Hypnogogic Dreams
This list has tightened. It once contained waking hallucinations too, but those now have their own dedicated list.
RELATED TOPICS: hallucinations - trance and hypnosis - dreamwork and dream research - Surrealism - dreams of Mark - tales of the waking world - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
What this site is - Add your dreams! - How to read blurbs - Ratings - Copyright - Downloading - The World Dream Bank has 4000+ dreams plus 1000 more pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2022.
BED VORTEX: by Wayan; 2002/10/24, an abstract Halloween portrait of the hypnogogic state I sculpted a plaster abstract, then found it wasn't. A vortext of bedsheets, faces, hands, bodies... |
|
BESS: by Forrest Bess, 1946, '47, '57, '67 & '70; five hypnogogic dreams Bess painted images that look like abstract symbols but actually flashed in front of him when half asleep... |
|
BETTY STOPS BY: by a Kentucky woman pre-1961, a farewell visitation dream? I was moved that Betty came to see my two babies despite her illness, but shocked when her father told me... |
|
THE BLACK WAVE: by Wayan, 2016/10/18, a poem on a hypnogogic healing dream After days sick, I open myself to unseen spirits and let a black wavefront go through me--and the healing begins. But what did I let in? CAUTION: MYSTICISM & FETISHISM DON'T MIX |
|
CREEPINESS: by Scottopic; 2001/11/30. A hypnogogic nightmare. I'm in bed sleepily petting my cat, when I see my cat across the room! What's on my legs? It's big. My cat chases it off... through the wall? My room is sealed. Where did it come from, where did it go?... |
|
CRYPTOMNESIC TROLLEY: by Wayan; 1991/4/22, a lucid dream of a suicidal experiment. To prove I really am lucid-dreaming, I let a streetcar run me over. Mm, crunchy! Then I find out... CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT OM... |
|
DREAM CLARITY, or, the Field of Psychotherapy: by Wayan; 1996/11/27, a dream on dreams While we're making crop-circles in the field of psychotherapy, my hypnotist and I start to argue... |
|
FALL FROM A STAR: by Edwin Muir; 1920, a hypnogogic shamanic initiation Escaping the tiny red plush room inside a star, I dive back to earth. Oops. A beast eats my broken body. My soul waits... |
|
FANFARE FORESEEN: by Wayan; 1983/7/7, a dream anticipating an unlikely event by just half a second He turns on the radio, and a moment later a loud horn section rings out. I wake shocked--for that horn fanfare isn't just in my dream ears... |
|
F.I.P: by Dr A (c.1947), a Cambridge man (1960?), a London girl (c.1916) and a Midlands mum (July 1958) Examples of inexplicable moods that appear (after the fact) to be reactions to future events... |
|
FRANKENSTEIN'S ORIGIN: by Mary Shelley; 1816/6/16, the (hypnogogic?) dream inspiring a famous book I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out... |
|
HYPNOGOGIC ASSAULT: by Dr Simon Forman; 1559-63, recurring hypnogogic images. From age six on, Simon nightly climbs mountains and faces roaring floods in a sort of naptime bootcamp... |
|
KETTLE WHISTLE: by Wayan, 1991/10/8, a predictive dreamlet I half-wake as a kettle abruptly starts whistling. Odd, it's quite unlike ours. Wake. Silence. A dream! Dawn. That abrupt whistle again! But this time, real. Somehow, a housemate got our kettle to sound... CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P. |
|
THE KEY IS HERE, BUT BEWARE; 2012/3/8 by Eleanor; nested nightmares of enlightenment The moment I find the Key, I'm possessed! I wake to find it's just a nightmare. Only who's broken into my house?... CAUTION: DEMONIC POSSESSION & EVERYDAY PSYCHOPATHS |
|
LONG ROAD TO HEAVEN: by Edwin Muir; 1920, an epic hypnogogic shamanic initiation Creatures in the primal sea touch my third eye, dragons cry their eyes out, I fight the Sphinx, and arrive at last in... |
|
ORB: by Walter de la Mare; before 1939; a feverdream image I held the strangest and most entrancing object I have ever seen: the very citadel of life itself!... |
|
PETE: by Norman, a soldier on Guam; 1944, either a ghost or hallucination with a lifesaving warning. Pete told me to skip the shortcut. Only after I'd turned the truck around did I realize Pete had died weeks ago... |
|
PRIMAVERA: by Walter de la Mare; 1920s, a dream persisting into day I dreamt the Goddess of Spring paraded by my house. I woke and leapt to my bedroom window, and there she was... |
|
QUAKE: by Robert Brust; 1964/3/24; a possibly predictive daydream or hypnogogic dream. Drowsing on the bus, I see great holes open in the pavement. Our bus falls in. We climb out to find devastation... I wake and get off the bus. A few days later, I see my nightmare on the news: that massive quake in Alaska... |
|
THE SHOP SPILLED OVER: by AE (George Russell); early 1890s, a telepathic flash Closing my eyes I saw an old man and a red-haired girl in a shop. My workmate was writing home... |
|
SILKY'S MASSAGE: by Wayan; 1981/2/2, a dream on workaholism, with 2/16 follow-up I tried to cartoon a joyful dream but nightmares kept intruding. Finally, aching, I half-slept... My spirit guide Silky came, and said the obvious, and stretched my sore neck and back... CAUTION: NUDE ANIMAL DANCE TROUPE |
|
SIXTY-NINE MIDAIR: by Wayan; 1987/10/27, hypnogogic/daydream image Just a lazy, sexy image that came to me, of floating in air like a pinwheel, licking and being licked... CAUTION: SEX |
|
SPIDER TOILET: by Jenny Badger Sultan, 2000/2/7 hypnogogic image and 2000/2/17 nightmare First a lone image on waking, of a woman cradling a skeleton; ten days later, a nightmare of spiders swarming out of my toilet, covering me... |
|
SUNDAY, 4 A.M.: by Elizabeth Bishop; c. 1960, a sneaky dream poem Bishop is being driven mad by insomnia... until predawn birdsong wakes her, and she discovers she's been dreaming of insomnia... maybe. |
|
THOREAU'S MOUNTAIN: by Henry David Thoreau, 1857/10/29, a recurring hypnogogic dream I dreamt again of that mountain east of Concord where no hill exists. I ascended that long rocky ridge where wild beasts haunted, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity... |
|
THE TRUMPETER: by John Hollander, Dec. 1971 or Jan. '72, a (self-aware?) hypnogogic dream In the border-mountains, there is a Trumpeter. His clear, triadic melodies break out through the frosty air, or through the swirling mists. No one knows whether the Trumpeter is theirs or ours... |
|
TWO GUILLOTINES: by Vladimir Nabokov, 1973/1/9, a sustained hypnogogic delusion Half awake, Nabokov interprets shadows as guillotines and believes he and his wife will be executed... |
|
YOU CANNOT STAY FOREVER: by Ursula Le Guin; c.1970, creepy hypnogogic verses You cannot stay forever / on this side of the river with darkness coming over / and salt has lost its savor... |
World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites