And now the big one - alien abductions. I've posted elsewhere on this, stressing that this only happened to me in vivid dreams and that I have no reason to think that this was anything over and above the nocturnal theatre of the mind giving me a very vivid, memorable, internally consistent show, that I am very happy to conclude I never physically left my bed at all and that this was entirely subjective. (Posts 19 and 22 on page one of this very thread - I did promise to come back with specifics...)
Also, I was well-read about this, and had prior awareness of the topic area. So I was not going at it cold; at some level my mind was primed, and I'd read the script.
But man, those dreams were vivid. Just vivid enough to leave me with the lingering "what if I'm wrong?" marginal shred of doubt. (You've got to leave that tiny little niggling doubt...)
Not quite eighteen. just having left school. The summer of 1980, about July. Aware that my A-levels weren't going to be stellar and mulling over questions of where to next. One night, a series of interlinked and connected dream episodes all of which were more vivid and stark than usual and seemed to occupy a far longer length of time than usual. With one odd peculiarity which I will discuss later, that seemed to involve somebody I hadn't, at that time, actually met yet. (the jury may be out as to whether I retrospectively added her after the event in my memory of the dream; it's not impossible).
But the general thread of the story is still clear now, forty and a bit years later.
In the first dream, I was in a car with a girl who I knew was my wife or a long-standing girlfriend. I was driving, she was in the front passenger seat. There was a just-before-a-big-row tension between us and I knew this was going to explode. The atmosphere was not pleasant at all and the location didn't help: we were on a lonely country road, a narrow road barely big enough for two lanes, with large flat expanses onboth sides that I sensed were marshes or fens of some sort. There were no trees or bushes of any sort. It was also very dark night. So when the car broke down and we got out, we were in a sort of waist-high white mist that somehow seemed to be generating just enough light to see by. And - a rarity for dreams - there was a dank rotting-vegetation marshy smell. It was cold, and standing in the waist-high mist, she lost her temper and berated me for allowing the car to break down. I got this was also masking a lot of anger with me for other reasons. (she seemed frustrated and pissed off with me in general)
And then They came out of the mist: about four feet tall at most, humanoid, creatures I read as the classic little grey aliens. ( I may have filled this in retrospectively; expecting to see them filling this role after the event). I can say I just saw four-foot tall humanoids in white one-piece jumpsuits, anyway. They took our arms and steered us away; I wondered why I was unable to prevent this and why I suddenly became very passive. the girl, let's call her C- for now, screamed (panic and fear) as two of them led her off in a different direction. I never saw her again.
Dream Two took place.
I was in what I got was a "warehouse" , a huge open floorspace with metal walls and a high roof overhead. It looked as if it was of human design and manufacture. There was concrete underfoot and the dominant colours were white and bare dull metal. Every so often there were girdered pillars supporting the roof. A sort of spiral staircase upwards wound around one of the pillars; the spiral was walled in up to about half its height,, following the curve of the stair, making it look like a part-finished cylinder.
I wasn't alone in there; there were hundreds of other people milling about, looking frghtened and bewildered, also dressed in Western European street clothes, men, women and children, all of whom seemed to be white. I looked for the humanoids: none were present. Then I realised there were some humans in here who seemed to know what they were doing, as if they were the "guards" to the prisoners. Some carried weapons.
I asked one of them abut where I was, a boy who seemed younger than I was, reassuring myself I could deal with him and take him out in a fight if I had to. (Hey. I'd just finished seven years in an all-boys' school). This kid sneered at me and told me I was "in the warehouse". then he propped his rifle against the side wall of the cylinder staircase, turned his back on me, and went up it.
I felt angry that he'd treated me with contempt, so much so that he was conveying the idea "you don't have the balls to fight or resist and you aren't worth guarding." The suddent flush of anger sparked something. I went over to the rifle he'd carelessly left and realised it was an old Lee-Enfield Mk 4. (Army Cadets. Standard issue rifle.) and I knew how to use it. I picked it up. The weight and the feel and the rifle-smell were strong. I felt confident, and knew I could get out of this place. And those stairs might lead to a way out... I went up the stairs. And, damn, the British Army rifle turned into a child's cardboard weapon, shaped to look like a rifle with an arrangement of pegs and elastic bands that mght just flick a spent matchstick. The reassuring weight and solidity had gone. I went up the staircase anyway.
This led to Dream Three, in the living room of my own home. One of the better teachers from my old school was sitting there, a guy I liked and trusted. He explained to me that the way out to safety was via the front door and the street outside, that this was another trap. He was very convincing. but the dream-me realised something was wrong. The feeling of wrongness intensified, and I realised They, whoever They were, really wanted me out in the street, for whatever they had planned next. I also knew this was not my teacher, but something shaped like him.
I groped behind a sofa cushion and found two familiar things; a builder's claw-hammer and a Stanley knife. (I know. Violent brat that I was)
Again the feeling of reassurance that I was armed. I said "I don't believe you are Mr Parr."
As i said this he turned into the classic grey humanoid. Abslutely no doubt this time. I remember the shape of the face - the big almond eyes, the hairless scalp - also, that these things have teeth. A combination of vampire fangs and cat, but the association was with some sort of reptile. (that was a clear immediate memory) I hit him with the hammer. Hard: there was a bg unpleasant thumping noise and I felt the shock of it up my arm. There was a loud hiss of pain and rage and all the lights went out. Pitch-black. I was aware of being attacked from all sides by hissing, angry, Things, and swung the hammer and the knife in big circles to drive them off. Periodically the hammer hit, or else I'd feel the drag on the knife as it ripped something. Whatever I'd hit hissed with pain. I also knew this was my home. I could navigate in the dark, to the stairs, up to my bedroom, where I'd be safe. I was focused on the retreat, on moving backward and upwards, step by step, wondering if I'd make it; knowing I had to make it back to my room. I knew anything else meant death, and that I had to make sure none of them got behind me, or I was doomed. So in the dream I was backing up the stairs, using the hammer and the knife to fight with, scoring hits, but realising they were also wounding me... then I woke up, completely wide awake, with my bed facing the open door and the stairwell (I left the door open at night)
It was dayight and about six in the morning. I got out of bed - no wounds to my legs or chest, I checked - and checked the stairs. Nothing there, not even a lingering emotion or sensation. checked the living room. No inconvenient corpse in the chair, no signs of a fight, completely on my own. Then went back to bed thinking - what the Hell was the point of all that?
The coda to all this: five years later (1985) I was at university. I met a girl called C-. got the very strong impression she'd been the girl in the dream. but as I say - maybe I was retrospectively writing her in for whatever reason, casting the character after the event. (And C- got ample reason to be angry, frustrated and resentful with me in real life...)
And that's the tale of my first "abduction during a dream!"