Blue_Opossum

Morning of November 22, 1975. Saturday.



My dream starts out with a detailed backstory with fictional characters possibly implied to be living in Arcadia (as that is where the final event likely takes place). There is a family curse where an unfamiliar man of perhaps about thirty was warned, I believe by his grandmother (and possibly other family members), not to ever become a sailor or go near the ocean at any point in his life.

There had been a sampler in his family for several generations which depicts rats leaving a ship that is implied to be destined to sink, which is hanging on display in a local museum. The edge of the boat is shown and the gangway is visible, with three rats on the gangplank in running position from upper left to lower right, diagonally positioned. This design also seems to represent the family’s coat of arms.

Eventually, I become corporeal and part of the scenario. I am with my best friend Toby at a public gathering in an unfamiliar setting. He is seated to my right. The unknown man has decided to go to sea as a ship’s captain (apparently without moving up the ranks). He is dressed in a captain’s uniform and is explaining how he no longer believes in his family curse. There are at least two other speakers at the gathering. The speakers take turns sitting on chairs to the right of the podium (my left). There are probably less than twenty people at the indoor venue. The podium and speakers are perhaps about six feet from the first row of the audience, who sit on singular chairs.

Time passes. There is an uneasy quiet growing, followed by an eerie clattering (reminiscent of wooden wind chimes), followed by another eerie silence. Toby is looking off to the right. I tap him to get his attention, saying his name. The unknown would-be captain has become a skeleton, now sagging slightly on his chair, still in his uniform, unmoving. A hush falls over the audience as the dream, now at its most vivid point, quickly fades.

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The preconscious personification, who never regarded me directly, was rendered as an unknown male who wanted to go to sea (return to sleep, as water represents the internal biology of sleeping and dreaming) as a captain (dictating control of his sleeping and waking habits). Instead, he became a skeleton to symbolize the cessation of the dream state and to activate the waking stage. This was foreshadowed by the sampler of the rats leaving the ship. Rats basically symbolize nighttime circadian rhythms (as they are primarily nocturnal, excluding pet rats) and the gangplank is actually oriented like a clock to represent a time around four or five o'clock in the morning. The sampler also implies leaving the potential to sail upon the ocean (analogous to not returning to sleep). Additionally, the background of the sampler was yellow, which represents sentience and a precursor to dawning consciousness (waking). This was my last longer and clearer dream of the morning. There was no fear created in this dream; just a subtle sense of awe and curiosity. The foundation for this dream was water induction (my most common dream induction).

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It is possible that my dream was influenced by a cover of DC’s “Ghosts” comic book (volume one issue nine, cover date November 1972), one that I had looked at fairly often, even though there is no implication of a ghost in this dream, only the skeleton as symbolic of the cessation of my dream.

Night of October 15, 1974. Tuesday.



The companion to this entry can be found here: “The Gate” connection

This was another dream about being underground and near a “gate” to an “underworld” - a very long sparsely recurring dream that I had also written as a longer story, called “Diamond Cave” - which had a large number of different ideas and imagery, a few having been similar to the later movie “The Gate” (but with far more additional mixed elements) - including the “eye on the palm of the hand” symbol. The diamond-like patterns through much of it was a type of in-dream hypnagogic-like imagery that was also common at that time. I had also illustrated some of the easier-to-illustrate parts, such as the “flatworm demons” seen at the end of my dream.

There is a scene near the beginning of several of my friends (including Toby T and Johnny C). They are sleeping (or in suspended animation?) in five mostly transparent coffins made of diamonds and turning about in an implied pentagon shape, floating in the air in the semidarkness in an undefined area.

There are later - geodes with diamond-like light patterns that glow and “dance” with various holographic light patterns (mostly bluish), like a swaying curtain that also crosses over itself. This was possibly inspired by a Donald Duck comic book story that implies meteorites are filled with precious jewels like diamonds, opals, and rubies - which was a recurring theme for a few weeks when much younger - something I even believed for a short time. Also, it seems as if the “diamond coffins” are some form of large casket-shaped transparent geodes kept afloat by magnetism.

There is a long-lasting scene of running through a very long hall or underground tunnel (or a fancy marble hall built into the underground tunnel, yet with imposing tree roots near divided larger doorway-like sections). I am moving past endless statues on each side of me that represent Greek gods and goddesses, mostly “good”, a few “demonic” or less human-like in anatomy. There is a sort of teal hue in parts of the imagery.

