memorable

Morning of February 14, 1969. Friday.



It is Christmas in my dream, but not in real life (it is actually the morning of Valentine’s Day). The date is actually February 14, 1969, the morning after the airing of the “Mrs. Stephens, Where Are You?” episode of “Bewitched” (“Serena turns Darrin’s mother into a cat.”) The cat is black and not very large, though an adult female.

Our large (fictional) “real” Christmas tree is in the middle area of the north wall of the Cubitis house living room (where it had never been set up in reality even by 1978, of the three locations being northeast corner, southwest corner, and west wall between my door and the front door). I apparently had received the cat for Christmas (I believe from my mother – although I am not one hundred percent sure; it may also have come from Brenda W, a female classmate, or just mysteriously found its way to my home for some unknown motive - my in-dream back story seems ambiguous).

When I come home from school one afternoon (and as I am just about to walk through the front doorway), the cat’s head seems to float and move up just in front of my face (from where she is in the doorway) in an eerie startling event, but more as if it is some sort of invasive telepathy. There are also scenes where the cat seems to “multiply itself” in unusual, sparse kaleidoscopic vision (but a bit too random to be truly kaleidoscopic). In each facet of the image, the cat seems to be expressing a different human emotion, even with descriptive impressions (for example, “this is Serena when she is annoyed” or “this is Serena when she is puzzled”, being nearly identical to another dream’s event though featuring my mother and only using our surname with “Mrs”).

There is one scene where the cat has made the toy train go around the Christmas tree (the tracks being in a perfect circle around the tree) that I had apparently gotten recently for my birthday or Christmas. (I never had a complete toy train set in real life, but my adult brother did have a model railroad setup after my dream, but it was setup at his house, not mine.) I am somewhat concerned about the “powers” of this cat, but it is not a nightmare. The cat also makes a small toy red alien figure (one of three) walk around, but walking mostly sideways, mostly on the frame of the sofa that had been left open.

Supposedly, the cat is killed when the couch section (in real life, the couch that converted into a bed, by the front lifting up and then the back dropping down, was along the southwest corner of the living room near the entrance to the door of my bedroom) falls onto it when it had been left open in preparation of making it into a bed or when I had accidentally left it open when taking something from the storage area (which I believe was divided into two compartments). However, the cat disappears from my dream after this even though there is an awareness it is still alive or existing somewhere (perhaps in another dimension beyond the living room wall or as a “ghost” – although there is a slight awareness of the idea of nine lives being literally for a cat).

Amusingly, shortly after my dream, I absentmindedly set up the ending of my dream by leaving the sofa section up for a short time. It soon fell, and curiously enough, crushed part of a plastic toy (a cereal prize) which was the small red Martian (or other supposed alien) figure I believe came from Quisp Cereal and described previously (relating to “coming to life” in my dream). I kept it (but had three others that remained in perfect condition) even though the eye area had been flattened. I had absentmindedly left it on the edge of the frame at the time when the section fell. I would not call this precognition though, as I absentmindedly caused the event.

Morning of February 9, 1979. Friday.



This is a recurring dream event of getting off a bus (likely a metaphor for a shift in consciousness). Here, I am with my “mystery girl” (wife Zsuzsanna prior to knowing she was a real person) who is vaguely associated with being a Mouseketeer, though I am not sure of our destination (possibly a television studio?). Though I am living in Wisconsin in reality, my dream’s location may be near Disney World in Florida. As we get off the bus, my mystery girl (I am not certain if it was absentmindedly or on purpose for some reason) drops a snow globe so that it hits the sidewalk near the curb and cracks open.

At the same time, the entire universe is destroyed with a brief soft cracking sound; the fabric of space “cracks” and the stars seemingly float in a liquid (in a similar way as fake “snowflakes” float in the liquid in a snow globe). Oddly, it does not seem that threatening even though it is “the end”.

On another level of course, this dream merely represents the waking mechanism - the “destruction” of my dream.

The snowflake (which also represents the Star of David and as such, also a two-dimensional view of the Merkaba) relates directly to my wife Zsuzsanna (and was also precognitive of the “I am fragile, I am avalanche” B.C. strip becoming one of my favorites), but seems to be shown here as a chaotic “flurry of stars”, linking the concept of a blizzard with stars randomly “falling” and moving, something I had not (prior to this) made any connection to before regardless of the obvious imagery. (However, when I was five years of age, I did made a cutout picture of a winter scene which actually confused snowflakes with stars.)

