I remember only one, and that was because it contained a scene so impossible it was surreal.
It was not at all frightening, just weird when looked back on; but it seemed to set a pattern for many of my dreams inventing finely-detailed but totally absurd versions of real places.
These images are not weird within the dream, but the normal scenery for the location. It's only if I remember them on waking that I realise just how bizarre they were.
As if you were watching a sci fi or fantasy? An observer rather than a participant? In the dream are you calm and detached from the goings on or caught up in it? Are you in the audience or the actor? Thank you for your reply Durdle! :)
This post was edited by RosieG at May 6, 2021 2:25 AM MDT
Fantasy but not in the film sense. Participant. Calm because the action such as it is, is very ordinary in that dream; but often the other people are vaguely defined, even occasionally a bit misted out .
That very early one I recall, I and ???? (parents?) were walking past the real beach not far from home. Only instead of a flat expanse of water extending for over a mile to breakwaters, with the distant hills above the coast across the bay, my imagination created a high island only just off the beach. As we watched, the tide was coming in and small waves were washing round the base of the cliff facing us. So far so feasible.... but falling over the cliff-top as well?
In another I was with someone - I think my brother - in a large, very strange house on the outskirts of the town, where there really is an area of sizeable 19C homes. Why we were there or what we were doing I have no idea, but the place was heavily furnished in a peculiarly fussy, chintzy way. Then beyond a couple of rooms we ascended stairs to the interior of a spire-like turret, its roof slates clearly visible above our heads... Why? Goodness knows but if I recall that dream rightly, it was unusual in giving the imaginary scene a slightly unsettling atmosphere.
Typical is that the other characters are usually either vague or clearly-defined but strangers; but the scenery is always very finely detailed.
I've noticed some of my dreams are set in broad daylight, even bright sunshine; but others are set in a strange near-darkness sometimes like a sepia-tinted old photograph. I wonder if in those, my eyes are open but my brain is not seeing, only registering the real darkness for the dream's setting even if not relevant to the story.
I have had very brief but very unpleasant "waking dream" experiences in which my eyes are open so my brain sees harmless objects in the deep gloom, but it fails to identify them correctly. Instead it turns them into something horrible or menacing.
Durdle 