Blue_Opossum

Morning of July 19, 1969. Saturday.



This dream, looking over notes and doing a bit more research, seems to have been influenced by the following real-life events and associations:

1. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (original movie from 1951).

2. Visits to a parking lot near a store at an early age (not sure where, somewhere near Port Charlotte, I think) where an elephant would perform tricks near our car. It terrified me when I was much younger, but as I got a older, the fear subsided. My mother had said that I had yelled for them (my parents) to roll up the windows of the car when we first went there when I was really young. An older sister still has photographs of these events.

3. Movies in the earlier grades in school about Pompeii and volcanoes in general. My wife said she had dream influences from such movies as well. I dreamed of volcanoes fairly often during my early years and once in real life, was startled by a sudden hailstorm which I thought was lava and volcanic rocks pouring down on our roof (this was a few years after this entry’s dream) and so I ran and hid in the closet until I realized what it was. Due to the fact that there was a large rutted metal section as the roof over most of our carport, it was really loud.

4. The “Uhny Uftz” episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, first seen September 29, 1965.

Contrary to what my dreams sometimes presented, I was never alone in a car at an early age.

My dream begins with my becoming aware of being in the middle of my backyard and assuming it is Sunday, late morning, perhaps around ten. A shadow appears on the ground, which is perfectly round, moving southward over our neighbor’s house. Perhaps it is a cloud, but perhaps not, so I go inside. I get a very vague sense of a “poisonous cloud”. Inside, in the living room, a man on a news report is talking rather unemotionally about a flying saucer having been sighted.

I am slightly lucid, so I decide that I will take control for a time and visit Brenda W, a female classmate who lives north of me. We go back to my house and I notice the news reader is still talking about the flying saucer and some sort of (I think) toxic gas or some such. Brenda is laughing because when the man is speaking on the television, certain things he is saying seem to be going on outside in the backyard at the same time as each spoken reference (round shadow, flashing light, strange hum…).

Later, Brenda seems to have gone home and I am seriously annoyed at this, as I want to spend the day playing with her (more like “playing house” even though I was quite young at the time). I decide to go back to her house. Soon, though, the round shadow appears on the ground, but I do not really look up. I start walking faster and faster, first trying to hide under trees, but eventually I start running and turn to go south towards town where there may be bigger and safer buildings and more people - and I have a vague idea that Brenda may also have gone there instead of going home.

Amazingly, I run so fast and “perfectly” that I manage to run straight down the wall of a gulley, then turning about at fully ninety degrees upright again, treading effortlessly and swiftly over the surface of the deeper stream - only lightly splashing the surface, and turning my entire body again at ninety degrees and going straight up the wall on the other side - and then continue on as if nothing strange had happened, my only concern being that I had wasted a few seconds by not running in a straight, horizontal path!

Eventually I am in town (Arcadia) and I do not notice any people around. Even though it seems to be the weekend, I notice a few cars in the elementary school’s parking lot and think it may be a meeting of the teachers - or perhaps a few alarmed people did not know where else to go for safety.

I notice that the flying saucer seems to be landing, so I go to duck down near a car (but do not yet get into the car). It lands and looks just like the spacecraft from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The “door” of the flying saucer opens and…as I start to climb into the front seat of the car to hide…

Out walks a large elephant…

The elephant lifts its trunk straight into the air and out sprays a massive amount of lava and volcanic rocks. I jump into the car, but I notice the volcanic rocks quickly stacking up over the front window of the car (almost in “fast motion” animation) and so…it is the end of everything.