During my teenage years, I ate up anything that was related to the supernatural or the off-beat.
Part of that was literature on dreams. Yes, my mom had a copy of 10,000 Dreams Interpreted by Gustavus Hindman Miller, but I was more interested in what Jung had to say about dreams. Freud, well, he’s tough to take in large amounts, but he’s a trailblazer in the field.
I don’t dream often. It’s probably because I don’t get to sleep deep enough working two jobs and having two kids. But having kids and being overworked really wasn’t the start of my silent nights. When I do dream, however, it’s visceral. Can my epilepsy and severe migraines affect my dreams? Who knows.
Here and there I’ll have a few that I remember. Some good. Some bad. Most dreams are just wisps of cotton candy, dissolving by the fluidity of waking. When they’re good, you wish you could stay asleep.
I very rarely have dreams about people I know. Usually, it’s just me. Funny, as a teen, Cindy Crawford never made it into my dreams. I had a shit load of dreams about tornadoes, falling and being a ghost investigator helping families.
I’ve also experienced something that takes a high-level of tolerance to get through. Night terrors. They are not something you want to experience and often times, they involve what’s called shadow people. The mind can project one helluva a horror movie sometimes.
I’ll fill you in on the experience if you ask, but to this day I cannot sit through the documentary The Nightmare without having my normally low blood pressure emulate an old man’s hypertension. Night terrors are no fun for those involved.
I often ask if there could there be a link between dreams and past lives. Perhaps. We’ll never know until we kick off. But until that time, we can only opine. Here are the Top 5 nightmare themes I’ve had over the years.
| 5. |  |
Dream: Tornadoes Period: Youth My Thoughts: My mom would shutter the house, turn off the lights and unplug most of the electronics whenever a storm would approach. Perhaps her fear found itself in my dreams, as I would often dream of being in a house during a tornado. Just to confirm, I’m not afraid of tornadoes. I’ve seen two funnel clouds in my life and the only reaction was awe. |
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| 4. |  |
Dream: Falling Period: Youth My Thoughts: For the life of me, I can’t understand why there was a trap door in my falling dreams. I’d be on the edge of a precipice falling over … dropped out of an airplane … losing my balance on a Hoodoo like geological formation … or simply falling through the sky and then through a trap door and actually feel like I was physically bouncing in my bed on impact. It was the weirdest sensation. |
| 3. |  |
Dream: Paranormal Investigator Period: Ongoing My Thoughts: Since my teen years, I’ve dreamed of being in a haunted building or helping a family who is experiencing a violent haunting. On my first night in a house in Whitby, both my mom and I dreamed that the place was haunted. It wasn’t but a latent fear for both of us must have manifested. |
| 2. |  |
Dream: Don’t Look Beast or Car Period: My youth My Thoughts: If there was a window in my dreams, there would be a tap on the glass. If I looked, well, I’d be ripped to shreds by either the claws of a giant cat or the bullets from a passing vehicle. Subconsciously, you begin to pick up on certain trends in your dreams and you’d be able to side-step running into that nightmare. |
| 1. |  |
Dream: Every family member dies Period: Every Easter and Christmas as a child My Thoughts: Obviously my whole family did not depart in an untimely manner, but every major Christian holiday, or at a time of intense anxiousness, I would have a dream where all my family members were gone. One by one I would get the dreaded sense that they were no longer with me. Those were the nights, as a young kid, when I’d wake up soaked with fear-sweat. |