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About The Dog...

gattino

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
2,522
Last night I got in late and the dog was waiting for me.. I got into bed but realised it had been on its own for hours already and felt guilty. I raised my head in the dim light of the room and looked around, then realised in my half awake state that it was actually lying on the bed with me, in front of my chest, its head, now raised to what was going on, touching the underside of my chin. It nuzzled me a little and I was content she was there and seemed happy enough and lay my head down again.

Then a thought slowly dawned on me. I don't have a dog. Or more precisely she died 20 years ago.

But in the brief transition between realising this must have been a dream and being fully awake I still physically felt the sensation of its touch upon my chin.

I'm not reporting a ghost story here..hours later it lacks the impact that made me at the time want to recall the details and report them on here. This properly belongs on one of the many threads about dreams..but to place it there would be a spoiler. But what is of interest to me is something I've only had a few brief personal experiences to testify to - perhaps lucid dreamers can confirm the reality of this - that whilst in the dream world, it would seem, that reality is as solid and real and tangible as the current one. On fully waking it becomes a whispy out of focus image but while in it, it seems, its anything but. But if that fantasy world is solid and real while in it, what does it say about our ability to judge the reality of THIS one?
 
With all the lucid dreaming you've been doing, isn't there a blurring of the edges between dream and reality?
I don't know, would that be a bad thing or a good thing?
 
I don't have lucid dreams..not as I understand the term (becoming conscious and awake inside a dream and realising you are dreaming). Rather I seem to have the near mirror opposite - false awakenings: where I seem to be awake and conscious but only realise after properly waking that I was (past tense) still asleep and in a dream.

I had another last night. It was another variant on an old repeated theme I've reported here at least 4 times: being attacked from behind , at home, by an invisible entity, and responding with a script straight from the exorcist "I command you to go in the name of Christ Jesus!" (the order of the words last night were inverted like that in the more theatrical style sometimes used) I was in two minds whether to report it in this thread or under one of the old ones. But I've told the essence of it now anyway. I'll dig out the detail in a short while by listening back to the dream recording I made when I woke.
 
Memory duly refreshed, here's what appeared to be real last night until I woke "properly".

I was here in this, my bedroom, sitting on this chair I'm currently sitting on. In real life in the room next door were two german lads, airbnb guests, but in the dream (as it turned out to be) there was an unseen perception of a solo female guest in that room.

I'd already dismissed the idea of there being ghosts, but the moment I did so stuff started happening. Something invisible started pulling at the chair I'm sitting in. I have head phones on and am determined to not be gullible so am saying to myself this isn't real, its not actually happening and - this is a bit meta! - "I'm dreaming". But the "something" doesn't go away, it gets stronger and more active until its pulling the chair with me in it around this room. I'm visibly prizing my eyes open to see (a detail that resembles a previous dream I reported here which I speculated may have been a potential oobe), to tell myself this isn't real, but eyes open its still happening. So now I'm standing up shouting at the unseen thing "In the name of christ jesus I command you to go!" repeatedly. And I physically feel the cold building in the room (this is like the original post above, evidence of dreams having a solid tangible quality whilst in them). Then I slowly become "properly" awake lying flat on my back in bed and record all of the above.

One element unspoken on the recorder. Whilst, like my previous related dreams, there was no one and no thing actually seen, I did have some lingering sense when I woke that it was an old woman, the mother of the girl next door, trying to get her attention through me. But there's no memory of such a revelatory conversation taking place during the experience.

And oh yes, one thing more, I also woke aware of a low hum in my right ear throughout the experience. Is this the buzzing/vibration people claim to have before leaving their body?
 
ok a sinister spin on the above. As usual I'll leave the details with you just in case (but of course every time I do, the just in case thing never happens. I'm aware of it!)

Apart from two ghostly false awakening dreams, the past week has seen me dream twice (the night of the first such dream and again last night) of my next door neighbour Yvonne. Something I've never done before. The connection..if there is one..is that in my account of the invisible attacker my words "the girl next door" while in reference to the unspecified girl in the next room could be misunderstood as a reference to Yvonne. Which in turn would make the ghost her mum Jean, who used to lived there and died a number of years ago. That's as far as the thought went, but in general terms I thought I must tell Yvonne about my dreams about her if I see her in the street.

But just now as I was leaving the house I looked up and two crows and a magpie swooped and landed on Yvonne's roof. Don't worry for my sanity I don't literally think they're an omen, but the theatrical sense of portent the image gave suddenly gave an eerie new meaning to the first dream I had of my neighbour....

