03-28-2025, 05:43 AM
Bizarre dream experience (very)
I was scheduled to take a trip down to Sydney, Australia from whee I was stationed in SE Asia (Malaysia). I was super sick (flu), but there was no changing the plans, I had to go.
I remember getting on the plane. It was about a 6 hour flight, so I OD'd on some Nyquil and just hoped I'd get a little better when we landed.
Next thing I knew, I woke up inside someone's house. I had no idea where I was (not even what country). I'd been in about (7) countries in about as many days, I was exhausted, and I was sick on top of that. Where the fuck was I? I didn't know. I was in a bed. It was definitely someone's house, but I'd never been there before; I knew that much. I remember the first thing I saw as my eyes focused. Shag carpet. Green shag carpet. I hadn't seen green long shag carpet since the 70's, but here it was. I immediately jumped up, and said out loud..."Where am I?". No one answered.
I cautiously opened the bedroom door and looked around. There was no one there. The house was empty. Okay, I must be dreaming, right? Nope! This was no dream; I was awake, and how I knew this was my left knee hurt (old football injury, surgery, etc. ). Definitely not a dream! You don't really feel pain in a dream, at least I don't. But I literally had absolutely NO idea where the hell I was. I was wearing some gym shorts and a T-shirt. I knew I never traveled dressed like that, and clearly I'd traveled somewhere, but where, I had no idea. I ran to the bedroom and yanked open the closet. My suit was hanging in the closet, so I fished in the pocket and grabbed my passport. This is when I got REALLY scared. As I looked in my passport I had an exit stamp and a work visa cancellation in my passport, but no entry stamp from another country. There was only one possible explanation...I must have returned to the States! I was seriously worried at this point because there's no way I would have knowingly done this!
Holy Shit! Where am I? Then it got worse. I decided to look out the window. I was in an apartment building, 2nd floor was my guess. Outside on the street were parked cars, but not just any old parked cars. They were all cars from the 70's and 80's. Fords, Chevy's, Dodge's. My Gawd, I must be in some sort of time warp!...I thought to myself. (This is a true story, mind you) Okay, what next? I walked around the apartment and it was seriously like I was in the 70's. All the appliances were dated, drapes, carpet, everything. I looked in the frig (don't ask me why I thought this would help, but it actually did). Inside the frig was the usual stuff and there was a jug of milk. I grabbed the milk and looked at the date. It was still fresh, and the date was about what I expected. Whew! Okay, at least it's not a time warp (seriously, this was the stuff going through my mind). My heart was pounding. Then, I spied a telephone book sitting on the table. I grabbed it and frantically opened it up to the middle and flipped through it. "Smith", "Jones", "Johnson" were the names I was seeing. "Maple St", "Main St.", "7th Ave", were the streets. WT actual F??? Where am I???? What I should have seen was names like "Xi" and "Shaolin" and "Gnu", and none of the streets should have been familiar. Honestly, at this point, I was about ready to have a nervous breakdown. I'd never had one before, but figured that must be what it's like. To save myself from having a straight-up heart attack, I sat down on the couch to catch my breath and just relax for a moment. I wasn't in imminent danger, so I had a minute to sort this out.
I kept looking at the phone book for clues. My world got even darker when I saw the phone numbers. Instead of being (7) digits, they were (8) digits (i.e. xxxx-xxxx, not yyy-yyyy). FUCK! Where the hell am I?
By this point I had all but freaked out. I knew two things (and ONLY two things); I had my passport, and I had my wallet. With those two things I could go anywhere. I could call a cab, get to the airport, and buy a plane ticket back to the States (...and check myself into the crazy people's asylum! Because this engineer had clearly lost all his marbles, gone over the edge, and gone completely insane! LOL! Not really.) But this is seriously what I was thinking...if I didn't get some answers pretty damn quick. This 'mystery' had gone on WAY too long!
