Forums

Posted: 17-05-2009 08:12 Post subject: Dream visitation from a ringmaster demon

Ahoy-hoy, all!

I thought I might delurk and share a bit of dream spookiness with all of you. This actually happened to me a couple of months ago, and ditz that I am, I didn't think to post with it. Instead, I just stayed up until dawn for many days in a row and ate frozen yogurt and plied my friends with strong coffee. Misery loves company!

Pardon me in advance for the long post. I tend to ramble a bit.

Here's a little bit of background: I've always been fascinated with paranormal phenomenon, but particularly with lucid dreaming. I've had dreams about lucid dreaming -- a cruel irony, I know. In total, I've only had a handful of lucid dreams, the following account being one of them.

As a whole, my dreams share a number of characteristics, never quite straying far from them:

1) Characters almost never speak to me in my dreams, nor do I attempt to speak to them. Any communication is through quirky intra-subconscious telepathy.

2) I am usually not myself in dreams. Normally, I am either a floating spectator, or I jump from character to character. Kind of like tag for bodysnatchers. Awkwardly enough, usually I take over right when something momentous! and astounding! is expected, and then I find myself unable to properly play the fiddle or defeat the giant goose-headed Bavarian dragon with my somewhat twiggy wand.

3) I don't feel emotion in dreams; usually the fear sets in once I wake up and realize that there is something deeply wrong with my psyche.

4) Similarly, I don't normally have a sense of smell, taste, touch, etc.

So these are a few important details that explain why, when the lucid dream in question occurred, I completely bugged out. In sum: I've done my research on lucid dreaming, and I am actually a dream android. Do dream androids dream of other dream androids dreaming of electric sheep? Who knows.

Now on to our feature presentation. In the dream, I woke in the bed of my new apartment. This detail was slightly odd as well, since I normally don't register location until much, much later. After my family moved from our old house, it took me several years before I even dreamed of anything taking place in the new house. At the time of this dream, I had only moved in to my apartment perhaps 5 months prior.

As soon as I left my bedroom and went into the living room, I saw a thin Gollum-looking creature, maybe three and a half feet tall, with a large bulbous head and a grotesquely wide smile. It stood in front of the bathroom and simply grinned at me. I kind of paused and said to myself, "Self, do you expect me to believe Gollum is standing in my living room? Didn't Frodo throw him into a volcano with the People's Elbow?" So naturally, I (somewhat smugly) concluded that I was dreaming.

"So cool," I thought, and promptly tried to hadouken the overwhelmingly underfed creature. For those who are not as geeky as me, this just means that I held out my hands and tried to blast my dream villain into smithereens with a blue fireball.

I failed! So I shrugged and kicked him. Ha-ha! I thought. You may have escaped the fiery wrath of my fists, and yet I triumph!

Not so, because this is when the dream took a turn for the creepy. The creature got back up and morphed into what looked like a caricature. He was conical, and looked vaguely like this painting: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rlsm/ho_41.16.1.htm

He was dressed as a ringmaster, complete with red jacket and all, and he smirked at me. He began to engage me in conversation, which startled me. In all the unspoken dream conversations I've had, it was sort of like talking underwater -- whatever the dream character was trying to tell me bubbled up and floated over to me, bursting and only imparting their meaning. In contrast, when the ringmaster spoke to me, I could hear his words, clear as a bell.

"You know you're still awake, right?" he said casually.

"You be trippin'," I said. (This is a paraphrase).

We began arguing, myself in earnest, and him as though he were speaking to a child. He pointed out the fact that I couldn't shoot him with a fireball like a video game character, and I observed that normally I don't entertain creepy gnome-like psycho stalkers. This went back and forth for a bit, and then with a growing sense of panic, I went to the dining table, determined to prove him wrong. I picked up a magazine -- vividly, an in-flight magazine -- and said, "If I'm really awake, I would be able to read this; since I'm not, this is going to shame my alma mater."

The words were very crisp, and I could read the article clearly. In fact, I can still remember what the article was about, something boring about seating layouts on Southwest Airlines.

I tried to outsmart the ringmaster with a few more demonstrations, then starting to panic (and possibly I've lost lucidity at this point; I'm not sure), I kicked him into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Really, I don't have a violence problem, I promise.

Completely freaked out by now, I ran back to my bedroom and groped around for my phone, intending to check it against my digital clock. Looking at clocks has been one of my lucid dreaming checks, and I wanted to prove to myself that the details were off. When I did find my cell phone, I noticed that the display read "1:10" while my clock read "7:05." A-ha! I've bested the ringmaster!

At this point, I started really losing lucidity, because I noticed then that my phone display was actually the real-time feed from someone's camera. The 1:10 was actually a countdown, and as the seconds ticked away, I read the words " 'til the end of the world" right above them. I tried another one of my lucid dreaming tricks (usually I'm successful if I close my eyes and will myself to another location), but I was apparently powerless.

Lucidity was completely lost at this point, as my bedroom morphed into an elongated version of my room in my parents' house. I heard my mother calling for me to get out of the bathroom, and I heard the ringmaster reply in my voice, "Coming!" I heard the sound of the bathroom door opening just as the countdown on my phone reached 0:00, and then I became frantic with panic and had some wonky dream about the TV show ER.

Anyway, I wasn't sure if this was worth sharing -- I just thought it was odd that I felt a sort of entity present in the dream. I had a subsequent (non-lucid) dream a few weeks afterwards, also involving the same caricature features though not on the ringmaster character in particular. That dream was lacking the urgency and panic of the dream above, but I do recall that the Daumier characters in the second dream were actually background characters who just turned and regarded me with malevolent smiles before exiting the scene. That dream was actually pretty fun and creepy (as opposed to horrifying and freakish like the ringmaster dream), because it involved an interdimensional windstorm.

Hearing the ringmaster's voice so clearly was really unlike anything I've ever experienced. I'm not sure if it's because the ringmaster dream was lucid or not, but for weeks afterwards, I felt an acute sense of dread every time I looked at the space in front of the bathroom where the ringmaster stood. And...yes. That's it for me! Small fry compared to some of the madness on this board, I know Smile

Posted: 17-05-2009 08:27 Post subject:

I don't know anything about lucid dreaming, but I do know that sometimes a weird dream can leave you feeling a bit odd for quite a time afterwards. The problem with phenomena of this nature is it's subjectivity - you know what feels normal for you so are aware when things go differently, to everyone else its just a weird dream! Nice story though.

Posted: 17-05-2009 13:29 Post subject:

I have experimented with lucid dreaming myself, and you get much further with it, than I ever did.
Thanks for sharing the story. Experiences like these are always interesting to read.

Posted: 17-05-2009 23:04 Post subject:

I wonder if there are entities which live in dreams? They could hop about from dream to dream, crossing continents until they got back into the mind they started in.

Posted: 18-05-2009 05:07 Post subject:

Thanks for reading, guys!

The idea of dream continent-hopping dream entities reminds me of Mark Twain's "No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger" -- the Library of America version, anyhow. He explored the idea of the waking self versus the sleeping self. There was this really fantastic passage where a sleeping self explained that every time we fall asleep, our sleeping selves romp across the universe, exploring different planes of existence completely inconceivable to the rational mind.

I really like the idea that maybe there are entities that are birthed in our minds that likewise go romping across the universe... maybe some disgruntled 37-year-old librarian dreamt up a conical ringmaster and it crept into my dream for a look-see! I'm not sure what the ringmaster thing was in my dream, but it definitely felt like a very "real" presence.

Posted: 18-05-2009 15:00 Post subject:

Great story. Reality is not always what it seems...

Posted: 21-05-2009 00:00 Post subject:

Brilliant stuff!!! Just as a byline, have you ever tried to turn a light switch on in a dream? The light won't turn on. Or it will, but very dimly. Don't know why this happens, but apparently it's the same for everyone. Unless you know differently . . .

Posted: 21-05-2009 06:49 Post subject:

That's a relief brumben!

In used to dream about trying to put the light on SUCH alot when I was a child, and it always frightened me that I couldn't!
I also feared that it might be telling me that I was going to go blind in later life.

What does it actually mean, or is it just general stress?
I don't have such upsetting dreams now that I'm an adult.

Posted: 26-05-2009 11:27 Post subject:

Didn't realise the light switch thing was so common. I also used to dream that one regularly in my childhood & found it pretty scary. Often wondered if it was related to sleepwalking, when I would sometimes turn the lights on.

Interested in your point 4, englerj, re emotions in dreams. I'd say the opposite for me - the strongest feelings of fear and pure dread I've had have been in dreams.

Posted: 30-08-2009 12:36 Post subject: demons in dreams

Hi all, this post reminds me of a strange dream I had when I was aged 9 or 10.

I was on holiday wuth my parents at the time in a very old and grubby caravan situated on the east coast. At around 11pm i was drifting into sleep - half awake/half drifting - when a very strange image entered my minds eye.

Before me was a cavern dimly lit that had a stream or lake of water rushing along, the sound of splashing water echoed around and struck me with a "wow moment". The partially awake me was amazed by this vision and so i just watched with interest.

I seemed to move around this strange place from one side of this rushing water and as i did i came across a childsize figure sat along some banking. It was staring into the water and looked like the classic devil character, two little horns, a small black pointy beard, pointy nose and was dressed in some black/dark tightfitting uniform. It had a stick or staff - memory fails on this part of its person.

I stopped in my travels and stood looking over the water at this creature. It looked towards me and smiled and then giggled at me. It then placed part of the stick or staff in the water and returned its gaze towards me laughing, its small chest rising with each vent of humour.

This shocked me, realising that a living thing was in my dream and could see me! I jumped out of my sleep and spent alongtime awake and frightened. Nothing happened after this and for all i know i fell back to sleep with no return to this strange underground place.

Mark

Posted: 31-08-2009 01:40 Post subject: canary has brilliant idea.

the king sized canary had a brilliant idea, one i hope he or someone else picks up on because it would be an incredible story...dream entities who live in dreams, moving from dreamer to dreamer until they end up back in the original mind. what an idea!

Posted: 31-08-2009 18:07 Post subject:

I'll sell the idea to Hollywood and make millions! Millions, I say!

Posted: 10-10-2011 13:58 Post subject:

Posted: 10-10-2011 19:40 Post subject:

As well as light switches, go looking for a toilet. I can pretty much guarantee that all the toilets in your dream will be broken or not very nice/convenient to use.
If you find one, don't use it... Smile

Posted: 10-10-2011 19:44 Post subject: