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Night of October 29, 1966. Saturday.



I am involved in a seeming prototype (first version of a dream theme that appears in more complex forms later on, especially after moving to a new home) of what appears to be a variation of the (originally) Milton Bradley game “Operation” (which is fairly new at the time). It reminds me just a bit of the “nostalgic” noise and lights of a carnival on a much smaller scale (and according to some sources, actually was based on games in funfairs so maybe that is a typical association). The main distortion is that it has a red telephone (receiver only, but probably only about half the size of a real one) in a recess on the left side, nested on its side though does somehow become full-sized at times. (This may be from a distortion of the actual shapes relative to real game sections, which are somewhat reminiscent of a telephone receiver shape.)

I am not quite sure if the telephone allows you to somehow talk to the character in the game and receive information on his present status, but it seems a bit strange at times as if I am “expecting” an eerie “contact” at one point. No conversations ever ensue, however. My dream remains nonthreatening.

Interestingly enough, I did not live in a home with a telephone until 1978 (we never had a telephone all the years I lived in Florida and only my sister had a telephone in the Rose Street building in Wisconsin).

Late morning of October 17, 1976. Sunday. (There were other versions which played out more like semi-lucid reconstructions, as this dream was more like a very interesting coherent story than is usually the case.)



There apparently is going to be a movie made of a class play regarding issues on pollution and habitat loss. I am to be the main performer in the opening of the film, which will supposedly be distributed to a larger audience. There is a sketchy mascot, a beaver, related to the line, “You too can be an eager beaver and help stop pollution”. The movie is to be made at a city dump which happens to be near a large otherwise clean lake where logging had been done at one time. The mascot drawing is not very good and reminds me somewhat of “Go Go Gophers” and he appears in a concentric oval frame with lines going outward around between the two ovals, with the school logo above that and with the antipollution line under that.

I arrive at the location too early. The season and feeling seem much as in real life regarding the temperature and such. There is an old and worn dingy sofa on a pile of rubbish at the dumping area where I am to sit and converse with the puppet beaver. I wait for awhile in case the camera had already been set up. After a few minutes, the beaver comes up through a hole in the seat of the upholstery, the arm of the controller likely under the cushion or near the back of the couch. I seem to remember most of my lines, most of which are simple questions of which the beaver is supposed to answer. As time passes, I notice how amazingly “real” the beaver puppet appears to be. Not only that, I am aware that the communication from the beaver seems telepathic in nature. I find this a very strange and intriguing “film trick” and wonder how they are doing it - possibly with speakers on each side of my head, but at a distance and in an unnoticeable area, probably hidden.

I look around but I try not to absentmindedly search for the camera that is filming the interaction. Everything is going well and I feel very assertive in my performance. The beaver says its last line and then is gone.

Soon though, I notice a station wagon coming around the curve of the road. A man gets out and sets up a tripod about ten feet from the bank of the lake. There are also at least three of my classmates in the vehicle but I am unsure who. I am now unsure of what is going on. After a time, I feel movement and look down and a very ugly cartoon-like allover orange beaver puppet, which reminds me of the texture and color of my Nerf ball, has emerged from the hole to my right. This beaver puppet has mismatched googly eyes that roll around a bit as it moves and its voice is very annoying; scratchy, squeaky, and slightly muffled. I am not sure what happened to the realistic puppet of minutes before. After the scene is filmed, the puppet “bites” me on the fingers and hand (and I experience realistic discomfort in my fingers) and the unknown male controller is playing around and really annoying me.

I get up and look at the lake and I realize that the first beaver was “real”; that is, an actual living animal that was supposedly “speaking” telepathically, yet no one else had been around at the time. Its head emerges from the lake at a fair distance and nods and I “hear” the phrase “and now you know”.

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I remained intrigued by this dream. The overall plot was very unique and did not reflect anything I had thought of in waking life. At its core, it is doubly-layered autosymbolism for the nature of lucidity, even though I am not viably lucid in this version. A puppet represents both the fictitious nature of the dream self identity (as manipulated by RAS and the preconscious) but also the potential for controlling the dream state as one would a puppet show.

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On a spiritual level, it might also serve as an analogy for everyman, when the general public allows themselves to be controlled by an invalid belief system even when truth has already clearly revealed itself.

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Morning of October 3, 1976. Sunday.



I travel in a car with good friend Johnny C as the driver (same car he had in real life and this scenario being similar to real life to a point), best friend Toby T, and three girls including Tina L (so I guess the car was apparently crowded but did not seem as such). There is a recurring idea that was very common in dreams of this time period. The idea of moving through time or into “alternate worlds” based on a series of directions alone. I am semi-lucid but not “take full control” lucid, as I did not seem to want to be at this stage, just so I could passively enjoy things.

