Perhaps a few of you remember this post I made over two months prior. It went something like this:
The street before me was utterly still and silent as I ran its course, a few spectral lamps being my only source of illumination from the night that settled on the neighborhood like inky, pervasive smog.
“Help, please!” I would occasionally cry out to the looming houses as I passed them by. No answer would ever come. So I ran, on and on, because I knew somehow – though I never dared to look – that not far behind was my nighttime stalker, keeping pace with me all the time.
I discussed a recurring dream that frightened me throughout childhood. By far, this seemed to be my most popular post, and I thank those who read and commented – the nightmares shared were beautifully frightening.
I would like to add an afterword of sorts, however.
I happened to be listening to a 1986 broadcast of American Top 40 (with Casey Kasem, no less), and in a little side note to introducing Heart’s ‘These Dreams’, he mentioned a study that talked about the four most common dreams. I’m afraid I can’t find the study myself –not for lack of trying- but I do remember that, ‘coming in at number one spot’ in the words of Kasem himself, was the very dream I had posted about.
I found the whole thing fascinating, anyway.
(In Memoriam, Casey Kasem.April 27, 1932-June 15, 2014.)
The Devorian 
Is this, then, what you were discussing with me in the comments of “An Enduring Nightmare”, where you’d dreamed and it indirectly came true, I believe you said? Or was that something else entirely, my friend? My ‘poor cat’ never left the spot from the moment you made mention of your dream…now she’s up and curious, lol! Katie
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Ah, no. The dream I referred to was actually a pregnancy of someone I knew, though I had not thought of her in a long while.
Thank you for commenting, my dear, and let me know if Curiosity rears her head!
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The greater question is, Does Curiosity ever take a rest? lol! Yes, I suppose because one must sleep sometime…dreams are always curious to me for I have journals full of them…25-30 yrs of them…not just nightmares, but often I find dreams speak to me about people..what they need…things I wouldn’t normally know or see by talking to them…sometimes I am sure I am helping/saving people from disaster in real life…the more haunting and surrealistic ones are like that…now I must know what your dream was like…I’ve had some dreams that occurred where what happened in the dream, eventually happened in life…pregnancy is a very positive thing as a rule…hope I am not speaking too soon…my dreams that have occurred are usually preparation..sometimes for someone passing…these I cannot change…but others I have had, I have wakened sometimes knowing what I can do (not necessarily with that person knowing a thing about it) to change what may happen to them…good grief, Devore…I have NEVER told anyone this much about my dream state…I hope it is at least clear and succinct…if not, let me know as I’m so new at speaking about them, it may seem complex or confusing to you…BTW, regarding the end bit on this blog about hearing scary stories out of peoples’ dreams, etc…I could likely give you enough “grist” for five or six books, lol! Any time you’d like me to, I will write out one of the shorter ones. Katie.
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Hmm. Where to begin answering. Let’s try this: Q: Does Curiosity ever take a rest? A: Do Simon & Garfunkel have the voice of angels? My dear, I am highly fascinated and always enjoy your lively commentary, and glad you are able to share these things. Of course, I would love to hear a few of these dream tales.
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Agree with you wholeheartedly re Simon and Garfunkel…”Hello darkness, my old friend”….ahem, but to come to the point, short nightmare I had 3 yrs ago…note it was repeated three times in the same night with variations…this is what I mean by sometimes I think I’m helping someone…also should tell you I’m often “with” the person I’m dreaming about, that is, somehow I seem to be part of them..
There was a man hiding in a stand of trees near someone’s house. (Very large yard, that seemed to go down to a lane or a road) He was quite frightened and thinking of how he could run the roughly 300 yds. from where he was to the side door of this house. Not sure whose house it was, but I felt the man’s fear as the dreamer. He knew there was safety inside the house. It was night.
Then there were hooded men everywhere and they were chasing him. I, as the dreamer, felt like it was happening to me, but it was definitely this man they were after. They chased him into a set of woods leading away from the stand of trees he’d been hiding in. As he ran through the woods with these wraiths at his heels, he stumbled and fell. I could feel his fear rising to terror. I woke up then, sweating, terrified. Took a few seconds to orient myself. Calmed down, fell back to sleep.
Dream recurred almost immediately. It was a variation on the above except that one of the hooded men caught up to the man who was running from them, and grabbed him from behind. The man broke away from the hooded thing, and turned around to fight I think, but stopped cold because he saw inside the hood a completely demoniaical face. I woke a second time, sweating and scared, but got my bearings faster. I sat up in bed for some minutes, calming down and thinking, ‘This man needs to get away from whatever these hooded beings are. But how?’ Not having anything immediate come to me I lay my head down and went back to sleep.
Again I seemed to dream almost immediately. It played out again with the first and second parts. but when the man stumbled and fell, there were suddenly two ordinary men standing over him (no hoods), who picked him up between them, and helped him run back to the house. Once safely inside the door, he turned to thank them, but they’d disappeared. I didn’t wake up this time. I knew he was safe and I fell into a deeper sleep. Got up and wrote it down in the later a.m.
Some quick notes: I didn’t know or recognize the frightened man at all.
I didn’t know until it occurred, that help would come.
I didn’t recognize the surroundings or the house or setting I was in, but I believe the man himself
knew them quite well.
I didn’t know that the dream would be repetative…sometimes there are “hints”, I guess, that tell you
so when you wake up, you are aware you’ll dream it again..but not in this one.
There you are, Devore…this is one of the less creepy ones…more frightening…although it depends what you think creepy is. Katie.
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I apologize for the tardiness of my reply, my dear … long week.
That is quite a series of dreams. Yes, I’ve heard of these, in fact, someone in my personal circle seems to have most dreams where she isn’t even in them, instead watching a scene in someone else’s movie. It’s a rather strange phenomenon, and I can’t quite understand why those are happening … but of course, I don’t study dream psychology, either. Much as I’d like to, I’m afraid time wouldn’t allow.
What were your thoughts?
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My thoughts…wow! I’ve spent the last 15 mins. trying to get them down to one or two succinct ideas. Firstly, I don’t have the time or patience any longer to explore ‘dream psychology’…read much on the subject when younger, but mainly felt it was nonsense…at least for me…you can no more categorize dreams than you can categorize people. Honestly, we are all uniquely formed..this is what the word “individual” means. Flusters me that anyone thinks any person can be categorized to a “personality type”. If one cannot categorized people, one certainly would fail completely at categorizing peoples’ dreams. (I have stepped down and am folding and putting away my soap box, lol!)
As far as the dream itself went, I have had too many of these kind for too long not to recognize within myself that whatever else sleep does, it allows me to connect to other, real people in the world. That is what I think happened here. I don’t have to know or even like someone in waking life to give them a helping hand. It seems in sleep state, I don’t have to know who the person is…they’re in some kind of trouble, they’re playing it out in their sleep state with a dream that somehow (and I’ve never asked or cared how) connects to me. I dream with them, feel every feeling, knowing with them, if you like, what they want to attain for that moment. Sometimes, quite accidentally, I help them attain it. Which I think helps them in their waking life..I don’t know how I know that, I just know it I think the woman you mentioned who has “movie” like dreams, may be at the beginning of the same sort of idea. She must be an altruistic person I imagine…I can remember when they were more like that/ Now they’ve become like the above. I accept. I f I can help anyone, waking or sleeping, my life has purpose. So to me, I think this is an extension of my actual waking self…in other words because I am a person who wishes to help in waking life, somehow this has extended itself to my dream state as well. I believe that whoever this man was, he was battling something quite evil. I believe in good vs. evil. So to me it seemed appropriate that two ‘ordinary’ men came to his rescue. That they disappeared, reflects the side of good. If they weren’t two angelics I’ll eat my shirt with the buttons! There that is. Katie..
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Ha! Lovely. I think you’re onto something there, my dear. As for good v. evil, however, I’m afraid I’m not yet straight on that score.
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Thank you my friend…you understood what I was trying to get across..that, to me is amazing. That I was able to tell you and that you understood me..a marvel, both ways…as to good and evil…is it that such a concept is too simplistic? I have been told that many times before by others. That is, good and evil being what they are to me, is too naive or too simplistic an idea to be true. I have seen too much, sleeping and waking, not to believe it myself…I do not ask others to accept or believe what I know to be true, as it is true for me, but not necessarily for them…but then it makes it difficult for them to accept me the way I am. Hence you are the first person I have ever discussed my dream state with…for it has always been about good vs. evil for me. And my dreams have been centered on this as a truth, I guess you’d call it, all of my life. If good vs. evil is a gray area for you, perhaps you could tell me why you feel that way, if that’s not too personal. I am an earnest and caring listener, if it is something you wish to share. Katie.
