nightmare

Morning of June 7. 2017. Wednesday.



The first main scene of my dream involves going to a very large unfamiliar post office, though there is the common indoors-outdoors ambiguity. There are a number of rows of post office boxes and drawers, though no interior walls or discernible building features. It seems to be late morning. The sky is overhead; no ceiling implied for the “post office”. It is somewhat like a simple maze in the last part of this scene. I see a group of about six police officers between two rows. In another area, there is an unfamiliar male in black appearing with a gun, though he is not a direct threat to me. Still, I do not want to be near him or the people he aims at from time to time. From an unrealistic distance, I am still able to read a yellow strip of writing below one post office drawer (in about the middle of the feature) that has something to do with needing a special code as well as the key in order to open it. It seems related to a business. I have a curiosity over what might be in the drawers, though I also consider there might not be anything.

Several unknown males join me as I move around the rows of post office boxes to be out of the viewpoint of the man with the gun. He is not after us specifically but I consider that he may not want any witnesses regarding his activity towards others. He does not fire the gun at any point.

Eventually, I leave the area and find myself in an unknown neighborhood. A young version of Zsuzsanna is to my right (though I am seemingly much younger as well, perhaps only about twenty). It is as if we have only been together for a short time. Walking ahead of us and to our left is a thin female with short and curly gray hair. She is unfamiliar and seems at least sixty years of age. She is wearing light-colored slacks and a blouse. She is carrying a large black-and-white cat on her right shoulder (which I assume to be male).

Suddenly, there is some sort of change where Zsuzsanna is now somehow sitting on the lady’s right shoulder and I find myself carrying the large cat near my left shoulder. The old woman somehow caused this because she wants us to have a meal with her at her house and talks to us about this. Her cat was also apparently becoming difficult for her to control, which is why I am now holding it. I am holding it up and out with both hands and it struggles a bit but does not get away.

We reach the area where she lives. She has one neighbor (also an older lady) to our right. The chicken-wire fence is lying on the ground, rolled out to where one must walk on it to get to another gate where there is a small enclosed garden area (which is about the same size in area as our bed and probably a real-time play on “garden bed” as a dream sign). It almost seems like it rolls out automatically (somewhat like an irregular carpet) by the will of the person going to the old woman’s house. I do not really feel like walking on wire mesh, so I hover slightly above it and slowly fly mostly in a vertical position to the enclosed garden area.

Zsuzsanna, being already behind the first gate, is partly lying on her right side on the ground near the right internal corner of the garden fence, holding herself up with her arm. There is soon distorted imagery to where a couple large blades of tall grass partly block my view of her face, but this seems like some sort of “story” related to “Alice in Wonderland”. The old woman talks about a man who tends to her garden, but this becomes like a dream within a dream. The man is also seemingly playing a televised role, dressed as a farmer or a minimal clown as a farmer, but being called a “demon” in describing what he is doing in tending her garden and also having unusual snakes on display to the public. I consider if he feels odd about being called a “demon”, as they do not exist and there is nothing threatening or negative about his persona or activities. He seems to tolerate this in playing a role in a television show. He holds up a couple different snakes that he has cared for. One has a catlike head. The other has a black head on a light brown body but the head of which is like a miniature shark. There are no negative emotions of any kind in seeing this impossible imagery.

Dreams do not really have “interpretations” in the naïve popular usage of the term but they often do have layers of meaning, primarily based on real-time levels of consciousness which may or may not relate more directly to the present conscious self status.

There is a preconscious precursor here. Although he has a gun, it does not create enough of a sense of danger to activate the waking mechanism, which is a major function of dreams (though not the only function as some “experts” claim). The simple maze relates to finding specific threads of my conscious self identity for my temporary fictional dream self to find its way to the waking threshold. The post office probably has two underlying meanings, real-time communication between different levels of the self while not fully awake, and possible links to the collective unconscious (or even collective conscious). It may also relate to precognitive threads with someone the dreamer is not yet in communication with (and may not be for years), something I validated from childhood dreams relating to my “mystery girl” (Zsuzsanna).

The dark cat represents a real-time factor of being asleep (and often represents an aspect of liminal space), as cats are known for sleeping a lot (as well as being active at night when people sleep).