Additionally, I get the impression that a crack, which otherwise expresses fragility, also looks like a lightning bolt, implying the opposite (as well as representing the potential to grow severed nerves and tendons back again as I did from July 1962 on). This in turn is likely an association with my accident as a toddler, which caused my brain to be “rewired” through the retraining of my “dead” hand, allowing the usage of parts of the mind that people otherwise would never know about.

Update Monday, 28 December 2015. I should probably include a couple more details relating to how I know this dream was precognitive. Not only did it include my lifelong “mystery girl” (of consistent appearance and of Zsuzsanna’s unlikely mixed heritage), there is the connection to the snow globe and the song “Suzi Snowflake” (“Suzi” is the anglicized shortened form of my wife’s first name). Additionally, my brother Earl recorded “Hey Hey Hey Snowflake” directly after his marriage.

Morning of January 22, 1969. Wednesday.



A “wild weasel” is running around in the city. I am with Brenda W (a female classmate) at a large business building (seemingly G. Heileman Brewery in La Crosse even though I am living In Florida here). We can see him seemingly spin around and beat at the frosted glass part of the door like the Tasmanian devil would do in the cartoon though there is no weird growling. (Later on, I found out the animal in my dream could have possibly been a real Tasmanian devil instead of a weasel, as I had not seen a photo of one before). We hide behind various desks in different offices. Brenda says that it is getting late…“Nine thirteen” (my wife’s actual birth date) - this being a false in-dream “memory” of Brenda’s “wait for me” clock as the purse’s clasp (the purse design of which I have been unsuccessful in finding online anywhere or I would post it).

In most scenes, it is semi-dark, though I am not sure if it is day or night outside. Brenda W and I mostly hide behind desks. There is no cartoon-like feature anywhere in my dream. The shadow of the animal and the environment does seem “real”.

More recent notes on this and another dream can be found here: http://blue-opossum.tumblr.com/post/...asel-revisited

My wife and I saw a real Tasmanian devil together during our first year of marriage and as stated before, Brenda W was proven to be a yet-to-be wife archetype. Also, I worked at G. Heileman Brewery in La Crosse a few years after my family moved back to Wisconsin again (something I could not have known at this time), and as a cleaner, going from office to office as in my dream.

Morning of January 6, 1969. Monday. (This is the newly researched and corrected first version of a briefly recurring “set” as of May 30, 2015.)



On a prologued side note, I cannot believe it took me nearly fifty years to make the connection of this dream with the “Hippocratic Oath” - an oath historically taken by physicians, especially considering my meticulous focus on dream research since very young. (There may also be a vague association with “hypocrite” as well, though that is not certain.)

This was a short-term recurring vivid childhood dream of a cartoon-like hippopotamus that walked upright, directly influenced by the “Peter Potamus” cartoon character and firstly called Doctor Hippogippus to be later associated as Doctor Hippocampus in less vivid versions.

In my dream, he is apparently a “real” doctor (though still appears as cartoon-like) who makes house calls for people. He walks into the backyard of Cubitis neighbor Lisa M, walking upright and approaching from the east, from where the railroad tracks and mostly only weeds are in real life and carrying a black medical bag (with the initials M.D.) in his left “hand”. She stands with arms akimbo facing him as a large red question mark materializes over her head in a comic-strip like thought-balloon. Even though this scene is impossible in at least two ways, I do not even react to the thought balloon appearing over her head as a trigger for either doubt or lucidity - not to mention the cartoon somewhat anthropomorphic hippopotamus (everything else is rendered “realistically”).

He holds out his right “hand” to her as an offer to shake her hand and introduce himself. I am not sure how I know that his name is Hippogippus (in the first version of my dream) but it is just there in my false back story “memory”. I also am not sure of why my dream would have him come from the weedy area near the train tracks at first, though he does approach from the highway later on.

There are a few other scenes related to her being ill (possibly measles or chicken pox) and a scene where he walks into my carport from the driveway, though I never directly meet him in-dream to my knowledge. There is a vague in-dream focus on having to get up for school yet this still does not alert me to the fact I am dreaming.

