More Vivid Dreaming During The COVID-19 Pandemic

[Min Bannister]

I have those kinds of dreams too sometimes. Hate them.

Mine are of having tanks of fish that I had forgotten about and haven't fed or cleaned in ages. Sometimes the tanks are huge. I get the guilt afterwards too.

 

[Jepra Peld]

I dreamt I was in Nova Scotia, never been there but have family and friends throughout Canada. Today I checked my e-mails and find I have one from the Canadian Tourist Board.
I have also started to dream in Russian, not that odd as I studied it at university, but it's over twenty years since I graduated and and about a decade since I last used it in any meaningful way.

 

[escargot]

On today's R4's You & Yours consumer affairs programme there is a discussion about how people miss their dear ones, both alive and deptarted, and how they appear in dreams in the pandemic. The psychologist says it's about stress and vulnerability.

 

[bugmum]

I had an interview at a local school this morning, for which I was expected to rock up at 8am so that I could be tested for Covid.

Cue a dream first thing in which the Teenager was a pupil at this school, and I was dropping her off, then going home because the interview wasn't for another couple of hours. But when I got home I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be there getting tested and started panicking because I now didn't have time for the test before the interview. I was quite happy to wake up from that scenario!

Didn't get the job either.

 

[mattstanhope]

So I dreamed I was dead and haunting the house we currently live in. The new tenant seemed nice though.

It freaked me out, really. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed I was literally dead and a ghost before!

 

[Jepra Peld]

I had a very involved dream last night. I dreamt that I was Joe Lycett's -who in the dream was a member of this forum under the name Big Kri-best friend and I was visiting him in hospital because he couldn't use his arms. After saving a talking cat from a savage fight, I took a wrong turn and ended u somewhere unfamiliar. It was meant to be the Isle of Man but it looked more like central Europe, there was a nice square with cafes, a church and a clothes market where I bought a lovely green silk dress for a tenner. I went to one of the cafes and saw a colleague who told me off for leaving the Isle of Man but I explained I hadn't. He then asked for 500 quid so he could show me the way to the hospital. Things start to look more familiar and I recognise a park, but there is also a shopping precinct and studios which I don't recognise, but I see another colleague who starts moaning to me about the co-op. I eventually get there but Joe has a new best friend.
Sorry that's not remotely interesting to anyone else but I felt the need to right it down.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

I had a very involved dream last night. I dreamt that I was Joe Lycett's -who in the dream was a member of this forum under the name Big Kri-best friend and I was visiting him in hospital because he couldn't use his arms. After saving a talking cat from a savage fight, I took a wrong turn and ended u somewhere unfamiliar. It was meant to be the Isle of Man but it looked more like central Europe, there was a nice square with cafes, a church and a clothes market where I bought a lovely green silk dress for a tenner. I went to one of the cafes and saw a colleague who told me off for leaving the Isle of Man but I explained I hadn't. He then asked for 500 quid so he could show me the way to the hospital. Things start to look more familiar and I recognise a park, but there is also a shopping precinct and studios which I don't recognise, but I see another colleague who starts moaning to me about the co-op. I eventually get there but Joe has a new best friend.
Sorry that's not remotely interesting to anyone else but I felt the need to right it down.

That's so trippy I love it.

 

[Jepra Peld]

That's so trippy I love it.

It was, I was miffed when I awoke that it was Friday and I had to go to work and couldn't go back to bed to try to continue the dream.

 

[Swifty]

Not sure if this is anything to do with covid anxiety but I woke up perturbed this morning because I'd been dreaming I was a contestant on a badly organised 'Ready Steady Cook' style gameshow located inside an over sized village hall ... with no cooking equipment, ovens etc and we were only given the name of the dish, something Italian sounding. Somehow I found a load of dried food: lentils, chick peas, that sort of stuff with no idea what to do with it. Everyone else were just looking at their phones and to make things worse, Gordon Ramsey was the judge and I was worried I'd punch him if he gave me any grief. Round 1 had been to make a fried breakfast and he'd told me he didn't like mine. Some woman called Marissa who was another judge whispered to me that my breakfast had been good and not to worry and then I woke up feeling a bit stressed.

 

[catseye]

I dreamed I was watching a concert. A man stepped forward to play guitar and I thought 'good lord, that's Carlos Santana!' He was playing a black guitar which had Santana written on it in whirly white writing, and played an entire solo.

In real life I doubt I could pick Carlos Santana out of a line up. There was no music around me while I slept either, but I know I enjoyed the concert!

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Couple nights ago I dreamt I was almost crossing an old bridge over the river near here. Whenever I dream of this particular place, it's always vivid.

Dream was set during pandemic (yes, it's finally entered my dreams - took it months!) but it was like a summer's day and there were people everywhere and I was panicking because I was in a crowd, but somehow lost my husband in the crowd. I was desperately trying to find him and I was on the other side of the river (I live on the opposite bank of the river to this place) and although it was like a summer fete/carnival sort of atmosphere, I could see people were heading towards the bridge. A girl/young woman was trying to kill herself on the opposite side, and she was trapped in the mud on a steep part of the river bank, screaming and this crowd sort of surged forward to rubberneck. The whole time I was panicking that there were too many people and I was going to catch It, and that I'd lost my husband somewhere in the crowd, was afraid and alone and watching this woman die as everyone rubbernecked.

Luckily I then woke up.

I used to have a recurring dream set in that exact same place only in my dream it was a ferry then and no bridge (bridge built in the 1870s). I've known this place all my life. My aunties lived about 20m from it.

One of the paramedics that came out to me last year told me he occasionally got called to that same spot on the river - people committing suicide or being talked down from trying to. He was telling me about this woman who he had to talk down from the bridge but said he'd had several. I think that must have been in my head when I went to sleep.

It's only my second dream I can remember that was set during pandemic.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I had a notably odd dream yesterday afternoon during an extended nap - one of the most elaborate 'production' dreams I've ever had. By 'production' I mean that as the dream progressed I was playing a role along with others in a sort of play (as opposed to simply being myself in the first person).

The scene was a roadside gas station / truck stop / cafe very late at night in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was cold and dismal, with traces of show on the ground and in the air. The place sat adjacent to a substantial highway that had only sporadic traffic. I'd been driving for a long time and stopped in for some coffee at the diner's counter. The place was drab, and the staff and customers were quietly keeping to themselves. The initial stages of the dream were in black and white, which is unusual for me. This was one of the things that cued me I was acting in a 'production' rather than simply dream-living a slice of life. It started out as something akin to a grim film noir version of Hopper's Nighthawks painting.

As I was silently nursing my coffee a guy seated nearby at the counter said something distasteful. The waitress behind the counter looked at him and said, "You better watch out ..." Some drunk in one of the booths next to the front window chimed in, "You better not cry ..." One by one people spoke up to trace out the first verse of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

... And we were off ...

More and more of the diner's occupants joined in until we were all singing along, smiling and laughing. We all then grinned, shook our heads and went back to what we'd been doing.

Almost immediately a car pulled in at the gas pumps outside, and the driver came into the diner. He asked if the cashier knew what the weather was like farther down the road. The cashier told him there was a major storm coming in and the driver should 'watch out' ...

... And we were off again, jumping into the song more quickly and with more animation than the first time. The waitress started stepping in time to the song, and those seated also began to sway or gesture in synch with the singing. This time we kept it up through multiple verses before simmering down.

This cycle began to repeat endlessly as new people arrived, and each time it repeated we all acted more lively and self-consciously foolish. Eventually we were dancing around and interacting in synch with the song as if we were characters in a 1930s Fleischer Brothers cartoon or one of those intricately choreographed mile-a-minute MGM musical numbers.

At one point I spontaneously jumped behind the counter and began washing / drying dishes in tandem with a waitress at another sink, and we were sailing dishes back and forth between us like Frisbees. At another point I was carrying two mugs of steaming coffee - each the size of a mop bucket - through the side door into the attached garage area and handing them to the mechanics in coveralls who'd been working on a car up on a lift. These and other maneuvers were tightly coordinated with the singing.