The personified preconscious takes on the form of an older woman carrying her cat. Her giving it to me relates to activating my emergent consciousness precursor. “Beyond the fence” is a metaphor for a shift in consciousness while in the dream state. The first fence is on its side because, in reality, I am lying down (sleeping) instead of being awake and standing up (thus it is a second-level dream sign). I often hover or fly very well and effortlessly in the final stage of a dream and without giving it much thought (which relates to lessening the hypnopompic jerk and waking more softly as it is premonitory of the biological falling sensation). My emergent consciousness (as a projection as the gardener with the snakes in some sort of skewed television role) is illogically called a “demon”, but in a very matter-of-fact sense, with no associations with negativity of any kind. This probably relates to my status of being in a world full of superstitious people who have little or no understanding of the dream state. The imagery, though slightly grotesque (primarily the snake with a black miniature shark head, which is a “less water” factor of which has continuously occurred in my dreams on a day to day basis for over fifty years and is both biological and symbolic on a number of levels) has no effect on my perception or emotions, just as with hypnagogia visuals (though this becomes more of a hypnopompic state). I wake very slowly and softly, with no physical hypnopompic effects.

Morning of April 7, 2017. Friday.



I am in an unfamiliar apartment (in an unknown location; that is, no idea of the city or country), though it seems to be implied to be John Lennon’s. John Lennon (October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980) is seated near a table opposite the room from me and facing me. There are two unknown males in the room, one on the far left, one on the far right. I feel very good and have an optimistic attitude even though I am uncertain of who these other men are. They have scraggly hair and are of an unusual appearance. There is some conversation, but I do not focus on it that closely.

John Lennon goes over to the area near where I had been though I am now more near the center of the room. He inserts his left hand, up to his wrist, into an unusual recess (which is actually shaped like a hand) that is on the side of his microwave oven. I suppose it is like some sort of security procedure. There is no door on the oven. It seems to have fallen off at some previous time.

A man on the other side of the room seems worried and complains that he can feel the heat. I recall hearing that microwave ovens can be dangerous (especially with the door off), though I do not feel much concern myself. He uses it with the door off to warm up a bowl of something.

Later, there seems to be a normal oven in the room (though the room is not a kitchen), opposite my side, with the microwave now near the back of the normal oven (and facing the opposite direction). I can feel a lot of heat from the normal oven, though it is not uncomfortable.

In the last scene, the four of us walk to a dump (landfill). One of the males is carrying a large stuffed rat, which is somewhat cartoon-like and which is about half the size of a person. The male says he is discarding it because it “doesn’t talk anymore”.

As we are nearing a pile of trash (on our right) which he intends on throwing the stuffed rat onto, the rat says “Are you kidding, I’ve been talking all day”. (No one hears it except me.)

---

Morning of June 6, 2015. Saturday.



Sometimes dreams are so surreal and unrelated to life and every facet of a person’s personality and thoughts and interests, it is a task to make any grounded reasonable associations. This is a good example. Nightmares are very rare for me and always seem linked to sleep apnea or my lifelong cardiac arrhythmia (which my father also had) though only problematic for a period in the 1980s, but this one comes close with the strange mood (though I still would not call it a true nightmare, as there was no residual negative emotion carried from it).

My recent vampire witch dream had a typical carryover (though it was atypically divided by more than one day) - being embarrassed about wearing clothes in public.

I am seated in a dark movie theater (while the unknown movie is showing) and realize that I am wearing clothes and thus become embarrassed since I “know” that you should not wear clothes in a movie theater, especially this particular one which is also a library. Even more frustrating, I seem to be wearing a clown outfit (with no back story on how this occurred) or at least a white shirt with dark pink pompom (or pompon) clown suit buttons that are about the size of a small fist.

I stealthily leave the movie theater with one hand each on the top two buttons to hide them. I get the impression that someone is laughing at my clothed body. However, I manage to suddenly find myself (as if by teleportation) in a different scene in a library checkout area - which is also somehow the same theater’s lobby - where my shirt seems to be normal though I still seem to be holding pompoms in my closed fists. However, they are moving. I place them on the counter and they are each a small cuttlefish, which writhe around (as if disoriented) a bit and then decide to mate. This in turn is my payment for an overdue fee regarding books I did not even check out, but I do not question it. (I think cuttlefish are metaphorical for human hands as with spiders, because both instantly make me visually associate human hands - in fact, my “Things From Outer Space” childhood dream seemed to feature more of a giant cuttlefish-like creature than an alien spider - though actually recognized in-dream as a “giant” hand with theatrical enhancements - this being the first time I have clearly made that connection even though other creatures, such as the octopus-man, were also ocean-related).

In another scene, I become aware of an annoying (stray?) cat, possibly a darker tortoiseshell. I am not sure who it belongs to. I eventually see that it is only a piece of a cat; the head and front part of the body (with two legs), yet almost flattened into a two-dimensional form (though still with perceivable volume). It cannot possibly be alive, but it somehow is. When I pick it up to check on its status, it makes strange meowing sounds and I consider that it may be just a residual muscle reflex and that the animal is not aware of anything. However, there is slight movement as it meows, but I decide it will probably not live very long so I put it in a cardboard box and into a commercial dumpster in an alley in a business district. I do not have the will or interest to “put it out of its misery”.

