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Do You Dream In Colour / Color? With Or Without Sound?

Do You Dream In Colour? Do You Dream With Sound?

  • No - black and white only, no sound

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No - black and white only, but with sound

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Yes - colour but no sound

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Yes - colour and sound

    Votes: 33 100.0%
  • Total voters
    33
A

Anonymous

Guest
I've always dreamt in colour, but various sources seem to suggest that black and white tends to be more common. Which seems strange as we don't live our waking lives in monochrome... I'm just interested in a quick straw poll to see if this is really "true".

Also, as an aside, do people tend to have sound/music in their dreams too?
 
I dream in colour and with sound. Strangely enough, my dream colours are normally blues or greens - lots of water or forest in my dreams - yet in real life I'm blue-green colour blind.
 
Full tehnicolour and surround sound, and music, the whole shebang :D

I read a report once that suggested there are 2 types of thinkers as well, those who think in words and those who think in pictures. I do both.
 
For me it's the lot as well, though in spite of being a musician (no jokes here, please - I can play more than one instrument:D ) I don't often hear music, as in background sounds, but when there is music it takes full centre stage. My dreams have a very strong narrative content, occ. they include ridiculous and impossible events and things inc. transformations, but usually are pretty believable.
 
I don't remember dreams that often, but when I do they're often pretty weird (radioactive spiders eating people in the town, people turning into vampires) and very occasionally have then happened in the future (the only two times I recall are when I was young, and I dreamt I'd be playing at my grandparent's house on the carpet with my toy cars, then a short time later I was, I thought "Hey, this is what I dreamt!", the second time being a couple of years ago, I dreamt I was in a strange kitchen I'd never seen before, eating lunch with a bunch of people I'd never seen before, and I woke up and actually thought "What a weird dream". Then, a few months later, I was sent by the Job Centre on the "Back To Work" course and there I was, exactly like in the dream, one specific lunchtime, it was quite surprising. So I took it as a sign and asked a girl on the course out, but she said no. Anyway, it's also happened a few other times, but I can't really remember them (except a geekier instance where I had a premonition that a guy who produced some software that was in competition with mine would make a new release, but that could have just been coincidence)).

But they've always been in colour, and always had sound. I've always wondered where the belief that some dream in black and white, and I've even met people who seemed to insist that everyone does and if I say I dream in colour then I'm obviously lying :rolleyes:
 
Colour, sound and even smell. I also sometimes take drugs in (lucid) dreams and 'feel' their effects.
 
Ooh, Atch, I used to have a recurring dream about being a heroin addict, and would "feel" the effects. Never tried the stuff in reality, never would to be honest, so suspect it was a case of watching too much Trainspotting at an impressionable age... I had an interesting dream about an opium den once though. I think I was Lord Byron in that, which was, um, interesting. Being a girl and all.
 
I've never taken drugs or anything in dreams (probably as I've never done any in real life either, and have little interest in them) but I'm pretty sure I have smelled stuff.

And I've also heard people say "You can't die in a dream, if you did you'd really die" which I've also tried to argue with them about, as I've died in a dream definitely once (the dream continued with me as a ghost), and I think almost a few times (e.g. me waking up). And I'm pretty sure I have died in dreams and other stuff happened (e.g. I once dreamt I was meeting up with a friend outside the main entrance of Heriot Watt University and a nuclear bomb went off over Edinburgh), but I don't remember what happened afterwards ;)
 
Atch said:
Colour, sound and even smell. I also sometimes take drugs in (lucid) dreams and 'feel' their effects.
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That's just bizarre. I just woke up from a dream about being given some kind of white powder and paper on my tongue, by Stephen Fry, and then feeling a bit strange.

I dream in colour, sound also. And other senses - taste, touch. In the dream whatever was on my tongue was fizzy, then he put a tab of something on top of that.
I do hope this isn't libelous. "Stephen Fry Helped Me Drop Sherbet and Acid Cocktail in Dream".

Another interesting question relating to this is whether people dream from their own POV, or from "another angle", viewing themselves as a camera would, or as another person or persons viewing themselves.
I've experienced all of these, the most amazing being where I am everyone in the dream. I think these dreams come from my love of storytelling, where I am effectively all the characters.
I've been both sexes in dreams, I don't find this that remarkable for various reasons.

Oh and as to dying in dreams - I have died in a dream but continued watching the action, so I don't buy that one at all. I had the nuclear war dream too Colin! Us poor children of the 80s.
If you pee in a dream you will probably pee in real life. Dying, I doubt it. But who's to know.
 