On each cycle a drab wan fellow (think of a 5-foot-tall Dobby) would pop up and ask, "Isn't Christmas over with? Wasn't it a month or so ago?", whereupon one or more of us prancing fools would answer to the effect that there would be another one coming if you just shut up and waited. His appearance and the Q&A became a running gag performed in different ways.

With each go-'round our singing and dancing got progressively more involved, more surreal and more complex. In addition, the motif became more colorful with each cycle, as if we'd washed away the original film noir ambience.

I finally got tired of the foolish infinite loop, hit the eject button, and woke up wondering WTF that was all about ...

 

[Mythopoeika]

I had a notably odd dream yesterday afternoon during an extended nap - one of the most elaborate 'production' dreams I've ever had. By 'production' I mean that as the dream progressed I was playing a role along with others in a sort of play (as opposed to simply being myself in the first person).

The scene was a roadside gas station / truck stop / cafe very late at night in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was cold and dismal, with traces of show on the ground and in the air. The place sat adjacent to a substantial highway that had only sporadic traffic. I'd been driving for a long time and stopped in for some coffee at the diner's counter. The place was drab, and the staff and customers were quietly keeping to themselves. The initial stages of the dream were in black and white, which is unusual for me. This was one of the things that cued me I was acting in a 'production' rather than simply dream-living a slice of life. It started out as something akin to a grim film noir version of Hopper's Nighthawks painting.

As I was silently nursing my coffee a guy seated nearby at the counter said something distasteful. The waitress behind the counter looked at him and said, "You better watch out ..." Some drunk in one of the booths next to the front window chimed in, "You better not cry ..." One by one people spoke up to trace out the first verse of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

... And we were off ...

More and more of the diner's occupants joined in until we were all singing along, smiling and laughing. We all then grinned, shook our heads and went back to what we'd been doing.

Almost immediately a car pulled in at the gas pumps outside, and the driver came into the diner. He asked if the cashier knew what the weather was like farther down the road. The cashier told him there was a major storm coming in and the driver should 'watch out' ...

... And we were off again, jumping into the song more quickly and with more animation than the first time. The waitress started stepping in time to the song, and those seated also began to sway or gesture in synch with the singing. This time we kept it up through multiple verses before simmering down.

This cycle began to repeat endlessly as new people arrived, and each time it repeated we all acted more lively and self-consciously foolish. Eventually we were dancing around and interacting in synch with the song as if we were characters in a 1930s Fleischer Brothers cartoon or one of those intricately choreographed mile-a-minute MGM musical numbers.

At one point I spontaneously jumped behind the counter and began washing / drying dishes in tandem with a waitress at another sink, and we were sailing dishes back and forth between us like Frisbees. At another point I was carrying two mugs of steaming coffee - each the size of a mop bucket - through the side door into the attached garage area and handing them to the mechanics in coveralls who'd been working on a car up on a lift. These and other maneuvers were tightly coordinated with the singing.

On each cycle a drab wan fellow (think of a 5-foot-tall Dobby) would pop up and ask, "Isn't Christmas over with? Wasn't it a month or so ago?", whereupon one or more of us prancing fools would answer to the effect that there would be another one coming if you just shut up and waited. His appearance and the Q&A became a running gag performed in different ways.

With each go-'round our singing and dancing got progressively more involved, more surreal and more complex. In addition, the motif became more colorful with each cycle, as if we'd washed away the original film noir ambience.

I finally got tired of the foolish infinite loop, hit the eject button, and woke up wondering WTF that was all about ...

Write it up and turn it into a musical. Profit!

 

[Mouldy13]

I dreamed last night that I was talking to my first ever serious girlfriend Jane "why did you leave me? " I was asking, rather wimpily tbh. Strange, in real life and 30 plus years ago, we parted amicably enough, I was distraught, but with a bit of maturity I realised that she just wanted to move on and live a bit.

I've often thought of her over the years, just in a "hope she's ok" sort of way.

anyway back to the dream "isn't it awful? this situation?" she was asking

"What situation?" I kept asking back

"The pandemic, you do know about it don't you?"