After this, I have a very uneasy awareness that the cat will exist like this forever (long after I am gone) and I feel a bit guilty over its immortality as such, as it goes (without any of its own intent) to places unknown (perhaps trapped beneath layers of debris and not able to do anything or to be a “proper” cat and enjoy its cathood). It is a haunted feeling, although the creature cannot move much or walk (and thus cannot threaten me). It is almost like being aware of a human mind being “trapped” in a particular time period or culture (or religion) for endless years.

Morning of April 8, 2015. Wednesday.

Dream #: 17,642-06. Reading time (optimized): 2 min.



My dream starts with a vague backstory about advanced technology and the theft of a new type of computer from a business. It seems to be America. The setting is so ambiguous and distorted at first it is as if I am in the King Street boarding house on the second floor in the northeast corner room but seeing another part of La Crosse through the wall at street level. (It is as if the wall is invisible or transparent, though I am still aware of the doorway.) It seems to be night and day simultaneously.

Although Dennis (half-brother on my mother’s side) and his friends are the ones planning to steal several computers and advanced technology from at least two stores (possibly including experimental prototypes not meant for public use), I am a suspect by the end of my dream while the authorities do not catch them.

In the last scene, my brother says police are in the area, behind a row of tall commercial buildings. It is later at night at this point, and there is very light rain. I am in an open area. The layout is unrealistic. Although there is a row of commercial buildings behind me, there is no other side of the implied street. The police are in an alley behind the buildings. The area I am in is like a big park with a couple of random commercial buildings off to my right with no parking lot or sidewalk. The area in front of me is mostly featureless though implies extensive residential lawn.

Suddenly, a policeman walks up to me from my right (and I am aware it is solely because of where I happen to be at the time, not about anything I did). He is only about twenty, probably a rookie, wearing a black rain poncho and is reminiscent of the Grim Reaper. The association is off-putting, though the menacing cloaked figure is ambiguous regarding my original expectation as I realize he is not Death personified. As he holds my arm, I do not attempt to pull away. I calmly say, “I didn’t do anything.“ My body feels like liquid fire, an unusual awareness, intensely realistic, with no distortion in perceiving body shape and presence. It only lasts for a couple of minutes but leaves me feeling weak (yet beginning with inexplicable energy, as if every cell in my body is conscious but fading). I walk along as he holds my right arm without force. Upon waking, I have the beginning of a sore throat and an ear infection. When I wake, the fan is not on for the first time in months, but I do not feel overheated or dehydrated, only nauseous.

---

My dream is similar to one from the same date in 1978. It involved being swallowed by a giant rat leaping down upon me and had the same rare physical sensation. It was also at the beginning of getting the flu. The cause is likely a body temperature above normal.

---

Morning of May 23, 1998. Saturday.

I decided to look over some of my many smaller, older dream journals (ones where I first wrote only a brief outline to write of in more detail in other sources, such as larger notebooks) and just threw this one onto the scanner as is. The original 1998 entry is exactly as it is here from May 23rd, 1998 and I had not even looked at it in several years. See images below. The entry reads (the printed data being May 23 1998 Saturday 143 / 222 Week 21) - this was also recurring a few times:

“Long, vivid dream about a pirate movie. There are many details and there is comedy in some parts, drama in others. It is about a sort of feminine male pirate and a tough, older bearded one and their misadventures in an almost science-fiction-like plot.
I enjoy the movie although it seems very impersonal.”

An additional scan from another part of that dream/dream set:

“In one part I go down into a part of one building and am near one gateway by The Land of the Dead. One asks me what I am doing there since I am alive…”

Looking at my more extensive notes, I see that I was writing a fair amount (almost essay-like) on “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”.

There is only one little problem. The movie, as I understand it, was not even thought of until 2001…and was released on 9th of July, 2003 (USA)…but there is a bit more, as, precognition often comes in layers, linked to several things at once, even when relating to many years ahead.

The most hilarious connection is the “feminine pirate” reference. Both my wife and myself (only within the last few years - as we did not see the movie until 2008) thought that Johnny Depp was far more feminine in that role as a “male pirate” than a teenage girl would have been - to a point of being near-surreal in its absurdity.

Anyway, in the pirates movie, the pirates were “undead” (which I would not call zombies, by the way). In another Johnny Depp movie (we have not seen “Corpse Bride”), there is the “Land of the Dead” exactly as I wrote it in 1998 regarding the other “movie”.