In a later version of my dream (a few weeks later), the name turned into “Hippocampus” (the real name for an actual part of the human brain in the temporal lobe) and he was then a professor from a (assumed fictional) college (obvious play on “campus”) though he still seemed to have doctor-like attributes. This was possibly a more conscious focus to alter the original dream’s form (as “Hippogippus” made no sense to me) from having seen “Monster on the Campus” (1958) as well as talk in school of the intriguing coelacanth (a rediscovered “prehistoric” fish that also features as the plot device in the aforementioned movie).

The only existence of the word “Hippogippus” that I could find on the Internet was related to a poem by William Henry Furness in a possibly rare book from 1874. If I had seen this around that time, I do not recall it, though it is still possible there was a copy in my house. The related lines (apparently from “Tetra-chordon: A Pot Pourri of Rhythms and Prose”) are:

"For all good society is always on its very best behavior, sure.
For there was no concern whether your grey mare was black or sorrel,
So long as she had not the hippogippus, for that you cannot cure.
So well engaged that time passed away like a charm ;
There was nobody hurt, there was nobody to weep.“

Morning of January 4, 1969. Saturday.



This childhood dream journal entry has been revised on Friday 20 October 2017 to complete and clarify revelatory dynamics to more coherently define the meaning. This dream occurred about 3:30 in the morning. Sunrise was not until about 7:20 a.m. I had attempted to watch the 1942 black-and-white movie “Cat People” (which started around one a.m. on this Saturday morning), though our television was black-and-white anyway, but I slept through most of it, though I did not go to my bed until about 3:15 in the morning.

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In my dream, as I am walking out from the front of our Cubitis carport (after deliberately “stepping into” the stabilized hypnagogic “portal” rendered as the unlit carport area), seemingly only about three-thirty to four o'clock in the morning, and walking in a northwesterly direction towards our neighbor’s orange grove, I maintain my lucidity.

Even though I am lucid, I feel somewhat vulnerable when I find myself walking into the opening of a fictional feature. It is a hallway in which the walls are seemingly made of fog, yet with a suggestion of at least partial solidity. This eerie hallway starts from between the middle area of the driveway and the neighbor’s orange grove, and runs from east to west towards Highway Seventeen (and is perpendicular to it). I do not perceive the potential length of this hallway or clearly discern a door or doorway on the opposite side, which makes me hesitant in continuing.

From here, I see various domestic cats (at least fifteen) in various positions throughout the hallway ahead. Some cats are sitting or standing on tables (one near a vase on a table) and some are sitting or standing on the implied hallway’s floor. One cat jumps down from a table (or simple platform) on the left side in this scene and walks toward me though never gets very close or attacks. An unknown male narrator’s voice (seeming to come from above and to my left and as if from a loudspeaker with slightly fuzzy audio) only says “cats” in a very informal way and without emotion. I feel that he may not be speaking to me as it may be a voice that was recorded years ago. There is also the vague idea that I may not be fully in the setting but looking at a realistic three-dimensional movie scene either superimposed or bilocated into the front yard area. Despite my lucidity, I feel somewhat wary, uncertain, and passive to what I am seeing even though there is no discernible threat. Soon, with deliberate intent (lucid choice), I fade from my dream with a soft awakening. (The liminal space transition is also softer than usual.)

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Following is an extensive and highly revelatory explanation of the most likely factors and personal history responsible for this dream along with their related meanings. I have recorded this dream as of the doorway waking symbolism type.

It was obvious to me at the time (despite being only eight years old), that my dream was trying to fill in missing details from “Cat People” even though that was not my original dream entry intent (which was to visit my younger neighbor and friend, Brenda, who lived north of me). However, my dream was completely unrelated to the movie’s plot as my distorted memory implied that the movie was about an older woman with a fear of domestic cats.

The otherwise ambiguous hallway setting is modeled after two common real-life locations and progressions, one, walking through the hallway in my Cubitis home, and two, walking down our Cubitis driveway (as the fictional hallway was rendered as just north of it and parallel to it) to wait for the school bus on week day mornings. The possibly implied exit of the fictional foggy hallway would be at the east wayside of Highway Seventeen and it should also be mentioned that while waiting for the bus on week days in this time period, there was sometimes dense fog. Fog was far more common as a dream feature during the time periods there was fog in the mornings in real life, although fog also seems to be a factor of the dream state itself, possibly influenced by dream scenes in movies that include fog (to represent that it is a dream), though is also a natural association with dreaming.

