Oh yeah. Actually just last night I had a really vivid (could go into long and boring dream description, won't, thank me later) dream, but one of the main details was that mudpuppie had just written a book. And I dreamed I was reading this really detailed back cover biography of her, and there was stuff there that I know about her, and other stuff that my brain just decided about her, but I remember reading it for several minutes, dream time, and being fascinated to learn more about her.

Yes, the chickens were mentioned.

I have had the telephone dream too. I could hear the phone ringing and her voice was so real, that is special because I didn't even have a phone in the house at the time, otherwise I would think I took a phone call in my sleep.
I love it when I lucid dream and I take control of the dream and then actually remember it. I can fly, breath underwater, and talk to dead people in my dreams. I have had two OBE's in my life as well. I'm just freaky like that.

GEML - awesome! And part of this dream also was this bizarre restaurant called the Metro, where you could only get to it by a special subway stop, and the entrance were just grimy steps leading up the street, but once you got there, this oak door led into this turn-of-the-century bistro with wood panelling and brass, and an enormous bar with a gigantic mirror behind it.

I wish there was a place like that in real life I could dine in.

Once I dreamed that someone gave me a plastic bag containing about a half ounce of really green, sticky bud. I could totally smell it and feel that sappy texture.

I have the "reading the back cover of a book" dream a lot and I'm always sad when I wake up and can't buy the book.

I had this amazingly vivid dream last night that had as part of it this incredible stage show. The stage was HUGE and featured a cast of hundreds singing and dancing and acting...

...and all of it was experienced only peripherally as the real focus of the dream was entirely elsewhere. That my brain could come up with something so complex just as background--set dressing, if you will--dumbfounds me.

matildaben: I too have had tactile experiences in my dreams and thought I would still have the object with me in real life when I woke up, sadly to find it not there.

There are certain (fictitious) places that show up repeatedly in my dreams, often months apart. There's an apartment that I occasionally live in, with a whole extra area that doubles its size, that is not immediately apparent. There's a huge secret area in my grandfather's house that only I know about. There's an apartment that's totally rotting and falling apart that I'm forever turning down, and another apartment building that I often end up living in, although unhappily. Every time one of them turns up, I know I'm dreaming and (with the secret, tardis-like ones) think, "ah! Here I am. How wonderful."

I sometimes wonder if dreams can be actual visitations. Once I dreamed I was in a boat on a quiet lake with a wolf, who was rowing. The wolf was my grandfather, whom I needed just at that moment, but who had been dead a long time.

Then, too, it's amazing that the mind can reconstruct the physical presence of people who are decades gone from us. When people who are dead, or who I haven't seen in ages, are in my dreams, everything is clear and real and immediate, from the texture of the fabric of their clothes, to their voices, to the small details about hands and pocketbooks and belt buckles and such that the conscious mind would never remember.

What I love about dreams is that they are signalling in a language designed to go right under our protective shields. For instance, recently I dreamed that I had made a plan to commit suicide by swallowing a certain sort of a drug - and it seemed like a healthy, smart plan. I thought it was the right choice. After taking the drug, I went about my daily routine as usual.

It wasn't until I actually realized the enormity of my action - that it was too late to take it back, that it was making me feel sick and scared, and that it meant I would be giving up things I loved and needed and be forever dead - that I suddenly panicked, attacked by dizziness and horror.

I couldn't parse it. I didn't understand it until I asked for the analysis of a third party, an astute person who loves me but had a better perspective, to let me know exactly what that dream was about, and free me to give up something in my life that wasn't working, never would, and was, in fact, probably harming me. For something a lot better.

elizard, I have dreams exactly like yours. Do you ever see these buildings later? I see them later in real life, or ones that remind me of them.

Miko, that is a powerful dream. I'm glad that you could use it to improve your life.

The verisimilitude of dreams is phenomenal. “To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action, and actually the waking perception and action.” If you haven't seen the movie "Waking Life", you should check it out. It's a kitchen sink movie, so don't expect a coherent narrative, but it asks a lot of questions that are fun to think about, and you seem like the kind of dude to me that likes thinking deep thoughts about questions where the answers aren't as important as the wonder. Kinda like myself.

