Several years ago when I was a young teen I had two dreams that were connected to someone else’s dreams (at least I think)… I am really just seeking information as to the how what and why. So to start here they are, more normal one first.
They both involve the same person, my best friend of nearly two decades. The first dream was not lucid, the second was… something else.
I was standing at the edge of a thick forest, I couldn’t tell how large it was, the tree canopy was too thick to see the sun, let alone the other side of the forest. There was a sense of urgency, I either needed to get somewhere inside the forest, or needed to get across it. I started to run, no real direction just letting the urgency take me. I had no control over this dream so I really had no choice. I stopped, it most have been the center of the forest because the edge’s were not visible in any direction. On a fallen tree, a moss-covered log at this point, I saw my friend. He saw me and waved… I went to him and said something, I didn’t at the time know what I said and still don’t. He responded, I hugged him, and woke up. We didn’t talk about this dream til years later when the second dream happened, but he was the one who described it to me so I am fairly certain he wasn’t yanking my chain.
This is by far the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, I haven’t had a lucid dream since I was a young child about the age of 8 until this one. (Granted at 8 I didn’t know what a lucid dream was, just that I could make my nightmares end if I wanted to) This dream started around a campfire, I was on a hill… there was snow on the flatlands around me but it had melted away from this hill. At my side was what I would imagine an ancient barbarian would have looked like. He had an axe, it was either stone or a crude metal of some sort. I didn’t recognize the face, but I knew it was my friend, one of those bottom of your gut feelings. We spoke for a long time, small talk over a mug of some drink, mostly a conversation about preserving a way of life and our “people”. (I use this term lightly because I don’t know what group we were talking about). He told me it was time, there were horns in the background, some whining resonance that reminded me somewhat of a ram’s horn being played that I heard years later. I stood with him, I had a sword or some similar bladed thing of the same metal/stone material, I know that in my real body I could have never lifted the thing but it was second nature in the dream. There was a sense of understanding, like this was the most natural thing in the world even though it was all so foreign to me. My memory has some gaps in it, so the next few events are jumbled and lost to me, I’ll skip to the next part I remember clearly. We were back to back, we had our weapons up and were sweating as if we had exerted tons of energy, but I could breathe unhindered. We were surrounded by a large group of men, they were armed with far less crude weaponry, swords, axes, and spears that were well refined. Most of them were wearing what I would think would be bronze armor, a brassy looking material that seemed far more advanced than the meager leather we were wearing. He told me he loved me, our bond seemed like what close brothers would feel, maybe twins. I laughed and reached back, wiping some of the sweat from his forehead and rubbing it on the edge of my sword. It drew my blood, I smeared some on my chest where my heart would be, then reached back again and wiped some on his brow. To this day I clearly remember saying “To death, this path ends. We will meet again on another battlefield. I love you.” The men charged, there was a frenzy of melee that is still hard to sort through. It came down to him being run through with a sword, I knew it was also pressing into my back but I couldn’t feel it. I whirled around, cutting down the man that pierced my friend. The sword caused him to be attached to me so he swung around as I turned, but he was still somewhat alive, enough to keep swinging though now he was gurgling instead of shouting warcries. I was ran through with another sword, it pierced through to push into him, causing us to be locked together like superglue. I didn’t have his resiliance and I fell, bringing him down with me on my back. He raised his arm and chopped at the man who struck me, cutting him down at the knees to bleed out. I looked outward, my vantage point was bad but I couldn’t see anymore attackers. I asked if they were gone, from his position on my back he told me there wasn’t another in sight as best as he could. I tried to laugh again, so did he. He started to say what I think was “Another battlefield,” but he couldn’t get it out before he stopped breathing. I looked down and watched the path of red snow grow bigger and bigger, then I felt as if I went to sleep when in actuality I woke up.
