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.

#1) In the first dream there was an old lady travelling through a thick temperate forest on a ship. The ship was magical and it could sail across both water and land. The old lady was hunting down an enemy that she had been pursuing her whole life.

She comes across an old man who is stranded in the middle of the forest and offers him a ride on her ship, which he gladly accepts. Through their ensuing converstaion it is revealed that the old man is the enemy that the old lady has been hunting for, though they do not fight because they are too old and too tired. The forest clears and the ship sails away on a large body of water, and the dream ends.


#2) The second dream takes place on a peice of land owned by my Aunt and Uncle, out in the eastern coast of Canada. There is some sort of gathering and we (both friends and family, as well as some random unrecognizable characters) are all sitting around two fires on opposite ends of the open space, wrapped in blankets or doing various activities. The sky is overcast and it is "spitting" rain, but the gathering continues despite the slight chill coming off the ocean.

I am sitting on the ground near one of the fires when a shadow falls over me. I look up and there is an elderly Native American man standing over and staring down at me. He is dressed in the traditional clothing of his indegenious clan (though I cannot recall the name of the tribe) and radiating a pleasant warmth. It becomes quickly apparent to me that no one else can see him. The dream becomes fuzzy here and I cannot remember any more for a bit.

Later in the day the drizzle has stopped and there are a few partings in the clouds where the late afternoon sun shines through. The gathering is still going full strength though I am laying down on a blanket away from everyone else. Through half lidded eyes I again see a shadow fall over me. I open my eyes and there are three native indians in traditional clothing huddled together and staring down at me. There is a young woman who seems strangely farmiliar though I cannot place a name to her face. There are two young men, one who looks like someone I used to know named Mike (but with long hair), and another whose face is shrouded in darkness. I am not afraid or worried, though I am a bit uncomfortable with all of them staring at me in silence.

I get up and go over to my Aunt Dorothey, and ask her who the three strangers are, even as they continue to watch me. Again, though, no one else can see them except for me and my family silently thinks that I am eccentric. For some reason I know what my family thinks of me. The dream ends there.


#3) The third dream takes place in a busy city with narrow streets. There are two people with me; a young woman and a young man, and though we are friends in the dream I do not recognize them as anyone I know in waking life. Everything about the city seems very dreary and grey and takes place in the Chinese section of town. I think it's raining.

The young woman and I give our hair scrunchies away or something and then convinced the young man to come along with us to buy some new ones. We all went into a store that had three stands filled with hair elastics. Even though it wasn't necessary or whatever, my friends and I wanted to buy bigger and more poofie scrunchies.

There is an old man in a grey trench coat standing in the entranceway of the strore. No one else sees him except me and we make eye contact. His look unsettles me and I am afraid to leave the store because I know the old man is waiting for us. I cannot remember any more of this dream.


#4) In the last dream I was a beautiful Chinese movie star who had just been signed on to a new movie. The filming location was deep in a temperate forest and was difficult to get to because there were no paved roads. There was a shallow, rushing river near the filming site that I had to be carried across because there was no bridge and I did not know how to swim. For some reason I was already in a bright red film costume when I was carried across the river. I could not see the face of the man carrying me across, yet he smelled farmiliar.

Filming eventually begins but is quickly halted when it suddenly starts to downpour. The cast and crew try to take cover in the equipment tents. As it is raining, the director adds a sex scene to the film, starring my character, and doesn't ask if I am interested in participating because he just assumes that I would. I refuse and say that my stunt double can do it, but she refuses also. I storm out of the tent and into the pouring rain after I quit because the director would not stop harassing me about doing the offending scene.

This is a dream I had when I was about nine or ten years old. I have remembered most of this dream because it is still vivid in my memory even fifteen years after the fact. I believe it has great personal significance for me though I am not entirely sure in what ways. I am not sure what everything in the dream means as of yet.

The most significant aspect of this dream for me was the colours. Every colour was so luminous and vivid that it still blows my mind today. I have not since had a dream so poweful in regards to colour alone like this one was.


The dream took place on a pirate ship in the middle of an unknown sea under a brilliant red sunset. The ship was a "stereotypical" pirate ship, except the wood and metal parts of which it was made were all shades of purple. It did not look as if everything had been painted purple - rather the wood was naturally that colour, as were all bits of metal and fabric that could be seen.

The water of the ocean was a deep purple-ish black, where it did not reflect the light from the setting sun anyway. The sky was a bloody red, as was the sun, which was frozen in place just above the horizon. There was only a slight breeze and no waterspray around the ship, even though all the sails where unfurled and billowing like they were being hit with a strong gail. The ship was as frozen in place upon the water as the sun was hanging in the sky. The ocean rippled softly like any calm sea and I could move around the ship freely, as I (and other DCs) were unnaffected by the time freeze that locked the sun and ship into place.

The purple pirate ship seemed devoid of all life save for me, though my dream form looked nothing like me as I appear in waking life. I wore all bright red clothing and dark red cape and I had long flowing white hair and a red hat that had a big yellow feather in it.

Anyway, the dream starts off in the setting I just described with me on the ship's deck, wielding a long silver sword, fighting a dozen or so large flying monsters that kept swooping down on me. The creatures looked like a cross between a monkey and a fish (with bat-like wings)and they were a puke green colour, except for their huge black claws with which they slashed at me as they swooped down to attack.

I wasn't the greatest sword fighter and I had no shield, but somehow I cut a few of the monsters down. As the carcasses landed on the ship's deck they oozed a disgusting blackish fluid before burning up in a blue flame and dissapearing. The carcass dissapeared but the ooze remained and it made it harder to fight the flying monsters because I kept slipping on the stuff!

I cannot remember now how exactly I defeated the monsters but I think some flew away before I could kill them. I have always though it was interesting, though I do not know the significance, that during the entire fight I faced the bow (front) of the ship. At no time did I turn around to face the stern (back) of the ship, even when dodging or attacking, and neither did any of the monsters land on any part of the ship while they were alive. The creatures seemed to want to avoid making contact with the ship as much as they avoided my swinging sword.

When the last was dead (and the ones that escaped were out of sight) I took a moment to catch my breath (still facing the bow) and heard a soft laugh from behind me. I dropped my sword in surprise, turned around and there was a man with long black hair standing in the doorway that lead to the lower levels of the ship. He was very handsome, kind of pale and dressed in black velvet, Victorian style fashion. Up until this point I thought that I was alone on the ship.

Despite the man's vampire-like appearance I sensed no hostility from him and he just smiled at me. We did not speak to each other but there was a warm, friendly feeling eminating from him and all the worry and pain from my fight with the flying monsters was forgotten. I vividly remember the handsome man's green eyes, which sparkled like emeralds and made my heart skip. I only got to gaze at him briefly however because the dream ended there.