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I’m sorry to keep you waiting for so long, my dear.
Again, I am extremely pleased and flattered that you are able to express yourself here. I can assure you there is always a place for your voice here.
I agree with majority of your views in this. I would say that it isn’t that the concept of good v.evil is too simplistic, I merely question its validity in some circumstances. Today, people seem to be less concerned with good and evil than they are with the pleasure factor of life.
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Yes, I do see that myself. What you say about what people concern themselves with..I don’t think it means good vs. evil has lessened one bit…but sometimes it makes me think of what people were like around World War 2..”Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”. My parents talked about what it was like back then, because no one really knew what would happen. Though we fought as allies, long and hard, lost many, no one truly knew that it was over until it was, much less that the Allies had won, and the Germans had lost. Because of that fear, the fear that there might be no tomorrow, people lived for the day. Now it is like that again, people live for now. Only there’s no World War. There’s nothing there to foment their attitudes and actions. About a yr ago, I came back online, bought a new desktop tower, Windows 8.1. The first thing I found was that this program came with Defender, so I didn’t need to upload an anti virus program. In fact many of the things done manually on Vista or earlier programs, were all now nicely taken care of for me…and they ran in the background. I didn’t have to worry..Windows had it all taken care of..which was nice, sort of. But while there was little or no upkeep for me, somehow it was unsettling that so many things ran in the background, without even notifying me of changes. I didn’t in the end like it or trust it…what’s that got to do with anything..good and evil haven’t gone anywhere my friend…they’re still running about the same as they always did…but no one knows it or sees it…and that would, don’t you think, be absolutely delicious grist for one of the scariest horror stories you could ever write. The scariest part being, that it might, in fact be true. Katie.
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That seems to be the premise of most horror, I think in part why I went the path I did. I was quite young during the the latter part of second World War, no more than a toddler, yet the affects of those horrors lingered well into the future. A fascinating analogy with the computer program … one could even associate it with the government of today.
I suppose the essence of what I am trying to explain is that good and evil are rather like the old folks sitting around the front porch, chatting about their glory days. They are still around, yes, but they’ve been relocated to a nice nursing home by their offspring, Sin and Hatred.
Like you, I ask no one else to share these views, but they are mine, nevertheless.
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Yes, you would have been quite young in that war…you are in fact, one month younger than my eldest brother.(He died, as Shakespeare said, young.) You are quite right, in a way..these words, good, evil, sin, hatred are virtually unknown, so the best place for them is nicely tucked away out of sight…the nursing home idea is perfect..it feels like that to me, sometimes..what I am, what I think is so far beyond a square peg in a round hole…even when they were acceptable discussion, “back in the day” as my kids are so fond of saying, I was still the oddball in the picture for my uniqueness in what I thought, believed, felt at that time…I am glad to find someone I can express myself to without fear…the unseen, the unknown, the uncanny, especially when it is embraced in a human being, is not acceptable..I have not had much acceptance..thank you, Devore…I hope I will not ‘wear out my welcome, lol! Katie.
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My dear, that is highly impossible. No one I have already welcomed here, can ‘overstay’ or have it revoked. Unless of course, they are disrespectful to either me or a friend. Respect is golden. (In other words, you have naught to worry;)
Again, thank you.
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Than you so much for these reassurances, my friend. I daresay you will never find me disrespectful..friendship is too rare and to valuable for that. Thank you for your kind words regarding my brother. He passed in 1991: it was, what my family came to call it, “the dying year’; I miss him so very much sometimes…Katie.
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I know the feeling, my dear. You have my sympathy… and empathy as well.
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My dear, that is highly impossible. No one I have already welcomed here, can ‘overstay’ or have it revoked. Unless of course, they are disrespectful to either me or a friend. Respect is golden. (In other words, you have naught to worry;)
Again, thank you. And my deepest condolences for your brother, my dear.
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I’ve always found dream psychology interesting, but not enough to dive into it wholeheartedly, just touch on it once in a while. This link may give you some of the information Casey Kasem was referring to: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-factory/201411/typical-dream-themes
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Thank you. That was indeed what I had in mind.
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Glad I could help.
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