Visions in the Dark

Most of the general items and fashions in this dream appear to be from the mid to late 1800s, though most of the transportation machines that appear look like they came from the 1930s-40s.


I am a Gypsy and travelling but do not know my destination. I appear to be in my late teens and have nothing with me except for the ragged brown dress and light blue handknit sweater I am wearing. My meager worldy possessions are in a faded green corderoy bag. I am alone and very pregnant. I do not know where the father is as he is never mentioned in the dream. I feel mistrustful of most of the people that appear in this dream, as well as unfairly judged by them because of my youth and pregnancy.

At the beginning of this dream I am sitting in a glass bus terminal on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. It is night time and raining hard. The only nearby lighting is old fashioned oil burning street lamp which really does not supply a lot of light. Beyond the immaediate area around the lamp and a little bit inside the terminal everything is utterly, pitch black. I can see faint yellow and red lights flickering in the distance, but I have no idea what they are. I am waiting for a bus that will take me to a nearby port. There lies a ship that I know I am supposed to board but I do not know how because I have neither money nor a ticket.

After a while of sitting a bus does come along and it appears that it came from the 1950s or early 60s. There are several unsavory looking men taking up most of the seats at the front of the bus so I head to the empty seats at the back. They all stop talking and leer at me as I walk by which makes me feel nervous and fearful. The bus is well lit and clean and I stare out the window as it travels, though I can still see nothing through the darkness outside. I am uncomfortably aware of the men at the front talking quietly amongst themselves then shooting leering glances in my direction and laughing coarsely.

The bus arrives at the port and all of the passengers disembark. It then turns around and drives back the way it came, eventually disappearing into the darkness. The lighting of the port is dim but much better than at the bus stop. The only ship in the port is docked beside the only building, which is multistoried, made of concrete and painted white. I am not sure exactly where to go so I cautiously follow the group of men who also disembarked from the bus, but they do not head towards the ship like I hope and instead go to a pickup truck parked on the far side of port and drive off.

There is a large group of people outside a set of glass doors and they appear to also be Gypsies seeking passage on the ship. A man with a goatee and dressed in a black navy uniform stands between the people and the door and is telling everyone that they cannot board the ship. Many of the Gypsies hand the man wads of cash or jewelry and he quickly waves them inside. It is not long before most of the people are inside and the few who were rejected linger around the port. The rain no longer pours and slows down to a gentle trickle. An elderly Gypsy couple arrive late and convince the man at the door to let me in along with them. He accepts only when they produce an acceptable bribe.

Once on the ship we join with the rest of the Gypsies and are told that there is no rooms available and the only space available is on the floor in secluded halls and storage rooms or out on the deck. Everyone scrambles to find space inside and the few unlucky ones who have to go out onto the deck try to find spots out of the wind and rain. Because we are the last ones to board, the elderly couple and I try to make ourselves comfortable undernearth a lifeboat, but it is hard to crawl under for them because of their age, and for me becuase of my bulging belly.

I do not know how much time passes, but the ship is far out at sea and though it is still dark, the ambient lighting of the scene allows me to see practically everything. The rain has stopped but the temperature drops drastically, almost to the point where I can see my breath. I am laying on the open deck looking up at the sky. It is overcast with thick, dark grey and maroon coloured clouds. I stand up and look over the rail. The water is choppy and dark, and I can see icebergs in the distance all around the ship. An old man who looks like the captain of the Titanic (as portrayed by Bernard Hill in James Cameron's film) dressed in a white and blue navy uniform comes out and asks me if I would like to sleep inside. When I say yes he takes me to a room with eight cots in it. The small beds look like hospital gurneys and have lime green burlap blankets on them. The room is devoid of people but seven of the beds look like they have been slept in and have bags and coats thrown around nearby I recognize the possessions as Gypsy in origin. There is one bed left and it is in the far corner of the room against the wall. I lay down upon it, using my corderoy bag as a pillow, and fall asleep almost immediately.

I have a dream within a dream.

I am sitting on a bench outside of the white building back at the port when an old fashioned pickup truck drives up and stops in front of me. The leering men on the bus are in the truck and they try to convince me to get in with them. I say no and try to ignore them, but two jump out of the back of the truck and grab me by the arms and try to force me into the vehicle. I kick and scream and out of nowhere a police officer with short black hair and dressed in a modern uniform appears and tells the men to let me go. He then warns them to leave and not come back. The leering men get back into their truck and mumble angrily as they drive off. The police officer encourages me to keep going on my journey before disappearing as mysteriously as he appeared.

I wake up to a room filled with people. The other Gypsies have returned and most of them are not happy to see me as they paid heavily in bribes to get into that room and I was given a bed for free. Some of them also vocalize their disapproval of the shame of me being a single unwed mother, especially one travelling alone, but they speak to each other and not address me directly. I ignore their jeers and go out to visit the kind elderly couple on the deck, but they are nowhere to be found. It is still dark and icebergs still surround the ship but there are more of them and they are much closer. The ship seems to be heading for a large featureless landscape in the distance that looks like either a beach with cliffs or a glacier.

This dream starts off in my hometown of London, Ontario. I am on the way from my parent's house to my new apartment on Adelaide Street. For some reason I am in the country side west of the city. An unnumbered city bus comes along and I get on, but I cannot find my transfer. I can find transfers from several days before, but not the one for today. Only after going through ever pocket on my person do I find today's transfer crumpled up in my left hand. The bus driver sighs with impatience as I hurridly take a seat, red faced from embarrassment but relieved. Despite being out in the country side, but bus is packed and everyone on board seems scruffy or rugged, like they have been camping outdoors for a long time. They are all men and seem to be all staring at me and I feel a bit creeped out and threatened.

The bus drives into the city, to the edge of downtown then suddenly stops. The driver tells all of the passengers to get off and promplty drives away as soon as we have done so. I walk down the main road, Dundas Street, for a while before deciding to wait at a bus terminal in front of a white multi-storey building that I do not recognize from waking life. I am expecting the Dundas bus to come along, but after a short wait, the Adelaide Street bus shows up instead. Though I am confused as to why it is the Adelaide and not the Dundas, I happily board the bus, hoping it will take me straight to my apartment.

The bus pulls away from the terminal and passes a group of asian men standing in the middle of the street, waving various melee weapons around and shouting loudly. I cannot hear what they are saying, but the majority of the noise comes from a man wearing a blue hooded sweater over a white t-shirt. He is waving a hunk of wood around and seems to be directing his anger at random pedestrians on the street. I feel the atmosphere change and everything seems suddenly darker, eeiry and inexplicably desolate. The bus suddenly slows down and stops. A burned out pickup truck, and a pile of damaged cars, is blocking the road and there is no way around. The bus driver manages to turn the bus around and starts heading back to the bus terminal.

As we pass the group of angry asian men, the one in the blue sweater, waving the hunk of wood, pulls out a pistol from his waistline and opens fire on a group of people who have gathered by the side of the road to watch the commotion. The first shot hits a woman holding a baby and the crowd panics and scatters as she goes down. As the man begins randomly firing at the running people, the other men in his group start attacking people with their melee weapons. The bus driver floors the gas pedal and tries to drive away from the ensuing chaos, but a large military truck pulls directly infront of us and forces the bus to stop. The doors are opened and the passengers make a run for it. I run towards the white multi-storey building, with the intention of hiding in it or behind it, but asian men in military uniforms start appearing between and around the buildings. At first I mistaken them for London's Area Support Unit, but it becomes apparent very quickly that these military personnel are foriegn and hostile. I run towards central downtown but it seems that the entire area is surrounded by this mysterious invading army of asian origin.

Many people are captured, myself included, and forced to sit together in large groups with hands behind heads. People who do not comply, or who try to escape, are shot on sight. When the street is overcrowded with captured prisioners, the armed guards start herding us into the large white multi-storey building by the bus terminal. The inside is decorated in bright red fabrics and paints and seems to be a giant theater of some sort. The ceiling is open for several storeys up and the parameter of each floor seems to be made up of box seats, except for the ground floor, which is bare tile like a gymnasium. The prisoners are forced to sit on the floor and face a large screen on the west wall. The military men start playing some sort of propaganda film about their greatness or their great leader or something, but I cannot follow it because it is not in english and I am being distracted by several fat white male prisioners who insistantly try to stand up and show their private parts to the rest of the captives. Their penises are very small or severely deformed but I am finding great amusement in their last acts of bravado, as it seems to really piss off the armed guards.

I suddenly notice an unguarded electrical socket to my right. I descreetly pull the plug and hope that I am shot quickly if I am caught. I have no idea what pulling the pull will do and I am surprised when not only does the propaganda film end, but the electricity to the entire building goes out. The invading asians go into a frenzy trying to maintain control of the prisioners while trying to sort out what is going on. Some captives manage to sneak out in the darkness, while others are caught and executed, but the majority stays put in fear and confusion. Whe the emergency lights come on, the invading army is still a bit frenzied and there is a commotion outside. A man I assume is a commander of the army comes in and motions half of the armed guards to follow him outside.


I cannot remember anymore of this dream.

The dream starts off in a warehouse of some sort. There are hundreds of people seated at desks working away at drawings and animations and the such. I am sitting at the very back and making little doodles because I am not happy and I do not want to be there. Some of the other animators are gloating and flaunting their talents and everyone is giving them praise. I start making drawings that are not a part of the criteria and get in trouble for it.

There was also some animator guy who stood up and made a big anouncement that he was leaving animation and becoming a wrestler or something, but I cannot remember exactly.

I leave the giant warehouse-animation room and go outside. I am in a farmer's field that is all dried up and devoid of any crops. I can see cars and trucks passing by on a distant roadway. There are a few small aircraft flying overhead. I gaze up at the aircraft and suddenly the dream changes and I am in the cockpit of a fighter jet. I am supposed to bring the aircraft in for a landing, but the small airport is suspended on the side of a large building or cliff and the runway consists of only a helicopter landing pad. Fortunately the fighter jet has hover capabilities and i am able to put it down on the narrow landing pad.

I get out of the aircraft and suddenly I am floating high above looking down on everything. There is a group of people looking at the fighter jet and an older man who is very rich and powerful who is gloating about his prestige and his ownership of the airport. Suddenly the dream is back in the bare field, but it is no longer bare. There are miles of grape vines, but all of the plants are dying. I can hear the voice of the rich old man but I cannot see him. He is still going on about how great it is to be him and it is really annoying me.

I then walk back to the giant warehouse-animation building, but when I go back insode it is different. The inside is now a giant mall (like the West Edmonton Mall) and everything is coloured in an autumn colour scheme. I walk for a bit until I am in the center of some sort of multicultural celebration. I see my friend Rebecca and I run to catch up with her.

We get some food and sit down to eat and talk. She tells me that she she is scared and does not want me to leave and I say that I am not going anywhere. Rebecca has a sad look on her face, then suddenly she stands up and runs away, dissapearing into the large crowd. I try to follow but I cannot push my way past the huge gathering of people and have to go back. I am really upset that Rebecca ran away from me. I go into an East Indian food display and think about buying some delicacies, but I am sure that I do not have enough money for it. I find a credit card in my pocket and just pay with that. I am sort of creeped out because the two men who run the display will not stop staring at me.

Suddenly the dream changes again to the inside of an Oriental food store. Everything is dull and grey. There is an old Chinese man at the counter sorting CD-RW disks. His wife comes in through a heavy metallic back door and starts screaming at him for something. I go through the back door and find that it not only leads outside, but is at the top of a tall building (where as the front door is at groud level). The heavy metal door locks behind me and I cannot go back.

Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell is standing at the edge of the rooftop and jumps off. The scene is the same as the jump down from the opening sequence from the Stand Alone Complex anime series. I dissapear from the dream at this point and everything is viewed in third person.

Major Kusanagi lands on a low roof top in a back alley. In the alleyway below there is a black truck and three suspicious looking men loading cardboard boxes into the back of the truck. The boxes are sealed but heavy and the men are trying to load them quickly. The Major draws her gun and yells at them to stop, but the men draw their own weapons and open fire. Two of the men engage the Major in gun play while the last man quickly throws the rest of the boxes into the truck. One box falls out of the truck and bursts open, scattering VHS video tapes and CD disks all over the alleyway. The three men jump into the van and speed off.

The Major is trying to figure out what is on the disks when some investigators show up (though none are other characters from the GITS show or movie - they appear to be random creations of my subconscious). Major Kusanagi leaves them to clean up the mess and figure out what the disks and tapes are and runs off in the direction that the truck went. She runs out of the alley and into a beach front shopping strip. There are thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles on the road and on the beach, making it impossible to find the truck.

