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More Vivid Dreaming During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Last night I had my first lucid dream in a while. Bear with me because I'm hoping someone here will know what it meant...

I've recently moved house, about 100 yards down the road. My old house has been sold for renovation, is empty and stripped bare inside.

So last night I dreamed I'd lost my big ginger cat. I was worried he'd gone back to his old home, so I walked up to the old house (letting my dog run loose ahead of me, which I wondered about as I did it, she's a reactive terrier and HAS to be on the lead). When I got to the house, the big wooden gates had gone and been replaced by metal ones and I could see lights on inside. I thought someone must have come to do some work on the place. A man approached me, I was just about to apologise to him and explain I was looking for my cat, when my old terrier appeared from inside the house. She's been gone for nearly two years now, so when I saw her, I knew I was dreaming.

At this point I started to look around me. The man standing in front of me was wearing a Rack sweatshirt (it's a local firm) but I didn't recognise him. I told him I was dreaming and he did a kind of 'oh yeah?' nod, not very interested. So I asked him to say something to me that I would remember when I woke up... he was a bit reluctant - he clearly thought I was mad. In the end he said two words. The first was 'aircraft', the second was 'scootage'. Then he told me they were from his time in the army...

I woke up after noting that the roofline to the house had changed, and the location now seemed to be a cul de sac in a suburb (it's really in a very small rural village).

Anyone know what 'scootage' might be? Or if it relates to aircraft? I've no idea why my dreaming mind should throw these words up at me...

But it was nice to see my old terrier again. She looked fit and well, although eventually morphed into looking more like a German Shepherd puppy than her real self.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutage
 
Thanks, Myth! This probably came from a book I was listening to on Audible... which explains a lot!
 
I had a couple of odd ones this morning. I was giving Gary Lineker of all people a lift to the train station - he had to get somewhere for some reason - & managed to reverse my car into a small stream/ditch. Fortunately there was a garage which had a mechanised pulley system for exactly this situation. Prior to this we were on a golf course & I managed to fluke a ball into the hole with a freak shot. I don't play golf or have any interest in it.

After that I dreamt a fox got in an open window & ran over my bed waking me up. I went downstairs & found a dog in my back room.
 
After that I dreamt a fox got in an open window & ran over my bed waking me up. I went downstairs & found a dog in my back room.
Certainly a curious incident of a dog in the night!
I just have to be nosy again--how did the dog get in?
 
Dreamt i was walking down a long instututional corridors as some shuffling ashen grey men in suits figures are coming towards me. The leader is looks a lot like a a shrivelled version of Boris Johnson. I'm determined not to step aside and as soon as I'm near enough leap forward to choke him. At this point I smack my face hard into the bookcase next to my bed, hard enough to taste blood and give myself a swollen lip...this last bit's not a dream.
 
Dreamt i was walking down a long instututional corridors as some shuffling ashen grey men in suits figures are coming towards me. The leader is looks a lot like a a shrivelled version of Boris Johnson. I'm determined not to step aside and as soon as I'm near enough leap forward to choke him. At this point I smack my face hard into the bookcase next to my bed, hard enough to taste blood and give myself a swollen lip...this last bit's not a dream.
Your story reminded me of the time I broke my nose due to a bad dream, I had been working in the back of a garbage truck, repairing a leaking hydraulic ram during the day and that night dreamed I was back inside and about to be crushed ,I jumped out of bed and ran into a shelf which was nose height. It's really surprising when you hurt yourself in a dream isn't it.
 
Certainly a curious incident of a dog in the night!
I just have to be nosy again--how did the dog get in?

I think the sliding door to my garden was open. In reality it would've had to jump over an at least 5 foot fence & it was quite a big dog. The fox running over my bed woke me up but when I went to see where it went in my house I found the dog instead.

My dreams are usually fragmentary & fractured & I don't expect any sense from them. It was weird I was quite matey with Lineker.
 
