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

Of course people blind since birth (and before) can`t dream in pictures! What picture could they see?
I cant remember ever having dreamt in b/w. Once i had a dream that was so `real` i really didnt know if i was dreaming or not. There was colour, sound and touch, and i was cold. It was night and i was standing on a tarmac road. The road was hard under my shoes.A police car came around the corner and i jumped into a car (not mine) and drove off. That was when i knew i was dreaming- when something i wouldnt normally do occured, and of course, i woke up. But at the time i was dreaming it seemed very real. Of course, the test is, how did i get here? Do i remember waking up today and the sequence of events that led me to this place? If you cant- then youre dreaming.
Also, if youre about to get to get lucky with a beautiful girl that you dont quite reconise then sorry mate, youre dreaming! And the realization of that fact always wakes me up!

Twice I dreamed that I was given some fairly shocking information and could not subsequently remember if it was a dream or if it was real. I had to check. Both times the information was incorrect. Which makes me wonder how much else of my life was actually dreamed...



Ben

On the reading in dreams note, I was once dreaming (fairly certain that I must be be awake, since it was so realistic), when in the middle of the dream I walked past a billboard containing some information on Prince Philip. Said poster said that he was born in Scotland, at which point I knew it was a dream since he was born in Cyprus.

Did that make any sense?

As for colour, I dream with colour too. That said, my ex was completely colour-blind - I take it he dreamt in black and white...

I always dream in color, stereo sourround-sound, touch, taste, smell ... the works! I usually remember my dreams. I have to be careful what I watch before going to bed, because I'll invariable dream about it. It's always fun to spend time with the characters from your favorite TV show or movie, though!

There's a lovely house on a lake that I always dream about. It's my house, but it's nothing I've ever seen while awake. When I dream of home, it's always there. I wish it *was* real! I'd love to really fish off that second-floor deck!

Both Colour and sound.

I can read, but don't often have to in dreams.
Occasionally I've dreamt in ways that feel as if it's a telly programme, but with no sense of myself outside the programme. I had one a month or two ago about something similar to the Hillsborough tragedy (one of those few dreams that'll probably stay with me forever), and it had a football commentator for the soundtrack.

Normally, though, I'm there in the dream, although not very often as myself.

I've never had the steroetypical falling ones, that I can remember. My dreams are too *me* for that.

You know that thing about cheese giving you nightmares?

The last time I had cheese before bed, I dreamed I was hunting through a burning police station trying to find my juggling balls (which I like very much, hence why I didn't want them to get burned).

However, that's not the weirdest dream I've ever had, so maybe it just alters the probability of remembering it...

What's weird about hunting through a burning Police station for your juggling balls? That sounds fairly normal to me! Most of my dreams would have stuff at least as strange as that. How about the end of the world coming and the entrance to heaven being through the small cupboard high up on the wall in the corner of my living room. A large queue of people formed to climb up the ladder while angels floated around and played trumpets. But I couldn't read the music on the piano when I tried.

I've had one stereotypical falling dream - I was being pursued by this old man through cobbled streets in the mist until he cornered me into a sort of harbour and pushed me over the edge. I was obviously about to die, and then I woke up. I wonder if it's because I couldn't possibly imagine my own death? Hmmm... Then again, I was in a pretty dodgy state of mind and on heavy medication at the time, so that might explain it...

I've had quite a few dreams I've woken from while falling, being run down by a truck, etc.

However, my weirdest falling dream :-

I dreamt that I'd been caving and was falling down a long drop. I woke to realise I was falling out of my bunk in the caving hut. I woke again to realise that that was a dream, and I was still in my bunk.
I then woke again, (thinking I'd worked everything out), and rolled over on what I thought was my bunk, to realise I was actually underground, and had nodded off on a 3m wide shelf next to a 70m drop while someone else was rigging a rope down, I had rolled over towards the drop, and I wasn't attached to anything.

Blimey, Potholer, I am not sure what impresses me more about that - the fact you could go to sleep in those circumstances, or the fact that at some level some part of you was yelling 'wake up - this is NOT a good place to be asleep!'

Ben

I dream in movie. That is, my dreams often cut from scene to scene, and rarely obey the laws of reality as I know them when I'm awake. They seem ABSOLUTELY real at the time - In no way do I ever even think of questioning whether I'm awake or not, because I am quite obviously awake. That is, things are supposed to work that way, and thay always have. (One time, while dreaming, I was startled at the fact that I was suddenly unable to cast spells, even though I hadn't yet done so in that particular dream. Go figure.) Many of my dreams that are, well, more suited to this universe, would sometimes make wonderful feature-length movies, as they have excellent depth and great plots - but I forget them. I've been working on trying to dream lucidly, and I'm really not sure if it's possible for me. The thing is, the logic of my dream makes it impossible to tell if I'm dreaming, or even question the fact. I'm stuck being a character in a movie, precisely playing out a script that I'm unaware of, because the script says that I'm unaware of it. Oh, I have free will in the dream of course, and many of my dreams are great fun - I get to explore a whole new universe! But, I don't get to understand the intricacies of the dream world, simply because I know them already. I mean, the samy way you know that gravity makes things fall only you don't think of it as being gravity most of the time, you just know that "things fall". I mean, I drop something, it falls. Of course. You don't try to walk, you just walk, if you feel like walking. I just teleport if I feel like teleporting (assuming this is a universe that allows that). But I never have a list of the rules of a dream, I just know them the same way you know how to walk (or fall, for that matter). I mean, can you give me a list of all the rules of the universe, or at least the ones you instinctively know? Not just Newton and whatnot but stuff like "air is breathable and water isn't"? So yes, I get to play around in another universe, provided I'm not a secret agent keeping the world from being blown up, or have some other mission via the "script", which is usually the case (having a mission, I mean. I so wish I had time off to play in my dream worlds...). Incidentally, the secret agent thing happened once, and I failed. Do you have ANY idea how unpleasant it is to be on a planet when a gigantic nuclear bomb goes off in its core, blowing everything to smithereens? I got the benefit of a fiew from outer space to watch it with, but I still had the horrible dream-death sensation. Which brings us to our next question:

What does it it feel like to you when you die in a dream?

