I thought it'd be interesting to have a page for particularly memorable, intense dreams or about recurring dream elements. These dreams may be from the recent past or from a long time ago. I'll add more from time to time as I think of them.

Recently, I had a really long dream about Piccolo. Probably spawned from my wife and I watching Super Hero a lot around the time. Anyway, in the first half of the dream, I was little Pan! I was being chased by "dinosaurs". Unseen, of course, as dinosaurs are rarely dinosaurs in my dreams. They're usually some just out of sight force or a human being being called a "dinosaur". Occasionally, they might actually be a dinosaur, especially if it's a T-rex, but other dinosaurs usually turn into humans too even if they start out as proper dinosaurs. These were the just out of sight kind. I was in this mansion (I guess that makes sense) trying to find somewhere to hide. These little kids kept opening all the doors and gates of the house and I'd have to run around closing them so the dinosaurs wouldn't get in. But they kept doing it and the dinosaurs were getting "closer". Eventually, I ran into this room that was called the "Piccolo Room". Inside the room was, well, Piccolo. He was Orange Piccolo at this part of the dream. I told Piccolo about what was happening and he told me the dinosaurs couldn't get me because he would take care of them and to just take a nap and forget about everything. I found a little blanket and fell asleep on the floor. Then the second half of the dream started and I was Gohan. I was sitting in this busy area, still inside the mansion though, and Pan was running around causing havoc nearby. I had a laptop out and was working on some kind of research. I remember in the dream thinking about how thick the glasses I was wearing were. I was really tired in the dream and told Pan to chill out, but she was just bouncing off the walls, literally. Videl was apparently busy, so I couldn't leave Pan with her and the dinosaurs were also still lurking around too. Then, Piccolo showed up. He was regular Piccolo here. He told me to take a break and that he'd watch Pan. As soon as he said that, I closed my laptop and comically just passed out right at the table, face to wood, bam! So, then I took a nap as Gohan with Piccolo watching on. Was I just really tired that night? Haha.

This is a dream from HS. I was wandering around these streets I didn't know, looking for a bus. One shows up around where I'm at and I get on the bus. As soon as I get on, I get a bad feeling. I look around and I don't know how I can tell this, but I realize everyone else on the bus is dead. I'm on a bus of ghosts. I look around for a place to sit. There's only one open seat at the back. I sit down and look over. The person next to me is Kurt Cobain. He quickly realizes I'm not dead, somehow, but implies if I stay on this bus, I will be soon. We end up talking for a while. Ghosts get on and off the bus. At some point, I look at him and ask, "Okay, I gotta know. Did you kill yourself or were you murdered?" He answers, that obviously he killed himself. I say something like, "That's what I thought". I never believed that dumb conspiracy theory, and the older I get the more it makes me angry anyone does. (If you ever wanted a full debunking of that stupid conspiracy, let me tell you a morbid little detail about his death. He was still wearing his medical bracelet from being let out of rehab on one of his wrists when he was found dead, days after he'd checked himself out. Everything else that happened in between then also make it obvious, but that especially does. I've seen the photos. You can look at them yourself, if you don't believe me, but I wouldn't recommend that to most.) After that exchange, he tells me I'm not supposed to be on this bus. I should get off at the next stop. The next stop comes up and he says, "Go on. You should go." I get up and wave goodbye, then get off the bus. It vanishes and somehow I'm back in the world of the "living". I think about this dream from time to time. It wasn't a very long dream, but it felt really intense during it and when I woke up. I was suicidal at the time. I don't think I really met Kurt Cobain in some spiritual, dream sense or anything. I think my mind was just using Kurt as a way to tell me something, but in the dream, it really felt like that was him, you know? Dreams are good at making you believe all sorts of absurdities.

I had this dream a while ago, but relatively recently. In the dream, I was a samurai in the Meiji era. I had this rivalry with this other samurai. He was more traditional than me. In the dream, I wore a mix of traditional Japanese clothing and Western clothing, while my rival wouldn't wear Western clothes. We were both out shopping and ran into each other. Then, it was on. We started fighting in town. Swords immediately out and swinging. Everyone nearby moved away from us. We ourselves slowly moved out of the town as we continued fighting. Somehow, though, we ended up on top of a train?! I think I jumped on first. We were running up and down this train for a long time, just fighting. I remember I was smiling the whole time. We kept making snarky comments at each other about the other's lack of skill. Then, we hopped off the train and fought for a bit, then ended up on another train, still fighting. (This is one really long fight, LOL). My clothes were getting completely shredded from cuts, but I didn't have any major injuries. Then we got off the train and fought between two different sets of tracks. We did the classic samurai movie thing where we both did one final swing and one of us fell defeated while the other one. I won, and he went down, blood spraying everywhere. And then I started freaking out and crying. Apparently, I was actually into this guy. From our frequent battles (I suddenly had flashbacks to our "previous" encounters and fights as I mentally told myself my own supposed backstory with this guy, LOL), I had initially disliked the guy, then liked him as a great rival to fight against to improve my skills as a swordsman, and then somewhere along the way, I fell in love with him and was using the fights as an excuse to see him because I didn't want to confess. I didn't want to hurt him, just spar with him. I run over to him and I'm holding him, apologizing and crying my eyes out and confessing everything. Then, he confessed back that he was doing the same thing and points out that he accidentally injured me pretty badly too. I was so worried about possibly accidentally killing him I didn't notice he slashed me pretty good in that last swing too, just not enough for it to be fatal. I was bleeding all over the place too. He sat up and said he thought he might be able to pull through if I carried him to a doctor quickly enough. So, I bandage him up with part of my clothes and we both get some medical attention. Then, we went shopping because our clothes were completely fucked up and we just laughed about our own stupidity. This was already a long and intense dream, but even when I woke up, I was still dazed by the intensity of it for hours. I had one of those confused waking ups where I still thought whatever happened in my dream was "reality" and I was like "where did he go?!" and I started panicking for a few minutes. Like I'd woken up in some other reality. After I calmed down and realized I had been dreaming, I was left the whole day with this weird feeling of loss and I kept thinking like, who was that guy? As if he was some real guy I knew at some point even though I knew it was only dream. I didn't even get his name in the dream, but I felt so sad he was gone for some reason. Very silly since I'm married.

I used to dream about what people refer to now as "pool rooms". I was actually really surprised and excited to see a lot of the art people have made of that idea. It was like someone took something straight out of my head without me telling them. I stopped having those kinds of dreams sometime in elementary school. When i was young, a lot of my dreams would have some really abstract elements to them. Lots of white walls, empty spaces of darkness, unfinished floors, and other oddities I wouldn't dream about these days. I've read that other people have had dreams like this too. Perhaps this has something to do with the way our brains gradually develop understanding of the way space exists around us.

When I was really little, I used to dream about this older brother. I do have a brother, but he's younger than me. I'm the older one. I have no full older siblings. In the dreams, this brother was at least ten years older than me. He was really mysterious, like he knew all these secrets and would gradually give me hints about them. Whenever I'd start to understand something, he'd vanish and I'd spend dreams looking for him. Eventually, these dreams went away by about fourth grade and I never saw my mysterious older brother again. My dreams would still sometimes reference him and him being missing all the way through all of middle school, with his presence in my dreamspace finally vanishing when I went to high school. I based Idris Thomas on this not real dream brother.

When middle school started, there were a new pair of "characters" introduced in my dreams, the boy who knew secrets and the girl who was seeking but knew nothing. Sometimes, I was the boy and other times I was the girl in the plot of the dreams. The girl was always dressed in a white dress. She was always escaping some confined location, some type of dystopian setting to an outside space. She was obsessed with seeing a thunderstorm. The boy was on the outside. He had hoards of information about everything hidden, but he would try to keep the information from the girl because the information was disturbing in some way. In dreams where I was the girl, if he finally agreed to show me something, I'd end up so shocked I woke up. In dreams where I was the boy, I debate with myself on how much information I should give the girl, how quickly, and in what way. Sometimes, we communicated through floppy discs and CDs of information. Often, we would meet out in this field with an old oak tree, waiting on the rain or we would meet up at a rusted playground, still waiting on a thunderstorm. I based Sky Summerfield and Julia Lowell off of these two dream "characters".

As you can tell from the previous two dream entries, I use dreams a lot as inspiration from writing when I'm not pulling from real life or random flashes of inspiration. Occasionally, if a dream is interesting enough and mostly complete in terms of coherence, I'll turn those dreams into actual, written out stories. As a little writing exercise, I decided to link three unrelated nightmares into a set of three related stories. Detour, Red Ghost, and Decay are based on three dreams that had nothing to do with each other, but I slightly reworked what happened in the nightmares so they would have the same characters and an overarching plot to them. This was a pretty fun exercise. I'd like to do it again one day.

I had a dream recently I was wandering through an autumn forest I've gotten lost in many times in my dreams. This place doesn't exist in real life and seems to be a mix of feelings and memories of various forests I've been in. I've been travelling through this dream forest since early 20s. It's always autumn in this place. As usual, I got lost looking for something. This time, I was seeking a wolf. I knew the wolf was in the woods somewhere, it was a black wolf. I never saw the wolf in the dream, but I knew it was there somewhere and knew I was there. It wasn't a being I was afraid of. Rivers and creeks kept getting in my way of chasing the wolf. Eventually, I stumbled upon the Silver Comet Trail, a rather lengthy trail that covers three counties through industrial and deeply rural areas. This section appeared to be based on a few of the Paulding trailheads towards moving toward Paulding Forest. I have no idea why that section of it. I've travelled through pretty much all of the Silver Comet Trail over the years in all three counties, but for some reason it's always this section of the trail that shows up in my dreams. Once I was on the trail, I somehow came across a "school", which in the dream was the college I graduated from but looked nothing like it does in real life. The college I graduated from isn't even in Paulding county anyway. In the dream, it looked like a cross between a parking deck and an apartment building. I ran into some people I used to work with when I worked in education. They were wanting me to work with them again and pushed me into the college. I was also being demanded to go back to college by them at the same time. I didn't want to be there at all, for any purpose. I was trying to find my way out, but the building kept changing around me. Everywhere I ran, there were more of those old coworkers and old classmates, children I've worked with and taught. I wanted to get away from them all. The more I ran, the higher I ended up in the building and the darker everything got. While I was trying to get out of the maze university, plants were growing into the building; through the windows, the cracks, and in through ledges. Most of it was kudzu. The darker it got and the higher I went, the more the kudzu creeped in squeezing the building and cracking it open. When I looked outside from inside the building, while the plants growing in were summer plants, the forest was still in autumn.

I had a dream where I was in a house made up of different houses I've lived in as a child. I was on a family computer and wanting to transfer my files to my own computer. While I was moving my files from one computer to another, I was strangely downgrading the OS. I went from a modern computer to trying to move everything to Windows 95. I couldn't get all my files to transfer over and I was worried I'd lose certain files forever. In my "bedroom", which was mostly my second childhood bedroom, my computer was sitting on this tiny desk next to this giant bed I had in the dream. The bed was so large it took up around 60% of the room and was around four feet high. While I was transferring the files, I somehow came to understand I was supposed to be in high school and was in my teens. Sometime during this part, my "friends" came over, which were the gang from Migi & Dali for some reason. They looked like their timeskip selves. Akiyama was trying to help me figure out a way to move the files while Migi started a pillow fight on my bed. At some point I joined in and we all hung out there and walked around on the ridiculously giant bed. We basically treated it as if it was the floor because it was just so much of the room. While we were having a pillowfight and Akiyama was still messing with the computer, I looked up and saw this creepy hole in the ceiling. It was dripping black liquid and pouring out mold. In the dream, I thought about the movie Dark Water and suddenly knew that there was some "being" in the attic above my room causing the hole. We tried to come up with a solution to fill the hole. Out of nowhere, Migi picks up a huge back of grits, opens it, and throws the grits up into the hole. It plugs it for a bit, but then the liquid starts leaking back down again. We all grabbed bags of grits and tossed it up at the hole. That plugged it for a lot longer. Dali went looking for more. Akiyama said something about how we were out of grits now and that wasn't going to hold forever. Dealing with whatever was in the attic would be the only way to make it stop. I didn't know exactly who or what was in the attic above us, but I knew it was something I didn't want to deal with, something I didn't want to face. Not sure what that dream was about, but when I told it to my wife, she suggested "grits" was likely meant to be my mind suggesting the word "grit" to me. The thing in the attic was clearly something psychological I didn't want to face, so I may have been using "grit" to push through whatever that was, but that isn't enough to actually fix anything.

There are there three linked locations I sometimes visit in dreams. A dream might night feature all three, sometimes only one or two, but if they are there, they connect in a specific path and the setting is always at night. One end of the path is an underground location beneath a building made of these giant tunnels. The floors and walls are metal and there are no windows, but I can always sense it is nighttime when I'm there. There may be catwalks, ladders, or steps here and there, and what's beneath the catwalks is never visible, but there is definitely something down below and how far down it goes is a deadly amount. But it's too dark to see what's there, as if you simply disappear into nothingness. Above is too high to grasp either. The interior of this place always has an amber glow over it and an ominous mood. There's something lurking in the corridors, some sort of animal creatures, always predators but almost never seen. Just something vaguely lurking in the shadows. If I'm in this place, I'm always in a pack of people, enough to feel somewhat safe, but never truly safe because they're either strangers to me who are "acquaintances" in the dream or they're actual real life acquaintances. They're never friends or family. This location eventually leads out to a ghost town. The town is always underneath a clear sky and a full moon. The buildings are empty, and I rarely go in them, though I have in some dreams in an attempt to "shop" there. Things are always creepier if I actually go inside the shops. If I go into the shops, the dream will end inside one of the shops because the shops will become maze-like, trapping my group inside it. The shops will feel as if they have shopkeepers that should be there, but are actually ghosts tricking people to come in and trap them inside the shops. The ghosts may be heard, but never seen. Outside of the shops, the buildings themselves look "fake". They appear to almost be set pieces on a stage. The road is always cobblestone. On this place, I am also always with a group of acquaintances, sometimes real ones, sometimes dream ones. Someone else is always leading the way in both these locations. I'm simply stuck with the group for some unspecified reason. Sometimes, we're travelling from the "left" side of the stage, sometimes from the "right". If we're traveling from the "right", we're always exiting the "tunnels". If we're traveling from the left, we are usually entering the town moving, but sometimes we've left the third location, the "night swamp". My early childhood neighborhood is often a subject of my nightmares, especially the roads that lead to my great-grandparents' house. Sometimes, I'll visit this place during the day, sometimes at night, and whether it's night or day and where along these roads I enter completely change the type of dream it will be. There used to be this marshy area on the other side of the road where my great-grandparents' lived. In my dreams, this place is always exaggerated to be a swamp with alligators and other predators inside it, sometimes ghosts. When this place connects with the "stage", it's at the section of the road that would connect with the road that led into our neighborhood area from the main road. There will be tons of people here, but when I'm in this section, I'm no longer part of a "group", I'm on my own. Everyone is unfamiliar, even familiar people become unfamiliar. I've had two of these dreams in the last year after not having any for many years. Both of the recent ones involved the "stage", and the most recent one involed travelling through the "tunnels" to the "stage". The other dream with the "stage" was one I became lost in one of the stores by ghostly shopkeepers. The items in the store, as always, were stage props.

