Dreams and Nightmares
 

What is the best dream you've ever had? What is your worst nightmare? What do you think induces particular dreams? Can you consciously induce dreams of a certain nature and/or control a dream once it starts? If you do not dream often, do you find this to be associated with a lack of energy upon awakening?

The best dream I've ever had I won't describe here. The worst nightmare I've ever had . . . hmm. It's the one where I'm running as if caught in molasses, wearing a space suit, through a dark house with a spotlight trained on me, holding a small carton of chocolate milk that I apparently stole from an entity which commences to chase me down and, upon capturing me, tickles me until I die. In hindsight, it was pretty freaking hilarious, but at the time it scared the shit out of me. And the tickling . . . *shudder*. I hate being tickled. I think I had the dream because I was either really anxious about something public I had to do, or I really had to pee. Either way it was horrible.

What are you hiding? ;)

The best dream I had recently was I grew old and died. I was growing old with recognised people... But mainly the dying part was best.

The worst dream... I was so far deep in the water that it was just black. I couldn't move and I was slowly being crushed. Just the thought of being that lost freaks me...

Sounds awful. I should have dreams like that.

I'm not remaining silent on my best dream ever because I don't want to reveal it. I just don't want to be inappropriate.

But since we're on the subject, do you know any way of affecting what you will dream about? Like, say I want to dream about naked women, for example. Is there a formula for creating a dream like that? I tried just thinking a lot about it before falling asleep, but I ended up dreaming some kind of weird anime/sci-fi/video game dream with aliens and lasers. It sucked.

The reason I bring it up is that I'm fifteen and I've only had one dream like that in my life. I feel gypped. Anyway that dream happens to be my favorite dream. So there you go. I won't go into further detail, mainly because it's remarkably boring for a dream about what it's about. Seriously. I wouldn't even watch it on TV.

Hmmm.... I dream a bit but most of the time I don't remember the dream when I wake up... usually my dreams will have real places, mostly at home, in them, though, and when I'm awake I'll usually remember a little bit when I see a place that was in my dream.
Probably the worst dream I've had that I remember is being in a car going around a windy mountain road and going off the road, off the mountain, waking up as the car in the dream hit the bottom...

Soloution:masturbation :p

Why are you wishing to have a dream of this nature? I'm fifteen and I have had no dreams of such. Nor wish to.

Just remebered, cheese can sometimes affect dreams, or is supposed to according to old wives tales.

My best dream

Same with me.

Worst dream... well I don't remember most of my dreams. The last one I remember that I wanted to wake up from had something to do with the movie Saw. I was trying to rescue a woman, and I followed these corridors until I came to an ice cream parlor that was run by a creepy old lady. I don't know why but I wanted to get the hell out of there.

Super Munch, when you have a dream like that, you will see why it's so much better.

The worst dream I've ever had was when my best mates all died and it was all my fault and I could do anything. It was on the cliffs up where I live and I don't go there anymore just incase.

I can't remember my best dreams or any good ones, it's always the bad ones that stick in your memory.

OH. Tomatoe soup makes me mate have weird dreams.

Tomato soup, eh? Interesting. Maybe the acidity affects dreams.

I can never have a nightmare. And I haven't dreamt since I was 6. If I get a nightmare I wake up after like 1 minute.

You dirty fecker. :p

I vaguely recall dreams like this. But they're way over-rated. By breakfast you've forgotten it, or you wake up just before the good bit. They suck.
Reality is much better, even your imagination is better.

Wouldn't work. Masturbation stops sexual desire. He'd just fall into a deep sleep, with a slight feeling of guilt (If he had fantasies in his mind with real people he knows).

I've only had one nightmare in my life that I can remember. I made a bet with some kind of strange creature in a ghost town, I bet that I could withstand more horrible scenes of people dying and suffering that he could, and if lost he could kill me. And I'm amazed of what terrible things my brain could show me. I woke up before I won or lost. I mostly don't remember the usual dreams, but they are very strange. Such as one with two ducks, a midget and a giant guitar. And that my dad won lots of cash and spent it all on fake nuclear bombs filled with raspberry jam.
I'm addicted to dreamcatchers.

Yeah, dreams can be pretty weird sometimes. Some dreams I've had don't seem to have any point in them at all, but like Oddish said, I think there is something in them, even if it's hard to see what it means. One such dream I had that I remember was sort of like this: "I was coming out of the house and it looked like we had visitors and one of them was riding one our horses. Anyway, then the horse bolted for some reason, it looked like it was really freaking out about something, and ran straight out the gate, and out on to the track where I was. Then, the horse stopped because I was there, turned around and ran into a corner and stopped there. I went up and asked the rider if they were okay." Then I woke up, which is probably why I remember that dream, I read something once that said if someone's awakened while their having a dream or straight afterwards they'll usually remember it. So, what do you think can be gathered from that dream? I can't think of anything...