Dreamt i was walking down a long instututional corridors as some shuffling ashen grey men in suits figures are coming towards me. The leader is looks a lot like a a shrivelled version of Boris Johnson. I'm determined not to step aside and as soon as I'm near enough leap forward to choke him. At this point I smack my face hard into the bookcase next to my bed, hard enough to taste blood and give myself a swollen lip...this last bit's not a dream.

Your story reminded me of the time I broke my nose due to a bad dream, I had been working in the back of a garbage truck, repairing a leaking hydraulic ram during the day and that night dreamed I was back inside and about to be crushed ,I jumped out of bed and ran into a shelf which was nose height. It's really surprising when you hurt yourself in a dream isn't it.

Literally bloody hell..
 
Not to brag, but I'm having the most fantastic dreams almost every night. I'm talking film quality dreams, with proper plots and characters. I've watched some brilliant stuff lately whilst I'm asleep. These type of complex and prolonged vivid drams are not unusual for me (pretty sure they're due to my anti-depressants) , but the frequency of them is a new thing.

The stress dreams I'm getting are the same as always for me. I'm at college and I don't have a timetable and I'm the only person who doesn't know what they are doing. Last night I dreamt I missed the last day of college because I took too long putting make-up on, but my (actual real life) friends from college came by and said it was just lessons as usual, and pointless now we had officially finished.

I'm tending to find that each dream has a feeling, and that the next day I can connect that feeling to a real feeling I'm having. Feeling a lot of loneliness right now tbh, and I live with my family.

EDIT just to say, I never went to college, but I was in 6th form 30 years ago. My children are in college though.
 
I am blaming hunck for the dream I had last night.

I'd been down to let the dog out for her late night wee at about 3.30am and, because my back door doesn't lock easily, and I live in a very quiet rural location, I hadn't bothered to relock the door. That may also be partly to blame.

But I dreamed that I heard noises and went downstairs to find a strange man in my kitchen, wearing one of those warehouse coats, like an overall. He tried to dash past me and out of the house as I shouted 'what are you doing in my house?'

The noise I heard was the noise that you make when you shake a jigsaw puzzle box and all the pieces slide around inside. It's quite a distinctive noise. No jigsaws in this house and I'm assuming that the noise was me snoring...
 
I am blaming hunck for the dream I had last night.

I'd been down to let the dog out for her late night wee at about 3.30am and, because my back door doesn't lock easily, and I live in a very quiet rural location, I hadn't bothered to relock the door. That may also be partly to blame.

But I dreamed that I heard noises and went downstairs to find a strange man in my kitchen, wearing one of those warehouse coats, like an overall. He tried to dash past me and out of the house as I shouted 'what are you doing in my house?'

The noise I heard was the noise that you make when you shake a jigsaw puzzle box and all the pieces slide around inside. It's quite a distinctive noise. No jigsaws in this house and I'm assuming that the noise was me snoring...
That reminded me to go downstairs and double check that I had locked the kitchen window...
 
Not to brag, but I'm having the most fantastic dreams almost every night. I'm talking film quality dreams, with proper plots and characters. I've watched some brilliant stuff lately whilst I'm asleep. These type of complex and prolonged vivid drams are not unusual for me (pretty sure they're due to my anti-depressants) , but the frequency of them is a new thing.

The stress dreams I'm getting are the same as always for me. I'm at college and I don't have a timetable and I'm the only person who doesn't know what they are doing. Last night I dreamt I missed the last day of college because I took too long putting make-up on, but my (actual real life) friends from college came by and said it was just lessons as usual, and pointless now we had officially finished.

I'm tending to find that each dream has a feeling, and that the next day I can connect that feeling to a real feeling I'm having. Feeling a lot of loneliness right now tbh, and I live with my family.

