If you woke from a dream in which you forgot to lock your front door...

[Orrex]

Would you check it?

[TZ]

1. yep.

dreams can be your subconcious communicating with you. I've actually had dreams like this...and sometimes they are truthful.

[Orrex]

4. That, in fact, is the precise answer I wanted to hear!

It's an entirely reasonable position to take, because it takes very little to verify the message ("the door's unlocked!") and because, if the message is correct, it can have a serious impact on your immediate life!

I had such a dream recently and dutifully crept downstairs to check. The door was locked, but I'd awakened with the clear and eerie certainty that it was open.


I wonder if certain people experience dreams in which less tangible (and less verifiable) messages are imparted, accepting these messages after only brief critical review. Perhaps the rationalization is something like "well, my subconscious was right about the door, so it's probably right about my dead grandmother trying to contact me."

[TZ]

6. Not only have I had dreams about locked doors or not...

But I've had dreams where I was searching for a bathroom cause I had to go..and woke up with a full bladder!:D

[enki23]

2. when you remember your front door while you're awake at night, do you check it?

.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Yes - unless I clearly remembered having locked it!

Dreams are sometimes based on what is on your mind as you go to sleep - e.g. 'oh I need to lock the door!', followed by falling asleep before doing so.

Sadly, I have often dreamed that I had finished a grant application or similar chore with a deadline, and was disappointed on waking to find that I had only done this in my dreams and still had to do the damn thing!

[cosmik debris]

5. When I dream,

It is not about door locks.

In my neighborhood, locking your doors is optional. My front door has gone for months without being locked.

[jberryhill]

27. Can you tell me more about your neighborhood? /nt

[cosmik debris]

28. Mostly retired people, lots of dogs, very few children, no juveniles.

Entrenched middle class, and everybody has motion detector lights all around their houses. Most of the houses were built in the 60's and many still have their original owners.

Any one who enters this neighborhood after dark will be spotlighted by motion detectors, howled at by dogs, and stared at by a thousand nosy neighbors.

It is sort of amusing when early morning joggers think our neighborhood is a good place to jog. But every where they go the lights come on, the dogs bark and the old folks stare out the window.

I strongly recommend moving to a neighborhood with a lot of retired people. They are nosy and they are always in your business. But I travel a lot and I have left my home unattended for up to 6 weeks without a worry because I know that no one can get near my house without being seen by all those prying eyes.

[jberryhill]

29. Latitude? Longitude?

And what sorts of things do you have in your house?

[cosmik debris]

30. A lot of people rag on me for living in Waco

But I don't have to lock my doors to get a good night's sleep.

Do you?

[jberryhill]

31. Actually...

I never understood the point of locking doors when I'm inside.

Aside from which, it's more likely that you'll lock your children inside of a burning house than have someone wander in.

[beam me up scottie]

7. I've done it.

The sound of gunshots woke me up late Saturday night, and since I'm alone on weekends, even if it's illogical, checking the doors made me feel safer.

Of course I couldn't go back to sleep, but that's another story.

[Orrex]

8. I awoke early one morning about six years ago

And I was absolutely certain that some intruder was in the apartment. I checked every room and every closet, ultimately double-checking the door and bracing it with a piece of furniture.

No one was there, of course, but I couldn't get the feeling of "presence" out of my head. Maybe I'd been abducted...

[beam me up scottie]

9. I've had a similar dream several times, more like night terrors, actually:

I dream that a man is standing over me with a knife, but I can't move or scream as he starts to stab me, it sucks big time because I can't wake myself up since I'm already awake.

That was atrociously incoherent, I know, but I have never been able to accurately describe night terrors to anyone who hasn't had them.

I also occasionally dream that my house is on fire, I'm actually AWAKE but the hallucination is so real, I can smell the smoke and feel the heat from the flames. I've even run out of the house barefoot in a blizzard before snapping out of it.

The fire one can be explained, my father, brothers and I watched our house burn to the ground with all of our possessions and pets inside, and I'll never get over it.

[LeftishBrit]

11. One of my nastier dreams ...

was some years ago, when I dreamt that I was in some sort of field, and some big men kept kicking me back and forth between them. I screamed, "Stop, stop, I'm not a football!" and then something happened to my voice so that I couldn't even scream.

One did not have to be Freud to work out that this dream was a pretty accurate description of my situation at the time, as a political football in some pretty nasty internal workplace politics! Fortunately, things have GREATLY improved since then, especially since a certain person at work retired.

[beam me up scottie]

14. I think for my pets' sake the fact that I can't physically scream is a good thing.

Suddenly flying out of bed and sprinting towards the door in the middle of the night makes them nervous enough.

[realisticphish]

12. waking dreams

man, i hope i never have one, though at least I know what they are, which might help. I'm firmly convinced that the vast majority of alien "abductions" are waking dreams.

[beam me up scottie]

15. That would explain the abductions.

I usually realize it's a dream a few seconds after I hit the floor, maybe they just pick up the thread and weave it into an alien fantasy?

[realisticphish]

16. well

the phenomena is fairly common;

you wake up, usually in the early hours of the morning, and you sense a presence, usually hostile, in the room with you. Sometimes the presence is crushing down on your chest. But throughout the whole thing, the only part of you that can move are your eyes.

