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Floating Downstairs / Floating Down Stairs

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Anonymous

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I used to have the 'floating downstairs' dreams as a kid, only for me to realise them when I was about 10 and fell downstairs at a neighbours' house and crash through the glass door at the bottom of the stairs. I didn't even get a scratch, although I went straight through the bottom pane of one of those '60s doors with the three glazed panels. And I did 'feel' the floating sensation from my dreams as I fell in reality. Not scared, just floating.
 
There have been several mentions of this on the "Night Terrors" thread, in this forum.
 
Yeah

I know. Just pressed the 'new thread' button instead of 'reply'.

Am I dumb or what?
 
I've dreamt of floating downstairs in the same manner, with feet hovering an inch or two above the stairs themselves - the whole thing, I imagine, looking like the Bisto Kid adverts.

I had another one time, where I found myself floating just above car-roof level, travelling down the street. The ridiculous situation shook me into becoming lucid, and I willed myself to climb higher - but to no avail.
 
Just once I had a floating down the stairs dream as a kid. So real, I'll never forget it...
Then there was the night the gollywog came alive :eek!!!!:
 
I've heard dozens of 'floating downstairs' stories - it's always children of a certain age. Sometimes awake!
I've no idea what the significance (occult or psychological) of stairs is - Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes once wrote that 'no-one walks upstairs alone', but I'm not sure what he was on about, to be honest.

Please, please, please tell me about the night the gollywog came to life. This is the sort of stuff that gets me through the day.
 
Up until I was about three years old I had no problem being put to bed alone. I slept in a cot. After the night the gollywog came alive I cried almost every night when put to bed, up until I was about six.
I was lying in my cot, and as I always remember, I was awake. I was alerted to a squeaky chattering noise from under the cot. Suddenly my gollywog popped up and jabbered crazily at me in through the bars of the cot, as if he were trying to get in. I looked down at the ground yelling at my brother/sister to stop. Alas, gollywog had no visible means of support or animation! I screamed, and I screamed and I screamed. Gollywog jabbered and jabbered on. Eventually my mother burst through the bedroom door to investigate my screams. I was plucked from the cot and diagnosed as feverish. Calpol or the like probably ensured a sound sleep that night. However, many sleepless nights were spent thereafter anticipating... but gollywog never came alive again.
 
I used to get this dream a lot were I could float down the stairs I thought it was only me and it is strange for people do have very similar dreams as me.?
 
HYPMOGOGIC HALLUCINATIONS

I have hynogogic hallucinations occassionaly. I suppose it's pretty similar, my dreams are played out in front of me and seem absolutely real ...until I wake up of course. It usually happens when I'm over tired. Unlike yours they are usually pretty scary.
 
hospitaller said:
However, many sleepless nights were spent thereafter anticipating... but gollywog never came alive again.
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Nor will he any more, Hospitaller, thanks to the Politically Correct Brigade!

Carole
 
carole said:
Nor will he any more, Hospitaller, thanks to the Politically Correct Brigade!

Carole
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I dont think the golliwog doll itself was thought likely to cause offence, but the word wog may have done...by the way what does that word mean, I allways thought it meant western oriental gentleman, but I'm probably wrong.:confused:
 
i used to have a dream where i'd float downstairs to find my mums old teddy bear at the bottom...
 
A few times as a child I found myself at the bottom of stairs with no memory of descending the flight, despite a clear memory of being at the top about to take the first step.
I don't think this can be put down to the popular notion of the strange powers of childish innocence as the mysterious transportation never happened with a corridor or hallway; it was only stairs.
The R. Chetwynd Hayes comment intrigues me. I also have some vague recollection of a quote about the number of angles involved in staircases allowing some Lovecraftian incursion, though I have no idea of the origin.
Are stairs innately strange? Consider - how many ghostly footsteps are heard occuring on stairs, whether or not the flight still exists, or how many are heard upstairs while the witness is downstairs. How intrinsically strange are these incremental platforms?
 
i used to get told by my mother that i had gone downstairs in the night but was asleep and didnt remember it so maybe the dreems are R.E.M just before you awake at the bottom of the stairs

cas
 
My daughter used to 'float' when awake. She'd know what sweets were hidden on what very high shelf and what her little brother was doing upstairs when she'd been in my sight all along. She'd tell me how she floated up and down and looked at things at will, but I couldn't get my head around it until years later when I met someone who knew, spookily, that
I had a daughter who could astrally project......ah, so that's what it was....
 
