I'm curious to hear about sensations that others might have experienced in dreams that would be absolutely impossible in real life. I've had several that I can never forget, even though they weren't "real."

Once, I dreamed of a boy with deformed hands who couldn't talk. Someone in the dream told me that if I touched his hands I would understand him. I reluctantly put out my hands for him to take hold, and as he did, suddenly I was overcome by a sensation that can not be adequately described in waking language. My own thoughts were shoved aside to make room for his, and suddenly I was seeing images that weren't originating from my own brain. The only way I can think of to describe it is "mental rape." In that moment, I felt like I knew what it's like to be raped, and I woke up in terror.

On another occasion, I was shot in the head. There is no doubt in my mind even today that the sensation accurately replicated what it feels like to be murdered in such a manner. I was counting money with one other person in an old house with wood-paneled walls, and we heard a couple of muffled pops come from somewhere else in the house. I knew they must have been gunshots, but they were just muffled enough that I thought my "colleague" might not have heard them. There was a staircase nearby, and I tried to rush up the stairs as if I had business on the second floor. Unfortunately, after I had gone only a few steps up, the other guy said, "What was that?" He was somehow superior to me, so I had to act on his question. I trotted back down and said, "I'll go see." As I was coming down pretty quickly, I was almost at a jog as I rounded the doorway into the next room. I came face-to-face with the barrel of a pistol and tried to duck away as I said in surprise, "Whoah!" Whoever held that pistol fired on impulse, and the shot struck my right temple at nearly point blank range. There were four simultaneous sensations that I can only describe one at a time. For one, my head was impacted as if I'd been kicked by a horse, and it flew backward with force. Also, I was painfully aware in a fraction of a second that my skull had shattered into my brain. Curiously, I only heard the first few milliseconds of the gunshot in my right ear, because my ear drum was instantly shattered by the noise. Finally, I also felt the powder burns on my face and neck from having been so close to the barrel when it went off. I say "finally," but that wasn't the end of the experience. I also felt myself slumping to the floor as my body slid down the wall, but my senses were now corrupted. I couldn't see, and I also couldn't really experience what was happening in the room anymore. I was vaguely and briefly aware that I'd been shot, but my awareness was rapidly closing in. The sensation was a bit like lights being turned off in a house as sections of my brain closed down. As that last tiny light of awareness was fading away, I woke up and sat straight up in bed with a gasp. Later, when I thought back on that dream, I realized that if anyone ever asks me "Head or chest?" like you see on the movies, I think I'm going to say "Chest." I get the idea now that a head shot isn't the quick and painless thing that most people think it is.

What have you experienced that can't have possibly happened to you in real life?