I'm assuming I had this dream because I rewatched Wing not that long ago. So, in the dream, I'm Quatre for some reason. We're in some middle eastern-looking area, but exactly where we are was never specified in the dream. I'm initiall with the other guys, plus Noin and Sally. There's some kind of new conflict going on, but we all still have our gundams. (So I guess this would be between GW and EW? I dunno. It's a dream.) We need to sneak into some building to gather information. To do this, we split up into teams. Sally or Noin stays behind at our "base" to communicate with us. I don't remember who. Throughout the dream, I keep switching teaming up with a different guy. Initially, I'm with Heero and we were getting some data off this computer. That went smoothly, but then we got separated because something to do with Relena being captured and Heero rushing off. Then I'm with Trowa for a bit. We run into Duo, who exchanges some stuff with us that he's gathered with Wufei, but Wufei's not around when we meet with Duo. He's with either Sally or Noin, whichever was the one who left with us. We have some downtime and have a conversation, nothing important, just general friendly banter. We get attacked at where we're at. The enemy is on to us. We need to get back to our base ASAP. Heero sends us some kind of message that he needs to talk with us in person. So we all rush back separately, but Trowa gets delayed somehow. So, me and Duo make it back to the base without him. Wufei beats us back there. Everyone's worried about where Trowa went. I don't see Trowa again for the rest of the dream. Anyway, Heero tells us our enemy is using very disturbing tactics and we need to be on guard when talking to anyone. The enemy also knows we have gundams and is actively trying to stop us from getting to them. In the dream, we hid them out in the desert for some reason. We needed to get to them, and also find Trowa. We split up again, but Heero goes off on his own. He warns me privately before leaving that I really need to be careful with people we're working with. (We had this crew with us, plus Quatre's usual gang.) I'm paired with Wufei for this part. We're trying to very stealthily make it to our gundams, but we have to go through this abandoned building first. Some of our "crew" come with us as back-up, without mobile suits, just with guns on them. Some of the crew start going missing. Wufei suggests we further split our group so that, if the enemy does corner us, they'll likely only get one pilot rather than two. We split up, and shortly after that, this guy who was the leader of our "crew" starts talking to me. (He's not any character in Wing. Seemed to be a mix of various characters from different Gundam shows blended together.) The longer we talk, the more I'm getting a weird vibe from this guy. Mentally, I'm thinking "I really need to get to Sandrock FAST. This guy is probably the traitor." I know where Sandrock is at, but it's so far away I don't think I'm going to make it before this guy pulls something weird. Also, the main group of the enemy is in the same area as where Sandrock is at. So I can't really get it moved anywhere via our people nor can I easily sneak right up to it either. While I'm trying to figure out what to do, I see that the wind has started to uncover the sand we used to hide our gundams. Sandrock is about half exposed and directly in my line of sight. It feels so close I think about just risking it and running for it. Outside, it's a full moon. The moonlight is making my gundam's location really obvious to the enemy. I think, whatever, I don't have a choice. I have to try and get in it right now or they're going to either take it or destroy it. So, I'm about to jump out this window when the leader guy approaches me. All the rest of our half of the crew is gone now. I suddenly realize they were all betraying us, but I try to keep my cool and not reveal I'm onto them. The guy is initially making friendly comments, but I keep emphasizing I really need to get to Sandrock RIGHT NOW. I realize he's delaying me, so I just start trying to jump out the window. He grabs me and corners me against the wall beneath the window and reveals himself as not just the traitor, but the leader of the very group we're fighting. He makes it clear he intends to torture me before killing me. The rest of the crew have left to seal off the exits of this building and are also trying to capture Wufei. I manage to get around him. Then, I'm running around this building, trying not to get caught by these guys and find a way out to get to my gundam before it's too late. The guy keeps catching up with me. There's these secret passages he moves through. Even when I can't see him, I hear him taunting me with threats of different ways he plans on torturing me. During this part of the dream, I'm not able to contact the others. I couldn't find Wufei either. In the dream, I never found out if Wufei was captured, still in the building doing what I was doing, or managed to get out. All I know is, I seem to be alone with these people. Toward the end of the dream, the evil guy is catching me. I'm back at the same window again. Somehow, Sandrock has moved closer to me, like it sensed me and actually physically moved on its own to meet me. I climb up to the window and jump out it, but there's this mountain of sand pouring off the gundam that's making it harder for me to get to it. The evil guy is chasing me still, but the sand is also slowing him down too. I manage to touch Sandrock and the dream ends. Wish it would've lasted longer. I wanted to pilot it!