Craving nicotine
The last dream I had so closely resembled reality that for a while after I woke up I thought it had actually happened. I’d been taking an extended nap after arriving home late tonight, and I began dreaming. In my dream, it was approaching midnight and I was getting ready to go out to a club to see my friends. I decided to get a taxi and made my way there. This dream was noticeable because once I arrived at the club I took a pack of cigarettes out of my pocked and started smoking. The craving for nicotine was very apparent. The feeling of smoking was apparent and real. I woke up thinking I needed a cigarette. The dream was strange because I woke up around midnight and I was supposed to be going to the same club as I had visited in my dream. In the end, I neither went to the club nor had a pack of cigarettes.
Jumping down the stairs
I have always had recurring dreams of one form or another, but there was one that I had for years as a child that I came to quite enjoy in a backwards sort of way. It was always the same: there’d be me, stood at the top of a staircase in a house, and I’d wait until the time was right for me to jump. My jumping abilities were always pretty good in these dreams, and I was able to jump the entire staircase, from top to bottom, with one leap. The sensation of falling was very real and I would always wake up when I reached the bottom.
It is this sensation of falling that has always interested me about dreaming, because you can actually feel it in your stomach. It’s amazing that the brain can simulate that sensation. Occasionally if I’m in a dream and I know that I’m dreaming I will try and find something very high to jump off in order to recreate that falling feeling. The staircase dream is one I haven’t had for years, but it was certainly a part of my childhood, ingrained in my mind.
Sleep paralysis
I suffer from sleep paralysis from time to time. I used to get it more often than I do now, and so if you know what are some of the causes of sleep paralysis are then you can probably deduce a thing or two about me. When you slip into sleep paralysis regularly, you learn to deal with it, you learn that the wave can be ridden out. For those that don’t know, sleep paralysis is a phenomenon whereby your brain wakes up, your eyes open and you are technically awake, but your entire body is still asleep, unaware of what is happening in your brain. You are therefore conscious but unable to move. Sleep paralysis gets frightening because it is so close to sleep that more often than not while you are awake, and paralysed, you are still capable of dreaming.
One incident five years ago scared the living daylights out of me while it was happening. It was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I woke up, but couldn’t move, and I could feel energy rushing through my body. It was a strange sensation, but I could hear it rushing through me as if I were standing underneath a very heavy waterfall. At that moment I was convinced it was a ghost and I vowed that from then on I would always believe in the supernatural. The fear was unreal. The presence of a “ghost” was something I’d experienced before, but never so emphatically.
In the past couple of years I’ve only experienced sleep paralysis maybe a dozen times that I can recall, which is far less than I used to do, and is a blessing believe you me.
The man whose face fell off
I was often scared by my dreams as a child. One that springs to mind makes very little sense at all. I was in a desert-like environment, and it was very hot. I was walking around when I bumped into Sharon and Tracey from the British sitcom Birds of a Feather. I was speaking to them when an old man, who could have been a tribal warrior or witch doctor, approached us. He looked sad and was seeking our help. I was wary of him, and then out of nowhere the skin on his face began to sag and his entire face fell off. I was utterly shocked by this happening, so much so that I woke myself up instantly. I was only seven- or eight-years-old, and so I told my mum about the dream but was unable to convey exactly why I had found it so terrifying.
A flying knight
I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning after having this dream. It was a strange one. I was lying in a field in a suit of arms, as if I were a knight or something. We were running through a rehearsal for some sort of performance, similar to in the movie ‘The Banquet’ when the main character rehearses his fighting performance for the wedding. As in the movie, I’d been double crossed, and there was a man attacking me with a wooden stick, but he was really hurting me, which he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He was only hitting my legs, but I could feel the pain in my legs even through the metal of the suit of arms. I was angry, and so I decided to get myself out of the situation by flying away.
I flew upwards and willed myself away from the man with the stick; I flew over some hills, over the green fields below, and I eventually came to a small village. I landed on a small path that had a row of old, wooden buildings on it. They all looked like the sort of buildings you’d expect to find in England in the 1500s or some similar era. I was approached by a Thai guy I know. This particular guy, in real life, works for Buzzin’ Mag. He spoke to me with a thick, Scottish accent, saying: “Let’s go for a bevy.” He kept repeating those same words in his newfound Scottish tone, and so I eventually agreed to have a drink with him and we went to one of the inns amongst the buildings. That was when it hit 6 a.m.
A dream of being dead
One of the most vivid dreams I can remember from my childhood was one in which I died. I was on earth, but I was dead, and I knew I was dead. I had no memory of how I had died, or what had happened, but I was dead and was content with that fact. I had no body but I could see as if I were looking out through my own eyes. I just existed and at that moment I was happy. I began to move upwards, away from the earth, traveling higher and higher. I left the earth behind and was traveling through space towards the finale of my existence. I went past stars and planets, into a darkness right to the edge of the universe. At the edge I was still able to see, but there was nothing to see. There was just emptiness, with no people, no sound, and no colors or shapes. I was dead and was satisfied that this was what death was like.
After this dream I stopped being so afraid of death for awhile because, to me, I had an understanding of death that nobody else had ever seen. It was a calming dream that I will never forget.
Old friends
Last night I dreamt that I was with my best friends from secondary school, Tom, Ed, Julian, and George. They looked exactly as they did the last time I saw them some two years ago. We were out drinking in a pub and were sat in a beer garden. I had a drink of very flat beer, but Ed had a bottle of vodka with him. He poured everyone glasses of vodka redbull, but by the time he got to me he’d run out of vodka. I was frustrated, so I threw the flat beer out of my glass and stormed off.
I walked towards a low wall and jumped over it into a typical English field. I was wearing an old hoodie that I used to wear every day. I pulled the hood up over my head because it was so cold. I decided to go to a shop. The field sloped downwards and I strolled down the hill and found a shop where I planned to buy vodka and something to eat. Outside there were nothing but green apples. I decided I would eat some of the apples and was experiencing the sensation of eating large, juicy Granny Smiths. However, the old, green door to the shop was shut. I looked in through the window and the only thing inside there was a large double bed. The best had no sheets or duvet on it, just an exposed mattress. I stared at the bed for a long time and then woke up.