EDIT just to say, I never went to college, but I was in 6th form 30 years ago. My children are in college though.
Serves me right for posting about my fabulous dreams, I suppose, but last night I had a really nasty dream. I have a challenging relationship with my difficult mum, and I've also had to stop all communication with my oldest brother. I won't go into details, but they were in the dream and I woke up very upset. I had a similar dream a week or so ago, but my dear departed dad was in that one too and he held me all the way through, so they couldn't hurt me. Pretty much sums up my relations with my family of origin.
 
Here's a dream I had several years ago that I can remember in pin-sharp detail. And quite a lot of it is becoming horribly familiar-

It's dusk on a summer's day. The sun has just set but there is still some light in the sky. I'm walking through my deserted suburb en-route to the supermarket. The shop is in sight and as I reach the bus stop signpost on the pavement, my ex-boyfriend is walking towards me. I am surprised and overjoyed to see him. I hold my arms open wide. I quicken my step towards him but he barges past me and he's yelling at me to get out of the way. Just then, a low and ominous rumble invades the silent evening. I look up towards the sound. An aeroplane is flying out of the South West. I look back but my friend has gone. I look back at the sky. The plane is getting closer, lower and bigger. It's an airliner and it is descending rapidly. The sound of it's engines is deafening and reverberating off the silent houses. The plane is now passing directly overhead. I can see passengers at the portholes and the landing gear is coming down. I start screaming at the plane. "WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO LAND!!!!????" The airliner is still bearing down. It dips it's port wing and begins a horrible banking descent. It goes out of my line of sight but the jets are still screaming at full power. A few seconds later there is a bright orange flash in the sky followed by a tremendous booming roar as it crashes on the nearby racecourse or the industrial area next to it. Still there is no-one around. Nobody has come out of their houses to see what had happened. I run back for home. The silence in the air is back. There are no sirens of any description. Just the silence and the heat of the day still coming out of the pavements. I get home and run to the phone to report the crash. I get the dial tone and call 999. Then the phone cuts off.
 
Yesterday I woke up after a dream that probably sounds mundane if I recount it, but was really scary to me, given the current circumstances.

I was at some trade show or something, and for some reason everything went wrong. The show wasn't at any of our usual venues but, for some reason, in Leeds city centre, near the market.

I was left alone to pack up the stall, which is always stressful - and growing more and more conscious that I was late, and this vast place where we were doing the show was emptying and it was getting dark, and the other traders had gone/were going and just getting the stall down on my own seemed impossible. But somehow, I did it, and dragged all the stuff out of the building onto the pavement, only to realise I'd missed my lift home. So I thought I'd ring a family member - someone who would always help me, and I felt this sort of rush of relief again, because this person would, if I was stuck outside a creepy place in the dark, with some scary characters around, and marooned because I had all this heavy stuff with me, defo come to rescue me. (I'd already tried my late dad on the phone, in the dream forgetting he was dead, and he answered but couldn't come to rescue me for some reason I forget).

Anyway I tried and tried to phone relative but he just didn't come to the phone, and I just couldn't get hold of him at all. I was in the dark, alone and getting more and more afraid and more stressed because basically this is the one person you phone on his landline and he's literally sitting three metres from it... And this sounds mundane and less frightening than it was to me in the dream, but just that feeling of not being able to get hold of this relative, was utterly terrifying to me. (For some reason, in my dream it was as if my husband didn't exist as it didn't cross my mind to try and get hold of him!)

And I woke up in a cold sweat at that point - that the only way I could communicate with relative was just dead.

I think it's an anxiety dream. Said relative has bad asthma, and I have been constantly worried about what will happen to him if he should catch this virus - because I'm almost certain he couldn't survive it. And I'd be the last one left, from the entire family I started out with. Somewhere my subconscious is playing it out, I guess. Waking up, I knew immediately what that dream was really about.

The place where the dream was set was a very short distance from where my great grandma was born and where the other side of our family had a business, for decades so it is a place that means something, in that sense, as well.

I don't think this is in any way prophetic - I think it's just my mind playing out a worst case scenario.
 