The dreams I remember are always shaped like a movie. Sometimes I can see the main character (which isn't always myself) and sometimes I just see what they see. Nevertheless, the only dream I remember in great detail that happened recently goes like this:

I'm somewhere along the coast driving in the blue volkswagen bug. I'm kind of worried that I might veer off into the ocean for some reason, probably because towering over me on the right is an enormous office complex with painted-white cement walls. Up near the top there are horizontal slits as if its simply a gigantic parking deck. I keep driving for a bit and have a faint feeling of vertigo, even though the ocean is only thirty feet below the cliff edge to the left. Which I'm not very near.

I know that I'm headed to a town where I'm supposed to live the rest of my life in some absurdly simple and blissful cottage. I somehow know for a fact that in order to be happy, all I have to do is continue down this road and get to that village.

I go up a hill and off in front of me I see the asphalt road has broken down, and becomes an avenue of grass. Further on, it appears that the road rises vertically like some kind of green waterfall. Its very reminescent of optical illusions that the hill ahead of you is vertical instead of sloped, and so I blow it off, but when I reach the hill I find that it truly is vertical. Like its some kind of amusement park ride I try to drive the bug up the surface to no avail, terrified the whole time that I'll just flip the car and be crushed. So I get out and cling as tightly as I can to the grass clumps and climb up.

I've never been much of a sheer wall climber, and so as I get higher up, I keep getting momentarily paralyzed when the grass seems to give way. By the time I reach one of the horizontal slits in the office building I'm over a hundred feet up and convinced that if I don't get over the hill, I'm going to fall and die. So I look over and see this guy who looks a bit like a corparate version of myself. "Hey man," I say "I'm trying to get over this hill, is there another way around?"

He kind of looks at me for a minute and just says, "I don't think so." He's getting coffee and working at his desk at the same time. "Well, can I come in there to get through?" The slit is easily large enough to climb through and the grass wall runs perpendicular to it, but he says "Thats against company policy, I think. Where are you trying to get to?" I tell him its the village on the other side and for a bit he just stares at me blankly. "You can't get there from here." And thats when I realize that I'm always going to be stuck staring at this office building with the sea at my back, clinging on to these grass threads for my life. And i'm totally freaked out that I'll never ever make it to the village. Then I wake up.

This dream, while picturesque, was a total downer.

Really? Was I in it?

I hardly remember my dreams, which isn't uncommon for most, but I really don't ever wake up and remember even having any sort of dreams. Either it is because of my eratic sleeping patterns, or my horrible memory is just THAT horrible.

I do remember some, though. And they are incredibly meaningful to what is happening in my life at the time. I remember one such dream, which I won't share (as it might give away a few things I'm not entirely comfortable about), I took it apart an analysed all of it. It was amazing, how relevant and true it was. It detailed my fears, my hopes, and more. And in such an unrealistic manner. I wish I could have another one like it. I could do with one at the moment.

Alcar...

Why would someone assume that everyone on these forums has had a dream about OddWorld? No, I haven't, actually.

Fake nuclear bombs filled with raspberry jam. Wow. I wish my nightmares were that entertaining.

I always have strange dreams. One time my friend and I escaped from jail and about a hundered FBI agents were after us. In the end we hijacked a helicopter and flew to Mexico or somewhere like that. There are a few others I can vaguely recall. Alcar your dream sounds alot more meaningfull than my dreams.

I couldn't find much in the dream I described, except I think it detailed one of my hopes: to be a riding instructor. Just the way the dream was, it seemed as if I had a bit of authority where the horses were concerned and I was annoyed that they had put this person on the horse without letting me know...
It's strange that this is really the only dream that I can vividly remember, and I mean vividly, I can remember almost every detail, even the colour the rider was wearing!:)
The Marching Mud, your dreams sound... interesting... I've had some strange dreams, but nothing like that!

Has anyone experienced dreams where you can controll youself? I find I dream like this all the time... like, If I wish to do something, I will move my legs to walk to accomplish this task. Or am I just weird?

Most Recent dream: Walking through black. Just black. It made me feel real claustrophobic(sp?). Very similar to my first post in this thread. It just freaks me out being that lost and alone.

Ooh! A dreams thread! Dreams would have to be nearly my favourite things in the world. They intrigue me incredibly.
Yes, a while ago I noticed that everything in my dream is there because of something I have done recently in my life, or something I know I am going to do.
My favourite dream: Well, I can't actually think of one specific one, but I am noticing that more and more in my dreams I can fly. Now, don't think it's easy, it's a hell of a lot of hard work! I have to put all of my effort into doing it, and I'm constantly floating back down to the ground (it's not flapping flying, it's probably most similar to Dragonball Z type flying). The thing is, that when I wake up, and I go outside, I can feel the same sort of feeling in the dreams in which I fly, and it feels like I'm getting so damn close. Crazy, I know.
Worst nightmare: I have a few.
- As a kid I used to have a nightmare nearly every night about this guy trying to kill me. What's worse is that sometimes it was in a cartoon fashion (probably because of what I watched on TV at the time) like one time where he was under our house and he sawed up through the floor around my bed.
- I had one where I was at school and these soldiers invaded us and we were hiding in the classroom, but they got up on the roof and so the teacher told the whole class to crawl over to hide against the wall that the window was in, so they couldn't look down and see us, but I could only move really slowly, and a soldier saw me, and shot me with some sort of machine gun. The thing that was so horrible about this one is that I actually felt all the pain, and I felt myself dying. When I actually died I woke up, and I was holding my chest where I had been shot and was pretty much crying about the pain...
- I had a dream where I was in this white, never ending place (kind of like on the Matrix, but I hadn't seen that then) and as the viewpoint (did I mention I never dream in first person?) zoomed out, the sound decreased, and I could see myself talking, and calling out, eventually screaming, but everything was getting quieter and quieter, and zoomed so far away I was just like a little ant. This is probably the worst one, I guess it kind of symbolized isolation.