I am in the back seat on the right side. We are going north at one point. There is the idea that we should stop near my Cubitis home to see how it has changed. We decide to make my house the main destination through different “alternate worlds” or “alternate times”.

Upon our first stop, we find the house has changed into a laboratory but it has seemingly been abandoned. I see a beautiful painting on the east wall in my room that shows strange birds. They look like ordinary birds except that they have “sideways beaks” that I realize are exactly like the mandibles of a stag beetle. I feel a very strange awareness upon seeing this, an unusual feeling I cannot quite relate. I also notice a few pinned-up diagrams and scattered papers with various complex equations sitting on a desk. For some reason, I think of them as “byrds” with understanding of the different spelling.

We leave and come back into a different “time”. This time the place does not seem abandoned and one man is there to say that we are allowed to look around but not to touch anything. Going onto the carport, we see cages on the left. There are about three larger cages with strange creatures in them. One is like a peacock with snakelike features and it hisses and “strikes” at us but only succeeds in hitting the bars. I notice that our chicken shed is still there but built up a bit.

Once again, we leave and “come back”. This time, the house is abandoned again. We look around and mostly only find dusty ground and rusty pieces of metal. As there is not much to see, Toby T suggests going “as far as possible”. Johnny C seems hesitant, but we are on our way.

There is a strange sensation of moving very swiftly. We seem to be thousands of years in the future. We look out and see a strange sight. The house is very different (or likely a different building) and there are some strange creatures. It seems a “mother creature” is communicating with her “son”, who is standing near an upper-section-opened Dutch door to what looks somewhat like a barn (upper half open). They are somewhat human in form, but also a bit more like mostly white, living ceramic chickens with a Chinese appearance and with very small but defined simple geometric patterns (in mostly red and black) all over the large heads and smaller thinner bodies. They are making a sort of higher-pitched crunching noise to communicate by moving their “beaks” which is not really a beak but like some sort of small sliding door that varies in sound to how far it is open at any given time. The “mother” is somewhat wary of us, which is why she wants to get her “son” (about half as tall as “her”) and go inside.

We decide to go back. However, we end up taking a wrong turn, it seems (seemingly based on something Toby said), as the car goes flying westerly over an embankment and into Lettuce Lake. We all escape, but Johnny is annoyed at having lost his car. (There is also an idea that the land features may have changed when traveling through different time periods rather than solely misdirection.)

Notes on the bird relevance in this dream: Firstly, the living ceramic chicken (somewhat anthropomorphic) in this dream is perceived as being an incarnation of me (as the dreamer) at the “end of time”. It is curious how it is near the Dutch door. As a door represents the waking point (or shift in awareness), but here has only the top half open, it is a very curious reference to a false awakening (as well as a seeming invitation to be above as opposed to below - possibly suggesting rising from the end of the dream rather than the usual “falling”), which does occur, but still with continuation of seemingly the “same” dream. (Johnny’s car ends up in the water, which, even though water is often induction, is more relative to the “falling” waking transition here.)

Addressing the two other odd bird forms here, the serpentine peacock that hisses from the cage is a form of “captured flight” (restricted emotional, sexual, or spiritual freedom in the dream state). Even though the dream is very vivid, I do not become viably lucid. It may also be an association from when I heard that people thought that a peacock feather was an “evil eye” which may be linked to the fact that the peacock also had snakelike aspects. This of course is an absurd idea that I never considered as having any merit, but dreams utilize anything and everything (including the nonsensical beliefs of humanity) to teach viable focus and discernment. The other odd distortion, a painting of flying birds (which may otherwise be implied to be sparrows) with the sideways “beaks” (mandibles) of stag beetles, is relevant to the greater understanding of dream composites in general. The fact that these flying birds and beetle composites are only in a painting is a giveaway relating to the two other nonflying bird symbols and the failure to become lucid or resolve the concept of freedom. My dream self is not able to resolve why these birds are “wrong” either, only that they are somehow unusual. I even think of them as “byrds” rather than “birds” while in the dream state.

Morning of September 30, 1966. Friday.



In my dream, I somehow find myself back in the forest I used to play in (up in the bluff region) before moving down into town on Rose Street. It seems to be early morning, during sunrise.