Yesterday I woke up after a dream that probably sounds mundane if I recount it, but was really scary to me, given the current circumstances.

I was at some trade show or something, and for some reason everything went wrong. The show wasn't at any of our usual venues but, for some reason, in Leeds city centre, near the market.

I was left alone to pack up the stall, which is always stressful - and growing more and more conscious that I was late, and this vast place where we were doing the show was emptying and it was getting dark, and the other traders had gone/were going and just getting the stall down on my own seemed impossible. But somehow, I did it, and dragged all the stuff out of the building onto the pavement, only to realise I'd missed my lift home. So I thought I'd ring a family member - someone who would always help me, and I felt this sort of rush of relief again, because this person would, if I was stuck outside a creepy place in the dark, with some scary characters around, and marooned because I had all this heavy stuff with me, defo come to rescue me. (I'd already tried my late dad on the phone, in the dream forgetting he was dead, and he answered but couldn't come to rescue me for some reason I forget).

Anyway I tried and tried to phone relative but he just didn't come to the phone, and I just couldn't get hold of him at all. I was in the dark, alone and getting more and more afraid and more stressed because basically this is the one person you phone on his landline and he's literally sitting three metres from it... And this sounds mundane and less frightening than it was to me in the dream, but just that feeling of not being able to get hold of this relative, was utterly terrifying to me. (For some reason, in my dream it was as if my husband didn't exist as it didn't cross my mind to try and get hold of him!)

And I woke up in a cold sweat at that point - that the only way I could communicate with relative was just dead.

I think it's an anxiety dream. Said relative has bad asthma, and I have been constantly worried about what will happen to him if he should catch this virus - because I'm almost certain he couldn't survive it. And I'd be the last one left, from the entire family I started out with. Somewhere my subconscious is playing it out, I guess. Waking up, I knew immediately what that dream was really about.

The place where the dream was set was a very short distance from where my great grandma was born and where the other side of our family had a business, for decades so it is a place that means something, in that sense, as well.

I don't think this is in any way prophetic - I think it's just my mind playing out a worst case scenario.
Definitely an anxiety dream caused by current events and a pretty unpleasant one at that.

I had a "couldn't get through on the phone" dream last night. My husband had left me after an argument (which oddly I now can't remember) and went off to France with his family. At first I vowed not to contact him ever again but I was so utterly distressed at him having cut off all contact so abruptly that I had to call him. His dad answered the first call (his dad is dead in RL) but told be my husband didn't wish to speak to me. Then every time after that the phone was answered by an unpleasant young woman who told me her name was Tooth. She laughed at my distress.

The dream started off at my mom's house, but for most of the dream I was trapped on a tourist boat docked in China.
 
Not to brag, but I'm having the most fantastic dreams almost every night. I'm talking film quality dreams, with proper plots and characters. I've watched some brilliant stuff lately whilst I'm asleep. These type of complex and prolonged vivid drams are not unusual for me (pretty sure they're due to my anti-depressants) , but the frequency of them is a new thing.

The stress dreams I'm getting are the same as always for me. I'm at college and I don't have a timetable and I'm the only person who doesn't know what they are doing. Last night I dreamt I missed the last day of college because I took too long putting make-up on, but my (actual real life) friends from college came by and said it was just lessons as usual, and pointless now we had officially finished.

I'm tending to find that each dream has a feeling, and that the next day I can connect that feeling to a real feeling I'm having. Feeling a lot of loneliness right now tbh, and I live with my family.

EDIT just to say, I never went to college, but I was in 6th form 30 years ago. My children are in college though.

The anxiety dreams surrounding school, college etc seem common. I used to get them as a teenager but I didn't really like school. Strange that I don't dream about this now, but still dream about work, despite the fact that I retired from my profession nearly 20 years ago.
 
