Weird dreams? HOOBOY I've had a lot of those.

Earliest and maybe freakiest one I remember was a bunch of Spyro-style dragons running around a Sonic Robo Blast-style land screaming about Mount Playstation erupting.

Had another that involved a commercial about the effects of spam on your teeth (cartoon rapid rotting of teeth, eck), another about wandering around my primary school's playground during a fair of some sort and not having enough money to buy anything or not being sold any food by the assholes running the stalls. Um...

More recently I had a dream of a huge amount of Mudokons giving me piercing blank head-on stares, all of 'em facing the camera. That was freaky. I think it was my conscience trying to scare the shit out of me over something. I still need to scan in the interpretive drawing I did of this, if I can balls up and look at it again fdsfsdf.

Sounds like a good game.

That always happens with Wil.

:p

I had one set in some futuristic blade-runner dystopia in which I was traveling with a dangerous ex-special-ops vigilante fugitive because he was the only person in the world who wasn't a complete cock. We tried to board some kind of neon-lit aircraft with fake identification (I had none on account of being from the twenty-first century for some reason) to parts unknown, which he assured me would be fine. However they immediately knew, and after letting me through as though everything was normal, a shoot-on-sight kill order was put out on me across the entire world's law enforcement. This is not a situation that I take to very naturally but, due to a fortunate twist of that peculiar dream-logic these things obey, the fugitive and I were suddenly the same person and I went on the run quite expertly. And not without what appeared to be super-human abilities. I was swimming into the open ocean ahead of hunter-killer helicopters by the time even dream-logic was not sufficient to keep me from calling shenanigans and waking up.

That dream, at least, was exciting. But it was one of those that leaves you exhausted in the morning.

I wish I could tell you about my dreams but I don't dream, it's just pure blackness for like a minute or so and then I wake up.

That must suck a bit, but then if you never dream you don't know what you're missing I guess.

I had another zombie dream relatively recently, I get those so much. Don't remember too much, but I held up in my house for a while. Killed a few with the defence bat by my bed too.

I have two kinds of zombies dreams. One in which I can fly, but am indoors, in a room packed with them. I desperately cling to the ceiling just above grabbing fingers while I search for a way out.

In the other one, the atmosphere is like treacle for me. Running is prohibitively exhausting as I try to move my goddamn limbs, and I can barely move faster than the horde. In those dreams I always wake up feeling like I've run a marathon.

Hey BM, a question for you as a scientist, do you believe that dreams can be vivid enough that the brain triggers a synaptic response to pain? Causing us to actually feel it in reality? For example say you were stabbed in a dream as I was recently, it was enormously painful and up until then I had always firmly believe you could not feel pain in a dream because it was not physical. Now I'm not so sure.

The science of dreams is wibbly-wobbly as it is - which much of psychology our attempts to explain the outcomes of our brains is in advance of the ability of neurology. In doing so we get ahead of ourselves. Also, even by the relatively meager standards of the field I am no expert.

But the experience of pain is nothing more than a quale. Qualia are what we experience, distinct as a term from the physiological processes. For the time being they remain the greatest mystery of biology - we cannot explain what makes the experience yet, though no doubt the answer is in the brain.

I see no reason why there cannot be a pain version of a hallucination. I haven't actually heard of pain being felt in a dream, at least not that is recalled, but again I don't know why or that it absolutely cannot happen.

But memory is also a funny and almost useless thing, more so with dreams. Many of our memories are entirely fabricated. It could quite easily be the case that you did not actually experience pain at all, but now remember that you did.

I find dreams so fascinating. If I weren't so hell-bent on becoming a games designer, I'd definitely look into studying dreams further.

Sorry to break it to you

But interpretating dreams is about as scientific as interpretating tea leaves.

I would have said that, but that he had not yet indicated that he was talking about interpretation. Perhaps Jordan is interested in Somnology?

I find most kinds of psychology interesting as a whole, but Somnology sounds very appealing.

Oh, somnology is my third favourite area after psycholinguistics and the study of memory (Which try as I might I can't find a snappy term for).

If you accept that dream interpretation is pseudoscientific (And therefore ultimately pointless) but still find it fascinating, then I suggest ignoring Sigmund Freud and reading into some of the works of Carl Jung. He's like Freud in that he talked a lot of shit, but unlike Freud in that most of his bullshit is of philosophical interest and his work doesn't revolve around PENIS PENIS PENIS

I think dreams can be interpreted. But I also think they are unique to the dreamer, meaning symbols and stuff don't mean the same for everyone.

