Does anyone else have reoccuring dream locations that don’t actually exist in waking life, or that consistently look very different from the real-life version?
For instance, in several dreams now, I’ve dreamt about a mix between an aquarium/zoo and an indoor water park. There are pools, water slides, and so on, but also aquariums with live fish and a green house with repiles or other animals. The place has several floors and part of the water park can be flooded. In some places you can swim among the fish - sometimes this is by design, sometimes this is due to some accident. There are museum-like signs explaining the different animals.
I also tend to dream a lot about asian restaurants and supermarkets with wooden interior. They are never based directly on an actual restaurant I’ve been to.
I think these places are based on a mix of locations that I’ve actually been to. I’ve been to indoor water parks, I’ve been to aquariums and zoos. I can see how certain details reflect the real-life equivalents (style of signs, colors of walls). The restaurants seem to be a mashup between several actual asian restaurants I’ve been to, and the former look of a certain fish restaurant that’s close to where I grew up.
Dreams are based on memories, right?
But in this case, a mix of different memories seem to have been saved as a separate, new, memory. Because the places are reoccuring in my dreams, and in my dreams, I recognise the place and often know what to expect of it.
YES I do! Typically they’re weird distortions of places that do exist in waking life but they are so different (and so consistent) I see them as specific locations that exist only in my dreams.
One location that exists in my dreams is a city location. There are giant skyscrapers, including one which I can’t ever fully see the name of in the dreams. I call it the “Mayflower Building”. In this city, the main feature is the really tall system of elevated highways. They go almost as tall as the skyscrapers. I don’t know what exists below them.
A newer reoccurring dream location that’s been popping up lately in my dreams is a distorted version of my high school. It has the same overall building shape but aesthetically it’s completely different and the building has three floors. There are weird designs in the hallways that are supposed to help with hallway traffic by making people stay on their right side of the hallway. The walls are painted to complement this design. It looks really cool and I have no idea where my brain got that idea.
I think there are other places I go to often, but I can’t think of any right now. Some I probably haven’t been to in quite a while.
It is mostly the small town I grew up in. When I dream about it, there is a bridge across a river next to the crossroads that leads to the high school I went to. The steep path up the mountain side (which exists IRL) usually leads to a top secret spy facility on top of the mountain. And, close to the old cement factory, somebody’s cluttered garage is actually a secret entrance to an underground mall.
The road between the small town and the neighbouring town is also interesting. In my dreams, the road goes past a field of giant sunflowers, a medieval inn, and an abandoned railway tunnel where smugglers and other criminals hide their treasures. It isn’t that interesting IRL.
Now, after living here for almost two decades, Bodø is starting to get these distorted locations too. There is a small hill between here and my work, where I sit and enjoy the quiet view. Sometimes I sleep there. IRL, that area is military property and closed off. In some dreams, there is a fishing spot there.
There are also locations that are entirely fictional, such as the golden rooms and the overlook station. Some have been reoccurring since my childhood!
A distorted version of my hometown is a common recurring location. Other than that my dreams tend to imagine fresh locations I’ve never seen before. Only a handful of times have I returned to a place from a previous dream.
One reoccurring place for me is my cousin’s house. Because we moved around a lot when I was younger, that house was one of the only consistent ones I knew. I also used to sleep there randomly quite a bit, so when I dream of it the house is… often externally the same. It faces the same street (a cul-de-sac) and sits rather back on a large span of grass. But the similarities end there as the interior is always different. Sometimes there are a ton of rooms, sometimes the side door opens up onto weird outdoor, middle-of-space expanses.
Recently, and since I moved out of the house I had been living in most of my teenage life, I have also it appear as a reoccurring place. This mostly happens in FAs. So I’m in my old bedroom, but there will be minor differences. For instance, my bookshelf is in the wrong place. Or outside the door is something other than a closet.
I also have my high school appear, but it rarely actually looks like my high school. I think the last time I dreamt of it, it was an outdoor school. So it was one giant oval and all classes took place on various patches of grass. There was a modern building between the oval and the parking lot, and a water fountain out the front of this building. I have no idea where that layout came from.
Yes, I’m a complete newb (just started reading about Lucidity last night), and although I haven’t read much yet, I figured it was normal to have recurring dreams or recurring dream locations as I have them quite often. One location is a version of one of my childhood homes, one is a strange version of downtown in my City, one is an underground facility that always has bears in it, and another is a hotel-slash-indoor obstacle course. I have different dreams sometimes although have the same locations, although each location may be a little different than the last time I remember.
There is an apartment in a fictional world I go to often. It is connected to pittsburg and to a church that doesnt exist. I usually walk straight to the apartment, remember I lost my keys, find a way in the apartment and see a bunch of young women living there even though I apparantly used to live there. And then we have a shared existence together in that apartment. And I walk to the most perfect church.
Ive gone to this place in my dreams probably thousands of times. I havent found it as much lately though.