Ok has anyone ever experienced this. You'll be out doing something one day and something will happen and you think...I could swear i had a dream about this once. It happens to me every once in a while for some reason. I normally don't dream, i have real problems sleeping, i normally lie for hours biting my nails and stuff, it's worrying myself in a way.

YES. About once every two months I have this. I usually dream of a part of a conversation and a day afterwards someone is having the exact conversation I dreamt of. What do I do?

I can interupt and change the future.

Hee hee, that happens to me like once a week. Or sometimes I could swear that time is actually repeating itself. I won't remember dreaming it, I'll remember experiencing it in real life. It weirds me out.

Whenever I have a really horrible nightmare, I wake up and I feel like it's still happening. Like, once I dreamt I was getting chased by a drunk crazy guy with a flamethrower, and he finally got me and I was burning for a few seconds before I woke up, and when I woke up I swear I could feel my skin burning. Or, once I dreamt that I fell off my porch into the flowerbed, and there was a giant spiderweb there, and thousands of ants started crawling all over me, suffocating me. And when I woke up I saw little black dots going in a little line across my pillow, and my skin felt itchy and scratchy and weird. Anyway.

I talked to someone online who has sleep apnia. She says that remembering your dreams is actually a sign that you're not sleeping as well as you should. Apparently dreams occur when your mind transfers short-term memories to long-term memories during the stage of sleep known as R.E.M. or rapid eye movement. If you remember these dreams, it means the transfer is not fully taking place and you're not reaching a full state of R.E.M., which can cause you to be tired.

I don't really think that's true. When I dream I usually wake up feeling a lot better. It's when I don't dream that my sleep gets really screwed up. I wake up and my eyes are tired, and it feels like I've been awake all night, even though I was fully unconscious. In fact, I look forward to dreams, even nightmares, because anything out of the ordinary is exciting.

Last night I had three dreams. In one I was a dog. That's all I remember about it. I was a dog, and there were other dogs around, and I was happy. In the next dream there were these ice-hockey teams, and one team sabotaged the other and made them fall through the ice, and there was this deep, dark, cold lake beneath. And in the third dream I was in some country in Asia that was all jungle. I was a young adult, eighteen maybe, and I was helping these people escape from this town or camp or something, and one of them was a girl from school, and she had a sister and a little brother, and I was leading them out of this country, even though I was just some regular guy, not a soldier or Red Cross worker or anything. And somehow it didn't feel like we were escaping. We were just kind of travelling, living on what we had in these packs and sleeping around a campfire. And it was the best dream I've ever had.

I don't know what the dreams meant. They didn't seem to mean anything. They were just very good dreams. Especially the last one. It was sort of a combination of a macho girl-saving fantasy dream and an out-in-the-woods-carefree-living-off-the-fat-of-the-land dream. Anyway. It was great.

I read that the period of rapid eye movement is when dreams happen, and if someone wakes up during that period or directly after it, they will remember the dream. Which is why you remember nightmares more than good dreams, because nightmares quite often wake you up!:D
Also, here's something interesting: it said that when you miss out on some time of REM on one night, it will be made up on later nights. So maybe, for some reason, it's necessary?
Yes, it happens to me quite often. I won't even remember the dream, I'll just remember that this place, or this thing, was in my dream.

[QUOTE=Leeum]Ok has anyone ever experienced this. You'll be out doing something one day and something will happen and you think...I could swear i had a dream about this once. [\QUOTE]
It's called deja vu (or a glitch in the matrix, if you will). It's thought to be caused by a crossed wire in your brain wherein something that's just happened is presented to you like it's a memory.

I once heard about these goggles you put on and when they sense you're in REM sleep they flash lights at you so that you half-wake up and are half awake-half asleep and control your dream (called a lucid dream). No idea if you can buy them anywhere. They're not too healthy to use anyway because they interrupt your natural REM pattern.

Anyway to answer the topic, I can't remember any particularly good dreams. Plenty of weird ones like the one with Cartman as the cute blonde with crimped hair. I still don't understand that one. One time I had a nightmare about Whoopie Goldberg after watching Sister Act 2 whilst eating pizza not long before going to bed. I'm not sure what it was actually about, I just woke up at 3am with a morbid fear of nuns.

Heh heh heh. Nightmares are often hilarious when you look back upon them.

Lucid dreaming! Thats what it's called! Thankies, NDW.

Nightmares are always hilarious when you think of them afterwards. Abot 6 months ago in my dream, I was being suffocated by a wig. I couldn't breath or nothing, and I was pretty freaked. Then I woke up and thought "What the ****?".

I don't find me dying funny...