The “Corpse Bride” movie summary reminds me quite strongly of “Castle of Blood (1963)” / “Danza macabra” (original title), easily the most influential and most “lucid” movie of my childhood, “Gay Purr-ee” (1962) being the second-most influential.

Now, pay attention, very closely:

Johnny Depp says (see page) on (the Land of the Dead) “Well, Tim explained it really beautifully earlier, and so I’ll butcher it but he’ll fix it for me. It’s the idea that in life there is this kind of constant fear and obsession with death and the mystery of what death is and all of that, to the point of where people are unbelievably tense about arriving there, even though we all know we’re going to arrive there at some point. In fact, the land of the living in this thing is sort of super uptight and grey and heavy as a place and going down to the land of the dead where it could be heaven or hell or it could be purgatory, and it’s like 1920s Paris. Flappers and craziness. I thought that it was pretty amazing.“

And here from the information on imdb (on "Gay Purr-ee”):

“The film supposedly takes place in the 1890s, but the montage of painters doing portraits of Mewsette includes Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Van Gogh died in 1890, while Picasso would not exhibit in Paris until 1900 (and would not paint in the style depicted until the 1920s).”

Night of April 7, 1990. Saturday.



I remember only one more significant dream of a hyena to date thus far from before I came to Australia and even that one was precognitive in at least three separate layers. A mentally ill woman my sister knew had a birthday on this day and I did not want to be around her house at the time. However, it seems a relative of hers (named Martin, which makes me think of Mad Magazine’s Don Martin, thus part of my dream seemed vaguely linked to “Lena the Hyena” - the contest winning image by Mad Magazine’s Basil Wolverton that supposedly led him to fame) lives across the street and is out hunting or some such, but is actually a “monster” pretending to be hunting deer. There is some sort of plot relating to a hyena-man, who is like a “were-hyena” (similar to a werewolf) and going after people. I see “suggestions” of his shadow moving about on a few different walls of unknown locations. I wake slightly, but fall back into sleep at least once.

For some reason, I am thinking of the movie “Eraserhead” that I had seen about twenty times or more by that time, but never dreamt about much of the imagery before. I am thinking of the “little girl in the radiator” (from “Eraserhead” - but is actually listed as “the lady in the radiator” in the movie - she always reminded me of a young chipmunk or mutated child (or perhaps a seriously odd version of Betty Boop) - yet is here young Effie Elmer from the “Mourning Picture”). There is a scene similar to in the movie where the radiator is implied to open like a door onto a stage, but in this case, it is an actual carousel with balloons and lights (Effie is a “happy ghost” here just needing a friend and for the radiator to generate more heat).

I then seem to be having two dreams at the same time, the “Eraserhead-like” one and the “were-hyena” one. Eventually, I am aware that the “were-hyena” is in my street, near the house across the street. He goes after one of the college girls in the large house across from where I live and soon starts “laughing” insanely (like a hyena), the girl screaming (but the “laugh” being much louder). This was the only time I have ever heard such a disturbing sound. The image of Effie’s head, looking slightly to the right, superimposed on the radiator, changes into that of the monster “hyena man” in a sort of ghostly effect and is then staring out at me. I am still seeing it as I am waking, and it actually takes about 20 seconds or so for the hypnopompic hallucination to fade completely. The terrifying sound (in real-life) was caused by a horrid car tire sound skidding near the house across the street, with the tire seeming to actually be stuck in part of the street at the time or stuck in partially melted ice and dirt. I had never heard the sound before. This was followed by a girl yelling in real life about the problem.

Three precognitive layers discerned thus far:

1. My dream had already set up the plot and approaching climax before my dream ended with the real-life sound of the horrid “laughing were-hyena” sound that did sound somewhat like a real hyena. This seems to imply that I knew I would be hearing that sound quite some time before I heard it that night while still in-dream.

2. An episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” implied such a creature (and “demonic hyenas”). The episode was called “The Pack”. I had never heard of the concept before in real life until then. The episode, according to IMDb, aired on April 7th, 1997 (see above regarding April 7th, 1990 - IMDb has been known to be wrong, though).

3. There actually was a book published in 2010 called “The Little Girl in the Radiator”, where one cover was much like my dream imagery of years before, written by Martin Slevin.

Also, as I was writing this, someone posted a dream about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”; first time I have seen that show referenced on the dream journal site. This sort of synchronicity happens to me continuously.

Morning of September 9, 1985. Monday.



Watch out…for the horrible vampiric monster…the…Jacuzzi!