In a deeper part of the forest and mainly near a large tree near a cluster of bushes, forming somewhat of an implied semicircular arrangement, I see a pile of life-sized dolls or mannequins which I soon realize are my actual classmates who have been transformed by our teacher Mrs. Yandell. Their arms are freely out and some of them are in pajamas. Somewhat puzzled, I consider whether or not if I am also there somewhere, even though I am fully in-body in my dream self’s perspective. The scene is eerie but no violence is implied. (Our teacher is not present at any point.)

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This dream, like many, is extraordinarily easy to understand. I am seeing my classmates in their static sleeping form, as a doll or mannequin represents being asleep, as well as lesser patterns of active conscious threads within the dream state. This metaphorical meaning also links to dreams representing circadian rhythms in various ways. There are several layers of validation in understanding this but I will keep it simple here. They are in a semicircular pattern deep in the forest. The forest is a deeper level of the dream state or the unconscious realm (as mostly anything away from day to day “civilization” is). I do not recall (or it was not documented) the waking transition of this particular dream. They are “arranged” as such due to (threads of) my conscious self attempting to quantify and “organize” facets of the dream state.

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Night of September 29, 1976. Wednesday.



In my dream, I am fishing at El Jobean in the afternoon. The weather is very nice at first. There are a lot of other people of various ages, some fishing, but not that close to where I am.

Over time, I notice that I get a bite now and then, but every time I reel in, it looks like a tiny piece of tin foil moving just under the water and is not there later on when all the line and hook comes fully out of the water, as if something is following my bait, which may be a minnow or tiny shiny fish. This annoys me somewhat. It seems to be a strange and growing mystery. Other people are not noticing what is happening and a few people are leaving now and then, as it is getting later in the afternoon. The scene is very vivid, yet I cannot work out the reason for the small tinfoil-like “creature” under the water or what sometimes seems like an actual gum wrapper section somehow moving in consistent patterns (or maybe someone is playing a practical joke).

Oddly, there is a utility pole to my left, with a three-digit number painted at an odd diagonal angle about chest-high and an additional mark of some kind. It seems sort of out-of-place near the beach.

It is getting darker and darker and time seems to be compressed a bit. Everyone has left the beach but me and it has grown slightly cooler.

Once again, the silvery, reflective form is under the water, but as the sun has just gone down, things change a bit. A very large and strange silvery manta ray, which is somehow walking like a person, “slimmer” than a real manta ray, and about as tall as a person (or a bit taller) is coming up from the shoreline with its “wings” out. I see it as potentially dangerous. It is very vivid (not quite lucid - but almost). I manage to back up and grab some sort of gig or harpoon with my left hand and am able to send it into the creature and kill it. I feel “heroic” somehow, as if I am part of a legend of some sort. There is a subtle sense of rain and motion of waves as if the scene is being “painted” by those aspects. It is an eerie scene, yet somehow not nightmarish to me.

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There is mostly only moon symbolism here. This includes the silver manta ray, the fact it came from deep levels of the ocean (unconscious mind), the fact that silvery “moonlight” was glimmering from under the water’s surface prior to its emergence, the fact that I was fishing (seeking connection with my unconscious state to resolve my eventual waking transition), and the fact that a telephone pole appeared in an unlikely place near the beach - as a telephone pole represents communication between different levels of consciousness while in the dream state. The nature of this dream firstly going from afternoon to nighttime is also obvious in this meaning as it is analogous to “the moon coming out”. This is validated by the fact that the manta ray is an intriguing flight symbol which represents a very specific level of consciousness. The rain adds to this effect as rain also represents communication from deeper levels of consciousness and flow of thought while in the dream state. To conclude, this is a circadian rhythms dream with adolescent factors.

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What was interesting about this is that the next afternoon, the utility pole near the highway (but still a part of our front yard area) had the exact same white paint markings as from my dream and at the same height. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo on hand and did not sketch out the somewhat oddly painted number (could not fully tell what it was - only that it looked the same as my dream image and had at least one six - or what looked like one). It had definitely not been there earlier (even my father mentioned it and confirmed it was brand new). This is one of those times where I just reflected on how curious that was (especially since there was no seeming connection with any “silver manta” in any way - and that part of my dream was quite “mundane” compared to the “epic battle”). It mostly seemed to me as if they had worked at “marking” the poles for when they were to put in the small green utility boxes relating to underground cables (which I did not hear about until later). It did look a little like a graffiti tag, but we were “in the middle of nowhere” and it had never happened before.

Morning of September 13, 1976. Monday.



