Do you remember your dreams?

[yoda313]

So do you remember your dreams? I do sometimes. Though not completely and usually only right after I wake up, then it fades away. How about you?

[nwo]

None.

[Craig Tucker]

Sometimes, but pretty rarely

[gadgetguy]

Usually, at least for a little while. I've remembered a couple very vividly and one was the catalyst for a story I wrote. (The story ended up very different than the dream, but it was the dream that got me started.) When I was younger I used to have a recurring dream about a giant that lived in the woods near the house where I grew up. The woods are now gone and the dream hasn't returned. Coincidence? I don't think so...

[usually_quiet]

I rarely remember anything, and even then, it's almost always vague. Most of the time I wake up without the feeling that I have even had a dream

[JohnnyMalaria]

Frequently. Often they are lucid, too, meaning I am aware that I am dreaming and I can control how the dream unfolds.

For quite some time, I had a series of dreams where I knew I was dreaming and I had to escape the dream before some horrible event would happen to me. While dreaming, I was also aware of lying in bed and I learnt to say my wife's name out load. I had already told her that if she heard me trying to say her name then she should wake me up. I had to try really hard, though, to make my voice real - I could tell when it worked because I could feel the sound resonating in my lungs.

I live a real life and a dream life - one dream lasted the equivalent of many years and sometimes they continue from one night to the next.

And I only eat/drink normal stuff - nothing weird!

[bourboner]

Dreams are portals into parallel universes. Possibly when you die, your dream-universe becomes the "reality".

[Epicurus8a]

My most recent dream was something like this:

[Nitemare]

Sometimes I remember.
Sometimes I can't.
Sometimes I can remember part of it, but not all.

Sometimes I don't dream at all, and then when I wake up, it's like being born... total shock. I have no memory of going to sleep, or existing at all until I suddenly just DO

When I dream, I ALWAYS dream in color.

[FulciLives]

Sometimes I remember.
Sometimes I can't.
Sometimes I can remember part of it, but not all.

I couldn't have said it any better myself as this pretty much sums up my own experiences.

One thing that used to occasionally happen to me when I was much younger ... perhaps part of learning life when young ... is that I would dream and think it really happened until at some point in the day when I would reference the dream in some way ... "Hey remember when you and I did that thing ... oh wait that didn't happen did it? ... oh yeah that was a dream".

Was always "weird" when that happened.

Slightly off topic but another "odd" thing I did as a child was to stare at myself in a mirror ... often for "long" periods of time ... and think all kinds of "existential" type questions like "who am I" as if I was looking at some "alien thing" etc. and when I look back on it I find it a bit "odd" in that 1.) I was very young when I did this and 2.) I had no freakin' exposure to the concepts of existentialism or psychology etc. because I was like doing this when I was maybe 10 or younger ... something like that.

I also had an "imaginary friend" and his name was NOBODY because I had to give him a name proper yet I knew he wasn't really there ... yet I "felt" his presence and talked to him. Go figure.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Ethlred]

I find it depends on how much sleep I have had. Both in if I remember and what.

If I don't have enough sleep I am less likely to notice my dreams. When I do they tend to be mundane. With more sleep I am more likely to remember and the dreams are more likely to have some semblance of a story.

Something I have noticed that might be of help for anyone that has nightmares or disturbing dreams. Its almost always when I am dehydrated or hot. I think the cliche of sweat soaked sheets and nightmares is a result of looking at the cause and mistaking it for a result. I haven't had a real nightmare in a long time.

[KBeee]

You only dream during Rapid Eye Movement sleep phases.
If you are woken during an REM sleep phase you should remember the dream you were having. If you are woken during a non-REM sleep phase you probably won't remember.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

most dreams I can't even remember by the time I wake up.
some dreams I remember vividly from decades ago...

[bourboner]

I have recurring dreams all the time, or should I say, dreams that occur in the same environments. I am so familiar with some of these environments I could draw detailed maps. They don't relate to anywhere I've ever visited, or for that matter, anywhere on Earth (though there are resemblances here and there). There are beaches, bays, docks, suburbs, cities, buildings, train stations...but all on a grander scale. I wasn't really joking when I mentioned "parallel universes". Go talk to a quantum physicist or cosmologist about "parallel universes" or "3-branes", they won't laugh at you. My dreams are vivid and real. If you pay them more attention, the more vivid they become. You should all write down your dreams, it's a very good healthy practise. Dreams, I firmly think, are glimpses into something a lot more "real" than this tenuous nuisance thing we call "reality" around us.

[usually_quiet]

I woke up this morning and remembered part of a dream. I think maybe this poll had something to do with that. It was pretty strange, funny, and video related. In my dream, Robin Williams and I were cleaning out my parent's basement. Among other things, he encouraged me to throw out some old videotapes (which aren't there), then told me that recordable DVD's were more cost effective.

[Constant Gardener]

You only dream during Rapid Eye Movement sleep phases.

Not so, according to recent studies. Check out "The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" by Jeff Warren (2007), which is a fascinating read.

[fritzi93]

I have lucid dreams that I remember fairly frequently. It usually goes something like this:

I'm in the middle of an artillery bombardment or thunderstorm, something loud and annoying. (Other details aren't all that important, though I usually remember them.) Then I realize it's actually someone snoring. "Knock it off, will you?" Then I realize it's me. I know I'm asleep and I'm snoring:

"Wake up, dammit! Wake up and roll over! Jeez, wake up!"

