'That Ian' / April 2, 2004 12:54 AM

I rarely dream (maybe one dream per month). The most recent dream strange I had though, was that I was being chased by the mob. They cornered me in a small underground room with a wooden door which I barricaded myself behind only to discover that it was a utility closet with only one small barred window. The gangsters started shooting through the door and I scrabbled in vain at the bars, trying to pry them off the window or somehow squeeze through. Then suddenly the gangsters were in the room and I saw three gun-barrels pointed at me. I turned to run and felt a burning in my back and side. And then I died. And then I woke up.

Has anyone else ever died in their dreams?

Alice / April 2, 2004 8:17 AM

As a kid I used to have a re-occurring nightmare that H.R. Pufnstuf was trying to kill my father.

The dream would begin with me walking up the front steps of my house to the front door. I ring the doorbell and my father answers. He looks upset, hurt. With a cold feeling forming in the pit of my stomach, I ask what's wrong. He tells me he's dying. He holds out his hand, and I see a gash on the back of it.

I am confused. The cut isn't bad enough to kill a person so I think he must have been poisoned. That's when I sense him. Inside the house, at the end of the hallway behind my father, H.R. Pufnstuf is lurking. His evil, malevolent presence fills the dream and I know that Pufnstuf is killing my father and he wants to kill me, too.

Pufnstuf starts moving towards me down the hall, and I wake up.

paul / April 2, 2004 8:33 AM

I've had Pufnstuff dreams too. He wasn't nearly as malevolent, but he sure is creepy.

Funny, that the subject is dreams this morning, since I had one of those typical academic-panic dreams this morning, where I finally go to the class I've been blowing off all semester, only to walk in on exam day, unprepared.

It was a history class, and the 300 word essay question was "What do we know and what we don't we know?" The question was asked in a more philosophical way, rather than a request for the quantification of all human knowledge. I rummaged around, in typical dream panic, unable to find suitable pens, paper, or even a desk, unable to even start writing before the bell rang.

I woke up so frustrated this morning, that I actually wrote the essay right then and there.

katie / April 2, 2004 8:59 AM

asking me this question is like asking me to write ten novels. i remember my dreams almost every morning, and they're always weird.

for about six years I had reoccuring dreams about never being able to find anything I was looking for. those went away, thank goodness. now I have a lot of celebrity dreams. my favorites are the ones where I'm friends with Bob Dylan. in one of the Dylan dreams, he turned into a deer. that was nice.

Brenda / April 2, 2004 9:03 AM

I had a very vivid dream that I was going to jail for 4 months for cheating on a test (this was just a year ago, mind you), and the thing I was really worried about was who was going to take care of my cats and my apartment while I was gone.

The next morning, 9:00 a.m. sharp, the HR witch called me into her office and laid me off.

I found a new job 4 months later.

[insert Twilight Zone theme music here]

emily / April 2, 2004 9:04 AM

I once had a dream that I gave birth to a cat.

ken / April 2, 2004 9:04 AM

I've had this dream where the entire city seems deserted and as I wander aimless I come to an old train station by the lake (somewhere across from printers row) and there is a very large crowd of very solemn people dressed in late 1800 fashion (even though the city looks present day). The extremely weird part is when I couldn't get the image of the train station out of my head, I decided to try and find it. Through some research I found it to be the old Dearborn station (its in the South Loop on Polk). I had never seen the place before and I wonder why it's in a different location in my dream.

Jonathan / April 2, 2004 9:05 AM

I once dreamt I was spitting into a wishing well, a dream interrupted by my new girlfriend because I had spit in her face.

A year later I dreamt I was in a karate fight and jumped up, kicked over her shelves and smashed her coffee pot.

And we're still together.

