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The Ventriloquist's Dummy & His Bottle Of Milk

I have to say, quite randomly, that this is probably my favourite thread ever on this board.

It also sounds almost exactly like the sort of weirdness that i'd expect to happen to me. :lol:
 
Op, I just wanted to tell you that this is the best nightmare I've ever read.
Thansk for sharing. :)
 
You can really increase dream recall by taking a B6 supplement (don't take over 100mg) before bed. When I take this my dreams are much more vivid.

For lucid dreams try taking galantamine with choline.
 
Doesn't monster energy drinks contain 400% more B6 than the RDI?
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I have to say, quite randomly, that this is probably my favourite thread ever on this board.
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It's one of my faves too, BRF. It's just so creepy :D
 
Well, at least it’s your mother! You can take some comfort in the fact that your brain is at least in part a product of her genetic code, and may simply be coming up with the same thing when dreaming! :D
 
Wow. Amazing thread this one. A few things struck me about the dream and maybe it will make sense to someone. A ventriloquists dummy and his bottle of milk, suggests this. The Dummy, and the Milk are clearly psychological references to comfort for a baby. Dummies and Milk are used to comfort the child but in this case the Dummy is decaying. However the milk is still comforting and that is why the dreamer wants to get the milk even though the Dummy is scary and not comforting. Also what comes to mind isn't Bottle of milk but the way a Ventriloquist might say "A bottle of beer" as " a Gottle of Gear" Why milk in this case?
If we're going down the psychological route I'd say it was a dream about the transition from infanthood to a childhood that maybe wasn't perfect in a lot of ways.
However.. getting a bit creepier ... suppose the Dummy was real, and he was a representation of death in some way, he's clearly not alive and yet can move and speak on his own and he's decaying, and when you are dead your body decays.
The themes here are interesting - life and death.
Beginning and End.

Edit: Something just came to mind about the Navy man who was a p/t ventriloquist - just a thought.. a message in a bottle.
Could the message be "Oh you've done it now" as in a kind of admission of some kind of guilt?

Edit again;
Maybe admission of truth - as the milk represents purity or truth
 
I like that idea of the dummy & milk being the comforts of infanthood,Crookshank . Also, didn't the OP say that it happend at her Grandparents house? So, life and death/growing old would have been apparent to her at a really young age.

It's one of the few stories on FTMB's that's really stuck with me, such an interesting dream.
 
I personally find the concept of trying to read psychological detail out of the very random brain farts of a dream to be rather ridiculous. To believe that such a subtext even exists, let alone give clear detailing, is something I just cannot buy into. It's people trying to find a puzzle where there isn't one.

What I find more interesting is the notion of two people sharing a dream which plausibly was on ever experienced under the roof of one house. How that occurs.
 
cherrybomb said:
I like that idea of the dummy & milk being the comforts of infanthood,Crookshank . Also, didn't the OP say that it happend at her Grandparents house? So, life and death/growing old would have been apparent to her at a really young age.
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I'm not sure about that. When you are young people are timeless - it never occurs to you that they were once young. or even that your grandparents were once the age of your parents. They just are.
 
Hello everyone
I've not been on here for so long. I recently got a new job which allows me to spend a good few stolen hours on here. I am the original poster and have only just noticed that people have been discussing this thread. If you want to ask me anything then go ahead. :)
 
girl_who_fell_to_earth said:
Hello everyone
I've not been on here for so long. I recently got a new job which allows me to spend a good few stolen hours on here. I am the original poster and have only just noticed that people have been discussing this thread. If you want to ask me anything then go ahead. :)
Click to expand...

Do you have a formula for picking the winning lottery numbers?
 
girl_who_fell_to_earth said:
Hello everyone
I've not been on here for so long. I recently got a new job which allows me to spend a good few stolen hours on here. I am the original poster and have only just noticed that people have been discussing this thread. If you want to ask me anything then go ahead. :)
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Hello! But did you make it through the forum move I wonder? :)

I hope so. Because this thread is another truly fascinating tale.
 