I'm asleep and can't roll over without waking myself up first. It's surprisingly hard to wake oneself up sometimes. I'm not kidding. :P

[Nitemare]

The creepiest dream I can remember happened when I was 14. I became aware in my dream that in "real life" my alarm was ringing and I had to get up for school.

Things kept happening in the dream that distracted me from waking. Eventually it had occurred to me that the people in my dream were doing this on purpose. I told the people in my dream quite firmly that I had to wake now and they turned hostile, trying to prevent me from waking.

When I DID wake, it felt like I had barely escaped and I was terrified of going to sleep that night. Then I started wondering if THIS is what was wrong with people in a coma.

About a year after my dream, the first Nightmare On Elm Street came out so I wasn't influenced by that, but the movie had greater effect on me because of that dream.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Interesting.

Have you ever woken up in the morning only to find yourself completely paralyzed? No matter how hard you try, you can't move anything. Worse, is a very real sense of danger - particularly someone or something approaching to do harm (e.g., coming up the stairs).

I've experienced this a number of times - it really is terrifying. Such sleep paralysis is well known and the sense of danger is part of an associated hallucination. It can occur when falling asleep ("hypnagogic") and when awakening ("hypnopompic"). Great words, horrible phenomenon.

[FulciLives]

Interesting.

Have you ever woken up in the morning only to find yourself completely paralyzed? No matter how hard you try, you can't move anything. Worse, is a very real sense of danger - particularly someone or something approaching to do harm (e.g., coming up the stairs).

I've experienced this a number of times - it really is terrifying. Such sleep paralysis is well known and the sense of danger is part of an associated hallucination. It can occur when falling asleep ("hypnagogic") and when awakening ("hypnopompic"). Great words, horrible phenomenon.

I've heard of the "sleep paralysis" phenomena and never experienced it myself until somewhat recently. Been happening to me off and on now for the last 2 - 3 years. It usually happens while I am falling asleep or I am asleep (just barely maybe) and will wake to think that SOMETHING (ominous tone) is THERE in the dark and I "strain" or "wrestle" to move but I'm immobile for a few moments until I can move. Usually that's that ... I fall back to sleep or I get up to relieve myself in the bathroom then go back to bed. Any feeling of "dread" or that "they're hereeeeeeeeee" goes away once I can move.

Also it never seems to happen when I wake up in the morning be it from sleeping long enough (no alarm on non-work days) or from an alarm **** (on work days).

Only happens late at night BAHAHAHAHA

I am serious though ...

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Epicurus8a]

Last night I had an extremely vivid dream........

[dadrab]

I'm sure I must dream, but I hardly ever remember anything. That's an adult thing, however. When I was a kid, I would occasionally have extremely vivid dreams.

One such was a recurring one whereby I was in a speeding car by myself. The car would leave the roadway and cruise across a couple of fields. I could only sit by and watch (as I didn't know how to drive at the time). At first, I was really scared, but as time passed and the dream happened over and over, I found I just kind of sat back and enjoyed the ride. I never crashed and always woke up as I was cutting through a field at "haul ass" speeds. One night, I slipped over to the driver's seat, grabbed the wheel, stepped on the brake pedal and stopped the car. Never had that dream again.

Of course, in college I had the old "got-an-exam-tomorrow-and-haven't-been-to-class-yet-this-semester" dream a few times. That one sucked pretty hard.

Probably the most vivid dream I've ever had, happened when I was about 10. I awoke one morning and it was Christmas morning. I walked into my family's living room where Santa had paid his annual vist. I had all kinds of goodies I wasn't expecting that year. It was glorious...

...then my my mom came in a woke me up for school.

That one was a real downer.

The final tale I'll relay wasn't actually a dream. Or was it? Here goes:

I came home from work one evening at about 6 p.m. My wife was out of town on business, so I was at home alone. It had been a long, hard summer day and I was bone tired. I sat down on the couch to watch the news and dozed off. When I awoke, I glanced at my watch and saw it was 7:30. Panic gripped me as I had an 8 a.m. meeting and knew I shouldn't be late. I jumped from the couch, ran upstairs, took a lightning fast shower, screamed out the door and was cruising to work when I noticed a baseball game on the radio.

It seemed a bit odd to me that a game was being broadcast that time of day, but on I went. Finally, it dawned on me...it was 8 p.m. (still daylight due to Daylight Saving Time), not 8 a.m.

That one was...um...odd, to say the least.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

HAHA! That sucks. I had a similar thing happen. My cousins were visiting during Christmas vacation, but my school district's vaca hadn't started yet.
Somehow my alarm had gotten reset to midnight without me knowing it.
The alarm went off and I got up to do all the normal stuff and saw two of my cousins in the living room watching TV -- no big deal, they just got up early to watch cartoons, right? I don't normally look at the alarm clock when I get up, the alarm goes off and I kill it and get up -- no snooze, no need to look at the time (because I set the damn thing).
I get out of the shower and get dressed, come back out and they're getting ready for bed. WTF?!?!
They asked me why the hell I got up in the middle of the night and took a shower. I thought it was morning because even though it was still dark out, that's just the way it is in December.
Then I couldn't get back to sleep... That next day at school sucked bad.

[Joshua P]

I remember one dream that there was alien spaceships were attacking the earth and I was at home watching them, and then the whole world blew up, and that was the end. Very weird

[fritzi93]

You've really been busy digging up old polls.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Yeah Joshua P, we old-timers generally frown upon digging up old threads.
Excuse me while I go outside and tell the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.