On the coffee table was a remote control for the television (circa 1975...LOL!) I picked it up and flipped on the TV. When it came on I saw the "ABC" logo right before a commercial break. I was in the Twilight Zone sitting there. The commercials seemed normal, but just slightly 'off', but I couldn't place why. Then the programming came on. It was a morning show. It didn't register at first, but then I looked at the logo in the bottom of the program. It said..."Good Morning Sydney" (the equivalent of Good Morning America). HA! I'm in Australia! Whew! Now at least I knew what country I was in.
Now the pieces were starting to come together. In the pocket of my shorts was a key, but no idea what it went to. I walked to the front door and discovered the key unlocked the front door. Okay, clue #2, check. I must have let myself in. Then my cell phone rang. It was in my pack in the bedroom. I missed the call, but there was a message. "Hope you found the apartment okay, and hope you're feeling better. Make yourself at home. I should be back in town tomorrow and we can go over the project then. Cheers!"
Long story short; I'd arrived in Sydney, sick as a dog, taken about (3) shots of whiskey at an airport bar, taken a cab to a colleagues apartment, and crashed. The key to the apartment had been left under the mat, and that was the key in my pocket. This was in 1993, and back then the city of Sydney was like walking back in time to the 1970's. Everything there was vintage (which was really cool). The phone book was just the phone book for a suburb of Sydney, so I didn't recognize this. And the names were names just like you and me, along with the street names. The milk jug and the TV gave it away.
BUT...that night, although feeling better, I wound up re-living the entire event, this time much darker and more sinister, in one of my first lucid dreams. The dream inside of another dream kind, like the Matryoshka dolls kind.
And I've always wondered if it took an event like that to trigger the ability to dream like this. An experience which is not a dream, but is so dream-like, that you can't immediately sort out dream-state from reality, and if that does something to your brain making it capable of having things like lucid dreams(?). I don't know, but one thing I do know is...I will never forget that experience! I've had people tell me it sounded like a bad drug experience. It may well be, but I've never taken drugs like that, so I don't know. I'm sure the Nyquil had something to do with it though, so maybe there's something to that.
And lastly, as I've previously stated, I don't always have dreams like lucid dreams. Probably about once every 2-3 months I'll have one, and they're usually when I'm really, really, tired or unwell. Not always, but mostly.
I was scheduled to take a trip down to Sydney, Australia from whee I was stationed in SE Asia (Malaysia). I was super sick (flu), but there was no changing the plans, I had to go.
I remember getting on the plane. It was about a 6 hour flight, so I OD'd on some Nyquil and just hoped I'd get a little better when we landed.
Next thing I knew, I woke up inside someone's house. I had no idea where I was (not even what country). I'd been in about (7) countries in about as many days, I was exhausted, and I was sick on top of that. Where the fuck was I? I didn't know. I was in a bed. It was definitely someone's house, but I'd never been there before; I knew that much. I remember the first thing I saw as my eyes focused. Shag carpet. Green shag carpet. I hadn't seen green long shag carpet since the 70's, but here it was. I immediately jumped up, and said out loud..."Where am I?". No one answered.
I cautiously opened the bedroom door and looked around. There was no one there. The house was empty. Okay, I must be dreaming, right? Nope! This was no dream; I was awake, and how I knew this was my left knee hurt (old football injury, surgery, etc. ). Definitely not a dream! You don't really feel pain in a dream, at least I don't. But I literally had absolutely NO idea where the hell I was. I was wearing some gym shorts and a T-shirt. I knew I never traveled dressed like that, and clearly I'd traveled somewhere, but where, I had no idea. I ran to the bedroom and yanked open the closet. My suit was hanging in the closet, so I fished in the pocket and grabbed my passport. This is when I got REALLY scared. As I looked in my passport I had an exit stamp and a work visa cancellation in my passport, but no entry stamp from another country. There was only one possible explanation...I must have returned to the States! I was seriously worried at this point because there's no way I would have knowingly done this!
