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The dream starts off with me walking down a road, clasping a beige canvas bag tightly to my chest. It feels as if there are books or stacks of paper in the bag. I am about 12 years old and wearing a light blue sweater over a white shirt, a grey skirt, and black dress shoes. I know that I am on my way to my art teacher's house but the neighbourhood I am walking through is unfamiliar and I do not recognize it as any place I know in waking life. The sky is clear and the air light, but there are no people on the streets and I do not see any cars on the road.

I walk past a small house that has an open window on the ground floor. Through the window I can see a television set and there is a local news station reporting the death of a man named Robbie Ritchie. A photograph of the man is displayed and he has dark brown hair and eyes, is slightly tanned and has a stubbly chin. The dead man seems vaguely familiar. I continue walking for a few blocks more until I come to my art teacher's house and brush lucidity with the thought that it looks nothing like her house in waking life (I do not become lucid however). It is a three story townhouse with blue wood panelling and an enclosed garage (with dark brown paneling) to one side.

As I approach the cement stairs that lead up to the front door, a man who is crying comes rushing out of the apartment and quickly turns towards the garage and disappears inside. The man looks exactly like the dead man on t.v except that he has sandy blond hair and is clean shaven. I walk up the stairs and into the apartment. My art teacher, Ms. V, looks exactly as she currently appears in walking life. There is a young, thin, blond woman sitting at the same table. I do not recognize her as anyone I know. The young woman appears to be about 16 or 17 years old and is wearing a white sweater over a light blue shirt and a long black skirt. Ms. V and Blondie are sitting at a white table doing arts and crafts. The white table intersects another table that contains a pile of towels and more craft supplies. Blondie is knitting something with dark blue yarn and Ms. V is sorting bits and peices of fabric into several small bins.

I put my canvas bag down on a clear space on the long white table and ask Ms. V who the man rushing out of her apartment is. She says that his name is Sean before turning her full attention back to sorting. I then ask her if she knows anyone by the name of Robbie Ritchie. Ms. V continues to sort the fabric bits and gives me a peculiar stare, but says nothing. The young blond woman says that Sean is Robbie's younger brother and is upset because he just found out about Robbie's death. I heard what the young blond girl said, but I did not respond. I do not know exactly what, but there was something about the blond girl that annoyed me and I wanted nothing to do with her.

I started looking over the many art and craft supplies on the tables when Ms. V rose suddenly and started to leave. She said something about talking to Sean before she disappeared out the front door. I was not thrilled at being left alone with the blond girl whom I did not know and did not like. She started talking to me about something and for the most part I pretended to listen and did not respond beyond nodding my head at irregular intervals, so I cannot remember now what she said. I am sure that it was nothing important anyway.

I needed a cloth for something and started looking through the pile of towels on the far table for one. I mistook the dishtowel on the top as a cloth and was confused when I picked it up and discovered what it really was. I cannot remember now why I wanted a cloth, but I do recall becoming very frantic because I could not find one.


The dream ends there. I do not know anyone named Robbie (or Sean) Ritchie and I do not know what the significance of learning about his death in my dream is.

Dream takes place on a long stretch of beach at night. There are sticks and logs and seaweed all over the place that was probably brought in with the tide. I am walking with someone and even though I cannot see his face and he does not remind me of anyone I know in waking life, we are friends in the dream. He is wearing a grey, hooded sweater, dark knee-lenth shorts. I cannot remember what I was wearing. We seem to be the only people on the beach and there is no other illumination except for that of the moon.


My companion and I are walking barefoot through the soft, cool sand. We carry our sandals and try to avoid stepping on beach debris. After a while of walking and talking (I cannot remember our conversation) my companion points out an orange light in the distance. We walk to it and find an old man has build a little fire amidst some piled up logs. I want to sit by the fire but my friend wants to keep walking. He seems upset that I want to stay with the the old man, and he slowly walks off into the darkness.

I have a long and interesting conversation with the old man about various topics but I have all but forgotten our conversation. When I became bored of talking to the old man I walked off in the direction that my companion had gone. I did not notice until I was some ways away, but I had forgotten to pick up my sandals when I walked away from the fire. I searched the beach for what seemed like forever, but I could not find my friend in the dark. The old man's fire was a speck in the distance and it was becoming very cold, so I decided to head back.

When I got there I found that the old man was gone and my sandals were missing. I was upset about several things so I sat by the fire until it almost burned itself out, waiting for someone to come along. No one does though, and the dream eventually ends.

The dream takes place in some sort of two-story shopping center. The walls and floors, stairs, railings and benchs were all carved out of white marble. The upper floors had ritzy expensive stores, while the lower floors had cheaper, generic stores.

At the beginning there was some young man skateboarding on the lower floor of the mall. I don't reall his name but he looked like Link from Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but dressed in modern clothing. His boarding escapades led him into the basement of the mall where he ended up in some sort of electrical/janitorial room. I cannot remember now what he did there, but I do remember that he ran into some Canadian television stars that I recognize but cannot recall the names of at this time.

Eventually the young man returned to the first floor of the mall and as he was trying to grind on some stairs, the lower level of the mall started to flood very rapidly. People in the mall were panicking and screaming and many of them were washed away by the rushing water, but the young man managed to get up to the second floor and to saftey.

The young man's skateboard disappeared and the mall suddenly changed. There were suddenly no people and though it still looked like a mall, the window displays and stores were now more like a museum. The lights went out and the only illumination came through the skylights in the roof. The water on the first floor disappeared. Three people appeared and ran into the skateboarder. The group of three was led by a black woman who had psychic powers and could detect magic in items. The other two people were a young white woman and a middle aged black man.