I go out to the backyard in my dream and to the area we have regular bonfires and find that my bearded bantam Belgian (a breed of chicken) has gotten loose. I pick her up and she is very tiny. However, I understand that she is a “Hungarian quail” (my father for some inexplicable reason had began calling it Hungarian instead of Belgian with no cue form me) named Gabrielle (instead of Abigail). This was one of thousands of precognitive facets related to my future marriage and life; my wife being from a Hungarian Romani tribe and whose middle name is Gabrielle. My dream was on my wife’s birthday so this is even more validation.

This idea is likely at least partly related to the (archetypical if one cannot accept the reality of precognition) “wife as phoenix” theme (recurring and related to my other life-long dreams). The hint is that I found her in the ashes of the bonfire area and she somewhat resembles some images of the mythical phoenix which I had seen in reality. Abigail also had black “ashy” feathers on her back in real life. This was the day I returned to high school (tenth grade) after my operation, but I did not go to any classes or seek information (and just sat around in the open lunch area).

Morning of September 12, 1976. Sunday.



In my dream, I find myself at what seems to be the bottom of the sea, though it does not seem that I am really that far underwater. It actually only seems that I am in about ten feet of water or less. There are a few different kinds of large sharks swimming near me, but I do not feel threatened.

There is something about retrieving a wallet, though I cannot recall if it is mine or not. For some reason, I am aware of at least one important credit card (possibly more) - Mastercard I think, with possible associations with implications of the word “master” - and possibly some identification cards or folded documents in the wallet I am to retrieve. I can easily breathe underwater, and move about somewhat as if swimming.

My dream takes on an odd ambiguity, almost like two simultaneous dreams (both “deep in the ocean” and “looking at city features”), or at least implied bilocated settings. Above me, I look up through a “transparent” floor (as if I have X-ray vision) and notice at least one girl in a skirt walking above me in a presumed office - though I do not feel any significant voyeurism-based interest regarding this imagery and perspective and it is also unlikely that the building above me is actually over the water, as it seems like a business building somehow being seen from elsewhere. However, it may also be a high school with a young teacher present, though I see no one else. There may have been an odd level of foreshadowing and self-fulfilling prophecy here. A few years later, when “going back to school” in a manner of speaking at WWTI (after moving back to Wisconsin) to get my GED (or so-called high school equivalency), I got a student ID card for the first time ever. After the term I absentmindedly threw it over a bridge over the Black River.

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High school (my tenth grade classes) had started on August 30th, but I did not go until September 13th, due to having recently had an operation on my hand, and I was also still in pain for a couple weeks after my surgery. This dream may have related to the concept of trying to find my “identification” (or place at school) while starting tenth grade with certain students perceived as “sharks”, or potential bullies as well as either “getting credit” for doing school work or getting school credits in a metaphorical association.

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For an indeterminable reason, this dream seemed somehow “linked” to another completely unrelated and later dream (perhaps being somehow associated with the “same” presumed fictional town at one point) about a fictional movie or documentary about the “1910 Fruitgum Company” (an American bubblegum pop band of the 1960s) as if it was a real company. At one point, I watch while flying or floating from above, a 1922 red Phaeton (long-term-recurring dream feature) going down a street. It is implied that “Winchester Cathedral” (which I vaguely seem to hear playing at least once in my dream) is “their” song, when it was actually done by The New Vaudeville Band in reality. On one level, this may have been a subtle desire to “return to the past” (or at least review it).

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Night of September 9, 1976. Thursday.



One of the worst nights of pain based on the operation on my right thumb (on the 25th of August) and wrist (and much tissue removed), a cobra strikes me on my thumb in my dream, extraordinarily vivid and bright in the backyard (Cubitis), seemingly in early morning.

Finally, my mother gives me a stronger painkiller again and I slip into an extraordinarily vivid and lucid dream. I am rolling down an embankment head over heals, along a grassy hillside, doing “perfect” somersaults with no physical discomfort whatsoever, and in fact, feeling quite peaceful and blissful. I roll into a river of mist. It looks like a normal river and in an otherwise normal meadow-like area, but instead is made of flowing foggy tendrils instead of running water. I am heading into a “bottomless” domain, much like Alice on morphine, I suppose, and am completely free from all discomfort and concern.

