don’t remember how that ended, but I wasn’t killed or sacrificed as they were threatening. I think it may have resulted in my physical form remaining, but perhaps I felt a compulsion to bring new people into this grey world of theirs.

Night of 18.1.19: The Shapeshifters in the Sewers

There was a species of animal that specialised in shapeshifting and transforming into other animals. I was able to witness a sort of “real-time evolution”. The animal walked -hunched over- on its two hind legs, had green skin and looked like a hybrid between a reptile and an amphibian. Its natural environment was a dark, underground waterway. I saw a Dark Souls-esque menu appear in front of one of the animals with categories the animal could level up in. For example, the present animal levelled up in traits to make it a better polymorph. Suddenly I saw another of the animals shoot down the central shaft that I was sitting by; it was either falling or crawling down the walls very quickly indeed. I wished it that these animals invested resources into being more self-confident and to be content with what they were, so that they no longer needed to shapeshift.

Night of 17.1.19: The Aftermath of a Party and Alien Visitations

The whole thing is rather hazy, but I was hosting an absolutely messy birthday party in a fancy bungalow that backed onto a manor. I was staying relatively sober because many other people were out of control and I wanted to try and reign them in. One party was hungry so they left the house and went to a supermarket to get food. I followed them.

At the supermarket the partiers were just grabbing food off the shelf and eating it. One person knocked an armful of jam jars on the ground which shattered and spread jam everywhere. Shop clerks looked on powerlessly as I made a list of everything they had taken and broken and promised to pay them back tomorrow; this was after closing time.

Earlier during the day, before the raiding party, and I think in the manor house, I was being a good host and asking people if I could get them any drinks or food. The head the chef from the café I work at was having a barbecue and I was making drinks in a conservatory through a set of swinging double doors. Our chef was already super busy cooking all the food that had been ordered and I was going round to see if everyone had everything they wanted. One lady (who seemed rather drunk already) said she hadn’t received her drink (despite not having ordered one) and also wanted to change the food she’d ordered. Her group was a few feet away from the doors so I popped my head through and told the chef she wanted to change her order. They gave me a baffled look. I don’t know how that scenario resolved.

Later on in the manor house, as the party had spilled into there as well, I was tidying a side-room when I heard a telepathic voice in my head say something along the lines of
“Long and far have we travelled across the reaches of outer spaces and how near you all are. We shall come to your location and repossess your bodies. You no longer need them” and I could see vague silhouettes of alien shapes in my head: one of them looked like a nautilus.
“I hope they don’t find me” I thought to myself “there’s still so much cleaning to do”. A later missive revealed their forms to us, they actually looked pretty cool.

I was walking through this manor house with a friend of mine, still in the aftermath of the party, she was saying encouraging things about how we’d get the house tidied and sorted.

She and I entered a room filled with men wearing suits. I guessed they were invited but they were not doing anything notable (avoiding cleaning the place up!). It was rather stuffy in the room so I went to open a window but was still conscious of the telepathic voices I’d heard and thought it best to leave them shut. Equally, when I went over to the windows the men told me it wasn’t safe and that I’d fall out. After a while though, one of the windows opened on its own and all the men cautiously started opening the rest of the windows. I gave my friend a puzzled look and realised I was holding a foil reprint of a Magic the Gathering card called 'Black Lotus' (notable because this card is worth a lot of money). “I could open a window with this!” I joked. One of the windows opened out very wide with no visible force acting on it, all the men let out a panicked gasp, perhaps someone had fallen out. Ultimately it was a non-threatening creature that had climbed out onto the roof and opened the window in the process.

Some days later the houses were still in states. I think we’d managed to at least sort the mess into different types at this point. Someone who wasn’t invited to the party arrived and told me they were going to hold a series of tournaments across a series of days to get the place cleaned up: the first day was for animal wranglers (suggesting there had been animals released during the party), the next day would be for competitive eaters, to get through the leftovers, then a fight (for variety?) except I would have to provide the champions for the fight. It was very confusing and I couldn’t my head round it in the dream. But it did seem like a good idea.

Two days later nothing had been done to tidy the venues.

Night of 16.1.19 Dancing Trees in the Pit of Mud

I was fighting against a giant purple head that belched out toxic gas either as a large expanding cloud or a homing bubble. I had a claymore type sword and was doing quite well at evading both types of its attacks. I ran in gathering my strength whilst dodging another belch to strike it with a leaping slash when I saw what looked like its oesophagus at the back of its mouth. I changed my attack and instead of the jumping attack I stabbed the claymore into its oesophagus and twisted the blade. This completely untwisted the creatures body leaving a large hole in the back of it. This felt like the lethal blow but I noticed its health bar was still at about 60% capacity. I suspected a second stage and wasn’t wrong.