There is also an association with Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog”; the line “The fog comes on little cat feet” (which was silently integrated into my dream near the last moments). The poem was first published in 1916 and my mother was born in 1916. This seems to be the association with the “old woman” (my mother) with a supposed fear of domestic cats (again, not what 1942’s “Cat People” was about). However, neither my mother nor I had any trepidation relating to cats. In fact, my mother had a pet gray tabby named Dewey at this time. The mild trepidation in my dream was more about my lucidity being intruded upon by the absentminded association with the movie that I had not even seen much of, based on my earlier wondering about it (but not consciously intending for it to be carried into the dream state as it was).

There is one more relevant commonly recurring factor I should include here. The doorway waking symbolism and other types that sometimes include the liminal space cat symbolism (in addition to the term “putting the cat out for the night” as subliminally relating to shifts in unconsciousness and waking symbolism itself) curiously was validated to have come from having seen the ending credits of “The Flintstones” (an animated television series) so many times. A domesticated saber-toothed cat is seen throwing Fred out of his house (after Fred firstly put the cat out) during the end credits, resulting in Fred pounding on his front door and yelling “Wilma!”, waking the whole neighborhood. This also established not only the relevant waking symbolism but additionally established this symbolism as a more influential dream state end marker in many examples throughout my fifty years of dream journaling. There are additional reasons for liminal space cat symbolism, one being an influence from the 1962 animated movie “Gay Purr-ee”, another with my childhood association of a cat sitting on a fence as existing between dreaming and waking (that is, a fence as the liminal space divider between dreaming and waking). Additionally, I think of cats as being more active at night or while people are sleeping and dreaming, thus a natural symbol of the dream state itself.

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Night of November 29, 1968. Friday.



This (in quotes) is the original title and has remained so. I had entitled this as such due to there already being a story I was familiar with called “The Grasshopper and the Ants” (However, the Wikipedia entry is entitled “The Ant and the Grasshopper” - a variation I had never heard of before). This dream was one of many at a very early age that was very vivid and unforgettable in scenery and “momentum”. I am not even “in” this one. It is more like I am floating and viewing things in another world.

In my dream, there is a young female ant named Susanna (a variation of my wife Zsuzsanna’s name interestingly enough but pronounced without the “zhu” and “zha” sound although I did originally call her Susanna at times), possibly influenced by the Stephen Foster song “Oh! Susanna“. In that song, there is the line “The sun so hot I froze to death” and the grasshopper in the original story will supposedly starve in the winter or possibly freeze to death.

I have accepted the precognitive implications for four reasons; the bride’s name being Susanna, my wife being petite (thus much smaller than I), and the nature of our mixed marriage. She also has more than three younger brothers. Also, the building in this dream was similar to the one I first stayed at with my wife - even called Clarence (my middle name) House. There is also the association with “clodhopper” and “grasshopper” as detailed below. Though I was not certain of the grasshopper’s name, there was a vague association with Marco Polo.

This was a long dream, but I only summarized the main scenes originally. It involves the female ant being “courted” romantically and secretly in a “jungle” - or rather, an area with more grass and stones and such, a fair distance from her home. The female ant’s younger brothers were like composites of three Hot Stuffs and Huey, Dewey, and Louie - but with ant-like features. The scenes were not that cartoon-like at times, but rather like an animated painting. The ants seem to live in a scaled-down condominium rather than an anthill though, so it is kind of funny. There was also some sort of implied practical joke routine related to “condominium pandemonium”. I was not even quite sure what the words meant. I do not think I heard this exact term in real life, or maybe it had been a newspaper headline or some such.

Her rather mean-looking brothers do not want her involved with the grasshopper or any chance for a “mixed marriage” (which is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose, as I have been technically in a mixed marriage all these years - even though one man, a Jehovah’s Witness, thought we were brother and sister).