I also have these dreams about a strange kind of running, bounding many feet into the air with each step. Sometimes I go so high I get scared of the impending plummet to the ground. I read somewhere that a certain Native American tribe used this form of locomotion, with great gliding steps to get from one place to another (possibly in Gould & Pyle's 'Anomolies and Curiosities of Medicine' - not sure.) I wonder if drugs were involved? (Not by me, but by the 'Indians')
 
dead flag said:
A few times as a child I found myself at the bottom of stairs with no memory of descending the flight, despite a clear memory of being at the top about to take the first step.
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That is the case with what happened to me (see the 'Night Terrors' thread).
I could almost swear that I was awake after during these instances. I would step off the top stair and go completely rigid and feel a warm, tingly sensation all over my body. I would see each stair disappear beneath my feet, and would be floating a couple of inches above them. All the while my arms would be tight against my sides. There was absolutely no sense of panic at all. The reason I feel that I was awake is because I can remember being told off by my mum for opening a packet of Cheese and Onion crisps so early in the morning before having my breakfast just after I 'landed' at the foot of the stairs. I then said to her that I'd floated down the stairs.

The levitational value of Tayto Cheese and Onion?
Not for me to say...!
 
I did almost the same thing... Early one morning my mum asked me to fetch the biscuits from the tin downstairs. Off I went and floated down the stairs to get them, I didn't float back up. I remember doing it all the time.

I definatley remember doing it in the middle of the night too. A feeling of excitment at the first leap, our stairs had a ninety dgree turn half way down, gliding round the corner was most exilarating!

I don't know when I stopped, but feel that the first step just got harder and harder. As I got older I became more worried about what would happen if I didn't float down.

Astral projection? How to explain the biscuits?

I though it was only me... It's nice to know that there are other floaters(?!) ot there:)
 
-M- said:
I did almost the same thing... Early one morning my mum asked me to fetch the biscuits from the tin downstairs. Off I went and floated down the stairs to get them, I didn't float back up. I remember doing it all the time... I definatley remember doing it in the middle of the night too. A feeling of excitment at the first leap, our stairs had a ninety dgree turn half way down, gliding round the corner was most exilarating!... As I got older I became more worried about what would happen if I didn't float down.
I though it was only me... It's nice to know that there are other floaters(?!) ot there:)
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I remember feeling disappointed when I tried to float back up! I just couldn't do it -- I couldn't get that same 'fizzy' feeling that I assumed was essential to 'flight'. I guess that's why I've always felt that it wasn't me doing the floating -- rather that something was helping me float.

As to your coining of the term 'floaters' to describe our situation...I can't see the film rights being handed out until a review of the name is made, can you?!

"FLOATERS" -- a film by David Cronenberg. Produced by Viz Films and Channel Four.
 
-M- said:
I don't know when I stopped, but feel that the first step just got harder and harder. As I got older I became more worried about what would happen if I didn't float down.
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This reminds of H2G2's instructions for flying:

"Throw yourself at the ground - and MISS!"
 
I used to do this all the time when I was very young. I remember it nearly always ended with me floating over myself in bed and zooming back down into my body - when I would wake up! The strange thing is I remember distinctly having the sensation that I was able to touch objects physically as I floated around the house - does anybody else remember being able to do this?:confused:
 
I wonder...is this related to the way our brains handle information and therefore effect the universe at a quantum level? As we pass into increasingly left brain teaching/learning styles, the effect we have becomes negative and tied in to the 'established' laws of classical physics?

(*trans. by Molly Sugden - 'Perhaps it's magic what you can't do when you learn about fractions and that')
 
P.S. - just read the previous page. The RCH reference is from many of his books, which often feature spooky staircases. Oddly enough, they also mention a much less convoluted version of the 'theory' I put forward above, albeit with King in Yellow references thrown in.

The HPL link is The Dreams in the Witch House, I think. A must for any Fortean who was ever afraid of Gef the Mongoose, an apparition which I am determined to make a household name across the land.
 
Not exactly the same as floating downstairs but I had avery weird experience when about 18.

Asleep in my parents house I was woken by a light shining on my bedroom door. Now all the family were fairly night oriented so for a brief instant I thought it was my younger sister wandering about. Then I realised that it was an intruder.

I threw my duvet at the door yelling various imprecations and grabbed the first thing that same to hand. In my case, as my favorite sport was fencing and at the time I collected swords, it happened to be a sword bayonet about 75 cm long. The stranger, not unnaturally, was in flight I heard him thumping down the stairs. I reached the door to my room.

The door was nearly closed by the duvet and I remember feeling resistance as I tried to open it. Next I recall being at the bottom of the stairs seeing the intruder's back about 1.5m in front of me as he vanished through the front door. I ran after him and he vaulted the gate still just out of distance. At the gate I stopped, opened it and stood in the road yelling at him to "... come back here, you B*st*rd!"

For some reason, perhaps because I was naked and waving a sword, he declined my invitation and sped off. I went back inside and to tell my thoroughly awakened family what had happened and ring the police. I went back to my room to dress and oddly I could not get in through the door. It was still only 5 or 6 inches ajar and jammed by the duvet.

Now this was not a dream, the break-in was logged and investigated. It was one of a series of robberies with a similar MO. My description of height and build matched what was known about the robber. The method of entry through the french window was clear. The planned exit through a previously opened front door was a commonplace. There was small pile of valuables had been assembled for the thief to pick up on his way out if undisturbed.