Very creepy story and thanks for sharing it!

Seeking a rational explanation, could you have overheard your mum telling someone about the nightmare she had, when you were very young? If so, it just may have disturbed you to such an extent that it worked its way into your subconscious and thereby into your dreams?
 
An odd thing sometimes happens on my computer - the cursor moves slowly across the screen when I'm not touching the mouse, or even the table it's set up on! Almost spooky!

The mouse is an optical one, and this never happened with the previous (rollerball) mouse. I'm assuming that it's reacting to some minute vibrations, maybe from the computer hard drive.

Or else it's an ideomotor effect! ;)
 
rynner2 said:
An odd thing sometimes happens on my computer - the cursor moves slowly across the screen when I'm not touching the mouse, or even the table it's set up on! Almost spooky!

The mouse is an optical one, and this never happened with the previous (rollerball) mouse. I'm assuming that it's reacting to some minute vibrations, maybe from the computer hard drive.

Or else it's an ideomotor effect! ;)
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I've seen that phenomenon many times myself on several machines. It's probably down to a bug in the mouse driver software.
 
According to eHow....

"If you have an optical mouse---that is, one that uses lasers---drift can be caused by the surface you use your mouse on. Some surfaces, like hardwood, have nooks and crannies that can cause mouse drift. Try working with a mouse pad if you don't already."

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/about_5366556_mouse-pointer-move-itself.html


Happens all the time on my Windows XP work computer. Never happens on my Windows 7 one, or my home machine (also Windows 7 - dunno if that's relevant, but my two work PCs are on the same desk.)
 
It probably is something wonky with the driver.

The ventriloquist dummy with his bottle of milk came out of the fridge and messed with them while you were out. :eek:
 
I forgot how much I love the OP on this thread. Thanks for digging it up again :)
 
great thread, not read it before, as per a few other posts upthread, the decaying dummy/bottle of milk puts me in mind of the miniature giraffe walking under the crack in a door thread, which was actually a child trying to make sense of something an adult said ("theres a bit of a draft coming from under that door") ... the enduring memory thus formed was entirely visual and surreal ... im thinking of a scenario whereby someone used a rubber teat which wasnt clean on a babys bottle, prompting a remark such as "now youve done it, get that dirty old dummy off that bottle of milk" ... hard to explain how the mother and daughter both dreamt it, unless the mother was humouring her ?
 
henry said:
great thread, not read it before, as per a few other posts upthread, the decaying dummy/bottle of milk puts me in mind of the miniature giraffe walking under the crack in a door thread, which was actually a child trying to make sense of something an adult said ("theres a bit of a draft coming from under that door") ... the enduring memory thus formed was entirely visual and surreal ... im thinking of a scenario whereby someone used a rubber teat which wasnt clean on a babys bottle, prompting a remark such as "now youve done it, get that dirty old dummy off that bottle of milk" ... hard to explain how the mother and daughter both dreamt it, unless the mother was humouring her ?
Click to expand...


Indeed. That's what fascinates me here. Two people who appear to have had a very similar dream. Quite a dark and unsettling one at that.
 
Since I'm on a roll here today (I don't post for months, then splurge), I will add my unprofessional opinion to this well loved, long lived thread. I recall this from the first time around and have always meant to get back to re reading it. It's stuck with me over the years, that's for sure.

Having had some distance and being able to read the entire thread in one swoop now, I shall add my thoughts:

I agree with crookshank, theoretically, concerning the connection between age and decay, youth and maternal sustenance. I say this because I recognised similar sensations myself as a child when visiting the hauntingly quiet houses of much older people. I think it had something to do with the distance between extreme youth and extreme age and how I assigned meaning to that; a kind of staggering abyss that I can no longer recall but can still feel.
And when I was a child, very old people's homes tended to be so achingly quiet and were often filled with dark wooden furniture, old paintings, strange bits and bobs that seemed shadowy and portentous to me. It was a kind of potent stillness in which you would always hear a clock (or 10) ticking, which I must have associated with a slowing of the breath, of waiting...waiting...
It isn't quite the dream imagery/symbolism that speaks to me here, more the obvious sensations of a growing awareness of death and decay. In this particular dream I don't feel that the imagery is specific like a puzzle that needs to be solved. It strikes me as neither Jungian/Freudian, folkloric/supernatural. It does, on the other hand, make me feel sad.