I “land” softly in a hallway after moving downwards through the mist for a seemingly long time, which appears to be the set for some sort of avant-garde movie called “Hello Harry”. It is about a young businessman who dies at an early age on his birthday (late twenties, I think). All of the other workers at the business, both male and female (but mostly male) benefit only from his work (and do little themselves) - yet he is mostly disliked by his business associates. This seems to imply that the business will now fail since he has died (though he is not the manager - there may be some sort of very subtle connection to “Gunga Din” by vague implications), without the other associates knowing or acknowledging his role in keeping the business going, possibly as the best or most dynamic salesman (and may actually come in part from having read “Death of a Salesman” at an earlier date, as I did read the 1949 play sometime during this period). He only has one good friend who mourns him. I “float” into a room with concrete walls and floor and see that the man who had been his friend is drinking too much from a bottle of gin and “celebrating” his friend’s birthday while wearing a multicolored cone-shaped cardboard hat (with red “V” or boomerang shapes) and a red tinsel lei. The remains are in a coffin in an adjoining smaller room. The rooms are mostly featureless and appear to be part of some sort of large basement, but possibly in the commercial building where he died. (It is possible he may be cremated in the business’s furnace, but I am not certain.)

The man (name unknown, I only know the dead man’s name is Harry - the other man could be Willy) goes into the smaller room and places a cocktail glass of gin on the coffin and takes one final drink from his cocktail glass and slowly and mournfully sings (to Harry) “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” (obviously not expecting an “answer” of any kind, as he is the only one there and the other man has died the day or so before).

However, a clear voice comes from the closed coffin and it is supposedly Harry (even though he has actually died) also mournfully singing…“Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…”

This is the last scene and it seems to have some sort of science-fiction-like theme as well as the avant-garde movie essence.

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Morning of September 8, 1976. Wednesday.



I have not been in school yet in real life because of having been operated on regarding the odd multiple cysts on my right hand. This newspaper page with the entry was after my dream on the same day; relative to precognition or the very common somewhat trivial precognitive synchronicity - or whatever it is - but I have lived with it day to day since earliest memory. I also have just made a note after all these years that I had spelt “heels” in the title as “heals” and no one had ever noticed (that I know of) in real life since that time. There are probably thousands of such “revelatory typos” in my original journals. Due to the sheer volume of my work, I doubt I would ever find a fraction of them.

For some reason, I am doing continuous multiple somersaults in my front yard in Cubitis (doing somersaults was recurring during this period and was quite rare otherwise throughout my life - could have had something to do with the extreme pain in my right thumb and wrist and trying to “escape” it in-dream even though it was absent from most dreams). There is an actual roofed bus stop shelter with a bench and glass walls in front of Karen S’s house. To get there, I do somersaults all the way over, at least fifteen or so, even across the highway. (This was an area I needed to wait for the school bus in the morning in real life but not every year - sometimes the stop was at my driveway; another year, the next-door neighbor’s to the south.) Later on, it seems to be “normal” to walk on ones hands which I attempt for a short time. Not many people are around.

Later, I seem to be at a version of sister Claudia’s house where I had not been since I was a younger child in the first part of 1967. There is some sort of flood which oddly seems to be of different storeys. That is, the downstairs is flooded and the top floor is also flooded, but only from the level of the second floor as different from the flood downstairs but about the same depth. (In reality, the water would have just flowed down the steps.)

There is also something about buying chewing tobacco at what otherwise looks like an outdoor magazine (vendor) stand (which I never did in reality) and something about the product (Beechnut, I think) always being featured on the cover of “Outdoor Life” magazine, which is not true at all in reality, of course.

The main part of my dream features tigers coming up from the water, both in Claudia’s house (upstairs as well) and in the front yard of my Cubitis home, which is now flooded to about shoulder-high. I am aware that they are some kind of fictional aquatic tiger (perhaps with webbed paws and barely visible gills) although they look no different from normal tigers for the most part. I see about three or four rise from the water in different areas at any given time. This makes waiting at the bus stop somewhat problematic, although I sense it is the weekend and there would be no school anyway, which seems to justify being not all that concerned about it - though it is not the weekend in reality and I am missing school, which would have been the start of 10th grade on the 7th the day before. There are no dominant emotions relative to fear, though.

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An additional play could relate to feeling “clawed” (both in the scars on my wrists and right thumb and the fact that claws are on the “paws”/hands), which is also a play on my first name. It also may explain the association with Claudia (“Claw”-dia). I can even reach somewhat illogically to associate “tigers” with “ties” (relative to school responsibilities) - which is quite a stretch even for me.

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Morning of August 28, 1976. Saturday.



There were other versions of this dream, one many years later in the 1980s. The location is in the northeast area of my Cubitis home near our shed, a common dream location, often related to wanting to travel north on an otherwise passing train or by walking or running.

It was quite rare for radiation (which represents emerging energies of liminal space during shifts in consciousness) to be an issue in my dreams, although I have had a lot of dreams about meteors, some threatening (though meteors are just the conscious mind entering the dream state during the waking transition). In this case, the small orange tree (that never got very big in real life) in the northeast area by the shed has one large orange hanging from a thin branch. I become aware of this fact and focus on it. Over time, a large bright meteor moves down from the sky directly to the east. Even though it is seemingly far away, perhaps a few miles, the orange begins to glow brightly, first with a dull eerie light, then brighter. It has seemingly been infused with radiation.

