Sweet dreams are made of these....

[DR. BELCH]

We've discussed in countless threads strange dreams we've had and their meanings...but how many of us are writers who have used their dreams in some capacity in a story? I know Rocky, Sharklady at the WBC, and myself are definitely professional/aspiring to be professional scribes...but anyone else? And do you wish to share your somnambulent inspirations? The odder the better.

Mine (I promise, nothing dirty)--

*Josef Stalin rising from the grave, invading the home of Russian serfs, and stealing their Pepsi Cola.

*A ceiling fan slowly gaining momentum, spinning faster and faster until it threatened to break free, fly across the room, and decapitate me as I sat at the computer. I got up to leave, terrified. (Postscript: the fan actually broke free and smashed to ten million pieces on the floor a few weeks later, but didn't actually fly.)

*A weird one--watching a George Carlin routine in which he claimed John Wayne was a racist and knowingly hired members of the Ku Klux Klan to exterminate roaches from his home while he was dying of cancer in the hospital. My query is, has Carlin ever talked about John Wayne in any capacity in his routines, and said anything approaching this? And is there any truth to it? (I already checked Snopes --nada.) It sounds like something he or a comedian of his ilk would say....

[Mr. Unspeakable]

My weirdest dream was that the roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was invading Alaska and that I was a guard on the vital ice cream shipments to Alaska to help defend it. (I never figured out why ice cream was needed, maybe to build walls?) Later Marcus and I fought on the back of a moving station wagon when he tried to take the ice cream. I have no idea what this dream means (besides insanity :) ) and I've never had a weirder dream, that I can remember, anyway.

[don Jaime]

I almost never remember my dreams. At best I can recover a fragment.

About a month or two ago I had one with Yosemite Sam in it. I can't remember the details of the dream, but Sam said this and I thought it was funny. I managed to scribble it down when I woke up, otherwise I wouldn't even have it.

What did Sam say?


Whoa, there, son! You can't go in without a bathin' costume. You can't catch a pretty girl without a bathin' costume. There ain't a pretty girl dead or alive wants anything to do with a man without a bathin' costume, unless'n they're already swimmin'.

And now that I looked it up, I remember he was on a TV that was part of an animatronic ad for Six Flags Over Texas. I don't know why I dreamed that. No, I was naked. I haven't been naked in a dream since I was a little boy, when I was naked all the time and it was damn embarassing. Except the one where Texas invaded Oklahoma. And the other one where bats ate my hands. I'm glad I don't remember my dreams anymore.

[JustJack]

I hope no one gets offended by this...but, it was my dream...& it looked prety cool:
I have a lot of "Evil Deadish" dreams, where I'm an Ash-like character(either way, I usually have a chainsaw, a gun, &/or a sword), & I always have zombies in my dreams. One night, I dreamt than an airplane exploded in the sky, and a bunch of blazing zombies fell to the ground, & attacked me. Heh....it really did look REALLY cool in my head.

[Calhoun07]

I have had several somnambulent inspirations, Dr Belch. I've waken up before with entire poems in my head, songs, and cartoon ideas. It's not like it happens to me everyday, but I have had my share of them.

Two of my most unexplainable dreams are of me knowing in a dream that my sister was pregnant with her second child before even anybody else knew (and probably my sister!). When my mom told me the "news," my reply was "I know." When she asked me how I knew, I told her I had a dream about it.

And once I dreamt I had a CD of music I liked by a band called the Nixons. Believe it or not, I never heard of them before, and imagine my surprise when I was on amazon.com one day and decided for kicks to type in "Nixons" in the search engine. And imagine my surprise when I found CDs by them. I ordered one, after some deliberation, thinking that it must be some sign. I don't know what sign it was cuz I thought the CD wasn't that great. At least no where near as great as the music I heard in my dream.

[Maxie Zeus]

I had 2 dreams about ghosts, and a friend had an experience that can best be explained as a dream about a ghost. I wove them into a short story that was a kind of short anthology of ghost stories.

