memorable

Night of May 19, 1972. Friday.



In this dream, there was a hurricane occurring and it may be early morning. At the time it started to become more noticeable, I was outside near my Cubitis house in the northern section of the yard as well as walking in the carport, and as the wind became stronger, I somehow ended up holding onto the north-facing incline of the shed roof in the area closer to the entrance and yet not being carried away by the strong wind. (This scene, however, would not have been possible in reality, as the roof was smooth tin and had no features to hold on to.) Most of the roof remained stable and mostly undamaged as well other than at least one sheet of tin flying off. The wind seemed to last a long time. At one point, it is as if I am seeing myself clutching at the shed roof near the apex (peak) or at least lying upon the incline (the entire shed of which my father built) while looking from my disembodied self’s right (by which my perspective seems to be from floating slightly more northward of the scene). I can even see “swirly mostly horizontal curved lines” (as if in a comic strip) that supposedly represent the forces of the wind. I am not sure what the fate is of any other people in the region including my parents. Perhaps I will be the only one left? The thought of being the only person left causes me to wonder how I will get food and fend for myself though there is also an odd sense of comfort at one point, which continues to grow, probably do to emerging lucidity (and being grateful I am only dreaming), though nothing occurs after this.

Wind most often represents the passage of time or a concern with the passage of time (aging). This dream may also simply represent the waking process while trying to “hold onto the dream state” and not wanting to yet get on with the real-life day’s unfolding. Many other storm, hurricane, or tornado dreams may relate to trying to hold onto the dream state or even a particular level of consciousness, thus a storm comes to wake you (depending on what part of the dream the storm occurs in).

On a side note, the first actual storm of this time period was Subtropical Storm Alpha (also called Alfa) on May 23, 1972 though I never concluded this was precognitive in any sense.

Morning of April 26, 1972. Wednesday.



I am walking in a large field, apparently in an area in or near Arcadia, traveling north with Steve J, Tina L, Kenneth H, and a few others. The sun is to the east at about fifty degrees altitude and it seems to be about noon or earlier. There is one area we pass that seems to be a cornfield. I do not see any buildings at this point. Much of the landscape is featureless.

After a short time, part of the sun “explodes” into sparks of about three different small sizes that almost immediately seem to be in Earth’s atmosphere as if the sun was just a large burning feature hovering in the sky not that far away. I hear a sizzling and notice a few small grass fires farther to the east.

We all start to run, but I go in a different direction more to the northwest (while the others mostly run north). I eventually hide in an unfamiliar old barn which is fairly dark. I decide to squat near a wooden half-wall of a stall. I eventually start to hear what sounds like older ladies talking. There soon seems to be a series of rude critical comments and gossip about other ladies who are likely not present, such as a particular hat being out of fashion, though there are nice comments about necklaces made of daisies and the merits of wearing the “right” cowbell and so on. This seems very strange and the supposed catastrophe eventually seems almost like a false memory within my dream - or at least something not to worry about.

The “ladies” that are talking (none of them notice me at any point and I do not directly see any of them) turn out to be cows and horses idly chatting in the barn. Oddly, this does not trigger lucidity and I mostly sit and listen to their gossip as my dream fades.

In a very similar dream or “reset” during the same morning, this time, right after I start running northwest, I seemingly become disembodied while taking to the air and then hover closely over an image of a small seemingly prehistoric lizard (it actually seemed to be a sort of olive-colored Florida chameleon) “frozen” in rock almost like some sort of powerful mystical fossil. It is me. It is apparently who and what I had always been - though maybe I am now in transition. I “realize” this as I wake. It almost seems hypnopompic.

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The lizard scene is a waking precursor as a sunrise metaphor. I am coming out of my being “embedded” in the fossil, analogous to waking, and the lizard represents the circadian rhythms symbol as such because lizards come out to sun themselves on rocks. The chameleon association relates to the dream self “changing” into the whole conscious self.

Morning of April 1, 1972. Saturday.

Dream #: 1,930-01. Optimized 1 minute 30 second read.



I am on my own, walking through downtown Arcadia, Florida, in the late morning.

Eventually, protoconsciousness (secondary consciousness that emerges at a specific point between dreaming and waking) personifies on my right (north of where I am standing).