It is sort of an ambiguous event. In some ways, it seems positive but in other ways, a possible danger. I am not sure why the meteor would have only affected that one orange on an under-grown tree.

Those who understand the purpose and meaning of dreams will know immediately what this is, and what type. Firstly, an orange represents the conscious mind in downsized rendering (analogous to the light of day or the downsized sun) for more intimacy with the unconscious self, even as a form of nurturing it, and for waking preparation.

The meteor, as basically anything coming down from the sky, is caused by threads of conscious awareness (another light of day association but upsized in this case). Dreaming itself is “flying”, and flying or coming down does not have to be the immediate unconscious self perspective, but any sort of projection as such into the rendering of the dream.

Thus we have a typical “failed flight” symbol (the entering of the conscious self into the dream), yet also threads of the conscious self becoming extended yet downsized and more intimately present and nurturing in my dream as the orange as it glows with growing awareness, like a sunrise, the opposite of what the (falling) meteor implies which is accelerated sunset, that is, the “sunset” of the dream form. The end of the dream, the beginning of the day.

Night of August 24, 1976. Tuesday. (Though more correctly in regards to dreaming, very early “morning” of the 25th, and being the beginning of Wednesday).



I am somewhat uneasy and restless. In real life, I had been in the hospital for the operation on my right hand to commence the next day - to remove the bizarre and unexplainable same-sized cysts (of which there were four “complete” and more growing) perfectly lined up on the left side of my thumb and partly down my wrist, which appeared to have fetal-like design of all things, like one of those “twins” you hear about in some ways, but not usually later in life (and there was a later rather ridiculous rumor in school that it was from a snake, as in snake “babies” - a story that I was not the originator of in any way). I was fifteen at the time and ready to enter tenth grade within a short time. After midnight, in real life, my mother being allowed to stay at my bedside as I was falling asleep (though she finally went home for rest the night after my operation), the young black nurse came in (someone I knew when much younger), shined a flashlight on my face, and asked if I wanted sleeping pills (though I was actually almost asleep at that point). She then directed the flashlight up at the television (which was quite high up on the wall) where “Night of the Lepus” was showing. “Watchin’ TEE vee,” she says with a hint of disapproval and left the room for the night (her flashlight oddly “enhancing” the scene of a seeming spotlight of the “herd” of giant rabbits).

In the eventual dream, there is a cobra under the operating table which does not really get to me, though I have to remember to keep my arm up and on the table (though there is a concern of what will happen when the large dose of anesthesia takes effect). Nothing eventful happens other than the “return” of a common dream element when I was much younger, this being an unusual “mist” (very cloud-like) that rolls along from about six to twelve inches from any implied floor or ground. There are also various distorted and apparently angry faces of unusual colors (with mostly passive responses on my part, as I seem mostly disembodied) and flashbacks to earlier childhood dreams. There are other cobra dreams related to this, the earliest being “Cobra in the Hayloft” from August 18, 1966, seemingly my first deliberate attempt to create a so-called tulpa (but fully in-dream). On September 9th (when I was supposed to be starting school by then but did not due to overwhelming pain as the feeling was eventually coming back in that area of my hand), I had the “Hello Harry” dream where the mist seemed to be engulfing a very large portion of my subconscious mind. This dream centered around a man who had died, but sang “Happy Birthday” to himself in answer to the one friend near his coffin in a basement and one-man party scenario. (This is not really that significant as my birthday is actually on December 20). Prior to the fall into the mist, I had been bitten on the thumb by a cobra in an extremely vivid dream of being in my backyard. The only good thing about this time was the “mystery girl” comforting me, which somehow reminded me of a scenario from the movie “Cat Ballou” (last seen on September 13, 1974, prior to the last time I saw “Night of the Lepus” shortly after - the other two movies airing being “Dark Passage” on another channel and “The Strange Door” on another).

This real-life event of my first ever longer hospital stay directly and precisely confirmed several precognitive dreams from early childhood, including one recurring one with both the enlarged right thumb and even the detail of a giant rabbit (relative to “Night of the Lepus” on television). This confirms the idea of physical precognition or foreshadowing of one’s own internal nature being somehow available (at least subconsciously) several years prior (though that certainly does not explain how I knew of the movie before it was even made, which happened fairly often when young).