Speaking of which: Yes, this thread came back from the dead. I stumbled across it while moving it from the archives into its new home. I would have replied to it when it was new, but that was back in the days of old AniGen, when we were generating hundreds of replies a day, and I had no time for posting. :rolleyes:

[Squall]

What's wrong with bringing a thread "back from the dead," as long as it's interesting? Aren't all threads technically "alive" until they go so far down on the list that they finally get removed due to age and lack of posting? (I rarely look past Page 3 myself.)

Anyway, here's my two cents. :D

Hmmm... I've had some pretty strange dreams in my lifetime. I don't remember most of my dreams 10 minutes after waking up (I should start writing them down to catch some of the weirder ones), but here's a few that are fresh in my mind to this day:

*A small, flying demon comes into my room one night. His flying and turning lights on wakes me up, and once I'm up (still laying in bed), this little flying demon (red with horns and a spiked tail) starts telling me about my life. "You'll never succeed in life," "You'll never find love," "You'll oversleep and be late for work because you were talking to me," etc. I just sit and listen, annoyed and a little freaked out. Then, he gets bored, it seems, turns all the lights off, and says, "Soon it won't matter anyway." Then I wake up. To this day, that little demon seemed so real at the time I was having the dream!

*I go to high school one day, just like any other day. The only problem is, everyone stares at me, and people keep their distance while I go to class. Once in my first class for the day, I sit down in my usual chair. Everyone is shocked, and the teacher is speechless. Am I naked? I think. Nope, I have my clothes on. So then I ask, "What???" Before anyone can answer, the principal comes on the intercom. "We regret to inform the students and faculty that 'Squall' died last night in an automobile accident. Funeral services will be held this afternoon at 5:00 pm." I was dead and didn't even know it! (I woke up in a cold sweat after this dream.)

*I had this recurring dream for a while that there was a ghost in my apartment. He was an older man, with full beard and mustache, wearing clothes that looked like they were from the late 1800's (big hat and all). He never said anything, or even had emotions on his face; he would just appear, randomly, throughout my apartment as a see-through white apparition whenever the lights were out. Sometimes he'd be standing by the bed; once he was standing through the bed while I was in it, facing me. Other times, he'd be standing outside the apartment window, or next to the fridge. In one dream, I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of iced tea, and he was floating up on the ceiling, staring down at me! The freakiest version of this dream occured when I dreamed I woke up in the middle of the night, and he was floating right over my bed, facing me! He was facing the bed (his back was towards the ceiling), about six inches over the bed. He was so close I could have spit on him! I definitely woke up in a cold sweat that night! :eek: After a few months, I stopped having that recurring dream.

*When I was a young child, I had a recurring dream that involved a strange creature (kind of 'Jersey Devil-ish' I guess I would say) that would come into the back yard of our house at night. I could lay in bed in my room (which had a view of the den, and thus through those windows the back yard), and I would see it walk by periodically. Sometimes it would stop and stare, sometimes it would just pass by. Sometimes, however, it would start knocking on the window when I wasn't looking! (Then I'd notice for sure, of course.)

I guess I usually only remember the nightmares, because they freaked me out. I very rarely have 'funny' dreams. But here's a dramatic one:

*This recurring dream goes something like this: Me and this woman I like (who she is changes periodically, with whoever's on my mind that month/months I guess) just happen to be shopping in this supermarket, when some crooks bust in. Three of them, with guns and knives. They do the usual robbery thing, but as they're about to head out the door, they decide to take a hostage. Can you guess who? Of course, the woman I like! Now get this -- I do a bunch of James Bond-Rambo-type stuff, kill all the bad guys, and save her life. She gets away without a scratch, but I'm fatally wounded. Then, after I die in the hospital, she tells my folks that she really *did* have a thing for me too, but never got to tell me before I died. (Awww... the hero saves the girl, unrequited love; you get the idea.)

Sorry if my dreams sound so creepy, but those are usually the only ones I actually remember. :)