I'm pretty sure in dreams I've been myself and other people, but not at the same time in a "I'm everyone in the dream" sense :) I think I have also been an outside observer of myself in dreams (ala TV/film) though. And the usual "knowing something with no way to actually have found out" that comes with dreams ;)

I've also peed in dreams. Normally it's followed fairly quickly by me waking up bursting for the toilet, so I assume my bladder is clever enough not to let go when I'm sleeping, but still get the message to my brain ;)
 
Pregnancy seems to be giving me incredibly vivid dreams that I always remember the next day, always in full all-singing, all-dancing technicolor, even feeling things that arn't there. For instance, last night I dreamt about a cute piglet in a blue knitted jumper, which I picked up and kissed. Not only could I feel the weight of it in my arms, but I could feel it's bristly hair.
:)
 
I had a dream on Sunday night, for example - I was snorting cocaine at one point (just after the ghostly girl floating at the window looking in and my mate being flayed alive then having his skin stuck back on again) and I definitely remember it changing the way my dream 'being' felt.
 
I also have Atch's drug thing. Interestingly, once it was LSD, which I'd never taken at that point, and I had a full-blown trip anyway, which probably wasn't very realistic but my mind still invented it all.
 
Colin said:
(e.g. I once dreamt I was meeting up with a friend outside the main entrance of Heriot Watt University and a nuclear bomb went off over Edinburgh), but I don't remember what happened afterwards ;)
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That sounds like a nightmare! Heriot Watt's Riccaton campus (I presume you mean that one) is like an airport with no planes out! Imagine being stuck there forever!

I often dream of schools and colleges. Some times I wander into a classroom full of friends who I haven't seen for years. In the dream they are all still 13 and want to know what this 30 something is doing creeping around their school. Last night I dreampt I was going back to my old high school and I got very worried because I was wareing jeans and not uniform, then I remebered I was a grown up and could wear what I liked. Next thing I saw an old school friend coming out of the building. She was actually the age she is now (though I haven't seen her for a few years) and seemed to have lost a lot of weight and looked wonderful. She was wearing a slightly 70's green dress - so I know I was dreaming in colour.
I sometimes hear music in dreams - sometimes it is quite good. A friend of mine who is a musician told me he once dreampt he was at a ritual with the most beautiful choral music being sung. Unfortunately he couldn't remeber enough to write it down.
 
Austen said:
That sounds like a nightmare! Heriot Watt's Riccaton campus (I presume you mean that one) is like an airport with no planes out! Imagine being stuck there forever!
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Yup, that very campus, as that's where me and him (and our various other friends, who weren't in my dream) went to University ;) The first job I had post-University was also with a company in the research park there, so it's not surprising my brain picked it as a place to use. It's not the most likely place I'd meet my friend these days (which was what we were doing out there in the dream), as my friend is in California and any times he's been home visiting I've gone to see him at his parents house ;)
 
When I was little, I normally dreamed in black and white, and it was considered unusual to dream in color. There's a scene in a Trixie Belden book (The Red Trailer Mystery) in which one of the girls - Honey I think - tells about a dream she had which was "like a Technicolor movie" and the other girl tells her that means "she's a genius or something." Lately, however, not only are all my dreams in color; but so are everyone else's!

I think the difference is color TV. If we look at dream traditions, such as the belief that dreams reflect the travels of the soul, that ought to mean that people remembered their dreams as being similar to their waking experience. With the advent of photography, particularly motion pictures, we had another experience to integrate into our dreams, one that handily reproduced the dream-like experience of seeing action we didn't take part in, but nevertheless identified with. Color began to leach out of dreaming. Now, however, we all watch color TVs and movies, and the black-and-white experience is limited to unusual events and moving around at night without the lights on.

I occasionally get tactile sensations in dreams, and once tasted an excellent pastry (while holding hands with Gillian Anderson), but I have so far never smelled anything in a dream that I am aware of.
 
I dreamt I was a werewolf last night, very real, very disturbing and very colourful with sounds, touch and everything. Won't go into too much detail as it was also a bit raunchy :D
 
That's just bizarre. I just woke up from a dream about being given some kind of white powder and paper on my tongue, by Stephen Fry, and then feeling a bit strange.
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Naw, by all accounts 'high' dreams aren't that rare.

I've occassionally had dreams where I smoked a joint and it felt just like it would if you did it for real.

The one I hate is when I've managed to quit smoking, after weeks of avoiding cigarettes I invariably have a dream where I smoke one, and it feels just like it should, then I feel really guilt in the dream:hmph:
 
Interesting addendum to the blue jumpered piglet dream, I found out today that I'm expecting a boy...

:eek:
 
Peni said:
I think the difference is color TV.
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I like this theory!