It manifests as an old lady carrying groceries in brown paper grocery sacks. We are standing near the curb. (Even though I was eleven years old in real life when I had this dream, she was about a foot shorter than me.) She is wearing a headscarf similar to my mother’s and is cheerful and friendly towards me at first.

I think she needs help crossing the street (even though I see no traffic) and carrying her groceries. I take a paper sack filled with her groceries and hold it in my left arm.

When I pull on her left arm with my right hand, I suddenly seem to be holding a small tree branch, so I become puzzled. I think I grabbed her wooden cane by mistake. However, it turns out to be her left arm that resembles that of a stick insect. (There is no blood or gore.) She is now an anthropomorphic stick insect with the head of an old lady. She raises her right fist and yells at me.

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Dream content meanings:

Main Category: REM Atonia (Physical Immobility While Sleeping) Influence on Dream Narratives and Outcomes.

My dream’s outcome: The woman’s arm coming off confirms my lack of physical mobility while sleeping. (This event is a protoconsciousness mechanism serving as a wakefulness catalyst.) This type of dream (lack of arm mobility) is usually the second to occur near a sleep cycle’s beginning. (Here, I had been awake for a time before going back to sleep on a Saturday morning.) The first is losing leg mobility (walking, losing my footing, and rapidly sliding on my heels while falling with corresponding myoclonus).

My expectation of crossing the street: Anticipation of leaving the dream state to achieve wakefulness.

There is influence from the “helping a little old lady cross the street” trope from television and comic strips.

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“Similarly, he (Herbert Silberer) has shown that the conclusions of some dreams or some divisions in their content merely signify the dreamer’s own perception of his sleeping and waking.”

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Morning of March 11, 1972. Saturday.



I have a small pet dog that barks at unseen things. “The Dog That Saw Ghosts” is almost like some sort of narrative that is perhaps also being filmed (perhaps even a novella) - that I am a part of rather than the usual real life events, but I do not know the dog’s name even though I do think that I heard it in the dream. I do feel like myself, mostly. We never had a dog in Cubitis by that point, although my brother soon had a dog (a female black Labrador) named “Gypsy”. (Brother Earl lived several houses south of us on the same side - east - on Highway Seventeen.)

He growls at one corner of the room at night. (In real life, later on, I did have a small pet stray dog that I named “Joe” that had the same habit from the dream - growling into corners of the room at night for no seeming reason, which gave aspects of this dream an intriguing precognitive awareness). He growls at what looks like a handkerchief sized ghost floating near the ceiling. Another scene seems to be on the school bus, where he barks at something floating high in the air. (A year or so later, I actually set up a small “ghost” made from cloth and had it hanging down from the ceiling to where you could move it down and back a bit manually. It was some sort of “dream nostalgia”, I guess.)

I become aware of some sort of special trick that people use to scare themselves. It is related to a dream where ghostly eyes seem to move towards me, very closely, but the effect is caused by my own eyes. It is squinting a bit and wrinkling the nose, so that it looks like “other eyes” are watching you (though you are really only see the “eyes-shaped” outer darkness of your own perspective, the “eyes” being whatever light is coming through, sometimes causing a slight tingling. I had not been aware of the effect until this dream and it does work for me at times.

I believe part of the idea of this dream, on one vague level, may have been connected to a book which my sister Carol had got for me entitled “The Thing in B-3”. I had it for years but do not even recall any specific details now.

Morning (and afternoon) of February 14, 1972. Monday. Valentine’s Day. (Last resupplemented for clarity on Friday, 1 September 2017.)



A stomach virus had rendered me very ill. I had severe stomach pain and my dreams were, as can be imagined, rather unusual.

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My main dream involved me being in surgery at an unknown hospital. A bright light overhead sometimes seemed to make my head hurt slightly. Over time, there were at least six doctors of both sexes working on me from both sides of the cold metal table I was lying on.

Over time, I seemed to be “pregnant”. I am not sure how I, as an eleven-year-old boy, could be pregnant, but this seems to be the case or at least the association. The surgery I am undergoing seems to be related to my apparent “cesarean”. I am somewhat wary of what is to come as I lie on my back hoping the pain will ease off.