I mean, logically, if you dream something up, it must have been for a reason. Even if just because you've seen it before and your mind just decided to visualize it.

Most dreams boil down to 'I'm puzzling over something that happened today'

They are not deep.

Who ever said they have to be deep?

Do you want a list? It starts with the Epic of Gilgamesh, goes through religion for thousands of years as an undercurrent and is then made a pseudoscience by Freud.

Well yea.... But I meant in this thread.


Anyway, I sometimes enjoy deciphering my dreams. As ridiculous as they are, they often take root in stuff that means something to me.

So you suppose, people like to solve puzzles and as such if there's even the vaguest shred that you can 'decipher' your dreams into what they mean the you might snatch at that when actually it didn't mean anything. I'm playing devil's advocate a bit though, I think some dreams might have some sort of meaning as suppressed memories or something.

We're overactive pattern seekers. A selective advantage - you can see why those who don't find meaning in sabre-tooth footprints are at a disadvantage to those who do.

Dreams have always been significant in human cultures, from those who believe them to be divine visions to those who base their whole creation myths on it. We've always inflated the importance of human attributes to the nature of the universe, and people find it difficult to believe that central aspects of the human experience are not very significant.

This applies to most of my dreams. There's also the possibility that dreams may just be a result of ones imagination and sub-conciousness fabricating lots of crap without any waking inhibitors to stop them from doing so. Dreams don't really mean much to me, and only rarely have they made me come up with a good idea or reminded me about stuff I've needed to do.

However, there have been 2 or 3 dreams I've had which have apparently predicted events that happened in the immediate future after dreaming about them, despite me not having any prior knowledge of these events - Even though they weren't actually that significant (apart from a pet dying suddenly without warning). My rationality writes them off as purely co-incidental based on stuff I may have been worried about - As BM said, we're pattern-seekers. Maybe that's the only reason I remember them. But I still find them odd or else I wouldn't be writing about them here.

Anyway.

Last night I had a weird one which was sort of horror-esque (and a little disgusting so don't say I didn't warn you before continuing to read). This is the weird shit I sometimes come up with.

It was sort of based on me being in a first-person game running around an abandoned castle (a little like Amnesia but it felt more like Skyrim) - 'cept it felt I was directly controlling the character using my own muscle movements rather than via a mouse and keyboard - Which gave me an illusion of "being" the character, but since I couldn't feel pain or smell my surroundings, it didn't really give me the feeling of any of it being real even if it was immersive.

I was moving slowly down a dark, abandoned and crumbling stone corridor, eventually approaching a doorway that lead down some stairs. As I entered and began walking down them, one of the steps was missing, causing me to trip - I rolled, and at the bottom I landed on a decomposed corpse. In repulsion I tried to stand up but felt that I was snagged and prevented from moving.

With just enough light to see by from a tiny grate far, far above me in the ceiling, I looked down at myself, and with horror I discovered the corpse was "alive", staring at me with wild, staring, un-decomposed eyes - And where my body had direct contact with the zombie, I was being "absorbed" into it, the decomposed skin melding somehow with my own through my clothes and consuming me.

Since this was a "game", I "died" four times, prompting a third-person Dead Space 2 style cut scene of me being slowly absorbed by the zombie while screaming, eventually suffocating. I always "quickloaded" to the point where I had just tripped over and was stuck to the zombie.

The eventual solution was to take out my sword, proceeding to cut myself free by slicing off my own skin, exposing muscle tissue and bone. However, I still couldn't stand and I was crawling as fast as I could along the floor, watching my health drain away via a health bar, while the staring zombie was crawling behind me, mouth agape, "wearing" parts of my own skin.

The next part kind of ruined the horror aspect of the dream: I remember using a Skyrim-style healing spell to re-new and regenerate my skin, allowing me to stand and back away from the zombie. I ended its "life" by thrusting my sword down into the back of its neck. Leaning back against the wall, I took a moment to regain my composure, before continuing to explore the dungeon.

Then my cat woke me up.

I know that in reality, dreams aren't really that complex, just exaggerations of things already in the brain. They should be seen as an explosion of things you've collected over time and are resurfacing in the form as dreams. I understand that dreams shouldn't be taken seriously, but I still like to read about interpretations and other things.

Like I said, check Jung out.