I think the suggestions of a sexual catalyst would depend upon the age of the dreamer to some extent, but to conclude abuse is certainly too presumptuous. Certain elements in the narrative read a bit like articles we've all seen in the past that go on to reveal sexual abuse, so we go on to join the dots too quickly. And I think the greatest contributor to the abuse theory is that the mother and daughter both shared the same dream in the same house. It would make a very neat little psychological horror script!
The OP did become a wee bit cocky and boastful about her sexual proclivities at this point, which might make some people think she was deflecting/protecting (a typical reaction in abuse survivors), but I will assume she was simply pee'd off, as I might be in her position, tbh.

I also agree with the poster (was it curiousIdent?) who tried to steer the topic towards the house and it's history. This would be the first port of call for me, after discussing it with my mother and exploring how we both felt about being in that house in the past. I would want to know:

1/ Did the mother fear the house or feel uncomfortable in it as a child herself?
2/ Since the mother was the 'first' dreamer, information from her about her childhood would be more important to me than symbol analysis.
3/ Were the grandparents very happy in the house?
4/ Why would the house, if it contained a malevolent aspect, skip the grandparents but distress only the female children?
5/ I know it isn't realistic but I would really want to ask recent owners/tenants if they experienced anything in there.

If we put the house aside, we are back to the mother-daughter. And if the great uncle of ventriloquist fame was a restless spirit, why the heck would this manifest in the dreams of only two family members - so many years apart?

So mother and daughter it is. For me the answer lies here. Reconsidering my initial point about a child's growing awareness of ageing and decay, it still doesn't explain why both a mother and daughter would have exactly the same grotesque dream, image by image, in one particular place, just to deal with fairly mundane existential facts. If we presume it is passed on genetically (mmm), we have to also suppose that the grandmother had it and the OP's potential future daughter/s may inherit it too.
Not working for me.

My conclusion, and remember I said it was unprofessional...is separation anxiety. The house represented being away from the known comforts of her home life at a time when it really does matter. The business her parents were working on sounded like it involved haphazard hours, changeability, hard work. A continuous disruption of a routine (and especially one as important as the routine of bedtime) will have a profound effect on a child. To a child this would be difficult to articulate, so the emotion would be worked out unconsciously (or through behaviour), hence the dream. The severity of the anxiety and never knowing when it might resolve; being powerless in a world of adults and their strange patterns, could easily translate to a dream that is repetitive and terrifying. If I had to squeeze some symbolism out of it I would say the reachng for milk suggests a desperate need for a source of comfort. In her mind the child adores her parents, but there would also be the unconscious, primal need for stability which over rides this.

What I am left with now, and would need more info to decipher, is again - what caused the mother to dream it so many years earlier, too? Did the mother experience separation anxiety? Why should both of them manifest this anxiety in an identical dream? The more questions I ask, the less it makes sense. And so! This is either fabulous fiction, or as they say, the truth is often stranger.

Answers on a postcard please, since the OP's brief resurrection sounded like a bit of a 'reddit AMA' piss take to me - no update, no discussion or additional info, just a rush of HI GUYZ! No idea my post was so popular! ........then poof! nothing.

Edit to add: it is the OP's reactions, not the opening post that lead me to doubt. If this was me, I would be interested in exploring and finding answers, not waiting for others to ask me what I already know. I hope that makes sense. If the story is genuine, perhaps the OP lost interest years ago, and that's fair enough. I also didn't address the incident with the marbles either, which would suggest some sort of odd energy/activity specific to the house at least.
 