Later, I look down at my navel as I feel my pain defined more densely in one area of my abdomen. From out of my belly button emerges a large mole cricket. (Mole crickets were common where I lived and I used to pick them up a lot and let them tickle me by trying to “dig” between my fingers though it was never painful). As I watch, there is a bit of blood and sand around my belly button as it crawls out. Apparently, I will not need surgery now, as the “birth” unfolded without a need for a cesarean. I am not quite sure what to make of it all. Congratulations to me, I gave birth to a mole cricket. Intriguingly, the pain was gone in real life after this dream.

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An earlier part of another dream of this date was also odd. It involves some sort of thin wooden female idol about eleven inches high (somewhat African in appearance, but also somewhat Maori-like) that is continuously moving about, rotating and bending (vaguely reminding me of mosquito larvae in water). It seems to only be able to bend at the waist. It seems to be “dancing” to a reggae instrumental version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, sometimes with an “uh uh uh” human chorus. (It was at least partly but loosely based on the “Sesame Street” cartoon “Water!”, which, at the time of this writing, has the YouTube ID of LEoy_Kaglxc). It soothed me over time, almost like a healing ritual. (There was an association with the “Water!” cartoon possibly due to being partly dehydrated, though I seem to recall an additional similar short film which I cannot trace.)

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In another previous dream, there was also a concern for the imaginary loss of my father (who seemed to be missing but actually was there when I was ill), who actually did die on Valentine’s Day, though years later in 1979. I had also been thinking a lot of my sister Marilyn who died on the 13th but Valentine’s Day in 2014 in Australia where I live now. (I had an unlikely idea all my life that my sister Marilyn and my father would die on Valentine’s Day but probably in different years and this idea became oddly enhanced when it was her that first told me of my father’s death in the middle of the night, waking me from sleep, though I had certainly never told anyone about this idea.)

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In real life, my teacher came by after school (I had not gone due to my illness) and gave me a large cardboard box full of Valentine’s Day cards from nearly everyone in the whole school (including from schoolmates of whom I am sure did not even like me).

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2 minutes 12 seconds to read.

Sunday morning, 6 February 1972.

A Rose Encased in Glass

Dream # 1,875-04.


I am standing at the front of my fifth-grade classroom in the late morning, to the left of the teacher's desk and facing the seated students. My classmates are gazing toward the front of the room. However, no one acknowledges my presence or seems to see me. There is a sense that it is the last day of school. Danny Hollingsworth is standing on my right, closer to the other students. He seems very happy.

An unfamiliar male teacher gives him an award for an unknown accomplishment. It is a red rose in a rectangular prism made of glass. Despite his gratitude upon receiving the award, I recognize that it is an act of mockery. I sense a couple of classmates (including John Cavas) snickering at Danny's "award."

"Thank you," Danny cheerfully says.

"It's dusty," he says without changing his happy mood.

He blows on the top of the rectangular prism. An overpowering wind carries dust that covers the other students. Time seems to flow rapidly, 50 years swirling by in a second, to present a scene of old business people (seemingly close to death) seated around a large rectangular table (still in the classroom but with a sense of bilocation). (They eventually seem mummified.) The event had not affected me. I am only a spectator. I sense Susan Cavas had been a real estate agent.

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Dream Content Errors:

Danny was not in my fifth-grade class, only in previous grades.

The rose and prism were of an unrealistic size, at least a foot high, perhaps caused by a zoomed-in superimposition that my dreams often provide.

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Causality and Meaning:

Wind often implies the passage of time and a "glimpse into the future" (as here), depending on other content.

The rose encased in glass; and the immobile business people are indicators of intuitive, metacognitive, or lucid associations with REM atonia (the natural paralysis while sleeping that occurs throughout all dreaming). This fundamental causality of dream narratives occurs whether or not there is any other related factor.

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Influences:

One influence was the joke where a teacher asks a student what their favorite flower is. They respond with, "chrysanthemum." When the teacher asks them to spell it, they say they like "roses" more. Another dream integrated this gag and included the ending line without the joke's inference.

Danny had a feminine personality and manner, and other classmates sometimes teased him for it.