Here's some of my anecdotal research. The lucid dreaming literature, in comparison with most of academia, is a wonder to read. But maybe that's because it's my specialization.

Every time dreams are mentioned, I get a little "squee!" in my brain, but I'll refrain from blabbing all sorts of junk in this thread, particularly the 'my opinion' part.

My first MeCha-related dream came last night. I was a talent agent representing Hugh Janus and I was trying to get him some sort of deal. It was very stressful and I'm not sure if he got the deal or not. Maybe I'll find out tonight.

And I better get my 10%, damnit.

Miko, that is a powerful dream. I'm glad that you could use it to improve your life.

Dreams, while they vary in degrees of vividness, are only as powerful as your analysis. There's nothing like the feeling of decoding a dream, and getting at the undercarriage of your brainworks. For me, it's like how some guys work on their car every weekend. I tool around with my subconscious. =D

You can have 10% of my Hugh Janus, mullacc.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, mullacc. And don't worry, 12.5% for closers, and you get your choice of Escalade.

But maybe that's because it's my specialization.

Eideteker: can you please expound upon this for me? I am sincerely extremely interested in LD's and OBE's.

Read the "anecdotal research" link up there. It's by no means comprehensive, but it'll give you an idea of some of the stuff I've done with lucidity. It might also be useful to check my MeFi posting history. I'm happy to answer specific questions, but if you just ask me to tell you everything I know about lucidity we'll be here for a few days.

Short answer: I'm finishing up a BA in psych and I hope to go to grad school in a few to study lucid dreaming and its relation to consciousness.

For a very long time, my dreams often featured the house I grew up in. We lived there for 18 years, from the time I was 18 months old to nearly 20 years old. The strange thing is that a year and a half ago, I found out that the house was torn down (sad, as it was a historic house and had the plaque to prove it). The house has now vanished from my dreams. This saddens me quite a bit.
Otherwise, I kept having recurring dreams of a huge, brick tunnel, with curved ceiling, sometimes with stores in it, never dark and dank. It was very old, and beautiful, and reminded me of an old fort I toured in Bucksport, Maine, and tunnels I've seen in a fort in Bermuda, and on Sandy Hook in New Jersey.

I think I have dreamt about my own past lives as well.

My dreams tend to repeat themselves, especially the ones that manifest themselves during times of stress. One recurring theme is that of tornadoes. My dreams always tend to have me traipsing around various buildings with groups of people. The people and the settings repeat themselves frequently.

My most interesting dream is one that I had when I was a little girl, and it came back throughout childhood. In the dream I was standing alongside a concrete river - on either side were brilliant turquoise pool tiles, the river itself looked like what you might see at a water park "lazy river." My grandparents floated by on a raft/boat and wouldn't let me come with them. I was sad and scared, and as they drifted along, I listened to the sounds of the tropical jungle surroundings. I began having that dream at age 4 or so, and maybe had it three or four more times after that.

My grandmother and grandfather passed away within a couple of months of each other, and soon after they had both passed, I had the dream again. It seemed to bring a whole new meaning to the dream, and I found it to be a great comfort, because it brought a surreal familiarity to the situation. I relate it to my youthful subconcious realizing the mortality of my grandparents. The interesting thing was that my mom brought up the dream one day after I got back from my grandfather's funeral - she remembered me telling her about it as a kid. I hadn't yet told her that I had the dream again.

Sorry for the crazy long post, I obviously find the subject of dreams pretty fascinating, too.

Elizard, I have a similar "relative's house" I revisit from time to time across the years in dreams. It bears no resemblance to any actual relative's house from RL, and even though it's somewhat different from time to time, I always know what house it is when I come back to it.

There's also a version of my childhood house from when my mother was still alive, and when I go to it in dreams, my mother is still alive in it, although I never go inside the house, I just see the street and the front of the house, and while I think a lot during the dream about what it would be like to see my mother still alive, I never do see her.