There is a bus sitting at a terminal on the other side of the road, seemingly abandoned. The Major gets onto the bus and it starts to move under its own power and without a driver. There are other people on the bus but they stare out of the windows and will not respond to anyone trying to get their attention. The bus travels down the road for a bit and makes two left turns around the block. It stops in front of the Oriental food store. When she gets off the bus, the Major can see the three men from the alleyway talking to the old Chinese man through the window. There is one of the sealed cardboard boxes on the counter.

The four men pick up the box and exit through the heavy metal back door. Kusanagi follows and finds herself back on the roof top in which she started, with none of the men in sight.


The dream becomes too fuzzy for me to remember any more, but it ended soon after anyway.

My first lucid experience!!! Well, it becomes lucid only near the end, anyway.


This dream starts off about a block from my house. All of the roads in the dream are deep waterways and traffic consist of a variety of boats and other watercraft; there are no ashphalt roadways or land faring automobiles. My parents and I were standing at a bus stop waiting for the "bus" boat to pick us up. There were other people waiting there as well but they did not have any significance as far as I can tell; just random people waiting for the "bus." Apparently we were going to take a boat tour for somewhere but at this point in the dream, I had no idea where.

When the boat tour arrived, it consisted of three small, old-looking, wooden boats rather one medium or large sized modern boat, which is what my parents and I had been expecting. The three craft were tired together with ropes and I could not see what drove the boats forward, as there were no sails on the masts or engines on the stern. The first of the three boats was full so my parents and the group of people got on the middle boat. Since the middle boat was filled to capacity I had to get on the last of the boats by myself. I was kind of resentful at first, because I felt insecure and I wanted to sit near my parents.

The boat tour/bus boat (whatever) started down the um, street... er, waterway... and at first the scenery around the boats looked like how the neighbourhood actually appears in waking life, but the farther we went the more the scenery changed from an urban landscape to a natural one. Soon there were no human-made buildings or other boats and it seemed that we were in some thick temperate forest. No one on the boats was upset because this all seemed to be a part of the tour.

Not long after the scenery changed into the forest there came a bend in the river. There was an old, dilapitated wooden mill at the bend and the three boats pulled up to a small dock and stopped. Most of the people disembarked and dissapeared into the forest. My parents stayed on the middle boat and I stayed on the last boat. I could have gone up and sat with my parents at this point and I do not know why I did not do so. As we waited for the boat tour to get moving again the water began rushing like rapids and tore the boats away from the dock. It was not scary at first, just unexpected, and no one panicked or anything.

The rushing water pulled the boat a long for a while and soon we came to a fork in the river. The left waterway was clamer and seemed to lead to an opening in the forest. The right waterway was very eeirie and seemed to lead deeper into the forest. There was also strange blue-grey mist above the water that lead down the river on the right side of the fork.

The boat tour turned towards the left river but just before it went past the actual fork, the rope holding the middle boat and last boat snapped. The first two boats drifted down the left waterway, but the last of the little wooden boats, the one that I was on by myself, got pulled down the river on the right side of the fork. I yelled to get my parents attention, but they did not seem to hear me. A few of the other passengers on the middle boat glanced at me, but then looked away and ignored me.

My little boat was pulled into the deep dark forest and I remember feeling really scared for a moment but the fear soon passed. I became more curious then anything because the forest seemed to thin out a little and it did not seem so threatening. I do not know how far I travelled but it seemed like I was on that little boat for a long time. Eventually it became standed on some rocks in shallow water and I was able to step out and walk to the shore. Right off the shore there was a path that led into the forest and to a small Oriental looking building.

It was as I was walking along the path that I began to question my reality (mostly because there was an Oriental style building deep in a northern Canadian-looking forest), so I did a RC by plugging up my nostrils and I could still breath! I realized that I was in a dream and became excited! I did not seem to have control over anything except move my own body so I ran into the building, which was very much like an ornate Zen garden on the inside. In the middle of the room there was some sort of small, stone statue that some Oriental looking men (I do not know if they were Chinese or Japanese) were sitting around smoking pipes. They all sort of looked at me and laughed and I tried to say something to them but the dream ended and I woke up.