The main, most vivid scene has an interesting meeting between the female ant and the male grasshopper (and note the play on my first name of Claude - I was actually called “Clodhopper” in real life for a short time by at least two classmates as well as “Kadiddlehopper” - from Red Skelton’s fictional comedic character Clem Kadiddlehopper).

I can sense or hear romantic music playing. The grasshopper offers his love a rose. She accepts it but says “Thank you, but I like dandelions much better” in the voice of a (unknown) human female. There is not much drama after this. I am not certain what happens, but I do know the three brothers will be bothersome to both their ant sister and their grasshopper brother-in-law.

The real-life joke has a couple variations, but only one relevant to the reversal of the romantic scene from my dream. A teacher asks a child what her favorite flower is and she says “dandelion” (or “chrysanthemum”). The teacher asks “Can you spell that?” and the child says, “Actually, I like roses much better”.

Morning of November 17, 1968. Sunday.



In my dream, I am mostly wandering around in a composite location that combines features of West Elementary school in Florida and the Rose Street apartments in Wisconsin.

My school’s hallways have areas that are much like the doorways with the transoms from Rose Street (which did have wooden doors into the next room). These “doorways” are oriented mostly east and west and only go from the same general area of the hall into the next area of the hall but there are no actual doors - just the transom area and the implied “doorway” a short distance out from each implied division of the hallway. There is a slowly dawning realization that hidden treasures are on the ledge of each transom, mostly out of sight when viewed while walking (though realistically, some would be visible when farther away). These treasures include small jewelry boxes full of valuable gems and such, smaller books which include older science-fiction digest magazines from the 1950s and possibly even the newest comic books, as well as American and Canadian coins.

Later, the idea and realization changes, even though I had apparently kept some of these treasures (and had hidden them from others). The items which I had not gotten to yet somehow turn out later to be cleaning items that the janitor had put there, such as a bottle of window cleaner and just a cleaning cloth or rag and such. There is also a distorted scene where I actually seem to be back in sister Marilyn’s apartment on Rose Street, yet also a very large “closet” or school maintenance room at the same time. I am not sure if this is some sort of temporary series of events regarding the cleaning supplies, or if the transom “treasures” themselves were only temporary. This is similar in mood to other dreams of finding treasures in square column-like areas under floor tiles in my Cubitis home, finding secret areas under roof shingles, and finding buttons or small levers that open previously hidden doors into secret rooms.

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The composite settings specific to my Rose Street apartment (as well as my sister’s) and West Elementary was mostly limited to dreams from around 1967 to 1968 when I guess I was still adjusting to the move from Wisconsin to Florida.)

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Morning of November 15, 1968. Friday.



The location seems to be a very dense cypress swamp in Florida. The cypress trees are seemingly gigantic; as big as skyscrapers (though there is no hint of any people or man-made features in the region). It is beautiful. It is also eerie but without any sense of a threat. Although it is of a full view and three-dimensional, I do not seem fully in my dream body (though I am not certain if I am implied to be incorporeal).

I watch what seems to be an enormous eagle, mostly in silhouette, flying from right to left. It is the most vivid when I view it through a wide clearing between two dense areas of impossibly tall cypress trees. It does not seem to be carrying any prey. Its wings are moving but almost as if in slow motion. I feel as if it is a roc (even though a roc is mythological). There is a sense of peace, love, and timelessness. The imagery is mostly in shades of gray (which is very rare in my dreams). The emotional state is also unusual, as other dreams I had during this time included the threat of buzzards, yet this bird seems much bigger, possibly as big as a jumbo jet.

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This dream was my last dream of the morning and is a unique and very enjoyable return flight waking transition.

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My dream seems to have three influences:

• The swampy Fort Ogden area in Florida where I lived when I was very young
• The Pogo Possum comic strip
• A deck of educational cards that, when flicked through, display an animation of wild animal silhouettes with a bird silhouette flying above them

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In my earliest dream journal entry on notebook paper (at age seven) I had referred to this bird as an “elephant bird” (though I also referred to it as a “roc”), but I later learned that the extinct elephant bird was flightless (and of Madagascar) and certainly not like the bird in this dream.

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This entry was last checked and clarified on Saturday, 31 December 2016. A new photographic image (based on an original sketch) has been added.

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Morning of November 11, 1968. Monday.