Amusingly, the night before, the movie title shown at the same time at night (11:30) and same network (CBS) was “Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding”. If that were not amusing enough, again, the previous time I had actually watched “Night of the Lepus” was on Friday the 13th in September of 1974. My wife’s birthday was Friday the 13th in September of 1968. This was long before I knew she was a real person (which came in 1991).

Morning of August 21, 1976. Saturday.



This very long dream event came about after falling asleep again before eleven o'clock in the afternoon, with the sun streaming through the windows but not directly near me. My parents were not in the house during this time. My more nightmarish dreams happened mostly in daylight, sometimes with the sun’s rays shining in through the curtains or windows as here and perhaps triggered by the body’s need to get up and do things, thus the dream state seems to become “hostile” to the dream self.

This one started out during the longest sleep paralysis I have ever had, about thirty to forty minutes, and it was during this time that I partly woke several times, going back into a very lucidly aware dream state. My head was “buzzing” at different times, but there was no “out of body” perception at any point. I was asleep on the couch in the middle of the living room, facing east, my head to the north. (Normally, sleep paralysis is enjoyable for me.)

The main events involved two pieces of furniture that the sun’s rays had been shining upon now and then in real life, but somehow also creating a nightmarish shadowy gloomy effect in the room. One was a kitchen chair, looking much the same as in real life and starting to “walk” from the same position from near the partially open curtains in real life at the time. The other was the small green metal typewriter table on wheels, with the built-in bendable lamp, with the conical green metal lampshade. (See photo; it is the same as I had). As the sun went behind the clouds now and then, but still keeping the room light enough to see all the details as I drifted in and out of lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, either the chair or the small table would “walk” towards me in an ominous, menacing way at a particular time. What came the closest to me was the small green typewriter table, its lamp being the “head” and the bendable part being the “neck” of some sort of miniature surreal “giraffe” as it moved towards me, appearing to “study” me (with the light bulb “face”) and I was hearing its groaning and clacking “legs” and “feet” upon the tiled floor (even though it has wheels). As the last energies of sleep paralysis wore off, I finally caught myself staring at the chair in the room in real life (although when it was walking, it did not have as much a menacing presence as the small table). It did not move of course, yet still looked the same as from my dream, facing directly towards me in perfect perspective and still having a creepy essence before I was fully awake. This was fascinating to me after being fully awake for a time. It was almost like a game, where I would open and close my eyes to check whether or not the furniture was really seemingly alive or potentially menacing.

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This is obvious sunrise symbolism with the related dawning consciousness event. A light bulb (especially if on) is also analogous to getting an idea, used as such in various newspaper cartoons and comic strips. It is also a sunrise metaphor (logic related to daytime wakefulness and being “bright” as in contrast to a “dim” person or akin to the phrase “the lights are on but no one’s home”, indicating the dreams self is aware and active but not fully awake and conscious). It is fairly common to have unusual dreams when sleeping in a different location and here, the bendable lamp stretched towards me to create an aggressive sense of sunrise (the yellowish glow) and the need to fully wake. It was as if my conscious self was annoyed by me still being asleep.

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My lovely wife Zsuzsanna has also had a lucid nightmare with this theme, yet she was watching the upright electric floor fan “walking” towards her on its otherwise flat-to-the-floor four “legs” and moving its “head” (the motor and fan) in a very similar way as the small table with the bendable lamp (in a seemingly menacing “observing” way) as in mine.

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Night of August 18, 1966. Thursday.



This is probably one of my first more precisely documented dreams over time. It was recurring and lucid in some versions. One might think this would be a nightmare, but not even close, just a sense of childlike awe and wonder and likely my first tulpa-creating attempt within a dream state.

My dream usually starts at the Concordia Ballroom (at 1129 La Crosse Street) where my father often performed in real life. It is fairly late at night. I danced there in reality at the time, but in my dream, things are quite different. The Concordia building seems to be oriented perpendicular to actuality. There are also a lot of cars that seem more of a late 1940s style than the 1960s.

Not only that, I end up wandering off into the darkness, yet seeing that a large barn…yes…a barn - exists just down the street a short distance from the Concordia Ballroom.

In the barn it is semi-dark. Cobras are certainly not to be found in Wisconsin (in the wild, anyway), but there is a cobra in the hayloft (and only ever one). It is mostly black with a bit of yellowish orange. In some versions (even later on, as it got colder in real life), I wait expectantly, but wake up before it appears (almost as if it had to appear before I could leave my dream with “better confidence” - hard to explain). Sometimes it seems to be a long time for me to be standing there. No drama happens. No one comes looking for me. I do not think of climbing up to the hayloft at all. The cobra is high above in the hayloft, upright, around the middle area, and is no real threat. There seems to be a mystical atmosphere over the whole time period with similar dreams.