Holy Shit! Where am I? Then it got worse. I decided to look out the window. I was in an apartment building, 2nd floor was my guess. Outside on the street were parked cars, but not just any old parked cars. They were all cars from the 70's and 80's. Fords, Chevy's, Dodge's. My Gawd, I must be in some sort of time warp!...I thought to myself. (This is a true story, mind you) Okay, what next? I walked around the apartment and it was seriously like I was in the 70's. All the appliances were dated, drapes, carpet, everything. I looked in the frig (don't ask me why I thought this would help, but it actually did). Inside the frig was the usual stuff and there was a jug of milk. I grabbed the milk and looked at the date. It was still fresh, and the date was about what I expected. Whew! Okay, at least it's not a time warp (seriously, this was the stuff going through my mind). My heart was pounding. Then, I spied a telephone book sitting on the table. I grabbed it and frantically opened it up to the middle and flipped through it. "Smith", "Jones", "Johnson" were the names I was seeing. "Maple St", "Main St.", "7th Ave", were the streets. WT actual F??? Where am I???? What I should have seen was names like "Xi" and "Shaolin" and "Gnu", and none of the streets should have been familiar. Honestly, at this point, I was about ready to have a nervous breakdown. I'd never had one before, but figured that must be what it's like. To save myself from having a straight-up heart attack, I sat down on the couch to catch my breath and just relax for a moment. I wasn't in imminent danger, so I had a minute to sort this out.
I kept looking at the phone book for clues. My world got even darker when I saw the phone numbers. Instead of being (7) digits, they were (8) digits (i.e. xxxx-xxxx, not yyy-yyyy). FUCK! Where the hell am I?
By this point I had all but freaked out. I knew two things (and ONLY two things); I had my passport, and I had my wallet. With those two things I could go anywhere. I could call a cab, get to the airport, and buy a plane ticket back to the States (...and check myself into the crazy people's asylum! Because this engineer had clearly lost all his marbles, gone over the edge, and gone completely insane! LOL! Not really.) But this is seriously what I was thinking...if I didn't get some answers pretty damn quick. This 'mystery' had gone on WAY too long!
On the coffee table was a remote control for the television (circa 1975...LOL!) I picked it up and flipped on the TV. When it came on I saw the "ABC" logo right before a commercial break. I was in the Twilight Zone sitting there. The commercials seemed normal, but just slightly 'off', but I couldn't place why. Then the programming came on. It was a morning show. It didn't register at first, but then I looked at the logo in the bottom of the program. It said..."Good Morning Sydney" (the equivalent of Good Morning America). HA! I'm in Australia! Whew! Now at least I knew what country I was in.
Now the pieces were starting to come together. In the pocket of my shorts was a key, but no idea what it went to. I walked to the front door and discovered the key unlocked the front door. Okay, clue #2, check. I must have let myself in. Then my cell phone rang. It was in my pack in the bedroom. I missed the call, but there was a message. "Hope you found the apartment okay, and hope you're feeling better. Make yourself at home. I should be back in town tomorrow and we can go over the project then. Cheers!"
Long story short; I'd arrived in Sydney, sick as a dog, taken about (3) shots of whiskey at an airport bar, taken a cab to a colleagues apartment, and crashed. The key to the apartment had been left under the mat, and that was the key in my pocket. This was in 1993, and back then the city of Sydney was like walking back in time to the 1970's. Everything there was vintage (which was really cool). The phone book was just the phone book for a suburb of Sydney, so I didn't recognize this. And the names were names just like you and me, along with the street names. The milk jug and the TV gave it away.
BUT...that night, although feeling better, I wound up re-living the entire event, this time much darker and more sinister, in one of my first lucid dreams. The dream inside of another dream kind, like the Matryoshka dolls kind.
And I've always wondered if it took an event like that to trigger the ability to dream like this. An experience which is not a dream, but is so dream-like, that you can't immediately sort out dream-state from reality, and if that does something to your brain making it capable of having things like lucid dreams(?). I don't know, but one thing I do know is...I will never forget that experience! I've had people tell me it sounded like a bad drug experience. It may well be, but I've never taken drugs like that, so I don't know. I'm sure the Nyquil had something to do with it though, so maybe there's something to that.
And lastly, as I've previously stated, I don't always have dreams like lucid dreams. Probably about once every 2-3 months I'll have one, and they're usually when I'm really, really, tired or unwell. Not always, but mostly.