I wonder if "couldn't get through on the phone" dreams are a whole subset of anxiety dreams? Am sure I've had them in the past as well, now I come to think of it. I rarely dream of my (dead) parents. Very rarely. So that one was especially weird as I was having a perfectly normal conversation on the phone with my dad, before I couldn't get hold of the other (living) relative...and it wasn't a lucid dream as I had no awareness that my dad is gone.
 
I wonder if "couldn't get through on the phone" dreams are a whole subset of anxiety dreams? Am sure I've had them in the past as well, now I come to think of it. I rarely dream of my (dead) parents. Very rarely. So that one was especially weird as I was having a perfectly normal conversation on the phone with my dad, before I couldn't get hold of the other (living) relative...and it wasn't a lucid dream as I had no awareness that my dad is gone.

I'm sure you're right on the phone thing. I remember even though it was 40 years ago a day when I was visiting an elderly relative miles away from home. She had one of those old twirly phone dials and I used it several times in an attempt to get hold of my girlfriend without success. Stressed out I was because she should have been at home (transpired she was out doing stuff she shouldn't have been). Very occasionally I have a can't get through dream and it always involves that same green twirly dial phone.
 
I think you're right. Inability to phone someone and also inability to drive a car feature in my anxiety dreams. So I dream I get into my car but can't get it to go any faster than walking speed. I've also had a similar dream about riding a horse - that I needed to get somewhere fast but couldn't persuade the horse to go above a slow walk.
 
Had an incredibly vivid dream last night where I met Oliver Reed at some kind of tea party. I was sitting at the same table as him, just us two, and was trying to be nice because I knew of his volatile reputation, but although he was plainly wanting to be elsewhere (pub?) he was polite with me. I told him if he had behaved himself in his career then most men would still be wearing moustaches like his, as he was a trendsetter (or would have been). It really was lifelike, just like meeting the man himself.
 
The weirdest one in recent days. Back when I was about fourteen, we had a French teacher temping for the absence of our regular woman (maternity leave). She was in her forties, long blonde hair, elegant figure, but looked forties (the other guys in the class wrote her off as an impossibly aged old hag and wondered why they didn't get the looker in the new teacher intake; a model-girl type in her twenties was also teaching French, but not to us. suited me just fine.). I remember she took a personal interest in me that was quite cheering. I'm not in any way implying it was THAT sort of personal interest - it wasn't and I suspect she'd have been shocked if the implication had been made - but for pretty much the first time a teacher was taking interest in me as a person, not just a number. Maybe she'd been diligent enough to inquire into the background of some of her pupils, read the briefing notes or something, and realised I was struggling a bit for various reasons. And yes, I did find her attractive. Well, I was fourteen and there was something about her.

Scroll forward to this week.

I dreamt I met her in a light and airy upper floor apartment. She was really happy to see me, we talked, and I wondered if, as an adult, the other thing was possible.... didn't stop to wonder why she hadn't apparently aged, and I had. My ego was telling me I could really make it work here and score, if only the other man in the apartment would be decent enough to go. (He was about her age, said nothing, looked tolerantly amused).

This went on for some time - got the feeling my intentions and desires had been read, things got less welcoming. My old teacher looked at me, not steernly but dissappointedly, and said "I think I'd really like you to leave. Now."

I found myself in the street outside, with no clear recollection as to how I'd got there. Looked up to an upper floor window in the block about five or six floors up and reealised that was where she lived. The street environment put me in mind of a city in France.

Then it dawned on me. Embarrassment. I'd been blatantly making passes at her in her own home while her husband had been watching. And I hadn't even realised. Hot, red, guilty embarrassment. Also a sense of shame that somebody who in her time seemed to have quite liked me was now somebody I'd alienated.