This dream disturbed me so much I picked up my phone to call him, we were both young so I knew he would get in trouble for me calling him that early in the morning, as he knew I would get in trouble for the same things. When I picked up the phone there was no dial tone, it turns out he had just tried calling me and I picked it up to call him before it could even ring. We spend the next few hours going over every detail of the dream, he seemed to have the exact same one in every detail we could remember other than vantage point and the fact that I was the person who’s face he didn’t recognize but knew it was me. By far the most disturbing thing that has ever happened to me.
Does anyone have any ideas why this happened? Or why out of the two shared dream experiences I’ve had they both involved the same person? I have been curious for so many years I figure perhaps I should ask people more educated on these things than myself. Please be nice, this is my first post and really my only experiences with things of this nature.
That sounded like an awesome dream (well except the getting stuck together with swords part). But onto your questions…
First off, for shared dreams like this, nobody really knows the answers yet - as to how or why they happen. A lot of people don’t even believe that they do happen - but they do. It could’ve been a past life experience, and I’m sure you’ve thought of that, but it could’ve also just been a really vivid dream. I like the vivid dream option more myself. But who knows…
Was your dream actually a lucid dream? That is to say, did you realize that you were dreaming? Often times lucid dreams are just as vivid as waking reality…
Why do you find this expeience disturbing? I’d find it uplifting to know that there’s more to life than what scientists would have us believe…
As to why both experiences involved the same person… It might be that we have shared dreams every night, but never realize it because they involve people we’ve never met - or people who never talk about their dreams. The first dream, for example, you would’ve probably consider’d a normal dream - until your friend told you about it. Maybe there are thousands of people out there who could do the same thing, but never will for one reason or another…
Thanks for the insights. I have encountered a lot of skepticism from the few people I’ve shared this experience with… to be perfectly honest if it would have happened to anyone but me I would have told them they were likely crazy. For the questions:
I am fairly certain it was a lucid dream, while I wasn’t conciously thinking about being awake, there was a definite feeling of being in charge. This was one of the only lucid dreams I’ve had since I was a very young child. While some parts felt like they were on a set path, maybe because of the sheer speed of everything, there were other parts that seemed to be myself. When I said my line to him, and the part with the blood and sweat… it felt impromptu, like being on stage, improvisational even.
Why it was disturbing… Well, this certain friend of mine has always shared a strange connection with me. The kind of friend where you can finish each others sentances, even have conversations without really saying a word. We have a tendancy of not talking for months or ever years (once) then out of the blue calling each other on the same day, sometimes at the same time. I was just disturbed at the time because he had called me at the same second, like we had woken up at the same time… it was just too much how many of the details matched perfectly.
I’ve never really believed in past lives or anything, but that idea was brought up to me before. I did some research and found some similarities with the barbarian tribes various European regions being wiped out in crusades or petty wars, but I still have a hard time imagining the reincanation idea. I am a skeptical person, probably why this interests me so much.
Maybe those folks are the crazy ones… Like when I tell a dream character that we’re dreaming - and he doesn’t believe me…
It could also be that you and your friend do share a strange bond. Once upon a time I had a vision of a girl I went to school with - a dramatic, full-blown, what-the-hell-was-that vision - and then a few seconds later the whole thing happened again for real. Deja Vu, but not just a vague feeling… Anyway, in the months to come, I noticed that I could feel her presence whenever she came into the room. For example, I was eating lunch in the cafeteria and felt she was there. I turned around and she had just walked in, all the way across the cafeteria - and she didn’t eat at the same time as me, so it wasn’t just a matter of subconcious scheduling or the like (it is possible that I subconciously overheard a distant conversation or something, but there comes a point…)
Maybe you should keep in better touch with that friend… Hell, maybe you should get him interested in lucid dreaming (assuming he’s not already)…
Another possibility is that the whole of our waking reality is, in fact, a dream - I don’t necessarily believe that, but it’s useful to think about.