---

I have said before that I have had hardly any serious nightmares in my life. The more vivid one in my young adult years was during an early afternoon nap. This was the first version of a short series of dreams (only the first one being an actual nightmare), where the name was semi-lucidly altered to something like “Chalcosi” (from “chalcosis” - or chronic copper poisoning), relative to their skin having a paler copper-color when dying.

It was of a horrible legendary creature that supposedly only lived seven weeks. They liked to eat people. They were to blame for the majority of missing people cases. I somehow fell in love with a “teenage” (in appearance only) version of the vampiric creature who I spent time with on a couch in the middle of the night as the rest of her family went out to eat people. This creature was born as a dangerous albino snake with boa-constrictor-like potential. It then changed into a killer albino tree-dwelling rabbit that sometimes leaped upon people at night. It then becomes a larger lemur-like creature (still albino) - becoming more monkey-like in some ways, and eventually an albino human-like creature with somewhat shark-like teeth (and growing as such, a lost one always being replaced, but almost immediately). As they neared death, their skin became a slight coppery color. Their hair was always white. I guess sometimes they wore wigs and sunglasses to hide their true identity, as their eyes remained snake-like. They lived in groups of a dozen or so at various ages.

---

Of course, again, this horrifying creature was known as…

A Jacuzzi! Watch out for the Jacuzzis, they are coming to eat your neighbors!

---

I awoke from the first version of this in a strange hypnopompic state. I felt dizzy and out of place and was hearing applause and disembodied voices, including the impression of a cheerful announcer talking about someone winning a Jacuzzi on “The Price is Right” - this as I saw the faces of the creatures fading in disorienting spirals. It was only then, after I was waking, that I slowly remembered hearing the word “Jacuzzi” on “The Price is Right” (which I only caught parts of now and then at a sister’s house during this time). I looked it up and finally remembered that it was a fancy whirlpool bath and not a dangerous monster.

---

Updated on Tuesday, 28 June 2016: I can now look at this and easily recognize an unusual atypical and subliminal form of water induction (since “Jacuzzi” is a hot tub brand and in fact a whirlpool bathtub implies an essence of the Merkaba as a tornado does) and the strong metaphorical references to circadian rhythms (and even evolution). Albinos also symbolically represent moon induction (which is often linked to water induction relative to the symbolic “tidal” shifting of consciousness in dreaming and waking). Even more curiously, “Jacuzzi” rhymes with “Suzi”, the anglicized form of my wife Zsuzsanna’s first name, more relevant here as I have a relationship with this female Jacuzzi. The unlikely rabbit stage is a symbol for something emerging from the unconscious mind as a rabbit lives in a burrow and even this was a Source clue, as Zsuzsanna lived in Maryborough when we first made contact. Not only that, the age of the girl matched Zsuzsanna’s age from this time period - and to add to that even more curiously, she had a period where she drew vampire animals (and certainly not everyone has an interest as such). This is all very interesting and in fact, validates yet again that most dreams have precognitive layers of one form or another.

Morning of July 6, 1985. Saturday.



Probably one of the most unusual clearer dreams I have had involved thinking I had awakened (in a very vivid “realistic” false awakening), only to find myself in persistent sleep paralysis (where I believe I actually did open my eyes at times). A box of Kraft macaroni and cheese (single serving) danced around in the air, screaming “Eat me! Eat me!” in a rather high-pitched raspy voice and it was shaking about like a loud rattle in my ears and face.

I feel great discomfort yet also feel the mildly pleasant body-wide tingling. I try to cover my head but it does not work very well. It seems to torment me for several minutes. As I finally begin to wake more fully, I notice a smaller moving silver engraving (like a photographic negative) of a heron and a bittern dressed up like elderly gentlemen (though the birds incorrectly rendered as being around the same size), with one in a top hat and the other in a derby, and with canes and fancy shoes, in a position moving away from near my door (King Street boarding house - the L-shaped room), on a table. Although they are implied to be walking westward, the imagery mostly remains in one area, as if I am seeing it on some sort of implied projection (as if on an unseen television otherwise).

As soon as I woke up, I went into the kitchen and cooked and ate that last box of macaroni and cheese. (Well…what would you have done?) I was not “starving” but I had regularly been eating a lot less at the time. I do get a vague impression at one point that the birds may be coming back from “celebrating the Fourth of July” in a partial or subtle anthropomorphic manner.

I have finally decoded the macaroni and spaghetti symbolism, I believe. It relates directly to the energies of the human brain (as a bowl of cooked macaroni and cheese resembles the brain to some extent). The box (in its potential but not utilized form) was trying to get me to appreciate the nature of using my brain in my state of sleep paralysis and the two birds represented my conscious and subconscious finding freedom in “walking together”.