Ian / April 2, 2004 9:14 AM

Between you, me and the wall, I had a doozy myself last night. Get this—a corn-fed harvest mouse, a hooker, a nun, a Flemish peasant woman, whips, chains, whistles, yo-yos, a circus midget, my grandma riding by on a bicycle giving me the finger and a duck.

emily / April 2, 2004 9:14 AM

I had a spitting dream recently, too. I dreamt that I ate something that tasted bad and had to spit it out. My husband woke me up yelling that there was something warm and wet on his face.

anne / April 2, 2004 9:33 AM

A couple of weeks ago I had a very vivid dream that I was smoking lots of cigarettes. I could feel the smoke going in and out of my lungs and kept on lighting up more. (I think, in reality I was just breathing really heavily.) But I didn't remember it until a day or so later when my office mate came in to ask another office mate for a cigarette. The whole thing was weird b/c I don't even smoke.

Jake / April 2, 2004 9:35 AM

I frequently have dreams that my teeth are falling out. Just last night, I dreamt that I was at a friend's house eating dinner, and one of my back teeth felt loose, so I reach back there with my tongue and it knocked it loose, but it was obviously still dangling there. So I try to put it back in place but the tooth completely falls out into my hand in a pool of blood.

I haven't lost a tooth since I was, what, 12? But the feeling of the loose tooth is so real that it freaks me out every time.

Time to visit the dentist, I guess.

Paul / April 2, 2004 9:53 AM

I have teeth dreams too, Jake. They really did subside once I visited the dentist after a long (too long - go to the dentist kids) hiatus. But then I had one just a few days ago, in which I just reached in and pulled out four of my teeth.

My favorite oddball dream was from many years ago, when I experienced an entire relationship (well, a 7-month one) over the course of one night. I woke up feeling sad that we broke up. Only possible influence? TNG, "The Inner Light."

Kim / April 2, 2004 10:10 AM

paul and jake, i've been dreaming about my teeth falling out about once a week for the last couple of years. it disturbed me so much that i actually have looked it up in "dream interpretation journals" and apparently it is a very common dream and supposedly means that you feel like you are losing control of something in your life. i'm not sure if that explanation explains anything in my life and i really don't believe in dream interpretation anyways, but it is an interesting analysis nonetheless.

lacey / April 2, 2004 10:14 AM

Ah Star Trek, the cause of *many* strange dreams for me. Good call, Paul.

My Weird Dream of the Week involves me having my spinal cord severed as part of a piece of performance art. Of course, the purpose is so that I die...and I was so HAPPY that I was going to be a part of this project. I was going to be some kind of martyr for art. Crazy.

jennifer / April 2, 2004 10:19 AM

When I was 7, I dreamed that my family and I were coming home from grocery shopping, and while pulling into the apartment complex, I noticed a bluish light and smoke wafting out of our windows. As we walked up the back stairs, the same light and smoke were coming out from under the back door. My step-father opened the door and sitting in the haze and smoke in our dining room was the devil (or what my 7 year old brain thought the devil would look like), on this huge gothic looking throne. "Don't look surprised," it said. "It's Devil's Day. You knew I'd be coming for you." A scary half dragon/half dog with no back legs starts dragging itself toward me and the devil just laughs this really creepy baritone laugh. I woke up crying. I still have it occasionally, and it's not gotten any less frightening.

I blame the origination on the dream squarely on the shoulders of the movies "Legend" and "Devil Dog: The Hound From Hell", two of my early favorites.

I also have teeth dreams all the time.

Dan / April 2, 2004 10:28 AM

No lie: I used to have absurd but frightening dreams as a kid. Totally absurd in hindsight, but frightening in the dream.

A good example: I had this re-occuring dream that Freddy Krueger was chasing me and my wheelchair-bound grandmother through Venture (which was like, the Chi-town K-Mart). Freddy kept announcing over the P.A. system that "THE STORE IS CLOSING IN 15 MINUTES!!! ...IN 15 MINUTES!!!"

Naz / April 2, 2004 10:30 AM

Dreams, I've had my fair share. Always remember most of them. They've run the gamut from fantastical to utterly realistic that I believe it the next morning. When they're realistic they tend to be ones about dating someone. And never anyone I know.