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Enigmatic Content:

In the next grade (in middle school in a different building), a female classmate, Lorilee, mocked me by giving me baby blocks and other baby toys tied together with string for the classroom's Christmas gift exchange (where students had randomly drawn names). (It was because she was obsessed with my "oversized baby teeth," and ironically, she was in dentistry years later.) When she was about fifty, she claimed to have no memory of her life until recently (though because of trauma and drugs, apparently). To read a strange news story regarding that classmate, use the Google search for "A dilemma carved in wood" in quotes.

Years after this dream (after I had lived in Wisconsin for years), I learned that Susan (who remained in Florida) had become a real estate agent.

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Morning of February 4, 1972. Friday. (Original version, fully explained.)



Message: “Let the sunshine in” / “Wake up and enjoy the day and don’t dawdle in the dream state even if you can fly while sleeping”

My dream starts out with a partial focus on last Sunday’s total lunar eclipse of January 30, 1972. I am firstly outside in the front yard in Cubitis, but as my dream ends, it seems like I teleport into the southwest bedroom. (I am also not as aware of my physical body as in other dreams.)

Prior to my dream’s sudden outdoors to indoors scene shift, the moon, which is in the northwest area of the sky (the same location the sun was in my dream “The Day There Was No Sun”), becomes sort of dark. I am not sure if there is going to be another eclipse or not. Eventually, the moon somehow seems to become a giant crow or blackbird.

This giant crow crashes through our roof, directly into our large sliding-door closet in the southwest bedroom (where my school clothes are kept in real life). The giant crow has somewhat of a cartoon-like appearance. He seems to have an expression of puzzlement and frustration and I get the vague impression he is now “too fat to fly” as relating to the “moon being full”. He fills our entire closet with his bulky body, which is several times the area and volume of our hall closet. I am aware that this event means “when the moon is in the seventh house”, seemingly meant to mean that our house is the seventh from an implied starting point, though I am also aware it is the first line from the song “Age of Aquarius” (which ends with “let the sunshine in” continuously repeating).

The moon represents the dream state (as well as circadian rhythms in relationship to night and sleeping) and the link to the unconscious self. It flies but “falls” and becomes a part of my day to day waking reality by reminding me I have to get up and go to the closet to get dressed for school.

The “silly” giant crow is a projection of my dream self as simultaneously both an upsized and downgraded flight symbol (flight being the dream itself, the fall being the natural waking mechanism), cartoon-like to represent the "unreal” nature of some dream types and giant because of trying to focus more on my dream, frustrated and puzzled because my dream is over (waking transition).

Morning of January 11, 1972. Tuesday.



This was a more vivid scenario related to the “Fear No Evil” movie from 1969. (See also this link.)

I am at a fancy unknown restaurant with Susan R. For some reason, the Beatles song “Hello Goodbye” is playing in a 1920s band style (as if from a false in-dream “memory” of the song having been released and becoming popular in 1922). This is connected with a car accident relative to my (in-dream only) 1922 red Phaeton. There is some ambiguity regarding the ghost of Susan R after the car goes off an embankment and crashes, leaving several smaller sections (and she or her remains seem to have vanished at one point) - and there is also the presence of the “mystery girl” at one point (though mostly in shadow and not more definitive in rendering). This was at the level of paranormal dreaming that was directly related to my eventual real-life destiny regardless of the strong movie influence. I am not threatened or injured at any point. The movie is not set in 1922 so I am not sure why this came to dominate this dream theme other than the small antique car in the movie which is slightly similar to the 1922 red Phaeton of earlier dreams. The mystery girl, though somewhat eerie, does not seem threatening or demonic as in the movie’s parallel theme.

Night of November 19, 1971. Friday.

Dream #: 1,796-02. Reading time: 1 min 40 sec.



While in the Cubitis house’s living room, I hear on my mother’s radio (her pale green one that was sometimes atop our refrigerator) about a twister approaching from the west. I am concerned that Brenda does not know about it. I plan to go to her house to get her so that we can escape from it. (I do not see or consult my parents even though I am only ten years old, though this was typical in my childhood dreams.)

As with the majority of my dreams, features are incorrect without my dream self’s realization that they are. In this case, Brenda’s house is incorrectly east of my house (where the cow pasture is in real life) rather than north of it. Also, Arcadia is east of my home rather than south.

