Noser
Dreamed before 1963 by Anonymous #13 as reported by J.B. Priestley
FOREWORD
In 1963, writer J.B. Priestley put out a request on a BBC show for examples of strange experiences with time, whether waking or dreaming. Over a thousand responses came. Some were off-topic, but he found hundreds of predictive dreams and visions of varying clarity, accuracy and credibility. The following year he published many examples (though withholding most dreamers' names for privacy reasons) in his book Man and Time. This is one of the thousand.
--Chris Wayan
NOSER
...the dreamer may have a true prevision of something while creating a fictitious adventure to account for it. The following is a very clear little example of this:
On one occasion I dreamt that a large savage beast leapt up at me putting its paws on my shoulders and thrusting its face within an inch of mine. I thought of this beast as "a tiger" because it was bright orange in color, though its face was rather wolf-like with two pointed erect ears. I was startled in the dream, but not terrified. It was more like a big dog jumping up than a tiger attacking.Notice that while, in the dream, she thought "a large savage beast" had come so close to her, she did not feel terrified but only startled, as she did in the toyshop the next morning. There is a queer complication here. While she thought it was a large savage beast, she did not behave as if it really were--for then she would have been overwhelmed with terror--but reacted as if somehow she knew it was only a toy creature. Yet she was not conscious of this knowledge in the dream.On the following day I took my children shopping for a birthday present. While wandering through the toy department, my small daughter suddenly said "Look, Mummy!" and without any warning thrust into my face a large grinning wolf-like head made of sponge rubber, bright orange in color and with pointed ears; a kind of glove puppet without a body, whose jaws open and shut with the movement of the hand. I recognised it at once as the animal in my dream, and of course the experience was the same in that I was startled but not frightened.
This creature was actually purchased by the children, christened Noser, and still frequently lurks in my son's bed and gives me an odd feeling when I see that grinning orange face looking up at me from the pillow as if he had materialized out of my dream.
--J.B.Priestley
EDITOR'S NOTE
A century earlier, Hervey de Saint-Denys was experimenting with scent's ability to affect dreams. He sniffed specific perfumes on a trip to the mountains and to a friend's art studio. An assistant then exposed him to one or the other as he slept. The mountain perfume did evoke mountain dreams, the studio perfume, art and studios. But when mixed, he got results like Noser! A nude model from the art studio intrudes on a family in the mountains, but without evoking the shock such nudity would normally evoke--as if the studio's mood and customs (nudity being normal) get dragged in the door with the model! See Perfumes.
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