I cannot remember the purpose now, but the four characters had to explore the place and find some magical items. They could not leave the shopping center/museum until they had done so. The dream gets a bit fuzzy, but as the four explored and found the magic items (several magic rocks or peices of jewelry) the brighter the building became, as if finding an item had turned the electricity back on.

When they had found all of the items, the group of people found a stairs leading the the first floor and into a room that was very much like a standard museum display. They became excited and went in and found a door from which they could exit the shopping center/museum. The dream ends as soon as they get outside into the sunlight.

The main character is me, but I do not look like me. I looked like a young boy with short blond hair, wearing a dirty grey jumpsuit and a bright orange scarf, and I was very thin. Every time I mention myself in this dream, picture the aforementioned description of the young boy.

No long before this dream I had to euthanize my first cat, Bambi, because she was very sick. I find it interesting that my memories of her, and the pain I feel from losing her, appear in the dream - but she does not actually appear herself. I also acknowledge my memories and feelings of her in the dream but it does not become lucid when I do so.

Picture of my cat, Bambi:


The dream took place in this beautiful, lush back-country that bordered the ocean with huge rocky cliffs. There was four areas to this place: a flat, grassy field that lead to the cliffs; a lightly forested area that was "hilly"; a farmhouse and country road on the otherside of the lightly forested area; and a heavier forested area that bordered the other three areas.


The dream starts off with me inside the farmhouse, tidying up rooms and packing my belongings because I was supposed to leave that place for good for some reason, though my heart was reluctant to go, because my memories awere in that farmhouse. It felt especially painful because my cat, Bambi, just died and I kept finding cat toys and other things that would bring up memories of her. There are other people there cleaning up as well, but I cannot remember specific descriptions about them. There was a middle-aged man, a young girl, and a young boy who was similar in age as I appeared in the dream.

Eventually I went for a walk because my heart ached for Bambi too much. I cannot remember now how in the dream I got there, but suddenly I was at the cliff overlooking the ocean. The cliff edge was very steep and must have been hundreds of meters above the sea level; it was one heck of a long way down. I cannot remember how or why now, but somehow I got too close to the edge and I slipped over. I grabbed a handful of grass that grew on the edge and it held me up (which totally wouldn't happen for real, but whatever). I screamed for help but I knew no one could hear me. I struggled for a bit and at first I was convinced that I was going to fall. I thought of letting go for a moment, because if I died then I would get to see my cat again, but somehow I found some sturdy handholds in the rock and pulled myself up onto the cliff top and to safety.

I laid there for a long while before gettting up and wandering along the cliff's edge (but far enough away so I wouldn't fall off again) and I came across some stray cats playing and lounging around near the cliff's edge. I pet them for a while and thought of my own cat before walking to the heavily forested area. On the way I kept running into stray cats and I wanted to believe that if I found out where they were coming from, I would find my cat Bambi, still alive. There were many strays that looked like her (gray, stripped tabby) but none that were her.

In the heavily forested area I came across a large hollow tree that many of the strays seemed to live in. I became worried about them because I was going to leave this place soon and there would be no one to take care of them. I wandered out of the forest and back to the farmhouse. I explained to the three DCs about the cats and they told me to stop worrying about it. Just then a large truck pulled up in front of the farmhouse and some construction workers got out. They worked incredibly fast and put up a chainlink fence around the farmhouse and the large hollow tree in the forest. I asked them what they were doing and they said the next people who were moving into the farmhouse were Veterinarians and wanted to make sure the stray cats were safe.

It was a great relief for me to know that the cats were going to be taken care of, and I hung around until all of the construction was done (including an extension on the farmhouse that was going to be a cat hospital), and this seemed to allow me to accept that my cat, Bambi, was gone and I could leave without regret or sadness.

Just at the end of the dream, as I was walking towards the car that would take me away from that place, I turned my head and saw a black bear by the edge of the heavily forested area. The middle aged man was there as well and he was ignoring the bear, which was ignoring him as well, and since I did not sense and danger I ignored the bear as well. The dream ended there.

Morning of December 18, 1980. Thursday.



Summary: A town called “Circus World” does not seem to exist regardless of billboard indicators.

I am riding in a car in the back seat - with my older sister Carol also in the car in the front seat, and her husband Mel is driving (it seeming to be the car they own at the time in reality). It seems to be nearing six o‘clock in the evening. We are looking for an actual town near La Crosse or West Salem apparently called “Circus World”, though that is actually an attraction in Baraboo, Wisconsin in reality. Mel is regarding the billboards to determine where to go, but we never reach the town. It almost seems as if the fictional town of Circus World had moved years before. We go past some of the same sketchy billboards a few times over - most displaying an elephant head (back and forth in both directions, north and south, on a few occasions, Mel trying to determine if there is a main road that goes to the east or west). It may also turn out to be, I reason, a small town at the end of a back road, but we do not stop anywhere or get out of the car at any point. Perhaps it is not the right “season” for the town to be visible and is somehow invisible otherwise (or more reasonably, named differently during off-season).

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In real life, a few years prior to this dream, I had given Mel my paperback copy (which I read) of Alistair MacLean’s “Circus” as a Christmas present when I was a teenager (which was a spy fiction story or thriller). Though I saw it on the bookshelf in their home some time later, I was never sure if he would have read something like that and I never asked. That was possibly at least partly the “trigger” for this dream scenario. I also thought that perhaps he did not know what the plot involved due to the “unlikely” cover and title.

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Conclusion: A self-interpreting giveaway occurs; an inadvertent revelation that reveals that what is first read as “All star (Circus)” is actually “Alistair” upon closer examination. This is during hypnopompic dissolution.

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