I used to get the falling one all the time. I secretly loved them, it was bungess jumping without actually doing it - in your dreams. I'd wake up just before hitting the bottom. I'd always fall from amazingly high spots.

Has anyone had a proper nightmare? As in it feels like something is above you suffocating you and you feel like you can't move but you're trying to will yourself to do so? You're completely awake but you can't open your eyes and after a while, you finally do so and wake up. A little scary those are.

Strangest dream had to do with a magical kindgom where I was hiding away in the bushes outside some large castle either stalking or hunting someone in there and a lion that decapitates heads via guillotine was romaing the lands, lord of the forest outside of the castle.

I could talk about these forever. There's some fascinating stuff from everyone here.

jennee / April 2, 2004 10:30 AM

I have a recurring dream in which I am driving straight up the St. Louis Arch.

Hugh / April 2, 2004 12:06 PM

About this time last year, the Cubs were in spring training and Senator Peter Fitzgerald announced he would not seek another term, and I had my strangest dream:

Senator Fitzgerald decided to chuck it all and walk-on to Cubs spring training. This caused a media sensation as he did not resign as much as he abandoned his senatorial duties. Turns out he was a surprisingly effective middle-infielder with a capable bat, and made the team. And he was happier.

davin / April 2, 2004 12:54 PM

i have teeth dreams as well! odd.

once when i was about 14, i used to play this computer game that was quite a challenge to me (oh man do i sound like a dork already). anyway, i had a dream how to beat the game. i woke up and used the strategy and it worked!

one other time i was home on brake from school and i dreamt that my roommate was moving out. well wouldn't ya know, i came back from break and he was moving out!

strange. so strange.

Naz / April 2, 2004 1:02 PM

Davin - those aren't dreams, those are premonitions.

'That Ian' / April 2, 2004 1:19 PM

I had a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I had a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I had a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character....

Actually, I don't think that dream is mine alone, I think that is a dream we all share.

amyc / April 2, 2004 1:30 PM

I often have nightmares -- once a month at least -- that people are watching me pee. It's one of my remaining phobias.

Andrew / April 2, 2004 4:15 PM

I had a dream earlier this week that I had a baby -- as in, I underwent childbirth, nursed the infant, etc. It was a preternaturally strong baby, able to lift its head and stand (by holding onto my hands) shortly after birth. In the world of the dream, this was a natural, matter-of-fact thing.

Later in the dream, I drove a car, baby inside, through a posh hotel lobby like it was nothing unusual. Go figure.

christian / April 3, 2004 6:07 PM

Superman verses the Giant Sock Monkey of Doom.

An odd, live action animated dream. Superman was voiced by Vinnie Barbarino, Clark by John Travolta. He was a talking head somewhat like that of a guest star from south park, as where all the characters in the dream. Lois was voiced by Janeane Garofalo. Lex?s by Tom Selleck wearing a giant foam cowboy hat.

I guess Superman was battling the Giant Sock Monkey of Doom, voiced by Jeff Goldblum circa the fly, mostly grunting and saying yes in that weird way he does. It took place in Chicago and the suburbs, mostly on the train tracks. It seemed like a mixture of bad animation and a mighty morphing power ranger?s giant monster attacking a cardboard city.

Fun to be had!

robin.. / April 5, 2004 9:59 AM

in my dreams i have:

*swum the la brea tar pits to fight skeletor.
*folded the pages of the middle of a book into a tube and screwed it with a penis i do not have in real life.
*plucked my brown, rotted tooth out of my mouth.
*apologized to people i have actually wronged in real life.

also, my recurring theme from as far back as i can remember up until my first year in college was my eyes sticking shut. i'd be going along in a dream, any dream, and i'd blink and my eyes would just stick shut. it's one of those things where you think "oh, this definitely means something" but you don't know what that something is...

Zesmerelda / April 5, 2004 10:46 AM

I have a reoccurring dream about reading a book. I don't know what the book is, but I understand what I read. However, as soon as I realize I'm reading something and I try to consciously remember what I've read, I wake up. Wierd.