As the tornado is approaching, I go into Brenda’s house without knocking and say hello to her. (Neither her parents nor brothers are present.) We are suddenly in her kitchen. She looks annoyed with me and moves around a table to avoid me. I convince her of the danger, and she happily comes with me. We manage to avoid the tornado. It is seemingly a result of running in specific directions and being in particular places for a time, even though we seem to backtrack at times.

In the last scene, we are sitting at a big water fountain in an unknown city that seems to be a newly built resort. (The twister had supposedly destroyed it, but it was somehow quickly rebuilt while we were traveling. The tornado was there before us even though we were running from the opposite direction).

We eat sandwiches that had been in transparent sandwich bags (that it seems we were carrying even though this backstory did not have a foundation) and smile happily in the knowledge the worst is over. I have a vague sense we may be near Disney World. (It would be in a different location in reality as it seems we are not that far east of my house.)

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My dream coincided with the opening of Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground in Orlando, Florida. I might have heard about it, so I am uncertain if it was a precognitive factor.

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The fountain and surrounding area now make me think of one of the first public places I went with my wife Zsuzsanna in Brisbane in 1994. It was like in my dream and with the same cheerful essence when I was with Zsuzsanna.

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Morning of November 6, 1971. Saturday.



Of the thousands of documented dreams (even prior to my teen years) I found how dreams (at least mine) often seemed to lay out the course of one’s life in a fairly precise precognitive sense, often with many layered levels of accurate detail and associations (including many impersonal ones related to trivial things you see or read later rather than directly experience) - some not realized or verified until years later. This is one of my more important childhood dreams by mood and association. (This dream seemed loosely based on “When Worlds Collide”, a science-fiction movie from 1951, from the 1933 novel, though my dream held major differences. The idea is popular even in modern “doomsday” pseudo-science circles with scam artists.) This (“The Pink Planet”) was the original dream journal title at age ten.

It is somehow “known” in-dream that there is an Earth-sized planet on a collision course with Earth. Perhaps one of my parents had mentioned it or I had heard about it on the radio. I cannot yet see any sign of it in the sky at first. It seems to be morning, perhaps around 9 am. My father still owns a car (in real life, he was to eventually gave up driving primarily due to other people’s incompetence and his growing wariness of it).

The planet eventually comes closer to Earth and I see that it is like a “twin” Earth except for its color. As I look up, I mostly only see Australia as the planet is seemingly “coming down”. There is a pink glow around the other planet - even Australia looks pink. (Pink glows were fairly common in some of my childhood dreams and was associated with taking Pepto-Bismol, which seemed to have a direct effect on some types of dreams.) It is the biggest when my parents decide that we need to go to the other side of the world, apparently Japan, to get away from the destructive force of the collision. Obviously, this is not very realistic for a couple obvious reasons; one being that you cannot just drive to Japan (from Florida) in a short time and two being that it would not do any good just to go to the other side of Earth. Not focusing on this obvious unlikelihood, I am ready to leave home. There is an extraordinary sense of awe as I watch the planet. It is in the southwest region of the sky, filling at least a quarter of it, as we are leaving our home, going south down Highway Seventeen with just a few of our belongings.

We seem to get to Japan fairly quickly (again, supposedly by my father driving a car). However, I get the strong sense that I should return (having left my potential partner in life - the “mystery girl”?), so I leave my parents and set out to find out what is going on…to return to the other side of the world regardless of what awaits…as it feels it is my “destiny” for some reason, or that “love is there”. I wake before much else happens, although I eventually get the odd sense (in one “reset”) that I had somehow reached the other planet just by walking.

See Also: “Cage From The Sky”

Minor primarily coincidental associations: The planet in the movie is called Zyra, and my wife’s name begins with Z, not all that common a beginning letter for names (or even words for that matter). The star was called Bellus and her middle name is Gabrielle. One of the main actors in the movie had a last name that was very similar to “the Other” (Susan R), the first syllable in fact. The in-dream association with the twin planet at one point was “nigh pier” (based on my “Return to the Harbor” recurring dreams as well, where I anticipated my wife’s birth in Port Kembla - as well as the play on “docking” in the idea of two planets “coming together” as one as my dream seemed to imply at one point), which sounds vaguely like the first part of some pronunciations of Nibiru (which I never took seriously by the way - it is just typical scam artist pseudo-science). This was also the (coincidental) date to my trip to Australia in real life just prior to marriage. There is a Planet P (Tony Carey - my favorite vocalist who actually worked with a good friend from school but years later in Germany) album called “Pink World” which has a number of associations including some imagery that looks like my room in Cubitis or rather things I had at the time. The main song has the line “in a quiet little village by the sea I hear the calling and it calls for you and me”. Also, as in my dream, I ended up in Japan prior to the continuing journey to Australia in real life, something I could not have known (or even correctly guessed) as a child.