The theory, from what I understand, is that you do actually wake up, but your body is still paralyzed (which the brain does to keep you from thrashing around while in REM sleep). The general symptoms then get clarified in whatever format happens to be in your brain, be it ghosts, aliens, demons, or whatever

though i don't know the theory behind the hostile presence. Maybe that's actually a demon :D

[conscious evolution]

18. I have had that happen to me.

There is a medical term for it but I don't recall it right now.

The first time it happened it scared the crap out of me.I thought I had done something in my sleep that left me paralyzed.

As for the alien abduction thing,personally,I think it is the result of an unexpected release of the naturally occuring DMT that is found in the pineal gland.Dr.Rick Strassman,a researcher who studied DMT in a clinical setting under NIH auspices,came up with this hypothesis after he noticed the similarities between abductee stories and his test subjects descriptions of their experiences.

[Orrex]

19. So you're claiming that Dr. Strassman is an alien?

Interesting!

[salvorhardin]

20. That's a hypnopompic hallucination

It's a hypnagogic hallucination if it happens to you right as you fall asleep and both a relatively normal. It's also been conjectured that there are similarities between the disturbing "alien" presences felt during these states and phantom limb syndrome. The idea being that the brain becomes confused about the physical location of the body and mistakes your own body for the presence of another.

[conscious evolution]

21. REM Atonia

REM Atonia is what I was describing when I wake up paralyzed.
Found the term when I wiki'ed hyponopompic hallucination.Thanks for the lead.

I can see where there is a relationship between the two though.Waking up paralyzed will definitely send the mind into freak out mode in a desperate attempt to make sense of it.

Unrelated but semi interesting tidbit on phantom pain:One of my housemates is a Phsychologist who treats PTSD in vets.One of his patients had Phantom limb syndrome from his arm that he lost in Iraq.Mirror box therapy helped with relieving the clinching feeling he had in his lost hand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box
Funny how the mind works ain't it?

[salvorhardin]

22. Oh sorry

I thought you were talking about the whole package of strange stuff that can happen, not just the paralysis.

That's pretty cool about the mirror box treatment, and absolutely brilliant on the part of Ramachandran. Did you hear Ramachandran's 2003 Reith Lectures? If not, they're highly recommended.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003

Here's a pretty good NY Times article about some of the current research into creating not only sensation in phantom limbs, but also classic out of body experiences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/science/23cnd-body.html?incamp=article_popular_2

[LeftishBrit]

25. Ramachandran's work is very interesting

I actually got to attend one of his Reith lectures which he gave in Oxford. It was about synaesthesia, and fascinating.

I strongly recommend his book, "Phantoms in the Brain".

[conscious evolution]

26. Thanks for the links.

The NYT article was interesting.
I will give the lectures by Dr. R. a listen later this evening.
One quick thought though.I wonder if his familiarity with Hindu tantrics lead him to follow this field of science.I would have to imagine so what with him being of Indian descent.I know my tantric practices have really bizarre manifestations so it comes to no surprise to me that someone else would think it a good field of study.

[moggie]

23. The worst one of those I had

Hostile presence, unable to breate, unable to move: yep. But it wasn't a demon sitting on my chest: it was my evil self, strangling me as he laughed. Paging Dr Freud! Fortunately, I had read about sleep paralysis, so after I was fully awake I was able to treat it as merely an interesting experience. But it was very scary while it lasted.

[semillama]

24. Fuseli's "Nightmare" is thought to be an early representation of such a phenomenon

[onager]

10. I was able to "trace" a dream 2 nights ago.

I dreamed I had moved into a different apartment. The kitchen and bathrooms were decorated with dark green, shiny tiles.

That night, I had watched the movie "Proof of Life." If you've seen it, you may remember Meg Ryan lives in a house with the same color of tile. After I woke up, I thought "Aha!" and laughed about it.

With the standard disclaimer that I consider most dream interpretation on a par with astrology and dowsing, the rest of the dream was interesting. I consider dreams as nothing more than the subconscious flushing itself out, apparently like most of you killjoys.

But this dream was so realistic that I woke up frantically wondering how I'd get out of the situation:

1. In the dream, I remember telling myself I moved because the new apartment was cheaper.

2. It must have been REAL cheap. I hated the neighborhood. It was grim and dusty and appeared to be somewhere in West Alexandria, which is full of sulfur pits and chemical plants. (My current apartment is literally across the street from the Mediterranean.)

3. Soon as I started looking around the place, a massive rainstorm came up and the roof leaked...everywhere! FWIW, in August 2006 my house in the USA did have a massive water leak. That caused me a lot of trouble, since I had to deal with it from Egypt.

4. Seeing the rain pouring in, I started frantically telling myself I had to call my old landlord and get my old apartment back.

5. I woke up absolutely convinced I was in that crummy apartment, and had a few moments of panic before I realized I was in my same old bed, in the same old apartment. That was such a great feeling!

[conscious evolution]

13. I have dreams were I wake up late.

More often then not,when I wake up and check the alarm i find I usually have forgotten to turn it on.
What I find to be wierd about that dream is that it is the only one I ever remember the next day.
I seldom remember my dreams.

[CanSocDem]

17. Dreams have saved...

...my life, my sanity and my job, on more than one occasion. If it was that specific, I 'd check it.

Best dream ever...Kept me out of jail.

.