My dream’s last scene is of a larger “conference room” in an underground cave. It is filled to capacity with arrow-headed flatworm-like “demons” of perfectly alternating black and white figures, “standing”/upright, and turning (slightly twisting around) to look at me, each, either white with black eyes, or black with white eyes, similar to an M.C. Escher picture expressing perfect or near-perfect contrast of these “demonic flatworm” figures. There is one figure that seems to be addressing the rest on some sort of podium or lectern. There is no sound or speaking by them (and no perceived threat).

Looking over notes and doing more research, I have decided to consider this as lightly (impersonally) precognitive, because of the elements matching the later movie’s elements only for these connections (and not as precise in imagery or more multiple-layered details as other precognitive events have typically been):

1. The glowing geodes relating to opening an underground “gate” and being part of the overall theme.

2. Groups of “small demons” seeming to be in “conference” underground (though not of similar appearance).

3. Underground scenes with tree roots very much like my dream in distance, size, and depth orientation.

4. The eerie apocalyptic tree house scene (creating a very pure sense of time displacement), which also goes farther back in other dreams.

5. The fact that in the actual movie, it shows the imp’s arm (after being severed by the door) fall and turn into scattering worm-like creatures.

6. The movie also included a levitation scene.

There are also elements from other recurring childhood dreams that are vaguely similar, such as the idea of “saving the world” by firing a rocket (from “The Day There Was No Sun”).

Another loosely related link is of insects vanishing from a jar - such as the moths in the jar in the movie (but relating to a recurring real-life experience). Both my wife and I when fairly young used to collect smaller water bugs (in my case, smaller water-boatman beetles - the larvae which coincidentally resemble the “worms” in the movie) in glass jars with lids. We both experienced how the beetles (usually around seven or eight or more) seemed to have completely vanished from the sealed jar after only one night. In my case, I simply attributed it to microbes or some such eating them - or maybe weird properties of the ditch water (such as too much acidity), but was never certain of what really happened. There was hardly ever any sediment left in the water or residue at the bottom, either.

There were also a couple times in real life when I went to touch an (aquatic?) orange worm-like thing (that looked and moved somewhat like an accordion) in a puddle (left after a long rain) that mostly vanished after touching, leaving only a few particles and broken pieces within only a few seconds. This also puzzled me and even triggered several dreams about “ongoing creation of life”, such as “Niemeyer’s Penguin” (or “Penguin in a Jar”) and The New Life.

Morning of August 19, 1973. Sunday.



I look over the edge of my bed and see a book called “The Elite Kingdom” by Jaylene DeKish. It is a novel (possibly nonfiction) about hairless rats taking the place of people. At the time, I had never heard the name Jaylene and there are no people named “DeKish” as far as I know. There were Google matches for “De Kish”.

There are eerie scenes, also, of glowing hairless pink rats (seemingly not Pepto-Bismol-colored as was recurring) from radiation? - near my bed, mostly along the floor at the side of the bed to the north - and some concern about them being in my bed for a time. In my dream, my bed is near the center of the room where it never was in real life. There is no terror or fear of any kind, though. Certain thoughts regarding the rats seem to last almost all night but not fully into the morning.

For some reason, the word “smek” comes to mind at one point. This almost seems to mean “small mice elite kingdom”, but is actually a sound representation I had seen in comic magazines, for when someone slaps someone.

Morning of July 5, 1970. Sunday.



This is yet another old dream that does not have the “best” title. It actually takes place in a large apartment building (perhaps even a business building in some parts) rather than a house. The title comes from what someone tells me about the place. An older black lady says that “it’s a house of rats, child”.

I am aware that some of my classmates are in different parts of the building, in different rooms. It seems we are on some sort of extended field trip and will be sleeping on the floor for at least a few days. At one point, I look through a long pipe and see the large head of a black rat looking up at an angle to the right. It seems almost like some sort of special magnification or realization - it is almost as if this long plumbing pipe (part of an abandoned kitchen, I think - yet also serves in-dream as a sort of telescope-like device). There are a lot of chewed-up old clothes as well as chewed-up crayons and open coloring books in one area. I am not attacked at any point, but there is a very eerie atmosphere throughout. This is a dream I had recorded into newer journals a few times and with a short comic strip format. It is also implied in the dream that the rats are almost as intelligent as people at one point (perhaps as a result of an experiment though this is not defined) and will live there as long as they can, making it impossible for human beings to live in or near the building. They also seem to be multiplying.