This became recurring for some time. I am in class and there is talk of an approaching threat. It turns out to be a large dimetrodon (a prehistoric fin-backed reptile-like creature). This was recurring over several weeks. In some scenarios, I saved a female classmate, Linda, sometimes from a falling wall. In one later version of the dream, the single fin splits into two “wings” and I get the impression that it will start to fly, perhaps taking Linda or another classmate (or even a teacher) with it. I found this to be somewhat “too fanciful” an idea even as a child, which I now look back on and reflect upon with amusement.

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 October 30, 1968. Wednesday.



I am in the far back of a jeep (possibly being driven by the actor Marshall Thompson), right near the edge of the back (but usually not so close as to worry about falling out though I am somewhat wary of this possibility in one version of my dream), and Erin Moran in her Jenny persona from “Daktari” is also seemingly with me at times, and there are usually a few more people. However, she sometimes seems more like a composite of Brenda W and the “mystery girl” (confirmed wife-to-be) at times. When looking to the back, she is mostly always on my left. We are riding over a mostly featureless area (like an open plain), possibly in Africa, but I also sometimes get the impression that I am active in my school’s supposed field trip and a rhino possibly escaped from somewhere - though this focus seems to make my dream a bit ambiguous and undefined in location. There are different versions of this dream, as it was recurring over a time period of about two weeks or so.

Mostly, the jeep narrowly avoids being hit in the back by the charging rhinoceros, though it does get bumped in the back in minor inconsequential incidents in some versions. I am not directly threatened at any point but very concerned at times. It seems the rhino always manages to at least catch up to the jeep but not match its speed for very long. Sometimes it seems that somehow only the back of the jeep exists along with the floating “legless” (but undulating) rhino body in an otherwise completely featureless landscape with a lot of mist all around.

It is possible that I saw this rhino-charging scene on television (or at least something similar) prior to my dream, but it is not certain, as I did not record any direct associations as such and do not presently recall the particular scene.

Night of October 24, 1968. Thursday.



Newly researched and enhanced entry updated on August 31, 2014. Sunday.

This was one of my favorite childhood dreams, and I became fully lucid by the end of my dream. I was firstly in the living room of my Cubitis home very late at night, probably around midnight. There was a very unusual storm occurring with a lot of thunder and lightning. Over time, I decided to go into my own room, but only opened the door enough to see a very small ghost gliding across the floor. As one of my original titles for this was “The Pillowcase Ghost”, you can imagine what it looked like. There were hardly any features other than the white “pillowcase” with vertically oval eyes and a mouth. He had no legs and only a suggestion of hands to drag his chain. He had a very young voice, like a young boy, as he was “booooooing” (more like moaning and dragging out the word “boo” for some time), and in fact, I could actually see the letters moving in the air above his head in a long, wavy sequence. I was not scared at all. I found it rather fascinating and bordering on pure entertainment. He was dragging a small chain, which looked a little like an animated charcoal drawing. The lightning I watch for a time through mostly the east windows of my bedroom also seems somewhat animated (in an implied letter “Z” sort of way), and is fairly thick and yellowish. I watch the little ghost for a fairly long time. However, he eventually notices me and seems to vanish, as if he had been only practicing his ghostliness and did not want anyone to see what he was doing.

I look around for him and he seems to be under the couch watching me. I imagine that we are playing some sort of game, but I wonder what I should do. For a short time, I am wondering if he actually took the pillowcase from one of my pillows and was now wearing it.

I go into the entrance to the kitchenette and crouch down near a chair (one from real life, with metal legs, in the same position as from last seen in reality). Eventually, the small ghost is in the living room, moving around and gliding very slowly across the floor, almost reminding me of a snail. He does not seem to be aware of me at that point. All in all, my dream is extremely vivid, yet with a cartoon-like atmosphere (but still with full life-like depth perception).

I find myself holding a “Spooky (the Tuff Little Ghost)” comic book (the one in the image, issue number eleven with a cover date of July 1957). I jump out from behind the chair (although technically I was not hidden, as the chair’s legs vertically blocked only a small part of me), and I let out a very loud, staccato “Boo!” At the same time, Spooky flies out of the comic book, growing bigger in flight, until he is my size, as I am holding it open, raising his arms and also shouting “Boo!”

