Experiments with Sleep (and its Deprivation)

[SoulinEther]

...

...

wow.

[Meteo Xavier]

whatever you're on

i want some

I've never taken drugs.

[RocketSniper]

My record was just over 70 hours, I was playing runescape at the time (Oh shut up, I was ten. I had no taste then.), and was pretty much hungry all the time the last two days. I don't think I was hallucinating or anything by the end, but I slept for ~16 hours when I came out of it. This was, of course, *after* taking the jet from Ohio to Oregon. *faceplant*.

Jet lag + no sleep = insane people, usually.

[IcedDevil]

I have frequent occurences where I will nap during the afternoon, fall into a deep sleep, and I can see the outline of my ceiling and wall, but my eyes are closed, as if staring at a picture for a minute then looking at a white wall, the picture burning into your retina, you know, leaving the outline? That type of thing, but it feels like it lasts for a few minutes.

I try to open my eyes and they feel like they are glued shut. This usually ends with me forcing myself to shake my head to wake myself out of the trance, and I usually awaken feeling pretty exhausted.

Sounds odd, I know but this has happened plenty throughout my lifetime.

[The Derrit]

i've found that if i'm having some sort of terrifying dream, where something awful is happening, i can force myself to open my eyes and wake up by (in my dream) closing my eyes really tightly and opening them as hard as possible.

also, when you become aware of your dreams you can make really cool shit happen.

[RocketSniper]

^The Derrit

-Becoming aware of your dreams is called Lucid dreaming, there are actually ways to induce this, though it takes a while to really get into doing it. easiest way for me is to set my alarm about half an hour earlier than normal, and having it go off in 3-5 minute intervals so I remember what's going on in said dreams. Really sucks when the alarm goes back off, though...

[friendlyHunter]

Now that I think about it, I horribly suck at lucid dreams... I can control myself, but I can't control anything that's going on around me or give myself "super powers" or anything, so it's just like any other dream. Sooner or later (usually sooner) I either forget it's a dream, become unsure if it's a dream, or wake up.

You want to hear some sleep paralysis stories?

I got back into bed and tried to figure out how this happened.

"So let's see... I was laying in bed, end then all of a su-OH SHIT not again!"

I've never taken drugs.

Maybe you should (Nah, just kidding)

I try to open my eyes and they feel like they are glued shut. This usually ends with me forcing myself to shake my head to wake myself out of the trance, and I usually awaken feeling pretty exhausted.

I get the "eyes glued shut" thing if I've been trying to sleep for a few hours, or if I've just slept for only a couple hours or less... I can see why it would happen after a nap. But it's not so much "glued shut" as it is "difficult and rather painful to hold them open".

[Sinewav]

I've got some pretty irritating sleep issues (sleep apnea, as well as some other not-yet-diagnosed stuff), but nothing that's scary or weird so much as it is annoying.

I do have a friend though, whose psychology professor made some comment about how after 72 hours without sleep one could legally be considered insane (or something like that). My friend and some of his other friends who I don't know, then decided it would be a good idea to lock themselves into a dorm room, stock up on energy drinks and coffees, and play Silent Hill for the first time, all while depriving themselves of sleep for a full 3 days.

He still talks about it to this day as one of the most terrifying experiences of his life.

I try to open my eyes and they feel like they are glued shut. This usually ends with me forcing myself to shake my head to wake myself out of the trance, and I usually awaken feeling pretty exhausted.

This actually has happened to me once when I was a kid. I was having a dream (in black and white) that a T-Rex was chasing me and my mom through our backyard. We were trying to get to the time machine which looked like one of those playground roundabouts. When we finally got to it, I turned around to see how close the dinosaur was, and it seemed that he had gotten distracted and was now playing with a giant technocolor-orange basketball. Then I thought, "This is too weird; I must be dreaming," at which point I woke up but couldn't get my eyes to open.

[Monobrow]

I'm finding that the older I get, the more relevant my dreams are to my daily activities and the people I spend time with.

I really used to see no pattern whatsoever, but within the last year or so, my dreams really seem to be me sorting out important and minute things in my daily life, mix and match, and they make more sense... Even if the settings/people/random objects/and tasks I have to do make no sense, there's uaually a theme I recognize and understand what my brain may be doing.

[SoulinEther]

I'm finding that the older I get, the more relevant my dreams are to my daily activities and the people I spend time with.

I really used to see no pattern whatsoever, but within the last year or so, my dreams really seem to be me sorting out important and minute things in my daily life, mix and match, and they make more sense... Even if the settings/people/random objects/and tasks I have to do make no sense, there's uaually a theme I recognize and understand what my brain may be doing.

to continue the theme of this thread...

can i have what you're having?

[Meteo Xavier]

I had a dream last night where I got to breastfeed a child.

You want some of that, too?

[LuketheXjesse]

The only things I ever dream about are things that actally happen later.

That whole deja vu thing.

[SoulinEther]

I had a dream last night where I got to breastfeed a child.

You want some of that, too?