"What are you on about? I don't understand" I kept repeating

 

[Comfortably Numb]

I have not long woken from the most vivid and peculiar dream.

Something along the lines of 'Coraline' meets 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'!

Along with other family members, we were visiting an elderly aunt who was in her 90s.

I hadn't seen my aunt for a few years and was concerned how she would be coping with the present situation.

When we arrived, she looked so frail, white-haired with long spindly legs.

Her house and everything therein was in decay or broken, even if only slightly so in the latter respect.

I offered to take care of her budgeting from now on and she handed over a rolled-up envelope with contained £90.

A fellow in his 30s, who looked every inch a chimney sweeper was walking by the house.

I stopped him and after a brief conversation we agreed that, one day each week, he would come to my aunt's house and build a coal fire for her, to last all week.

For this, he would be paid £5.

Before leaving I asked if someone could find her house phone, so that I could ensure it was within reach.

It was an elegant, archaic model from the 1920s and had some inconsequential damage. As the cable would not reach her armchair, we had to move the chair closer.

I promised to call at least every second night.

I then had an idea... why not buy her 'Mastermind', the logic puzzle game which uses different coloured pegs to try and solve the original four peg 'code'.

I thought it was probably also available online and she could play against a computer opponent, if on her own.

We said our goodbyes and left in a taxi, which was actually a working Range Rover police car and operated by them. It had temporary been converted to offer local, elderly residents free transportation to and from their vaccination appointment.

My last recollection is the Range Rover climbing a succession of steep hills, via dirt tracks, with our police driver explaining how, being an 'off-road' vehicle, the car could handle this and it was a shortcut he often used, especially as it went past his house and he could get home quicker.

 

[Mythopoeika]

A fellow in his 30s, who looked every inch a chimney sweeper was walking by the house.

I stopped him and after a brief conversation we agreed that, one day each week, he would come to my aunt's house and build a coal fire for her, to last all week.

For this, he would be paid £5.

What century was this?

 

[bugmum]

Saturday morning, I had two dreams. In one, I was doing my weekly visit to the local farm shop, which had unaccountably set itself up in someone's garage. They had foolishly left the egg boxes on the end of a high shelf with no end to it, and I managed to knock a box of 6 onto the floor - but nobody was in that part of the shop to notice.

In the other dream, I was visiting a school at which I used to work, and they were giving me a lift back to a school in which I was working, except I couldn't remember for the life of me what the school was called. I knew exactly where it was (which, in reality, is actually a doctor's surgery) but not its name. And then the person driving me there took the wrong road, and we ended up on back roads, so I said I'd walk the rest of the way and ended up going through a clandestine Romanian wedding with way more than 15 people attending. Make of that what you will.

 

[Aurora Newman]

Wait til you get the fever dreams... I had one where I thought my feet were on fire and woke up screaming...

i had fever dreams in 1992 i had salmonella, winter Olympics were on, the ice hockey matches really cheered me. It was the first time I had got sick up North!!

 

[Aurora Newman]

He's but those fever dreams were like I was playing a video game, like I was in Tron.

 

[PeteS]

I honestly did not believe that this vivid dreaming during covid was A Thing , but have to admit that my dreams have become wilder than they have ever been. Too wild to share on even this open minded forum.

 

[catseye]

Last night I dreamed that Alan Turner (from Emmerdale) was standing in the middle of a trodden down patch of common land, waiting for me. When I approached, he told me he had something for me. An elderly man then rode in bareback on a large bay thoroughbred. He got down and the horse was mine! Alan Turner wandered off, leaving me to get to know the horse, which had very strange eyes. They were blue and gold, pattered like a teacup. The horse was oldish, not in great condition, but nuzzled my hand.

I then found myself running round and round this patch of common, along a muddy track, with the horse cantering along beside me, a bit like a cut price version of the Lloyds Bank advert. Alan Turner came back and gave me a hug and told me to go for a ride.

I have not watched Emmerdale in forever, apart from occasionally catching Old Emmerdale when I turn the TV on for the dog before I go to work. I do, occasionally, think about getting another horse, but I rationalise myself out of it as I really don't have the time (or spare cash) to devote to one. So goodness only knows what this was all about!