The other poor little ghost’s eyes widen as he cringes dramatically (and diagonally in the opposite direction) in seeming terror and he slides swiftly across the floor backwards, to the other side of the room (he cannot seem to fly at all). He no longer appears in my dream, and Spooky is also gone from the scene (having returned to the comic book, I assume). Eventually, I wake up, and have a false awakening of retrieving my pillow case from under the couch.

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A short time after this, my mother (without knowing about my dream) gave me a glow-in-the-dark plastic ghost figure similar to the one in my dream but wearing a clock necklace (most dreams have at least one precognitive layer or association, but not always as obvious).

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The main influence was “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, which aired earlier that evening. The Spooky comic book cover (that was apparently printed eleven years earlier as well as being issue number eleven) set the climax and resolution into play with a clever scenario, especially of a ghost coming out of the cover of a comic - that comic book cover in reality also showing the ghost coming out of the cover of a book! (and it was from behind a kitchen chair rather than an arm chair which would have hidden me fully - this seems one of several important facets of my dream). The “ghost” was possibly a representation of a challenge in easily “defeating” the Charlie Brown mentality - almost in the manner of “tough real ghost” vs. “weak and fake ghost Charlie Brown”. This seems important because in my dream, it was almost as if I was in full control of the Spooky presence regardless of how short the event. The layers of this dream still seem quite intriguing even as an adult. The later versions of this dream did not have as much impact as the first semi-lucid version.

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This dream had one of the most intriguing and marvelous dream signs I have ever seen. A glowing white “pillowcase ghost” (both a moon symbol and a very obvious dream sign - what could be more obvious a dream sign than a pillow?) serves as the induction and soon becomes the main feature of my dream. Even though Spooky is also technically a moon symbol (“downgraded” consciousness within the nighttime dream state) as are most ghosts, he wears a derby and is thus a “covered moon” in this case, and emerges from the comic book to “send my dream’s moon away” as the waking precursor.

Morning of October 13, 1968. Sunday.



I am in school with a special sort of book that has Matchbox Cars inside it. In one dream journal entry, my earliest record of this scene, I originally called this “The Small, Flat Car”. The actual case seems to be that I can take out and put back in real Matchbox Cars in this special book (based on the photos becoming “wells” within the book - recurring, and a long-term idea in childhood dreams). There is one version where I seem to be sitting in the back of the class for what seems like a very long time, and am somewhat concerned about a car being partially flat yet trying to fit it between the pages so that the teacher does not notice that I have my toys in school. It did not work most of the time, though I still was not noticed, seemingly from sitting so far back in the classroom.

Morning of October 11, 1968. Friday.



Summary of meaning: In subliminal anticipation of the need to get up for school, my mind renders my mother (as parallel symbolism with my own inevitable emergent consciousness precursor) as a prehistoric amphibious creature and, with the aid of four older males, to be held on an island by building a shed (liminal space) around her. When she wakes, the shed explodes outwardly, as I am leaving the island (dream exit symbolism).

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A team of four unknown men, dressed as if on a safari (recurring dream character mode), probably in their thirties, seemingly with my help (even though I am only seven years old), trap an Eryops that had fallen asleep on a deserted isolated island (possibly near Florida or within the state of Florida in a very large lake as I do notice some palmettos) by somehow building a wooden shed around it while it is sleeping, yet the hammering apparently does not disturb its sleep at any point which is of course illogical. There is a very vague consideration that it may dig its way out as it is somewhat toad-like and toads do dig. However, when it eventually wakes up as we are preparing to leave the island, it is easily able to smash through with only a couple movements of its body and tail. I see boards flying out from the outer walls of the small building and feel a sense of awe and imminent danger. I watch the men leaving quickly in a rowboat (though I am not yet in it, though I seemingly soon teleport to it) as the creature is escaping but is not a direct threat as it remains where it is. It is facing the shore but facing to the right in my viewpoint. There is a sense of awe and unpleasant surprise but I have never classified this as a nightmare as I seem to only be observing this last scene without being directly present, becoming incorporeal at the waking point. (It was fairly common in my childhood dreams to become incorporeal in the final moments in eluding a possible threat, and as such, actual nightmares have been extremely rare throughout my life.)