How would breastfeeding help me? Being able to tackle problems and stuff in my dream would be massively beneficial to me in my grand scheme to take control of the world. Lol.

[sefirosu]

The only things I ever dream about are things that actally happen later.

That whole deja vu thing.

Dude I get this all the damn time.

[Meteo Xavier]

How would breastfeeding help me? Being able to tackle problems and stuff in my dream would be massively beneficial to me in my grand scheme to take control of the world. Lol.

Oh come on, a comeback like mine only comes along once in a blood red moon.

[SoulinEther]

Oh come on, a comeback like mine only comes along once in a blood red moon.

maybe you need some rest man.

[FlagshipAmadeus]

I had a dream I was trying to drink a glass of water but I couldn't because I had hooves and by the time they evolved into hands the glass had turned into mud and was too mushy to pick up

[JCvgluvr]

LOL. ^[insert Guile's "NOOOOO!!!" here]

[StandingInMotion]

I've had some pretty crazy dreams, though not like Meteo.

I've been doing the Lucid Dreaming for quite some time... have only achieved it once, but still try it. I would recommend it, simply because you sleep deeper, and it's just an amazing experience anyway...

However, it comes with it's bad parts: if you aren't lucid dreaming (which is more often than I'd like) you're having an incredibly vivid dream that you can't control or manipulate... you're basically at the mercy of whatever is in your mind at the time...

Unfortunately for me, I'm very certain I've had demonic encounters through my dreams. There was one specific time that I was sitting in a class room, all alone at first. I suddenly heard a girl's voice asking something very vague and incoherent, like "Basically, I purple taxi squirrel? Not far from here." I grew confused and looked at her, and her face was Cthulu-esque. I backed away, and my eyes were frozen to her. I remember screaming at myself to wake up, but was too petrified to move (I have to perform some action in my dream in order to wake up, most of the time).

It was at this point I remember my body waking up, but my mind still sleeping... like, I felt my covers, could hear my fan, even grabbed my cell phone to see what time it was, but I couldn't open my eyes, and my mind was still dreaming. I stopped flailing around to try to will myself awake, and in the midst of my stillness, felt something much like a hand physically rub my shoulder, and I felt and heard a whisper in my right ear: "It's all gonna be okay..." That's when I shot awake... that was the first night I woke up at 3AM

The next three nights, I woke up at 3AM from increasingly demonic dreams (each getting weirder and more terrifying), and then they just stopped. Don't know what happened.

Side note: keep a dream journal... As soon as you wake up in the morning, write down what you remember from your dream... just key words like people, places, events, and anything that stands out. Later, before you go to bed, read these notes and flesh out what happened in the dream. It greatly helps with Lucid Dreaming.

[Jaybell]

I had a dream, and when I woke up from it I felt this weird confidence. Not like a YEAH YEAH I CAN DO IT confidence, but just...calm and resolute. It ended up being a pretty sweet day, and whenever I thought of the dream I just kinda felt good, but I can't for the life of me remember what the dream was.

[Shadowe]

Anyone else get body horror dreams, or at least truly feel what they dreamed even when waking up? I mentioned lovecraftian horrors on Page 2, specifically I meant aside from seeing things that can only exist in dreams (impossible biology etc) I also get tortured in them.

I mean it feels like a low blow that aside from the waking up in a cold and terrified sweat thing AND actually still feeling the second degree burn from getting your arm scalded while you were asleep.

[friendlyHunter]

Any kind of "body horror" tends to wake me up pretty quickly, and then it's gone. Multiple weird bee stings, spider bites, stupid butterflies in the face/mouth/eyes/nose (that one was nasty).

But I do get that terrible leg fatigue when I run in my dreams... or worse are the dreams where I get too tired to run so I have to crawl, and then when I wake up I really feel THAT physically tired.

Hmm, I don't think I've shared anything particularly disturbing or interesting yet. UNTIL NOW!

I don't think I've ever been angrier or more panicked than I've been in some of my dreams. In these dreams I do things that I never do in real life (yell, fight). Usually I wake up feeling "vented" and happy (especially when I compare the real people in my life with the dream versions I get mad at), but occasionally it goes horribly wrong.

How wrong? The worst was a dream when my brother and I were fighting (wrestling) intensely near the top of a staircase, and somehow I accidently flung him down the staircase and watched in horror as he dropped through the air like a rag doll, and I woke up JUST before his head would have smashed into the floor at the bottom. Yeah, I didn't feel good after that one ...Didn't help that the staircase was right beside my bedroom.

The second worst was a dream where my dad was driving me somewhere (to a real place, on a real street), and he looked away from the traffic for a moment, and I watch him run over a group of pedestrians before stopping, and I yell "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!?" at the top of my lungs and then wake up... that one really sucked.

Makes me wonder what I'd REALLY do in a situation where anger or aggressive fighting is called for. It's almost scarier than a nightmare, because I'm more or less in control of what the dream-me does (as opposed to a nightmarish outside force that's in control).