If the skepticism thing still bugs you, you might want to read the last few chapters of “Travels” by Michael Crichton. He’s the guy who wrote Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain. He’s also a Harvard-educated doctor. He’s got some things to say about skeptics, as well as telling about how he has personally done spoon bending and auric vision… It’s a strange, strange world…
Well, I’m not all that worried about skeptics, I can be pretty narrow-minded at times myself. I should talk to him about lucid dreaming, I’m in process of trying to get the skill back, hard since it came so naturally before. I’m hoping I can use it to conquer a lot of bad thoughts and dreams that give me some pretty wicked insomnia.
As for me and my friend, we keep in touch well enough… we’re the types that can disappear for years, meet up at the same cafe somewhere by accident, and be just as good of friends as ever, its a weird relationship.
I’m the type where I guess I just wish there was a logical explanation that could put a focus on what happened, but I know science is pretty weak sometimes, unable to umbrella enough into proof.
It was certainly a very curious dream. From what you said, I’m unsure it was a LD but it doesn’t matter at all indeed. I believe you cause I’ve shared information in a ND with a very close friend. I woke up cause he phoned me. I was absolutely sure that the phone call was from him cause I was just dreaming about him. Now I was extremely surprised when he asked me to do the thing he asked me to do in my dream. It happened just once.
The difference with your experience was that my friend wasn’t at all aware of this, cause he was awake and I was asleep. I can’t give any explanation about this, I just think it’s something like telepathy. There was another interesting account from Iluminada. She shared a dream with her husband: they dreamt about the same landscape and it was not such common (a mausoleum with four big pillars on a hill in a cemetery).
First comment: when it happens, it’s generally with very close friends or people from the same family. The friend I told about is my best friend for twenty years. Curiously, we are very close though we are very different. We stayed in close relation though we were most often separed by hundreds of kilometers during many years. Second comment: such dreams are generally not lucid. As I said in a post today, precog dreams and shared dreams are mainly found in normal dreams. An explanation is, lucidity prevents such dreams cause our lucid consciousness is not so far from waking consciousness. Another idea is, it doesn’t happen more or less often in LD’s or ND’s… but ND’s are more common!
Your points make a lot of sense. I’ve had a lot of trouble over the years trying to determine if I was in fact acting upon my own will in the dream, or following such a believable life and course of action that it simply felt lucid. To this day I can’t really answer which is which, but the words I spoke struck home.
I think one problem with determining lucidity in a shared dream is the actual connection with the person. You can know the person so well, and know how you respond to one another so well, that a subconcious scenario can seem to fit perfectly with the plot of actions you would set for yourself.
On telepathy: I have never had a concious telepathic exchange with anyone (that I can recall). However, me and this friend tend to, as I’ve mentioned, call each other at the exact same time after not talking for months or even longer. We also tend to pick up various curiousities, in turn telling the other to pick up the same item only to find they have purchased or found the same thing the same day (or within a reasonable timeframe to be uncanny). For example, I became infatuated with a nearly impossible to find film, I called him the day after I found a copy and purchased it, telling him to do the same… only to find he had just bought the same movie, literally minutes before! I know these things don’t necessarily fit under the confines of telepathic conversation, but in my opinion definitely indicate a link or bond that goes beyond scientific measure.
I’m curious as to your thoughts about subconcious telepathic bonds, similar theories have been the only semi-feasible explanations I can come up with.
P.S. Thanks for your ideas! I definitely have a lot more to think about tonight (pre-lucid experimentation)
About telepathy and phone calls, there were some recent Rupert Sheldrake’s experiments about guessing who is calling (or e-mailing) and they gave interesting results.
I liked the comparisons to the instincts of domesticated animals (god knows my cat is always right in my lap when I feel down). I almost can’t believe that 80% of people experience the pre-cog-phonecall, let alone that nearly half of the participants in the study could correctly identify who was going to call! The way he phrases his summary in the end reminds me of the ansible (spelling?) idea that Orson Scott Card introduced, with each person being a pinpoint linked to hundreds of other pinpoints by invisible threads. A good read!
Hell, maybe you should get him interested in lucid dreaming (assuming he’s not already)…