Morning of October 4, 1969. Saturday.



I am eight years old and am outside in the backyard of my home in Florida, and I become aware that I am dreaming. I want to enjoy myself in this lucid dream that is slowly growing in vividness, but I suddenly become aware that there are buzzards circling above (as sometimes occurs in real life) and I yell up at them - saying that I am not afraid, even raising my right fist at them. (This is mainly because Florida buzzards were a recurring fear factor in my dreams of this time period, both lucid and non-lucid.)

Almost immediately, I become aware that one of the buzzards is now swooping down to get at me. I run into the carport, and the buzzard flies onto my lower back, stabbing me with its beak (at the same time I start to sit down in an attempt to somehow crush the buzzard into the back of the chair which is impossible because a buzzard is too big for such an act). I then start to wake with a bizarre intense sensation as I am also leaning back against the chair with metal legs which I had chosen to sit in as quickly as possible (the chair facing south to the wall of the carport rather than out from the wall). The chair is not that far from the main door into the house, but I knew I could not get to it in time. I also notice a lawn mower near the chair. This also seems to be some sort of premonitory awareness of a spasm of some sort in my lower back, which is much the same as in certain other dreams.

---

This dream was so intense that I was almost certain that I had rolled over onto my pet cat and harmed it, but it was not around at the time. It takes some time for me to fully wake and realize this, but when I finally move, nothing is there. The in-dream sense of touch was increased to such an extent, I could feel the lumpiness in my back for a minute or so, which was not there in reality and I felt relieved that our cat was likely okay in another room as the sensation eventually dissipated.

---

Morning of November 2, 1978. Thursday.



For some reason, cicadas often take on a nightmarish essence for me, especially in dreams. In this particular dream my family is living back in Cubitis except it seems that my brother Earl is either living with us or visiting for a time.

The cicadas in my dream are apparently dangerous and possibly venomous. A few get into the house and I try to go to different rooms to avoid them but one always appears, usually on the ceiling (sometimes higher on the wall), though there is a fictional feature of wooden beams going across the living room just under the ceiling, oriented north to south. The cicadas, which are bigger than in reality, sometimes move behind a beam and out of sight as possibly in an attempt to “ambush” someone. There are times when I am concerned that someone has left the hallway door open (which was rarely used for a time in real life) but since several are already in the house, my focus seems misdirected.

I am not actually hurt at any time, but there is a very strong sense of fear. It is curious that I do not become lucid at any point. It is not really like an infestation as there are probably only about six or seven in the house at any particular time.

Night of May 25, 1978. Thursday.



This was a very unusual and near-traumatic experience. It starts out quite calm, though slightly surreal in the imagery and awareness directed at it. I am mentally “reviewing” the chickens we had sold as we are preparing to move to Wisconsin. It seems a bit impersonal in-dream for a time and I feel somewhat isolated still, as the region seems more and more “empty” (with less neighbors now as well). I am still aware that my head is facing south (as well as being vaguely aware of my body position) and I am still somewhat aware of the opening in the ceiling; a ceiling tile that had gotten too damp from a leak in the roof so that it sank downwards (my father fixed it later on with a piece of plywood). I vaguely ponder the potential of a large rat or two getting through in reality as I sleep…

…thus my sleep is not that deep. As I look at a black cochin bantam hen, I feel a very odd closeness and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia (including a sadness it was sold, this being like a “residual” but false memory) - which really makes no direct sense. Interestingly, it has white feathers on its legs and feet, which gives me a strange impression that it is “wearing bloomers” and the concept of an “antique” animal very vaguely emerges briefly. There is a very slight association with the comic strip character Loweezy, wife of Snuffy Smith.

At the same time that this imagery is growing more and more vivid and falsely nostalgic (especially as I had never seen a black cochin with white legs and feet), I am vividly aware of pattering rodent feet directly above my head, which I take to be a large rat that I am thinking will fall through the opening in the ceiling. At the same time, something very strange happens; I somehow “throw” myself out of the bed (oddly while lying in a horizontal position in apparently a light sleep) in reality - all the way to the other side of the room in one movement with no rolling - and injure my leg (but do not break it). Looking back at the distance I “flew”, it seems hard to believe that I was able to fling myself that far from the bed with what seemed like only the muscles of one leg, but this is apparently what had happened. I did not immediately inform my parents and the pain only lasted about a day. This taught me that some events considered supernatural may be related to augmented muscle strength and strange associations during sleep.

This was the only time I ever literally flung myself a fair distance from where I was sleeping.