The question is how had I arrived so quickly at the foot of the stairs? I still can find no logical answer. I have never been slim so getting past the bedroom door should have opened it wider but perhaps not. I could have closed the gap by jumping down the stairwell onto the 1.2 m high blanket chest, but the ornaments papers and flowers on it's top were undisturbed. Even at that time I could not recall getting down the stairs. Teleportation? Nah I don't beleive in that sort of thing.
 
This is so weird!

This is sooo weird. I thought it was just me!

As a kid (about 4 or five yrs old)I used to have this dream over and over. It always followed the same thread.

Deep in the night I'd find myself floating from my bed and moving gently through my bedroom door and out onto the landing. Then, slowly, the hight of my floating would increase and I would start to move out over the bannister rail. At this point I would begin to panic because I knew that whatever it was that was carrying me was going to drop me down the stairwell as soon as it got me over the bannister. I would sometimes be able to cling to the bannister but whatever was carrying me would be pulling me up and up so that I could barely hang on. Other times I would go over too high to grab anything.

But it never did drop me. Maybe it was just me being afraid. It would always float me gently down the stairs and leave me at the bottom. At that point I felt that whatever was carrying me was kind and loved me. The sensation of floating was sublime and wonderful. If only I could have quelled my fear of being dropped!

Anyhow, just a childhood thing which is dismissed and forgotten as adulthood aproaches.

But there's an unexpected sequel to this. Years later, when I was about 17 or 18 and into motorcycles and birds and rock music I used to visit my Gran' a couple of times a week. The reason I visited was because she'd been a diabetic for years and had to inject insulin, the use of which had robbed her of her sight. She was quite infirm anyway. She would sit through most of her days in her rocking chair in the back room, in front of the fire with the radio and her bugie for company. Grandad was always in his allotment. So I'd go round and sit with her a while.

One day while we were chatting away I got the conversation around to ghosts and stuff. I used to read a lot of stuff around that tiome on ghosts and UFO's etc. We talked generally for a while and then she told me about something that used to happen to her as a little girl.

Can you guess readers? Yep! The story was almost identical to mine! The only differences were that she was carried by long thin silvery fingers, and once downstairs it used to carry her out through the kitchen and leave her outside the back door, which it would then lock, and then she would cry for Mummy and Daddy to come and unlock the door!

Well, gobsmacked or what? I didn't tell her I had the same dream but I was absolutely stunned!

With all the reading I'd done I knew the long silvery fingers were Poltergiest. Did we/do we have a family poltergiest perhaps? Strange huh?

Can relate to the whole flying thing. I've always f-e-l-t it's possible, like some dormant skill we've forgotten how to use. If you've read The Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy series of books you'll understand. Douglas Adams (the author) describe's perfectly what lot's of us had been feeling for ages.

The first thing I ever read that made me realise I wasn't alone about this flying thing was called The Flying Yorkshireman. I don't know if any of you have read it. I wish I could find it again. This is about a guy who dreams that he's floating night after night and then comes to realise that he IS actually floating and then goes on to develope his flying skills until he's running rings around military jets etc etc. I wish I could remember who wrote it, I'd love to read it again.

The flying thing is in the blood. Perhaps there was a time when we flew unaided...

Anyway, enough!

Forty2
 
This has got to be one of the spookiest things I have read yet on FT.
I am not one gifted with the ability to float but as a child I remember clearly having competitions with the other kids in my street to see who could jump down the most steps...!!
Many times we done this over and over again. None of us ever went too far and got ourselves injured which is surprising.
It got to the point where I would start to have lucid dreams about doing this very thing and yes, I could certainly do it in my dreams. From the top step! Now I remember it, I could do it down whole flights of stairs, even turning corners to come down the next flight without my feet touching once...lol.
I haven't had a lucid dream for a few of years, but they are great!
Thanks for the memories.
:D
 
The first thing I ever read that made me realise I wasn't alone about this flying thing was called The Flying Yorkshireman. I don't know if any of you have read it. I wish I could find it again. This is about a guy who dreams that he's floating night after night and then comes to realise that he IS actually floating and then goes on to develope his flying skills until he's running rings around military jets etc etc. I wish I could remember who wrote it, I'd love to read it again.
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It was written by Eric Knight who also wrote Lassie Come Home. Ironically he died in an air crash.
 
Originally posted by Hermes
I've dreamt of floating downstairs in the same manner, with feet hovering an inch or two above the stairs themselves - the whole thing, I imagine, looking like the Bisto Kid adverts.

I had another one time, where I found myself floating just above car-roof level, travelling down the street. The ridiculous situation shook me into becoming lucid, and I willed myself to climb higher - but to no avail.

[/
QUOTE]
I had the same dream of floating over my car as it traveled down a road. I had read that during a lucid dream you could exert a certain amount of control over your dream, so when I realized I was dreaming I decided to go to a friend's house. The next image I recall was flying down the road to my friend's house as my car drove down the road under me. Then I got scared and went home. Guess I messed that one up.
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