 

[Nick Smith]

Good thread.

something peculiar from me.

couple of weeks back I started having a very disturbing dream where I find a dead man sitting in a doorway, he is sort of slumped over to the side with his head facing away from me and his hand cupped upwards resting on his knee.

as I get closer I start to smell the rot and realise his cupped hand is filled with maggots and as I bend over a massive swarm of flies erupt from him.

I then realise that the dead man is me.

I had this three nights in a row (I never have recurring dreams) and it was bothering me. This went on until the 24th when I woke up feeling wretched. Got tested for C19 and, voila, I’ve got Corona again. (Had it last March with no symptoms) I was ill for a few days but not with respiratory symptoms, just vomiting and fever.

no more dreams since symptoms came out but I guess some, on a subconscious level, my body knew I had something brewing. All better now. Back to work on Weds.

 

[hunck]

I have not watched Emmerdale in forever, apart from occasionally catching Old Emmerdale when I turn the TV on for the dog before I go to work. I do, occasionally, think about getting another horse, but I rationalise myself out of it as I really don't have the time (or spare cash) to devote to one. So goodness only knows what this was all about!

Does the dog have a preferred channel?

 

[Aurora Newman]

Does the dog have a preferred channel?

I had this Yorkshire when I was young it used to love that Euro gameshow Tutti Fruiti , basicly a show contestants take off a piece of clothing if you get an answer wrong. They also had dancing girls that would lead to an advertisement, they'd say chin chin chin chin and then rip open their tops. Then an add would come on.

 

[catseye]

Does the dog have a preferred channel?

She likes ITV3, but that's mostly because then Vera is on when I get in.

She can't reach the remote, so she likes what she's told she likes.

 

[Aurora Newman]

She likes ITV3, but that's mostly because then Vera is on when I get in.

She can't reach the remote, so she likes what she's told she likes.

I see

 

[hunck]

I had this Yorkshire when I was young it used to love that Euro gameshow Tutti Fruiti , basicly a show contestants take off a piece of clothing if you get an answer wrong. They also had dancing girls that would lead to an advertisement, they'd say chin chin chin chin and then rip open their tops. Then an add would come on.

Ah, a dog which appreciated quality tv.

 

[IbisNibs]

I then had an idea... why not buy her 'Mastermind', the logic puzzle game which uses different coloured pegs to try and solve the original four peg 'code'.

That is a most thoughtful gift for a 90-year-old dream auntie!

 

[catseye]

I had another 'University' dream again last night, waiting for a bus in the middle of a city, holding a bunch of files and talking to someone I knew quite well (in the dream), asking what they were going to do 'after all this'. He seemed confused by the question, so I said 'are you going to do a Masters or something?' A wagon came along that was supposed to be a bus, but I refused to get on it. The whole cityscape was very clear, as was that feeeling of not quite knowing what was coming next, that one sometimes gets whilst in education.

Then I dreamed I was asleep in a barn on the back seat of an old car with one of those ridged leather back seats. I could feel it against my cheek. There was a lorry moving out, and whoever else was in the barn with me was mending the lorry and also using a part of it to fix the barn. A man came out of a house, he had a pockmarked face and was asking where the lorry was going. I sort of sleepily looked up and over the back seat of the car to see what was going on, and the group of people mending the lorry told him that they'd sent it off to get some parts. He seemed satisfied at this and muttered something about hearing vehicles that were coming into the barn to steal stuff. I was just an observer of all this, I wasn't quite sure what was being fixed or why I was even there!

This morning I read in my local paper about two lads being sentenced to prison for breaking into barns and farmers' sheds to steal equipment, so that probably counts as a tiny coincidence too as well as a Covid vivid dream! Two for the price of one!

 

[Aurora Newman]

Last night I dreamt of when I was back at school. I was a honey addict, I still am. But I was more ballsy with it at school. There'd be many times when I'd dance away to music downing a bottle of honey in front of my friends and other people. My pals saying there she goes again. It always felt so sensual going down my throat and helped with asthma and heyvever, so it relaxes me. That's what the dream was about.