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kateadamson86 said:
This story is in response to my previous strange occurrance within my Grandparents house.

From a very early age I would very regularly stay at my Grandparents house while both of my parents were running a business at the time. So sometimes I would either spend all afternoon there or arrive in the evening, have my tea and then go to bed, ready to be picked up in the morning.

I absolutely hated the latter, I hated staying over at their house. Now, the strange thing is, nothing happened. I never saw a ghost, never experienced any strange phenomena, heard, smelt, felt anything. However, whenever and only ever when I stayed there I would have this very vivid dream, so vivid that often I would find that I would wake, only to find I had been sleep walking.

The dream, in which I could paint you a picture of it's still that clear in my memory, was of a ventriloquist's dummy.
The Dream :-
I would be lay in my bed awake, and be overwhelmed by this urgent feeling of needing to drink an ice cold glass of milk. Preferrably from a bottle (one a milk man would deliver). In the dream I was scared because I was aware that the only way I could forseeably get the bottle of milk was to visit the "dummy" in the fridge. I didn't like the dummy. He was decaying. I thought.

However, the need for milk was too great that I had to grin and bear it. I would walk down the stairs, very frightened, through the dark living room, through the dining room into the kitchen.
I slowly stared at the fridge plucking up the courage to open it. When I did, there it was, the ventriloquist's dummy, decaying, surrounded by rotten food. I had to reach for the pure white ice bottle of milk without disturbing him. (sometimes it would be easy and sometimes he would wake)

When he woke, he would look very angry and snap at me, laughing "oh, you've done it now." and with that, a massive black out, and then the house was burnt to the ground.

------I would then wake up (occassionally in the kltchen, holding an empty glass).

After my GRandad died, my nan moved to a different house, nearer to mine and I had the dream one last time and in this dream the dummy burnt away with the house. I have never had the dream again.

I feel that alone, this was weird enough, however, it gets stranger.

One night, I was sat with my mum watching a film and an advert came on with a ventriloquists dummy in it. My mum said out of the blue "oh, you've done it now"

I went cold.... turned to here and said "why did you say that?" she said "nothing, it's just that dummy reminded me of a dream I used to have when I was younger and he used to say that"

I couldn't believe my ears. So I decided to test it and said to her " Did he live in the fridge?". She stared at me in disbelief and replied "y-y-yes, he did." and silmutaneously we both said "with his bottle of milk".

We talked for hours about the dream, it had turned out we both had had the same dream and never mentioned it to either of eachother or anyone else for that matter.

We were as you can imagine very freaked out and had a lot to talk about. As this was her childhood home, it seemed weird that w both had the dream whilst staying at that house. And neither of us have had it since.

Thoughts?
change of underwear?
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Wow! Rea lly creepy story! Did your grandparents ever mention strange dreams , or anything creepy happening in the house? Do you know anything of the house's history, prior to your grandparents moving in there?
 
*shudder* this is a cracking story, thank heavens I’ve never had such a dream especially when it’s a repetitive one. I’ve always found ventriloquists dummies extremely creepy, those decorative china dolls too. When I was young my mum’s best friend bought me a china doll, complete with little Victorian dress. It was a kind and thoughtful gesture but I really didn’t like it (I pretended I did so as not to upset my mum’s friend). I refused to have in my bedroom so it lived on a chair in my mum and dad’s room.

I was about ten when I was in the living room engrossed in the TV when I heard a gentle tap on the window. I looked up and jumped out my skin in horror of what I saw, an ugly gurning face with big boggly eyes - the stuff of nightmares - looking in at me! I might have guessed it was my dad and another one of his ‘hilarious’ pranks. Somebody he worked with had asked if anybody wanted a ventriloquist dummy as they were getting rid of it, my dad thought I’d like it so had brought it home for me. He thought it was funny ducking beneath the window and tapping on it with the dummy’s hand. I wasn’t best pleased with him!
 
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