She passed me in the street and was wearing a bright blue top under a black suit jacket. Details which for some reason I found it important to note and recall. I tell her, oh, you've just reminded me.. a man came knocking for you at mine the other day, he had some test/exam results for you, you passed... Yvonne was dismissive of this missed news as she said "it doesn't matter. I've handed in my notice anyway." Oh when are you leaving? I ask. "When we move to London" she replies. Passing a test..handing in her notice..leaving..moving on... If this is connected with the more ghostly dreams the implication she may be on her way out suddenly leaps out.

There's nothing I can do but make note of it.
 
It appears to me that more and more people nowadays are using the term 'lucid dream' to mean just a very clear dream that you remember, rather than as I always use it (and it seems you do too, Gattino), to mean a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming.

Is the meaning shifting or are people just misunderstanding the term?
 
I think it's a bit of both - that is; the meaning becoming dumbed-down, or at least blurring and expanding, along with an unfamiliarity with what is a pretty rare mental state which many will never experience.
 
Andy X said:
I think it's a bit of both - that is; the meaning becoming dumbed-down, or at least blurring and expanding, along with an unfamiliarity with what is a pretty rare mental state which many will never experience.
Click to expand...

Yes, I suppose, if you've never experienced an 'actual' lucid dream, then you wouldn't know what it was (unless you'd read about it or belonged to this august site), and you might use the phrase wrongly.

But they should stop it. Immediately.
 
gattino said:
Memory duly refreshed, here's what appeared to be real last night until I woke "properly".

I was here in this, my bedroom, sitting on this chair I'm currently sitting on. In real life in the room next door were two german lads, airbnb guests, but in the dream (as it turned out to be) there was an unseen perception of a solo female guest in that room.

I'd already dismissed the idea of there being ghosts, but the moment I did so stuff started happening. Something invisible started pulling at the chair I'm sitting in. I have head phones on and am determined to not be gullible so am saying to myself this isn't real, its not actually happening and - this is a bit meta! - "I'm dreaming". But the "something" doesn't go away, it gets stronger and more active until its pulling the chair with me in it around this room. I'm visibly prizing my eyes open to see (a detail that resembles a previous dream I reported here which I speculated may have been a potential oobe), to tell myself this isn't real, but eyes open its still happening. So now I'm standing up shouting at the unseen thing "In the name of christ jesus I command you to go!" repeatedly. And I physically feel the cold building in the room (this is like the original post above, evidence of dreams having a solid tangible quality whilst in them). Then I slowly become "properly" awake lying flat on my back in bed and record all of the above.

One element unspoken on the recorder. Whilst, like my previous related dreams, there was no one and no thing actually seen, I did have some lingering sense when I woke that it was an old woman, the mother of the girl next door, trying to get her attention through me. But there's no memory of such a revelatory conversation taking place during the experience.

And oh yes, one thing more, I also woke aware of a low hum in my right ear throughout the experience. Is this the buzzing/vibration people claim to have before leaving their body?
Click to expand...

In my experience, when you find yourself trying to exorcise some spirit in your sleep, what you've got is sleep paralysis. The hum in your ear would confirm it, IMO. That's always happened to me.
 
Ulalume said:
In my experience, when you find yourself trying to exorcise some spirit in your sleep, what you've got is sleep paralysis
Click to expand...
Surely sleep paralysis is when you mentally wake up in bed, but find you can't move because your body is still asleep and so you perceive terrors in the room from the sounds and shadows to explain your predicament? I didn't perceive myself to be either in bed or immobile. I was fully immersed in an up and moving about dream (presumably) scenario.

A couple of small addenda to the tale: a) My eldest brother now tells me that when he used to live here in his teens he would repeatedly "dream" himself to be leaving his body and ascending to the ceiling and would be using all the religious language - saying an our father - to get it to stop. b) A woman came to the door yesterday asking if I'd take a parcel in for my neighbour..yes that one..not an uncommon experience it has to be said, but the first time for a while. Yvonne later came for it. She was a wearing a flowery blue blouse under a black coat. One wonders if I'd merely precognized this exchange. I told her my dreams about her..minus the morbid interpretation.
 
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gattino said:
But in the brief transition between realising this must have been a dream and being fully awake I still physically felt the sensation of its touch upon my chin.
Click to expand...

I the physical sensation part is normal because it's happened to me a number of times. Great read and thank you for sharing.
 