Night of April 8, 1978. Saturday.



[An interesting aspect of dreams is that they are more closely tied to biological patterns than clearer rational thoughts, the neural energies which are free of conscious self distractions; a more natural flow of circadian rhythms. Sometimes.]

I am semi-lucid, though it has been a challenge to not have my thoughts fall upon concerns relating to rats being in Cubitis when that has never been a problem before. It is ironic in regard to having had a pet rat named “Ben” that had just happened to become trapped in a cage with a black micro-bantam rooster in the chicken shed.

[In reality, at least four large rats started to become active in the plenum space of our home and the rafters of the chicken shed for the first time and only a few months prior to our move to Wisconsin. There was a part of the ceiling in my room that had been damaged by a leak and the softer tile eventually sagged down to be directly open to the space below the roof, which the rats sometimes occupied (though no rat had ever come through that opening in my ceiling despite my wariness at times). My father eventually covered the opening with a piece of plywood. They sometimes ran across our clothesline even though they seemed too big to do this as easily as they did.]

I am in my Cubitis bedroom in the middle of the night but I am somehow aware of the presence of a giant rat in the now empty chicken shed. There is also a sense of isolation, an illogical idea that no one else is around for miles. I can see the movement of this giant rat in the background behind the first partial wall of the shed, mostly only moving from left to right and back again at which point it does not seem to be aware of me. It is about the size of a horse. Even though I am aware that I am dreaming, I seem unable to focus on something other than this potential threat.

[Rat symbolism seems to be related to biology in some cases, having proven to appear in dreams as a symbolic precursor to a flu or other illness when there were yet no outward signs.]

At one point, seemingly while standing outside somewhere but in a semi-dark area that is mostly featureless, yet also sensing that I am in bed at the same time, I look directly up and see the giant rat leaping down upon me, vertically from above, headfirst, and it almost seems cartoon-like, even flexing human-like fingers. Despite the rat’s mouth seeming not that close or even very large, even as it is almost upon me, more of a comedic essence than realistic, I soon realize that I had been swallowed and I am then suddenly apparently floating inside its stomach. My waking is very slow. There is the sustained sense of being in hot liquid and floating on my back. This disturbing experience seems to last about twenty seconds until I rise through liminal space and feel of a normal physical presence upon waking.

[This was an immediate precursor to a virus, and yet also seemingly of a precognitive connection to my brother Dennis (half-brother on my mother’s side), regarding negative associations after my move back to Wisconsin. He even had a cartoonish tattoo later that was identical to the imagery in one part of my dream, the second-from-last rendering of imagery. What is also interesting is that some of the imagery at the beginning of my dream had a very eerie but unrealistic appearance; a superimposed aspect that is identical as that from the “Night of the Rat” segment from the movie “Nightmares”, which did not come out until 1983. The rat was rendered much more realistically in the first segments than it was in the last scenes.]

---

Morning of October 15, 1977. Saturday.



I go out to the chicken shed and notice that our turkens (who naturally have no feathers on their necks as a main feature of the breed), also called Transylvanian naked necks and wrongly (rather stupidly) believed to be a cross between a chicken and a turkey by some as well as of the widely mistaken belief that they do not crow (they actually crow louder and more often than other roosters, just with a lower pitch due to their bigger size). They are also not “rare” in North America as claimed by Wikipedia. They were actually more common than a lot of other exotic breeds in the region we lived in, in Florida in the 1970s. Thus, even a breed of a chicken generates several myths and invalid ideas; tells me all I need to know about people regarding any potential for general credibility.

At any rate, in my dream, the necks of our turkens are very long and serpentine and giving me an eerie feeling that they might become dangerous, even venomous. In another part of the same dream, a pet young black-and-white Polish rooster named “Sluggo”, very similar in appearance to a French mottled Houdan (of which I had a rooster of one called “Fonzie” and his hen “Pinkie”) is not moving as he is facing towards me. After a time, I understand that he is completely flat (front to back, while standing), and perhaps not alive (I am not sure - but being alive in such a form seems worse than not) and feel even more eerie and “out-of-place”. Time passes, and a group of miniature (not bantam, just “shrunken”) various hens are doing the can-can and for some reason, giving me a nightmarish feeling. Some of the small quail we have in a larger cage on the ground in the shed seem to explode, but they are still there afterwards somehow, in sort of blurred patterns with very ruffled feathers. I awake feeling nervous and ill, but am not actually ill a few minutes later.

Night of August 25, 1977. Thursday.