Morning of August 13, 1976. Friday.

Dream #: 3,525-07. Reading time: 20 sec.



I enter the Cubitis house’s southwest bedroom (where my school clothes are) in the late morning. I encounter a giant praying mantis that is about as tall as I am. It stands facing me (facing north) on the west side of the room. Curiously, I see it as an oddity, and I do not feel threatened by it. It does not attack me.

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My dream was probably at least partly influenced by the movie “The Deadly Mantis” (1957) though I had seen these insects in real life.

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Night of August 13, 1976. Friday.



I am within a continuity of false awakenings. There is a somewhat uneasy sense that someone else - a stranger - had somehow gotten into the house. This is unrealistic, as my bed is actually blocking the unused jalousie-window door to the carport (which opens inward). However, there is a shadowy form that I am sure is an intruder. It turns out to be a balding man in a loose, white, robe-like outfit and with some sort of medical kit in a metallic brief case, similar in size and shape to my real-life typewriter case which I then used for part of my Matchbox car, Johnny Lightning, and Hot Wheels collection. For some reason, I get the impression that he is “from Saturn” even though he seems fully human and from Earth. This seems based on some sot of hypnotic muttering he continues with and it is something to do with male surrogate “pregnancy” for an experimental reptile-like offspring, the area of the thumb being the ideal location for several reasons (including a natural tendency to draw the hand forward in defense). I seem to be part of some sort of unorthodox experiment conducted by a publicly unrevealed department of government.

I am unable to move or react as I am in a state of sleep paralysis, but not as vivid as usual. He injects something into my right thumb. I feel I need to escape as soon as possible. The utensil he uses is like a cross between a hypodermic needle, an ankh, and small scissors. There are various other objects similar to this in his case. I somehow manage to get out of my bed and try to get into the living room, but my dream “resets” and repeats a few times, and there is eventually a perception of needles moving on their own towards my right thumb, though possibly relating to some sort of implied magnetic remote control. They seem to fly “in formation” (like a flock of birds in a V-shape) at one point.

This, being one of the few actually disturbing dreams I have had in my life, was part of a relentless change. A few days later in real life, there was a rather small lump growing from the outer side of my right thumb which I only absentmindedly noticed when playing around with a metal band from a cheaper dismantled microphone and wondering why it had not fit on my thumb as it had the day before. Within days, there were five very large egg-shaped lumps (all exactly the same size) going down from my thumb to my wrist. They were apparently atypical ganglion cysts but had hair and bone tissue mixed in (almost like a miniature part of a Siamese twin). The doctor seemed extremely puzzled about the condition of my hand, asked me some unusual questions such as if I had “been putting things in there” which seemed ludicrous to me as there were no signs of cuts or supposed entry points and I certainly would not do something of that nature.

Because of the surgery and hospital stay, I missed the beginning of tenth grade, and eventually (when returning on September 13th), due to problematic scenarios in the school (such as a couple teachers not even spending time in the classroom while the students went crazy throwing knives and orange peels) I no longer went (stopping in October before I was legally “allowed” to though there was only one visit from the police) and got my GED in Wisconsin in 1979, getting told I had the highest results by any student at that time - which was not saying much based on how the other students looked and acted.

This also related directly to a much older precognitive dream (with several levels of precognition at once including seeing a movie that did not even exist at that earlier time - the usually low-rated one with the giant rabbits called “Night of the Lepus”). There was a lot of legitimate mystery around this and I have mentioned this in a few other entries, including in the original “Old Shack” dream documentation.

We left Florida in the last week of June of 1978 (with help from my sister Marilyn and her husband Bob). Looking at Google maps, I have discovered that my playmate’s house turned out to look exactly like it did in many of my earlier dreams - that is, abandoned, mold all over, and covered with vines. No one had lived there very long after my spiritual “outburst” after she moved (two different families actually going in for psychiatric help - Larry D actually killing most of his chickens, some escaping, after giving them a long speech about “not delivering eggs as promised”).

Whether or not this was based on long-term physical precognition (or some sort of natural cellular awareness) because of the additional childhood dream of my right thumb becoming enlarged and painful or perhaps was additionally triggered by a vivid dream state (and the very strange sounds and energies that come with sleep paralysis), is hard to say. I know I have often healed myself in dreams and meditation (even as a toddler regarding the accident with my left wrist and almost losing that hand), so I suppose the opposite is just as possible or even likely, even with the foreshadowing many years ahead.