Ulalume said:
In my experience, when you find yourself trying to exorcise some spirit in your sleep, what you've got is sleep paralysis. The hum in your ear would confirm it, IMO. That's always happened to me.
Click to expand...

Me too! I thought that was just down to my having been raised Pentecostal.
 
'A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware of dreaming.'

To be fair, that's not all that convoluted.
 
I have had lucid dreams for the past 12 months or so. I know I am dreaming and can control it. To be totally honest I am wondering if this sort of thing happens in the early stages of getting older erhem! I'm not exactly dolally tap yet, but I am getting a bit forgetful.

Gattino ... if I was you I'd get some holy water and splash it around the room, works wonders
 
Four years later....

The weirdest dream last night ..not plot but sensation.
I currently have two different canine guests in the house. So the sound of the occasional bark or instruction doubtless penetrated my sleep to shape my dreaming. But...
As in my original post here I dreamt I was in the position I actually was ..asleep in bed on my side, closed eyes ...and in this dream version of reality whenever I closed my eyes I felt and heard my own long deceased childhood dog on my bed. I never saw it, but it was a totally immersive sensation ..the weight and movement, it's breath, and panting, its wet nose, it's excitement...it felt totally physically real, not merely a memory of an idea...I woke (both in the dream and more importantly in real life) with the sensations physically fresh .

The similarities ( now multiplied in features and intensity) to the account I started this thread with are striking.

Id almost be tempted to imagine her ghost was really there.

For the record its not some reawakened memory ..my dog never slept on my bed.
 
I have had quite a few lucid dreams (not for a couple years, the effort I had to put in to achieve them was very tiring)

Anyway, in one dream I remember a dream character pouring cold soup on me and whacking my head with a wooden spoon.

The soup smelled very strongly and the spoon hurt my head.

:)
 
sdoig said:
I have had quite a few lucid dreams (not for a couple years, the effort I had to put in to achieve them was very tiring)

Anyway, in one dream I remember a dream character pouring cold soup on me and whacking my head with a wooden spoon.

The soup smelled very strongly and the spoon hurt my head.

:)
Click to expand...
I think I've posted elsewhere on here about the dream I once had when I was hanging from the gutter of a building by my hands. One of my hands was bitten by a spider, and the pain made me let go and fall. I awoke before I hit the dream ground, but my hand continued to hurt.
 
Krepostnoi said:
I think I've posted elsewhere on here about the dream I once had when I was hanging from the gutter of a building by my hands. One of my hands was bitten by a spider, and the pain made me let go and fall. I awoke before I hit the dream ground, but my hand continued to hurt.
Click to expand...
Did you develop the ability to climb tall buildings?
 
Here's a lovely poem by A.E. Stallings.

An Ancient Dog Grave, Unearthed During Construction of the Athens Metro

It is not the curled-up bones, nor even the grave
That stops me, but the blue beads on the collar
(Whose leather has long gone the way of hides),
The ones to ward off evil. A careful master
Even now protects a favorite, just so.
But what evil could she suffer after death?

I picture the loyal companion, bereaved of her master,
Trotting the long, dark way that slopes to the river,
Nearly trampled by all the nations marching down,
One war after another, flood or famine,
Her paws sucked by the thick, caliginous mud,
Deep as her dewclaws, near the riverbank.

In the press for the ferry, who will lift her into the boat?
Will she cower under the pier and be forgotten,
Forever howling and whimpering, tail tucked under?

What stranger pays her passage? Perhaps she swims,
Dog-paddling the current of oblivion.
A shake as she scrambles ashore sets the beads jingling.

And then, that last, tense moment — touching noses
Once, twice, three times, with unleashed Cerberus.
 
gattino said:
I felt and heard my own long deceased childhood dog on my bed. I never saw it, but it was a totally immersive sensation ..the weight and movement, it's breath, and panting, its wet nose, it's excitement...it felt totally physically real, not merely a memory of an idea...I woke (both in the dream and more importantly in real life) with the sensations physically fresh .
Click to expand...
I never followed this up. 2 days after this dream/report I received an airbnb booking from a woman (with my sister's name) and a dog which was, bar its gender, the doppleganger of my long deceased one. The timing is more than noteworthy. They were here this week. There's no doubt the dog is and would be overfriendly with anybody, but even his owner was struck by how much he was all over me.

I'm not implying canine reincarnation. Well, I'm implying it, but don't believe it. But that my dream fits in with its arrival in some way is a hard notion to resist.
 
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