h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So tell us...

Do you dream in colour or black and white? With sound or without?

Apparently Wowbagger the Post cartoonist dreams in black and white. (see A673670) And I wondered how common that was/is...

Or if this has already been covered, kindly point me toward the appropriate forum...



- X

I certainly dream in colour with sound. But as many people have found, I can't read in dreams.

The standard test for finding out whether you are dreaming or not is as follows: Look at a sign containing more than four letters. Look away and look back. If the sign still says the same thing, then you are probably awake. If you are dreaming, then the sign will have changed, because the dreaming part of your brain does not know how to read so it makes up meanings for the sign.

You can't read in dreams? I guess that will make those exam-dreams seems scarier. I find that most of the times I seem to dream in thoughts. I can remember the dream and what happened in it, but not with any pictures or color.

But I do also dream in pictures, just not with sound that often.

A dream without sound would not be very lifelike for me, because it would lack the music which is playing in my head non-stop 24 hours a day.

I dream in colour usually and with sound always. However, one dream I saw the entire dream through a black/white television set with bad reception.

I always dream in colour with sound, however I once drempt almost entirely in diagrams and maps, the dream was about my war to take over the world.

That sounds slightly disturbing.

I usually dream in colour, but it's frequently like those TV shows filmed on a hand-held camera (fly on the wall documentaries and "The Cops" in particular, with wobbliness that's not apparent when you're just using your eyes). Sound almost always, except in rare cases.

Sometimes, though, the colour is a lot more vivid than in a 'normal' dream, and these are usually also the dreams I am capable of consciously controlling to some extent. Standard literature on lucid dreaming suggests that dreams in colour are lucid or near-lucid, while black and white are normal. I disagree, since so many people seem to dream in colour and you're not all lucid dreaming, are you? I'm certainly not most of the time.

Glorious Technicolour, Dolby Surround Sound, Sensorama Touch (if I'm lucky ), and occasionally a sense of smell. I don't think I have ever tasted anything in a dream.

I can dream full 90 minute movies, with plots, steady-cam or hand-held, and sometimes I even get Dream II and Dream III on subsequent nights.

But I rarely remember them, if I don't write them down. And guess what? They are not as coherent as they seem.

a dreamer called Ben

Same here - full colour/sound/touch/taste/smell.

I sometimes have dreams involving locations that are particular blends of familiar places and people that are composites of people I know, that I'm pretty sure are fairly consistent from dream to dream or night to night, like some kind of alternate universe.

I have sometimes had huge detailed filmic dreams that seem to take hours, but I *know* took only minutes, since they were fitted between sleepily hearing a quick summary at the start of a 3-minute news bulletin on my clock-radio, and actually waking up a minute or two later to hear the more detailed item and thinking 'Hang on, I've been there and seen that'.

I sometimes dream in colour and sometimes in black and white and I also dream in B/W with only certain things coloured. Sometimes sound and sometime not.

What this all means, I haven't an idea.

Mostly

I can't remember having dreamed in b/w. But I do think that the dreams where I actually see stuff are more the ones where I am aware that I am dreaming. I do sometimes get strange angles. Where I am dreaming some scenes and I don't find it strange I am seeing it in an awkward angle from up under the ceiling or so.

I once had an orgasm in a dream, it woke me up. Honestly! Weird huh!

My dreams are always in colour. I also experience smell and taste and sometimes touch (which is very spooky 'cos this usually happens in dreams just before I wake up and can still "feel" the touch on me.)

I always experience the same thing in dreams when I am learning a new bit of software or have overdosed on some sim games. Everything I do in the dream has a sequence and a way that things must be done in order for things to happen correctly. For instance if I have to go through a door into another room in my dream I have to pick a door icon (from a screen somewhere) and use it! If I don't do it properly I get frustrated and try again until I get it right.

Does anyone else experience this? Or am I just

An orgams in a dream? Well, has anyone ever come with a good explanation as to why we humans have physical signs of arousal after sleep?

Come to think of it, I don't feel much emotionally in my dream. No big joy or big fears. I haven't had a nightmare since I was 9 years old. The closest is that thing where you feel you fall and wake up suddenly. Which can be annoying when sleeping in public But no big emotions in my dreams, compared to real life.

I dream in colour, but with no sound most of the time. I know this because one particular colour usually stands out in the dream, and if I do suddenly have some volume, it surprises the hell out of me!

Physical arousal is not uncommon, although I've never beenwoken up by an orgasm . I only rarely dream of explicit sex ( again), but I have been woken up because I am very upset by something in a dream. I've never woken up crying, but I have woken up and immediately started crying.

I frequently enter a sort of almost-sleep state when I've got into bed at night, where I will often have a dream that's almost a lucid dream (but not quite). These are frequently ended by me falling, tripping or colliding with something, whereupon I am brought back to full wakefulness with the feeling of having escaped something unpleasant.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm projecting myself somehow and really am encountering things which are trying to be nasty to me. Perhaps I should try avoiding that state of sleep...

Colour, sound, touch, taste & smell which sometimes linger after I've woken up. I've also woken up with an extremely odd sense of volume/depth and crying and screaming after a bad dream & Grandad frequently wakes up laughing. We both talk & walk in our sleep. The Weatherwax household is rarely quiet

And now for something completly different....

People blind since birth, have auditory dreams (no pictures)

I met a guy once who said he had 'conceptual dreams' - never sensory. Sounds like Xanatic dreaming thoughts and ideas.

Ben