My dream

[themagus]

This is a dream I had tonight. To explain the level of intensity - I slept 4 hours yesterday, and 7 today. I felt more tired today after sleeping than I had before I went to bed.



Big Troubles in a Little Village.

The sun was gone from the sky, and the darkness of night came upon the too-old European village. Dark skies, not dotted with stars but covered with heavy clouds were the somber and quiet welcome of the terrain, as there was no one to welcome anyone who might drive up the muddy path, all the way off of the main road. The so-called village consisted of 5-7 old wood made huts in a bad condition all sitting on a small hill. The wet weather and strong winds obviously taking their toll on the wood, making it soft and weak. There was moss everywhere, except for the huts for whatever reason but they looked bad enough to make anyone feel sorry for them. None of them had a garden and the environment didn't offer much growth, not at the base of this looming barren mountain that watched over the village.

We arrived at a truck, the four of us. I sat in the back seat, driving the car was Dean and next to him was Sam - the two heroes of Super Natural, probably the best choice my subconscious could make when it came to companions for this unreal quest. Next to me sat another person but he always seemed to be just out of my line of sight, standing a step behind me, going to check the other room, never being fully revealed yet always there.

Dean parked the truck and we got out, absorbing the surrounding and smelling the coming rain. He cocked his head, took off his jacket and threw it in the truck.
"Well."

He wore the expression of 'Let's get cracking' and we set out to the village. The sharp wind, a distant lightning and a quiet thunder were the only sounds as we walked the only road, not one meant for vehicles and knocked on the door of the first house. Light poured out of the windows, telling us it wasn't the result of electricity, but of fire. A short, thick man opened the door. He was at his forties, brown skin and a body structure that told of manual labor and a stocked kitchen. He wore a thick leather shirt over a red T-shirt, and what seemed to be the pants and shoes he used for work. We didn't linger or asked him for his name, instead we asked for directions to the village elder's hut and were off, leaving him for his late meal.

We had to open the door of the elder's hut. It was a one room, round and empty save for very little furniture and items - A bench, some flowers, bowels and a small stage. the sat in the middle of the room, on the floor, shaking in his heavy robes. He was indeed old and wrinkly and could be judged as partly crazed with first glance. The only thing we knew about this place was that we needed to talk to him, and he;ll get us started on whatever it is we came to do here. He blabbered about horrors at night, glowing eyes and the murder of four men, all the village men. He wasn't able to help us more than that however, and we didn't dare ask him to leave his house, but he told us of another villager a voodoo witch who will help us if we'll only ask.

She lived on the outskirts of the village, a short distance away, on a spot that won't allow eye contact with the village, the distance took about a minute on foot. Since we were new it felt like walking a greater distance in a shorter amount of time, the gruff, scrubby land, together with the dark weather fascinated me. She wore the clothes of someone of her class who came out of an RPG game would wear - very little for that cold weather, and very colorful for the grim area. She stood outside near well fed campfire, a thin carpet and an open bedroll at her feet, around the campfire. She also lived in a tiny caravan that was more of a wooden carriage. She'd hardly be able to lie in there, but things are bigger on the inside, ofcourse.

She welcomed us but didn't approach, keeping a safe distance from the group of strangers without letting them feel the part. We told her the story the elder told us and she confirmed it as true with a somewhat detached attitude. She also added that the last four deaths are the recent death of a series of murders that was happening in the village recently, and it didn't took much to figure, or to suspect that the other investigators who came to the village took part in that series. She told us of a manor uphill, a walk toward the mountain and thinking back I remembered seeing it when we came to the village. It was too dark to see by now, the night completely took over. She got ready and we were off to a nightly tour in the large house.

The walk took us up the same muddy path that crossed the village and toward the mountain. The manor saw on higher grounds, and though the walk wasn't very long it was in a climb. On the way there I saw a strange skeleton of an extremely large rat. Infact I could only see some of the tail links and the white snout of it's skull, but I've seem bones like them before so I knew who they belonged to. It wasn't very important and I didn't want to touch exposed bones on my way to something that might prove dirty, they also didn't seem important at all. Our company, aside from the voodoo witch was of low bushes and small trees, bent and naked because of the wind and the rain.

When we arrived at the manor we stopped by a small shade. The voodoo witch told us she had lamp prepared after the elder told her of our arrival. There were 5 lamps - one for each. They were made of stone and the cracks looked like runes. It was impossible to see the light source through the cracks, and it emanated blue light once they were picked up from the floor. They were very big too, but weighted next to nothing. Every one picked a lamp and we went to the door. It was intact, but the walls weren't. It was obvious the manor was built at the same time as the huts, if not before, and nature did more damage to this building than it did to the huts. The voodoo witch explained that the manor is abandoned, and was abandoned for a very long time. Still, the troubles came from there.