All of a sudden, I was cast into a lowered, circular arena filled with about 1ft of mud. There were park benches here and there. I was directly underneath the ledge where the head creature was still standing, it was contorting and heaving and suddenly grew greatly in size. After its transformation it now resembled an ent made of clay. Some of its roots were hanging down the ledge and I immediately started hacking at them with the claymore. The severed roots fell into the mud with a “squack” and shortly after, about 6 human sized trees emerged from the mud around the perimeter of the arena and started to slowly dance around it. The large ent confiscated my sword so I was left unequipped to deal with whatever these dancing trees were going to throw at me. I found a large chef’s knife from somewhere and started hacking away at the dancing trees. They too were made of a clay/mud material. The large ent started throwing large globs of clay to each of the trees and they immediately patched up any damage I’d inflicted. I decided to focus down on one tree and intercept any clay that got thrown to it by striking it out of the air. This plan was going well until I broke the knife by slicing at a lump of clay. All whilst this was happening, there was some shuffle/stompy blues playing. A similar style to Filipino Box Spring Hog and Cold Water by Tom Waits.

-

During the last passage of the tree fight, I checked the time on my phone and realised I missed the last train back to Sheffield so I somehow left the pit and went to a nightclub where two of my friends and a few other people were. One of my friends had been checking train times and advised me which train was best. He also validly pointed out that I may have missed the train today but I didn’t need to be back until 4 days from now so I could easily catch another train. In fact, my name was pencilled in on the train schedule, saying that it was actually pre-decided which train I would get. After this a blond-haired youth in a red t-shirt started dancing around the two of them. There was vomit down his t-shirt and he clearly hadn’t washed his hands after he'd thrown up, he was also very, very drunk. He was touching them both and insisting they danced with him, they weren’t having any of it so I went up behind the youth and put him on the floor in a body lock, encouraging other people to call the police. This wasn’t the first person I’d apprehended that day: there was another person who had taken MDMA and alcohol and was being physically violent towards someone.

-

There was another part of the dream which is a bit hazy, but I had discovered two magic the gathering cards that formed a good combination: however when I told someone my idea it sundered reality and some interdimensional beings told me the gravity of my action, they showed me the disastrous version of reality that would happen if I kept along this path.

Night of 15.1.19: Trees, Shadows, Trickery and Contests

I was walking in Ecclesall woods (in Sheffield) keeping to the path you enter on, just past the fences of the houses. I had a torch and shone it on a silver birch tree to look at the close details of the tree. Suddenly the entire tree started growing pink, and eventually all of the other silver birches in the woods glowed pink too. From this I got the idea that all the silver birches were connected underground by their root system and the stimulus of light was enough to make them all glow. One nearby tree was upright but not alive and had two large-ish mushrooms growing from it. Here I also gleaned a little bit of what it was like to be a tree: the mushroom infected one told me its infection was somewhere between inconvenient and urgent.

_

I was in a fictional garden with a group of people at dusk. They were discussing something when I saw a giant shadowy form loom into view at the edge of the garden, it looked like a cross between the final form of Metroid prime and the shadow creature from Stranger Things. I tried to snap people out of their conversation so we could deal with the thing, suggesting I go to the woods and ask the trees for help, but to no avail.

-

Me and a group of people were sitting on the rocky bank of a lake. Again they were discussing some sort of problem and how they could deal with it. Suggestions were being shot down as soon as they could be brought up. I grew tired of the directionless babble so got up and left. Soon after, a thin man with white markings on his dark skin tromped over to their circle and listened to their plight. When the group had told him and asked for his advice he vanished. The camera then cut to me in a nearby shanty holding a rock with similar markings to those on the man’s body, I then realised that I had created an astral projection of this man and headed back to the rest of the group to reinforce my wisdom and magic ability, that they should listen to me. On my way there I grabbed another rock off the floor with the casts of worms on it, I said out loud to another group of passers-by that if the group I was going back to “didn’t like circles, maybe they’ll like-” I looked at the rock to see what patterns were on it “worms!” 

-

I don’t remember the details too much of the final stages of my dreams, it was in an academy and there was infighting between me and a group of others, specifically one girl, as to who was best suited for a task. In the end I think she and I both tackled the task at the same time, realised we were both out of our depth and agreed to work together.

I’m not sure if this was in the same academy, but it was night-time now and we had a manor house to sleep in. Bedrooms hadn’t been allocated so people were just claiming rooms. Whilst people were claiming the biggest or the nicest rooms, I sneaked around to find all the secret rooms and slept in one of those. I think mine was at the side of the house, a small room with a French window looking out onto the estate.

Night of 13.1.19: Missing Whales and Eye in the Sediment

I had a dream last night that there was a rare species of coastal whale that had gone missing and I was part of the team to investigate. We went to a mudflat along the coast that these whales quite regularly visited. I have a distinct memory of standing in the flats, and seeing them shapelessly expand beyond sight: to say we were coastal, there was no hint of ocean here. But then again that might have been a contributing factor: perhaps the flats were drying out and the food source wasn't there any more. That said, there was no hint of any life here, it was almost as if it simply and catastrophically removed. We took some mud cores and other samples and returned to our field base. 