Fiew? View.
I need to remember to vocalize my consonants.

Usually colour, as reality with sound etc.

I can read in dreams. And sometimes finish books i'm reading at the time, these are usually very bad dreams though.

Sometimes i dream in B/W.

Sometimes in widescreen with the top and bottom cut off. Sometimes with subtitles.

Nearly always in the first person, but sometimes third person.

Sometimes dream in plans and diagrams.


When she's anixous my partner has nightmares where she dreams purely in equations.

OK - get your heads around this one...

At about 12.30 last night in bed it occurred to me that it is not inherant to dream in black and white. The only reason "black and white" exists is because of film and TV. Before the invention of movies there was no black and white! The only visual experiences encountered were real, live and obviously in colour! Therefore the only time we can possibly dream in black and white is when we are dreaming of a film or TV programme - or that we are in one. It is weird to think that it is only since the early days of the 20th century that people have had dreams in black and white! I reckon that in a hundred years or so the question of whether we dream in colour will be redundant.

Regarding B+W, I doubt that it's simply a matter of photographs, movies and TV influence. Monochrome drawings have been around for centuries, representational sculptures for millenia.
When light levels are low, we see basically in black and white. Colour is really just a bonus for vision.

I wonder if a disproportionate number of scary dreams take place in a nighttime scene? It's probably easier to reconcile things suddenly appearing or changing their form in a dimly lit, shadowy environment.

I dream in colour and with sound, and I can read. Last night (this morning, actually) I had a dream where I was unpacking something that needed assembly. The wood was pine, the box was the normal cardboard box colour, and contained a black-and-steel hammer and a screwdriver with an orangey-red handle. It also contained a snake - I heard it hiss! I think it was some kind of cobra - I've obviously been seeing to many 'Indiana Jones' trailers on BBC. I went to get the Yellow Pages (definitely yellow) which, for some reason, centred around Pershore (a small place in Worcestershire) - it should have been Birmingham South or West Midlands South. As I leafed through it, I was unable to find any entries for animal welfare or animal charities - I could read the headings and entries very clearly.

The only senses that work in my dreams are sight and hearing. I am sceptical of people who claim that other senses work, but have never had a dream that required taste or smell. I have had dreams where I have 'pinched myself', actually thinking 'If I can't feel this, I know I'm dreaming'. I haven't felt anything, but have kept on dreaming regardless.

As for scary dreams, I've had ones that have taken place in broad daylight. Finding a snake in a box is scary enough, and I've had scary dreams that took place at school - one featured the robot from the cover of a Queen album.

Hmm, dying in a dream - I've only done that once that I can remember clearly, all other times I've woken up just before the fatal moment. Or at least, I'm fairly sure I died in the dream, I might not have done. But I think I did. It was certainly kind of like how dying _might_ be, although I guess we don't know until we've done it, as it's a bit of a one-way trip.

Anyway, the dream was pretty horrible too - nightmares seem to be the only dreams I have that involve dying. I was in my house at Uni when I heard the news that some terrorist group were about to set off a nuclear bomb in the centre of Nottingham. Oh dear - I go to Nottingham Uni. Everyone who was living in Halls somehow got evacuated, and for some reason they sent them all to Blackpool on the train. We, however, were left to die, and I was in one of the Chemistry labs (never been in one, so that was complete fiction on behalf of my brain) when the bomb went off and blew the building and everything else to pieces, and there was lots of light and noise and then quite suddenly I was inside a tent, which I crawled out of and found that I was in the middle of a peaceful grassy meadow surrounded by lush, green trees and vegetation, and there were perfect puffy clouds in the sky, and I just thought to myself in the dream "I'm dead". That's when I woke up.

Anyone else ever survive their own death in a dream?

I usually only wake up before dying if it's a particularly violent death (such as a large drop or getting chopped in half). I need some other way to know I'm dead if I die for no obvious reason (such as someone pointing a magic remote control at me and hitting "off". Has happened.) In this case, my vision goes glowy red and I have that icky sensation like when you involuntarily fall (such as a sharp drop on a roller coaster), only worse. Then I wake up, feeling a sense of loss (the same feeling you get when, for example, you accidentally format your hard drive).

I dream in color with sound.

When ever I have a really good dream and then wake up from it, I always find myself trying not to wake up fully because I want to find out how the dream ends.

I really hate dreams that take place in my bedroom because then I wake up wondering if it really happened or not.

I can never seem to remember my dreams for more then a few hours after I wake up and if I try to tell somebody about them, I usually find myself totally forgetting the dream in the middle of telling them about it.

Another thing I really hate is when I am in the middle of a dream and my alarm clock goes off and I hear it in the dream but in the dream the sound is something other then my alarm clock because then it doesn't wake me up right away.

One of the worst things that I dream about is getting up. I can dream about getting up, having a shower, getting dressed, eeverything... and then I *really* wake up to find that I'm an hour late for whatever I was meant to be doing and that I've got to go and have a *real* shower, etc...