She opened the door and led us in. The first room, the largest of them all in this floor was a disaster - cracks in the walls, fallen support beams, furniture that a huge hand threw all over the room and moss that ate at everything made a very tormented sight. It began raining outside and we noticed that the roof was spotted with hooks that matched the lamp handles. The cracks, too big to make the wind shriek, let it in at full speed and with it came what rain it could carry. Lightning often showed us the dark corners of the room, but most of them were empty, and those that weren't empty had a washed down, broken old item or furniture in them. We exchanged some words and headed to the basement, where our lamps proved the most valuable. It was much bigger than a basement should have been - with many hallways and rooms, the basement made a very simple yet large maze.

It wasn't till we got further in that we saw it - A spider web spanning over a wall, made by a single spider, the web half an inch thick at places. Then the voices came. High screeching calling us from the innermost rooms, and promising to reach us before we reach them, or the exit. We walk more carefully now, one of us is leading the group instead of the voodoo witch. A room or two away the spider found us. Taller than a human with fangs larger than my arm it left no questions about what was coming next, and we fled as fast as we could.

Death. It happens in dreams, yet you're still alive, after all - you're still dreaming, aren't you?
The spider was on me, my legs under it's maw, it's fangs dripping with venom, lots and lots of dripping venom, isn't that too much liquid? It looks at me and I punch it's fangs. This has no effect, ofcourse, and after a while of hammering the world darkens, the enormous figure still standing over me.

The spider is dealt with, and we're back on the ground floor. We're four now, and Sam and Dean are still with me. So is he voodoo witch. There's the second floor though, we didn't visit there. We walk through the first floor, where there's a hall and bedrooms and 3 corridors creating a huge U shape that go through the entire manor. It's quiet and there's no sign of anyone being here before us, even though the furniture in the rooms was tossed around, too. We get to the end of the last corridor and we can hear footsteps coming from above us. Heavy footsteps, like some large person is waddling with heavy, stiff boots. The voodoo witch take us to the second floor, and it's as empty as as the first. The second floor, however, is opened to the roof. The manor doesn't have an attic and the triangular shape can be seen clearly. The last corridor leads us to the edge of the house, ending in a wall and having a rail we could lean over and see the ground floor through a hope in the first floor. There's a huge broken window on the opposite wall to us, the horizontal roof beams still hold their place except for one that leans on the corridor on the first floor, down below us.

The heavy steps are coming from the roof beams, above our heads. We look up as we walk the corridors f the second floor but there's nothing there, and yet something heavy is walking the beams in an arm's reach. The sounds stop and the storm goes on. We wait and hope we could see anything. Nothing, no one dares to reach out to the open space, yet no one dares to fall back. The voodoo witch hand her lamp on one of the hooks still spotting the manor, even in this dead end hallway. A second after she let go of the lamp the blue light blinks and red light is taking it's place. A huge, vampiric bat appears, his brown fur-covered body and leather wings spanning across the roof beams. Intelligent, bloodthirsty eyes are inspecting Sam who stand infront of me, and facing me, the bat's head no more than a foot away. Maw open and ready for a killing bite. I reach with my hand, motioning him to duck while Dean is shouting "Be careful!"
The voodoo witch get scared and hold on to her lamp, taking it off the hook thus the light changes back to blue, and the giant vampiric bat turns invisible again.

The world turns black again.

We're at the ground floor, the four of us. The giant invisible vampiric bat is dealt with. We head back to the village. On the way back we walk the muddy road, the rain is persistent but not heavy and I can see some of the mud is washing away. I get to a familiar curve of the road and look to the side. The mud washed away from the bones I thought belonging to a giant rat, revealing four skeletons of part-human part-bat creatures. 'So that's what happened to them' I thought. - The giant invisible vampiric bad bit them, but ate them before they managed to morph into something like him. We kept going, I left the skeletons to nature, there was no point bringing them back or investigating them now. We escort the voodoo witch back to her tiny wooden caravan and exchange a few words. Looks like we solved the issue here and our business is done, we're turning and heading back to the truck that got us here.