Night of November 2, 1971. Tuesday. (”Resets” into next day; November 3rd.)



This is the first, most vivid version of this dream as far as I know. This was one of my childhood dreams that I really liked and looked back on more than others. It is a typical “everything turns out to be different than what was originally thought” haunted house transformation. Although this type may relate to it getting closer to sunrise (in reality) towards a dream’s ending (thus transforming eerie features with the promise of approaching dawn) creating resolvableness where semidarkness dominated the setting previously, it may also relate to the very heavy influence “Castle of Blood” had on me in my early years. There is a certain feeling that cannot be described, yet not like other dreams where in-dream features typically transform.

In my dream, my best friend Toby T and I (in an implied but not directly experienced back story) are challenged to spend the night in a supposedly haunted house in a similar manner as directly inspired by the Barbara Steele movie “Castle of Blood” (1964; also known as “Danza Macabra” and “Castle of Terror” as first seen, but the movie has several other titles). (Not only that, this dream even occurred on the same date as the movie, November 2nd, “The Day of the Dead” or rather “Night of the Dead” as referenced by the movie.)

Over time, my dream mostly involves “sleeping” in this setting (though I am still aware throughout; just moving in and out of different levels of awareness). There is supposedly the presence of a (possibly vampire) coffin near the foot of my bed as well as a vampire bat hanging on the curtain. The silhouette of the bat can be seen at different times throughout the night from the moonlight filtering through the curtain. Toby ends up leaving before dawn (believing the immediate setting to be potentially threatening), thus losing the bet. I seem to be aware of the semi-dark in-dream environment for a very long time (for a dream, especially) and there is a sense of comfort and timelessness at one point as if I already know the outcome.

Eventually, I come to learn (as it gets closer to sunrise) that the concern about a coffin is unsubstantial, as it turns out to be a large (possibly empty) toy chest that someone left behind. The “bat” turns out to be a large harmless moth that remains on the curtain all night and is clearly seen as a moth at daybreak when the sun filters through the curtain. This seems to have been inspired by a real-life event but I cannot place the memory (perhaps a time when I was half-asleep when younger and actually thinking that a large moth was a bat - this would have likely been in the trailer in Fort Ogden).

Finally, it turns out to not be a house at all, but a smaller trailer that reminds me of the one Toby lived in (or again, the one my family stayed in in Fort Ogden) - though I did not learn of this until later when I visited him - so a layer of minor precognition exists even in this dream, as it did have some of the same layout, including his bed and furniture arrangement in his rather small room (though dreams have a tendency to create all sorts of unlikely composites otherwise).

There is a later version of this dream where the trailer itself turned out to be a “ghost” in one sense and did not exist after daybreak, which gives it a different feeling (and whereas the main version is not a “real” ghost story at all, the lesser version is).

This was a very enjoyable DDR dream that seemed to last the entire night. The “vampire bat” is resolved to a moth. The “vampire’s coffin” is resolved to a toy chest. It is typical of how, as the sunrise approaches, the dream’s features morph into something “safer” or more logical.

Morning of October 16, 1971. Saturday.



This was another November 6th dream (the first recorded title being “I Married a Ghost”) though the longest, most focused version was on October 16 (very early morning), 1971. In this case, it was mostly based on associations with the movie “Danza Macabra” (also known as “Castle of Blood”, but first seen as “Castle of Terror” on the “Shock Theatre” television series). To this day, I still have not seen, or even made any effort to see, the remake (“Web of the Spider” from 1971). This was quite odd I suppose (especially for a young boy), some sort of catalyst, perhaps, and came years before the “showdown” dream (the castle-of-winds one) between the “other” and my as-yet-unknown-to-be-real wife (in their actual forms rather than being represented by others). Had I not been influenced (or rather deliberately focused on with a higher clarity than with most movies, to be honest) to some degree by a few (to me) archetypical movies, it is likely my path would have been the same, just with a little less movie-based synchronicity and long-term memory of such, perhaps - the patterns and personal themes would likely have come from elsewhere as it is. I would likely have formed similar symbolic aspects from other things I saw or did not yet see.