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• This event of the prehistoric creature waking up as I am waking up (and it was my last dream of the morning prior to getting up) primarily renders the event as a very obvious waking metaphor, about as obvious as a basic dream meaning can be. Subliminally trying to prevent myself from waking (by preventing the creature from waking and escaping) did not work in this case, as biology is stronger than subliminal conscious will.
• Last update on Sunday, 30 October 2016. I had not considered that the shed in this dream might be associated with a doghouse. I learned that I had read a Marmaduke panel on October 6, 1968 which featured the dog “digging a storm cellar” under his doghouse. Additionally, building a shed around the sleeping creature seems a possible analogy to building a doghouse in hopes to tame a beast. A year previously, when I lived at 611 North Monroe Street, I had been yelled at by an unknown man who told me to stay away from his puppy (who was always resting in his doghouse when I visited him near my own open yard). This upset me (especially as I had never seen him before even though he lived in the apartments on the other side of our yard).

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Morning of September 8, 1968. Sunday.



I deliberately “step into” a chosen dream setting in my last dream of the morning, though I do not remain lucid. It is our Cubitis living room, but with different features. This setting is otherwise a rendering of the first area I see when leaving my bedroom in reality. The time seems to be early morning, around sunrise, the same time as when I “went in”. I sense that I am the only person present in our house (even though my parents are in the house in reality).

It comes to my attention that a great blue heron is trapped in our wood stove in the northeast corner of our living room. It is visible from the lowest part of the neck and up, thus somehow protruding from the top of this implied cage from an apparent opening. I am somewhat wary of it being in our house. Its beak grows longer as I watch, remaining in a horizontal orientation and pointing southward, never moving from side to side. I hold concern that it will become so long as to reach through the hallway (though it would have to curve if it did), out the back door at the end of the hallway (to the south) and possibly even around the world and back to where no one would be fully safe from it. This does not happen but I still decide to attempt to escape through the hallway (rather than going out the front door or back into my bedroom).

The bird does not make any sound. Its eyes seem very lifelike. I think that after going down the hallway that I could hide in the bathroom. The beak would have to turn at a ninety degree angle as well as go through the door but I am not focused on that line of reasoning other than very vaguely. As I walk through the bathroom’s doorway, I have a soft awakening (no noticeable physical hypnopompic event).

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Following is a detailed study in subliminal waking trepidation as sustained by the dream self in “The Heron’s Elongated Beak” (September 8, 1968) on Sunday, 16 July 2017:

• This dream is based on subliminal expectancy of the lower back spasm, a common physical jolt that only occurs in certain levels of consciousness between sleeping and waking (similar to the hypnopompic leg kick or abdominal jolt but experienced through different symbolism). In this case, my dream self successfully avoided it, though not with lucid intent (and possibly by coincidence as the event horizon occurs with various levels of presence and intensity, sometimes fading in an identical manner as an expected sneeze sometimes does). Being jabbed in the lower back by a bird’s beak or a variety of other features (such as a dog’s nose, knife, or arrow) was more common in childhood dreams and is also linked to certain forms of apex lucidity. This is a real-time biological event and its in-dream premonitory symbolism has nothing to do with the conscious self’s day to day reality.
• In other dreams such as “The Buzzard’s Beak (October 4, 1969), I did not "escape” the bird beak’s assault or lower back spasm as I did in this dream.
• Precognitive thread: The exact appearance of the wood stove and its location and orientation did not exist in reality until years later when I was a teenager. My parents did not own a wood stove in Florida up until a few years before we moved back to Wisconsin. I could not have known about the appearance, location, or orientation, as my father did not even build the chimney for it until years later, so there was no reason for it to be placed here in my dream based on any likely expectation. (Additionally, my dream’s date was a specific marker to when we first got the wood stove.)
• Going down the hallway into the bathroom relates the need to get up and use one in reality. Although the hallway can imply conduit symbolism (real-time consciousness shift) it may be incidental in this case. A doorway typically symbolizes (in real time) a dream’s exit point (though often serves as lucid induction).
• Preconscious waking induction of the emergent consciousness as features related to flight (birds, airplanes, flying saucers, my dream self in flight, and so on) have occurred in over 18,000 of my known dreams (excluding microdreams and other types), but usually with unique dynamics.

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