Most fascinating bullshit I've ever read, and I'm a Philosophy/Psychology student.

I just woke up after having only some part of a dream.

I actually woke up like I do and I went into the lounge only to discover my sister riding my BMX bike outside. :(

I also discovered that our kitchen sink was in another place with dinner inside it and our cats eating that. And then I woke up.

I had a dream last night that a fire went off near my house and it created a huge explosion...then there was a nuclear bomb...I went to look at the two mushroom clouds from my garden but then an enormous dust cloud blasted by nuclear winds was thrown at me, I pulled my bed covers over my head (makes sense right) to stop the dust from getting into my eyes and when I pulled them down again I was on a motorway having to dodge sign posts and upturned cars being thrown at me by the force of the explosion...all the while one of my dick head mates was laughing at me because I nearly died...oh...and before that there were zombies...again.

I had one on the train. And it scared me so much I scared the other passengers.

I was dozing off on the train and I could have swore my dream was so real I actually thought I was in work... working. Then one of the women I work with was trying to move a washing machine out to the front so I offered her a hand. Then she turned around with a grotesquely pulled face with red eyes and a gaping mouth and let out a blood-curdling roar (in the dream, that I assumed was reality, it was anyways) and it scared the shit out of me so much I woke up and realised that the shout, which sounded like she roared 'NO!' came from a song I was listening to at the time.

Listen up to 1:27 to hear what I heard and try to picture the face as well.



I was scared.

i dreamt i had a shit and it required two flushes to sink it then when i awoke i needed a shit so i had one and guess what it required two flushes to get rid of it now that's some spooky shit i can see the future

That's creepy, I wish I had dreams like that.

Or for that matter MORE dreams.

did anyone of you ever had a super violent dream?

I just had one last night and it was horrible. My heart racing, I woke up shivering. it also was a bolt from the blue.

before that I dreamt about a nice girl, suddenly I was standing with another me in the middle of a pedestrian area, speaking to two other guys who were trying to rip us off with a gamble. when the other me realized that he got ripped off he swung a giant sledge hammer to one's hand and smashed it. the other one tried to escape but got hit by the hammer on his head so violently that half of his face went off.
I was just standing there, watching, while this guy fell to the ground and started to dissolve in blood and meat.
I remember that's when the panic kicked in and I shouted god no. he tried to crawl away from us saying something, but his mouth was all sludge so just squishy mumblings came out.
the last thing I saw before I woke up was this cable grid (instead of a skeleton) jerking heavily and uncontrollably and parts of brain were attached to it.

I don't know what was happening there. I normally never dream about such stuff and I never experienced bad dreams after watching a violent film. I also didn't watch anything before I went to sleep. but this was just phew

Dreams are nothing more than your subconscious' (spelt right) own entertainment. No one can fullly control what they dream, even with years of practise. For example, when people have had a near death experience, you often hear the phrase "my life flashed before my eyes". This is true, because what the brain is doing there is, its rooting through all your memories to find a situation like this one, and how you got out of it. Like a computer scanning its CPU for a certain file, this cannot be controlled, which is why some people say "my life flashed before my eyes". The brain is a mysterious thing, when your asleep, it does what it wants, it has a mind of its own.
(wow, that took a while to type up on a Samsung Galaxy...)

I fucking hope that all that stuff's been copied and pasted.

No, it took me ages to think of something brainy to say, let alone type it up.

You're silly.

On topic of violent dreams, I had one a couple of nights ago which particularly disturbed me.
I pinned my brother to the floor, applied pressure to his skull until it crunched, killing him instantly.
I'm not sure what caused it because my brother and I are good mates... Maybe I have a thing with dreaming about killing family, I've dreamed I killed my mother before.

But I can lucid dream...I can pick and choose my sex dreams and only my sex dreams. But I can still do it. So in that respect I can control them.

I hate sex dreams. They're so fucking disappointing, because I always wake up at the best bit.

My dream was the grass shattered and then turned into a desert as far as I could see my dog disintegrated into gold and then I was at school, my friend and I got on surfboards and started riding a wave in the middle of a soccer field whilst rainbow coloured giraffes were turning themselves inside out at forming into the shape of a pretzel! :confused:

I don't even know how to surf. That's my wiered dream.

I wish all my dreams were like that.

(embedding disabled) - just watch the first minute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeh0...eature=related

I've only had around a 3 minute lapse of sex in a dream once, it was awesome but didn't last long. :(