For many years after, I had this focus around November 2nd (related to the “Night of the Dead” event in the movie - which of course is not Halloween as some have claimed - guess they did not really watch the movie they wrote about so much - which often seems to be the case even with so-called movie critics). Thus, dreams relating to around that date sometimes centered around certain ideas even when I had not seen the movie for awhile. Interestingly, as a young boy, I even perceived November 2nd to be the “real” Halloween even though I never mentioned it to others much at all. I guess because it was sort of like “my” private Halloween.

The main point of my dream was that I was originally going to marry the Julia character (Margarete Robsahm). However, there were scene changes and parts with wandering about in a mist. Eventually I married the Barbara Steele character (Elisabeth Blackwood). I guess the reason was that at least she tried to save poor Alan (me?). I did not die, however - only everyone else was a ghost. The marriage took place in an unusual location. It was outside in a mist on the top of a fairly high isolated staircase (at least twenty steps) with nothing beyond the top landing. Everything had a sort of grayish and bluish transparent look. The preacher (unknown) stood reading for some time. In the background, below, there was a very vague association with a white horse and hippies on motorcycles in the fog - seems to be from the episode of “The Immortal” (“White Horse, Steel Horse”). There are also scenes of wandering around in a library after-hours (recurring). This time, also in a mist. Being in a mist was far more common when I was younger, becoming fairly rare after the age of sixteen unless I instigated the idea with lucidity. (Age sixteen is when I developed what I considered amazing full control over some dreams for nearly a year - usually the last ones of a series).

Curiously, the movie characters, depending on angle, lighting, and expression, were similar to the real-life associations (which of course I did not associate with my wife at the earlier times, as this was years before she first wrote to me), including the same hair colors. I did include an image, but I cannot find the photo where my wife looks so much like the first image I actually mistook it for her once, the third being the “other” symbol. Again, it all depends on angle, expression, and lighting; otherwise, there is not that much of a resemblance at all. It could have been the other way around (hair, looks, and character intent different), but was not.

Morning of September 18, 1971. Saturday.



I wrote a few versions of a fantasy story from this dream (which recurred with slight variations) in my school days.

In the large front yard of my Cubitis home, I am with several friends around my age who are my rural neighbors and those I knew from school (including Steve J, Brenda W, Tina L, and possibly Kenny and Karen S). Earlier, there had been talk (based on something heard from a radio report?) about the sun moving from its present location while Earth would somehow remain in the same place or eventually move into a wider orbit, which of course would do far more than just make the weather real cold and result in “continuous night” as are the only problems implied in-dream.

The sun is at about sixty degrees altitude to the northwest - this being an in-dream inconsistency due to the events seemingly taking place around ten o'clock in the morning. We point dramatically (while standing at the end of my Cubitis driveway off Highway Seventeen) as the sun moves away and the sky becomes darker, with stars eventually visible in the final stage of the event. As the sun moves farther and farther away, a shadow briefly passes across it (from left to right) each time with changes of the sun’s color; there is mainly red, orange, lighter orange, yellow, lighter yellow, and finally white as the sun then looks like any other star in the now nighttime sky. (At one point, it briefly seems that I am disembodied, watching the group and myself from a slightly elevated level farther away, being closer to the central area of my front yard but more to the northwest of center.) In a way, it is vaguely like watching a series of time-lapse sequences of solar eclipses, though the sun becoming smaller during each “sweep”.

No threatening events happen in my dream regardless of the implied catastrophic changes. There is soon snow in Florida (there actually was snow in the region I lived in some time after my dream - only once in the years I lived there, but it did not stay on the ground). Eventually or apparently a week or more later, a female friend (Brenda W - about a year younger than me) is at another friend’s house (Karen S - about a year older than me) but soon closer to where I live (Karen S lived across the highway from me and slightly south while Brenda W lived north of me on the opposite side of the highway but a longer distance - though Brenda and Karen did not know each other). Brenda is standing near bushes and trees (left of the mailboxes for the area) that are not there in reality. She watches me closely, seeming very interested in what I am doing.