Nothing I say can top Meteo Xavier's stuff though =p

[Meteo Xavier]

Here's a really good entry from my dream journal:

The day of the school game day, I exit out of the games for some reason and walk along the mountainsides (like in the farmlands between Pigeon Forge and Shagbark) when one of the administrators runs up to me and directs me back to the school. She also tells me a test result found that there could be something wrong with my arm in its very poor circulation.

At night, as I lay on my arm, I wake up and hear music coming from it. I show it to Suzanne Ruhn and after a few minutes, we learn that the music is coming from elsewhere. We go outside and look up the mountainside and find a house that was previously empty has some lights on.

Despite the fact that there is snow on the ground, we make our way up to see whats going on. The music is louder inside, I very lightly open what looks like a sort of chimney door and look inside to a rather dark red and posh living room.

A blast of hot air shoots out at me and I look inside, I very finally see a man who looks like an impressario seemingly conducting music into the hallway. He seems to know I'm here and smiles something evil. I don't remember what he does next but he kind of attacks the two of us and disappears.

For some reason, we stay and decide to investigate further. We go inside the house to find its just like a regular house. As a modern family was living there and hasn't been home in a couple days. There are toys everywhere, a bathroom with a whirlpool tub, etc. No sign of that room is ever found.

The dream stays there for a while and it shows a lot of scenes where we look around the house to see if anything's wrong. I find very little wrong except in the children's room where something is wrong with a doll. It's either in pieces or bleeding or something weird, I can't remember exactly. The dream continues to stay there and makes it look like I've been investigating for days. Suzanne seems to have left and I seem to have turned into Anthony Hopkins. I even have a team with me to investigate. The investigation has taken a turn from "Who was that man and what was going on." to "what happened to the family that was living here?" We start to see a few vague connections between this family mysteriously disappearing and the appearance of whatever this entity is. No further haunting is going on at the moment, we've just spent about 30 minutes of movie time pouring over details and bridging connections.

During this time, about a week's worth of investigating, it seems I've made my home there. I sleep there, bathe there, etc. I get comfortable. I decide to use the whirlpool to bathe and once I get comfortable, I begin to go into something of a trance.

In this trance, I see a bunch of vague, weird things that I can't tangibly bring up. At one point, the scene is replayed with me and Suzanne going up to the house and opening the chimney door again. This time I find a woman on the couch, and she's staring right at me. She sucks the both of us inside and throws Suzanne to the Abyss. She attacks like me an invisible demon and I start to run through the house. As such, I am then accosted by other figures, like school administrators who are also possessed by this murderous entity. I keep running throughout this David Lynchian house.

I am able to temporarily escape them, but I find myself in rooms where I feel like the family is located and trapped. I kinda see spiritual prisons and other weird devices that tell me they are there. All of this happens with other random, bizarre images popping in through scenes like a TV changing channels. The worst yet is at the basement living room, I find a very small baby who is still alive - her arms and legs are cut off and she is bleeding like crazy and in a lot of pain but she refuses to die. She makes a distinct CLICKING sound as she cries. I try to save her but the entity attacks me again and throws me into the abyss. I find myself leaving the darkness into another room of the house where Suzanne is. She killed one of the administrators and tells me she found a way out, but the dead administrator rises back up and kills her violently. Then darkness surrounds me and a rage fills my head as the entity claims me for itself.

I wake back up in the whirlpool, as Anthony Hopkins, and decide I've had enough and I get out to dry myself off only to discover the family has come back from vacation. They do not like the idea of a stranger in their house using their facilities and proceed to beat me savagely. I become something like a dog to them. They keep telling me to get out but they won't let me leave. I keep trying to explain myself to them but they keep laughing and calling me a liar. I struggle to make sense of things but there is a noise in my head and lots of anxiety. I feel like I'm going to go crazy at any moment.

Days pass and I'm trapped with this rather large family of a mom and dad, several grown teenagers, several young children, aunts and uncles and grandparents. They continue to harass me as I'm here. The pressure keeps building and the mystery just as ridiculous until I find myself back in the children's room and my attention is focused on the doll again. I stare at it immensely, asking myself what it wants from me. SUspense builds until I hear it make a CLICKING sound. My whole body fills with terror and then I notice that the limbs on the doll do not match up with the body.

At that point, with noise and rage and terror all around me, creating an atmosphere of electricity and horror, I bolt out the front door. The family follows behind me, giggling and laughing and carrying on like a family but they're also shooting me and tearing at my clothes too. Its an incredibly hard journey but I manage to tear them off me and escape back to school, thinking I wanted to keep a "promise" to someone here.

Again at night, I wake up thinking my arm is making music again and me and Suzanne look out the window to see the lights in that house are back up again, with the same music playing, almost like its inviting us - or challenging us, to come back.

[SoulinEther]

Here's a really good entry from my dream journal:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree...

Uh yeah right now we're doing poetry but you should consider submitting something in July....

[Meteo Xavier]

I have larger goals in mind for these things.