Woke up then. Reflected, wondered what the hell it is about the uncontrolled male ego. It also occured to me in that waking-up state that maybe it hadn't just been something created within the confines of my own head as a nocturnal fantasy. What if it had been a shared thing with at least one other mind participating? it might happen - I sometimes wonder if that sort of shared dream is possible. And I also thought... in 1976 she'd have been in her early forties. Today she'd be in her eighties. What if... she was actually dead, had passed over. And when she gets to contact one of the living, in the company of a husband or other significant male she really did have feelings for, it turns out to be a horny fourteen-year-old former pupil in an adult man's body. I gatecrashed her reunion.... Poor cow.
 
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I had a very vivid dream last night which I remember in detail ( rare for me ), it wasn't strange and jumbled but instead very life like. I was back in a house I last lived in 25 years ago and looking out the window saw my car was gone, at first I thought it had been stolen, then noticed the whole road was full of low loaders with steam trains on them ( the house was nowhere near a railway but it still seemed perfectly reasonable for them to be there ). I then realised the police had towed my car for being in the way, which made me angry that they hadn't knocked on the door to ask me to move, so I thought I'd phone them and pretend I thought it was stolen, then started worrying I wouldn't get through because of C-19. No idea what that was about or why I remember it so clear.
 
I think my point in starting this thread was that it's the clarity of the dreams was new, rather than the content. Although the content of my dreams has also been more coherent than usual, but this may be due more to the remembering of the vividness than the actual content.
 
the clarity and the internal consistency fo the dream - that it tells a story - and the feeling that it's something other, a "normal" dream plus, as if it's been stepped up to the next level.

my dream last night was about my workplace. Dark, untended, musty, confused, people not sure what they should be doing, nobody seemed to know anything at all, taking advantage of the confusion to use work facilities and stationery/supplies/systems for personal use. Then a pleasing interlude where I was walking up Wellington Road (main street) in Stockport with a very pleasant and personable French girl - we were actually talking in French. Puddles underfoot, aware my shoes were unsuited and possibly had holes in, shrugging and saying there was nothing for it other to get our feet wet...
 
Of course, during lockdown, an element of sensory deprivation must apply - sensory limitation, anyway. I discovered many years ago when something similar happened (a combination of acute poverty and solitude for (thankfully) just a couple of months led to isolation. Things were not completely boring as at least I had a radio (no TV) and books to read. Food was limited and repetitive too. i started having regular OOB dreams while this was going on.... not a period in life I'd want to revisit, though. It was as if the dreaming life was compensating for lack of sensory input in waking life.
 
Of course, during lockdown, an element of sensory deprivation must apply - sensory limitation, anyway. I discovered many years ago when something similar happened (a combination of acute poverty and solitude for (thankfully) just a couple of months led to isolation. Things were not completely boring as at least I had a radio (no TV) and books to read. Food was limited and repetitive too. i started having regular OOB dreams while this was going on.... not a period in life I'd want to revisit, though. It was as if the dreaming life was compensating for lack of sensory input in waking life.

I'm not in sensory deprivation though, Ag. I still go to work, where it's very busy, go out running etc etc. Apart from the fact that I'm not meeting up with my kids every few weeks, my life continues as normal. Which is why I'm putting the vivid dreams down to the whole 'anxiety' thing that's pervading the nation, rather than a change in lifestyle.
 
I'm not in sensory deprivation though, Ag. I still go to work, where it's very busy, go out running etc etc. Apart from the fact that I'm not meeting up with my kids every few weeks, my life continues as normal. Which is why I'm putting the vivid dreams down to the whole 'anxiety' thing that's pervading the nation, rather than a change in lifestyle.
Interestingly, last year and early this year I was suffering from anxiety which grew less as the pandemic increased until now is gone, but I have noticed I am starting to remember more about my dreams but soon forget after waking, apart from last nights which I still remember clearly now.
 
My dreams have recently stopped completely which is unusual for me. Instead I wake up with a feeling of unease or dread and have to think hard to remember what's going on.

This is more what I've experienced. I didn't dream at all for the latter half of March and a bunch of early April, at least as far as anything vivid enough to remember. I've only recently dreamt more.
 
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