I have this setup of a few bottle rockets somehow tied up in a cluster along the ground near the side of the highway between some smaller trees. The bottle rockets spark and sputter a bit in the semidarkness with the implied destination being due north solely along the ground, but they somehow cause the entire Earth to move back into orbit as Brenda happily says “It’s workin’!" The dream is extremely vivid at this point and I clearly see Brenda smiling at me in the semidarkness. It becomes lucid only as I am waking.

Later on, when "Fiddler on the Roof” was released (in November of this year), the movie’s main instrumental theme seemed to “rewrite itself” as my dream’s “theme song”. (This has happened before with newer movies and songs after a particular dream.) The titular phrase “the day there was no sun” seemed to “forcibly” be the lyrical “match”, in timing and mood, of the first five notes of the movie’s theme song even though it remained an instrumental.

Night of August 29, 1971. Sunday.



A small dinosaur (possibly a young Ornithomimosaur) that is only about as tall as I am, and of which I think of as an ostrich dinosaur, is running back and forth in the hallway of my Cubitis home, trying to get into one of two rooms (and rattling the doorknobs each time), the bathroom or the hallway closet (the doors of which are on opposite sides - and near opposite ends - of the hallway; the bathroom door perpendicular to the back door and the hallway closet perpendicular to the living room opening). I feel sort of sorry for it (regarding its seeming confusion or indecision) but stay out of its way (and it does not seem to become aware of me at any point or at least act as such). There is no threat of any kind. I seem to be viewing the event from near the bathroom door though in the bathroom at one point, somehow seeing through the closed door.



Due to a particular vague association in my dream, I think this may have been influenced by an old cartoon (possibly Betty Boop or Silly Symphony; though even after extensive research, I have not been able to locate it) which showed a kangaroo going to the door of an airplane (while in flight), not being able to open it, and soon going back to sit down again, I think because of being bored or annoyed with a singing character, though this may be a false memory regarding certain details. I am not sure, as I neither wrote the name of the cartoon nor time seen at any earlier point in my journals.

It is probably relevant that this year, starting fifth grade on the 30th of August, I mostly got my school clothes from the hall closet and changed in the bathroom before sometimes “racing” back through the hallway to the living room to leave to wait for the school bus. (For the year after this, the volume of clothes I had took up more space and they were mostly kept in the room-length sliding-door closet in the southwest room - my father’s room at that time.)

(There may be a subtle connection with my “Poor Little Dinosaur” dream from 1965, from about a year before attending any school, and “identifying” with it on one level - it was of the same general size and appearance as here.)

Morning of August 28, 1971. Saturday.



I discover a seemingly prehistoric coral-like “garden” underground that I had dug out from our front yard and put in shallower cardboard boxes and tried to maintain in a few different areas of my room, mostly on my tables and dressers (perhaps one or more on my floor). These “plants” (including supposedly prehistoric sea fans) are all of various colors (each one only of one color), including Pepto Bismol pink (fairly common in childhood dreams), bright glowing yellows, and that brighter glow-in-the-dark green used most often for certain toy surprises in cereal. My prehistoric garden seems very special; beautiful and nostalgic for reasons I am not sure of. Each type of plant has its own specific color. There is also a purple one that sort of looks somewhat lightning-shaped, with a bumpy surface as well as orange sponge-like “rocks” but of which may grow larger over time. Some “plants” are more rock-like, sponge-like, or fern-like than others and some glow more than others (the purple ones glowing the least, the green ones the brightest, I think - almost in the proportionate manner of glow-in-the-dark colors in real life). I am very glad to have these special plants in my room. They comfort me and radiate a sense of peace.

This is an interesting situation and one of my most comforting and deeply felt dreams of this time period. Coming from underground implies exploring more deeply into the unconscious realm or taking something (a gift) from the unconscious realm or perspective or mood of the unconscious self (the memories as such defining a more harmonious and joyful coalescence into whole consciousness), the “prehistoric garden” perhaps analogous to human DNA, yet the way the plants glow (and how they are stored - in plain cardboard boxes for the most part) implies the essence of the conscious self (and the light of day analogy). The light remains at a certain level however, which may be why my dream seems to last so long (seemingly all night), almost analogous to a reassuring nightlight.