I have tasted things in dreams. Bacon dipped in vinegar was the oddest thing! :cross eye

Last night I dreampt was doing some very bad art work, really inept pencil sketches - I even felt embarassed in the dream!
 
I keep trying to lucidly dream of smelly, colourful, tasty things for me to eat, but so far I've only achieved a definite rememberable colour, it was brown, some kind of coffee based snack bar I was being offered.
I think dreams are going to reflect the every day perception of a person, so they would be in colour. The TV thing is plausible, if someone watched a lot of TV, maybe several hours before bed time, and that they didn't have much happening the rest of the day that the brain saw worthy of processing, so it just dealt with the TV programmes.
 
Color, sound, sometimes all the rest. Lately (last year or so), dreaming about dead relatives (mom, aunt, grandfather). Not as if they're trying to communicate (my wife has those dreams), but just being there. Last night dreamed I was looking for hidden money at my late aunt's house (which of course looked nothing her house had looked), and had to find it before she got back. Very strange, very vivd. I've noticed that diphenhydramine, commonly found in decongestants and OTC sleep aids, gives me especially real and vivid dreams.
 
I once dreamed that I was killed in a sword fight. The sword, which was huge, went right through my heart and out of my back, it hurt like hell, then everything went black.
After what seemed like quite a long time (so I must have been aware of being dead) I woke up.

Now, we've all heard about the theory that if you die in a dream, you also die in real life, but here I am, alive and well.

Has anyone else experienced something similar?
 
I dream in colour and sound ... I was on Prozac a few years ago [for Seasonal Affective Disorder - and it doesn't help!] and by gawd the dreams!! All those colours!!
Years ago when I was crippled by a back injury I used to have dreams where I was running like the clappers in various places, very odd ... :spinning
 
Elffriend said:
Full tehnicolour and surround sound, and music, the whole shebang :D
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Me too! My dreams are very vivid and particularly musical. This is slightly surprising, as I am not a very musical person in my waking life - I don't play an instrument, and I can't sing a note. I do wish to emphasise the truly orchestral music I experience sometimes in my dreams.


I once dreamed that I was killed in a sword fight. The sword, which was huge, went right through my heart and out of my back, it hurt like hell, then everything went black.
After what seemed like quite a long time (so I must have been aware of being dead) I woke up.

Now, we've all heard about the theory that if you die in a dream, you also die in real life, but here I am, alive and well.

Has anyone else experienced something similar?
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Yes. You know those dreams where you fall off a cliff and wake up just before you hit the deck? Well, I've had a dream where I actually hit the ground!! I too am alive and well. :)

Interesting thread.

Big Bill Robinson
 
I mostly dream about people I've never met and on the rare occassion I have known them it's always someone from years ago. Always in colour and with sound too.
 
My dreams are always lucid...so they're in colour and with sound and all the other senses. In fact, I sometimes wake up suddenly feeling sick from some smell or other!
I have dreamed about dying. Once I dreamed I was falling off a cliff when I was about 15 and when I hit the ground with a sharp pain...I woke up with pins and needles all over me for a few seconds.
Wierd dreams which reoccured were the typical ones where I floated slowly out of my bed up to the ceiling and desperately clawed at the surface to stop myself from being dragged across and out of the small open window. All very very realistic!
I once had a dream where I was staring at a poster, layed flat on the ground below my bedroom window. I was l ooking directly down at it, (It was an anti McDonalds poster) and when I awoke, I was looking directly at it and it was in the same field of vision as in the dream, which led me to believe that I was seeing a juxtaposition *Urgh word!!* of reality and dream fusion.
It's happened a few times that has mates!
Still on dreams...I remember a thread where someone offered a suggestion that we dream at the waking point. I find that theory quite realistic as, another dream myth states that dreaming is done when we are in our deep sleep periods, (After about 40 minutes and doing rapid eye movements?) But that's crap because , as we all know, dropping off for five minutes can still give you the illusion that you have dreamed for hours.
Dust.... No?....Anyone?
 
I have always dreamed in colour, all the other senses too, taste, smell, but I once had a dream where I was watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon in black and white, I turned to the person next to me and asked why it wasn't in colour but I woke up before I got an answer.:confused:
 
I'm storry, but I'm having trouble understanding the poll numbers here.

Previous statistics I've seen suggest that most people dream in black and white rather than color, or in monocromatic color at best.

Similarly the majority of dreamers reportedly experience very muted sounds (if sounds at all).

Yet 98 percent of Forteans have dreams with color AND sound!

Seriously, is there something THAT much different about the Fortean mind?

If so, I REALLY flunk out on my Fortean test, since I am that lonely one percent on the poll!
 
Maybe the statistics you have read have been wrong? I always thought most people dreamt in Technicolor and stereophonic sound.
 
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