As I was walking outside from one point to another in our base, a voice came through on my radio: some of the scientists had found something and that they wanted all staff to come and look. I radio'd back my acknowledgement and headed down a set of gravel steps that lead through a small wooded hill. 

What I saw when I arrived where the researchers were oppressed me. It was a metal cube about one story in each dimension with large, circular, glass windows occupying the majority of each face. It was dark inside the container, I approached to see into it and immediately saw what looked like an eye made of sediment that filled the entire container. Its pupil rolled and contracted and I could tell it was looking at me. But there was more. It was clearly looking at me, it was conscious of my presence and I knew that it was relaying this information to something, someone, or somewhere else. When I looked into the thing I could see the coastal whales dying and their corpses being taken somewhere. I knew that this thing was part of a much larger, much more powerful force that was causing the disappearance of the whales. 

This dream was set in a Mediterranean clime and there was a festival going on. For whatever reason the Stables café had relocated to this place and I was working. Customers were coming around the till and standing next to me to place their orders and it made me very uncomfortable. Earlier in the dream, before the passage about whales, a customer asked me for Ridley, the main antagonist of the Metroid series to be served to them.

Night of 10.1.19: Surprise Exams and Sudden Performances

I had a dream last night that I had two exams tomorrow and was in a show the night tonight*, it was very stressful as I had done no revision for them, as I didn't know I had to do them, and would not be able to study because of the show I was performing in. Towards the end of the dream though I realised that it was a dream and that I already had my degree certificate

The setting of this dream was very lush and verdant, like Pompeii would have looked like whilst still standing, but with an abundance of plant growth and vines that hung down into the buildings. 

In my dream, when I thought I’d done everything for my Masters, I looked at my statement of results and the “credit achieved” statement at the top was not there, all my existing marks had gone from ‘confirmed’ to ‘provisional’ and two modules suddenly had exams. However, this didn’t match up in the dream because the exams I was doing were ones from my third year of undergrad: behavioural ecology and conservation and ecology of marine vertebrates. I reassured myself that I’d already applied for PhDs using my certificate and statement of results in the real world so I had nothing to worry about in the dream.

*Some dateless night ago, I had a dream that I was either in Musical Theatre Group  or with Act One in their final performance of a show and that I was needed as an extra. There would be no lines to learn or anything so it was going to be fine. However, once onstage, people started talking to me like I was the principal role and I had no such preparation so I tried to make things up as well as I could but judging from the crowd I was not even close to what I should be doing, so I whipped up the actors into “the big dance number”, hoping there was a dance number that they could produce to kind of save the show a bit, but it devolved into me -and a few others who were following my lead- doing some box steps but no-one sang and no-one else danced. It was a total disaster. 

Night of 7.1.19: The New Reaper and a French Holiday

I had taken on the role of grim reaper (involuntarily). I knew it was a person’s time because a double-decker bus would pull up behind them, but only I (and other people in the world of the dead) could see it, the reapee, so to speak, had no idea. I would touch the person to bring them into the world of the dead and then they would get on the bus. There was no body left behind (unless I couldn’t see it) after I claimed someone, so people I reaped would simply disappear from the world of the living.

two of my friends and I were in a barn-like room, I was still the reaper, but they didn’t know that. One was complaining that there was no phone signal in the barn. I said “you want to see no signal?!” and jokingly grabbed her by the arm and brought her into the world of the dead. This was represented by us both taking a step to the right but suddenly the room was a little darker and the other friend wasn’t there. I then realised that I’d effectively just killed them and had no idea how to undo it.

Later on, I was stood outside the building back in the world of the living, though I effectively had one foot in each. The police had arrived to investigate a series of missing people (that I had caused). They were speaking to two staff members from the Segway shop at Mt Edgcumbe, who realised I was the reaper and therefore causing the disappearances. I hastily left before they could tell the police officer they were talking to that I was the culprit.

My physical presence in world of the living seemed to fluctuate, but it ranged from absolute to the point where I could interact with objects and whisper to peoples thoughts, but not have a physical body. I was able to help a recently bereaved family do some tasks around the house by relaying messages from their lost member to them and by moving things around the house.

Next thing I remember I was on a ferry, whether to escape the people looking for me as the next reaper, or just because. There were a lot of French people on the ferry and some were asking me if I knew where they could find “un arbre de Bontemps” (literally meaning “a tree of good times”), I understood that to mean a Christmas tree and told them I didn’t work on the ferry, so didn’t know, but suggested the floor with a shopping centre in it.

Later on that day, there was a gig on the top deck of the ferry. I was at the front because I like to be at the front for gigs. The band seemed to be pretty popular based on how many people were in the audience. The band was also singing in French, so I could more or less keep up with the main message of the song but was missing the fine details. The band came to what I assumed was their ‘big song’ as the audience were all singing super loud during the chorus and I mimed along. During one of the choruses, the lead singer held the mic out to me and I was simply unable to sing any of the chorus and it stopped the show.