As we walk away from the voodoo witch and toward the village, tired but knowing we could catch up with our sleep later I throw a glance back at the witch and her caravan. She's standing near her campfire, her voodoo doll in one hand and a small human skull at the other, and a smug smile on her face. She pull the carpet upwards and a revealed trapdoor opens. She glance at me with her wicked smile, steps into the secret entrance and let the trapdoor close behind her. I'm thinking 'I'm going to tell the others about this' and turn to catch up to them.

I wake up, with the knowledge that the voodoo witch was deal with, even though I missed that scene in my dream, too.
And, I certainly do feel like I've been through all of it. Real life experience? What about dream life experience? Huh?

[Amalgamator]

TheMagnus, you have stumbled across a fact about dreams which confuses even the top scientists of today. What I remember this being called is 'Memory Distortion.'

How it works is the following:
-You experience real-life events while thinking of past experiences, E.G. flashing back to a video game while inspecting a house for demolition.
-You later try to remember exactly what happened on that day, and your mind goes through the memories, unable to separate the reality from the flashback.
-You go to sleep, and visually recollect the distorted memory in the form of a dream, sometimes more vividly than others.

The human brain is an absolutely amazing thing, but even your brain can mess up every now and then.

Also, on the topic of what your dream means, you remember your dream quite vividly, pointing to one of three things. Firstly, you could have gone through your dream right after waking up, which is the most likely case considering most people forget dreams after one hour(It's just memory-organization, thus a dream tends to blend in with actual memories) The second possibility is that you ran through this dream 'lucidly,' meaning you were conscious while dreaming. The science of lucid dreams is absolute nonsense, so I'm not even going into that realm of theory, but long story short, you remember because you formed a new memory within your recollection of the memories you stored in a day, resulting in an easier time remembering it. Lastly, of course, you could've just dreamed, forgotten it and realized it was important, then made up a few details as you went along writing this story.

After all, you can only visually dream of what you have experienced before, thus the 'memory' conclusion. Blind people still dream, but they do not see images so much as they experience dreams in sound, or if they are deaf as well, touch. Science has also been done to prove that people can have dreams about memories which were destroyed via use of Beta blockers or strong PTSD psychotic medications. As a result, all that is necessary for you to form the dream you wrote about is you having experienced all the events in the dream once before in your life. Of course, you have probably never punched a giant spider in the face, but maybe you've seen it portrayed in a video or a game?

Because you barely got any rest that night, I believe that the problem you exhibited was either a deficiency in Melatonin, a hormone, or in Magnesium, a mineral, both of which are absolutely necessary for sleep. Melatonin is generated by a part of your brain called the Pineal Gland, and is also formed in the skin in lesser amounts when not subjected to light. If you sleep with a light on, your body will not generate Melatonin properly, thus you will likely not be capable of REM sleep for very long. Magnesium is a great all-round mineral used in far too many bodily functions to name, many of which relate to mental functions during sleep, thus lack of Magnesium might prohibit the pre-REM sleep stage where you are said to be in deepest sleep.

Of course, you could also just have insomnia from working the night shift at your job. That'd do it. :3

In any case, I may not be a doctor, but it seems to be the case that your odd dreaming experience was caused by an incapability to go through all five stages of REM, possibly a skip in stage four or three here and there where you wake up, then fall back asleep and start over. The part of your dreams where you remembered the most detail when you woke up all originated in either REM or stage 4 sleep, thus your brain likely timed your cycles to cut out during fights. Believe it or not, if you enter into physical activity within your dream in REM sleep, your body reacts as if you are actually in that dream, thus you likely woke up and quickly returned to stage 1 after your body reacted to your dream's stimuli.

Was this a good enough explanation? I personally have a fascination with dreams and the science of sleep, which may or may not be evident. Sorry if I was just stating the obvious, and I'm sorry if I'm still stating the obvious when I say that you should take mineral supplements to function better.

[themagus]

I feel bad for you writing all of this because... I already knew that >_<
I was just telling the story...

And yeah, sleeping during daytime messes you up, big time. I'll stop doing that soon, though.

[Amalgamator]

"I feel bad for you writing all of this"
Feeling bad for me implies that you feel pity toward the apparent effort put into my response.
In complete honesty, nearly all of the response you read was copied from a response I made to someone else through a research article, thus it only took ten minutes to adapt into the form you read.
I responded as such because you appeared to presume an incognizant tone, and thus I assumed you would appreciate some form of explanation as to your experience.
It was your intention to inspire a response by posting your story, correct?
"I was just telling the story..."
Or no?

[themagus]

I suppose I didn't expect to get a dream analysis the spanish inquisition...

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