This is a description of the most intense fully in-body nightmare I have had in my lifetime (almost as vivid as a typical fully in-body lucid dream though I am not lucid in this one). Even so, possibly the only vivid in-body nightmare that had residual energies on my mood (in “coloring” my day) for more than a day or two as well as very realistic imagery and perspective. It seems to fit in with the idea of “anniversary” dreams. It relates to how my dog disappeared after I was in the hospital for a couple days a year earlier when he apparently ran off looking for me. It preferred my company over anyone else’s. It was a mixed breed but part toy spaniel and showed up at our house as a stray. No one had claimed him.

In my dream, I find myself seeing the small dog sitting on the floor of my room in Cubitis. I am mostly looking west the entire time. I am very surprised and happy to see him, but something seems a bit “off” about the atmosphere or mood of my dream. I call out in an odd eerie sustained voice,“Joooe…”

I pick him up and he seems small and vulnerable but then something completely unexpected happens. He jumps up from my arms and bites into my entire face somehow with a strange growl. I actually feel the intense pain sweep over my face and when I look down again, I can feel that some of his teeth are still in a few different areas of my face. I am still holding him much the same way at that point. He now looks quite savage…or at least as savage as a toy spaniel can appear, and I can see where several of his teeth had come out - and I also have a vague idea that this may eventually cause his death and so I feel additionally sad upon this fleeting thought. My face feels wet and hot. There is an intensity which makes it seem like a real event even after waking. However, it is not that logically rendered because, being such a small dog, he would not have been able to cover my entire face with his open mouth.

This was actually one of the only dreams I had where he appeared after he disappeared in real life. Being an “anniversary” dream, it was unusually intense with regard to emotion and self-reflection. It was likely relative to the suppressed or “hidden” guilt I had concerning his disappearance and not knowing what happened to him (thus his in-dream behavior implies “the worst” if only in my imagination) even though it was not really my fault that I had to spend time in the hospital for a couple days for the operation on my right thumb. He was a “house dog” but this was the first time he just took off (on the second day I was in the hospital) when someone else opened the front door at my family’s house.

This was also one of the only dreams that seemingly took me by complete surprise in its outcome.

Night of November 20/Morning of November 21, 1976. Sunday.



If you are easily disturbed, this is probably a good entry to give a miss. It is one of only a few of the more vivid nightmares I have had in my life - and probably relates to the physical changes during adolescence. (For example, dreams like “Silver Manta” and the first childhood “Haunted House” dream did not seem like an actual nightmare at all regardless of the scenario and emotions involved, but as inspiring adventures which I still have fond memories of.)

A large spaceship lands in my front yard at Cubitis, near the end of the driveway and a few feet from the highway. I do not actually see any aliens in the dream at any point, though. Actually, the ship seems more like some sort of “factory”, with a maze-like assembly-line (except that it is “dis-assembly”, so to speak.) that goes all about the internal perimeter of the squarish “flying saucer”.

What is vividly implied and shown from several angles (including from the side and from above) is with a first scene of a girl being carried (while lying on her side) down a conveyor belt (which is dotted sparsely with human blood and a few small scraps of clothes) within the spaceship. I am not sure who she is or where she came from. It reminds me of a miniature “car wash” to some extent (the part where she falls next may be vaguely related to the opening of “Land of the Lost”). She moves through a yellowish orange ribbon curtain into what looks like a chamber with an implied shallow well and there are robotic arms and such that seem to hurt her. Eventually I am aware she has been turned into “fuel” for the spacecraft, the body being shredded as through a high-tech food processor of sorts.

This happens with several people, mostly adults. Actually, I am not sure how I am seeing this. It is as if I am there in my “orb” form, but also in my bed at the same time (though not fully lucid, only partially questioning the events). The dream seems to reset several times during the night and very early morning. I am on the belt at some points, trying to work out why my bed is moving, but I usually will myself back to where I had been and never go through any “terror” from my own perspective.

As with most dreams throughout my life, even this dream had a layer of long-term precognition (which was actually the reason I started documenting dreams in the first place to try to work out the layers and “rules” if any, as it was so common). Several years later, I worked in a factory in Wisconsin and for the first time, was close in real life to very similar conveyor belts and (identical to the dream) vinyl (or vinyl-like) ribbon curtains at the end of a chemical wash for the metal parts. Around this same date years later, I took the place of a man (whose job was to simply place the metal sheets on a wooden shelf for a pallet as they came out on the belt) who had cut himself very badly on the hand (supposedly losing a finger from what one worker said though I am not one hundred percent sure now) and the blood (and a couple pieces of his white work glove) was still on the conveyor. I guess they did not want to lose any production time (relative to parts for Ford Taurus cars).