I don’t often remember my dreams, but on occasion I get an odd dream that sticks in my head long enough for me to write it down. Apparently many writers draw on their dreams for inspiration for their stories. One story I heard was that when he worked as a fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard would have someone wake him up so he would be able to write down his dreams.
These are a few of my recent dreams that might inspire some story ideas.
The Spy and Jack Nicholson
I was making a movie with Jack Nicholson. Then I got called away to work as a spy. I can’t remember what the goal was, but I wasn’t supposed to kill anyone. But, if I killed four people, they’d let me go back to work on my movie. Jack Nicholson wasn’t happy that I’d left the movie and kept following me around on my spy mission. That threatened to blow my cover.
Later, I was in a car with three other people. The driver was my cousin. He was driving wildly. We drove past a small-town train station in an exceptionally flat part of Saskatchewan. Someone said that Switzerland didn’t exist and that all the pictures showing Switzerland were shot in that part of Saskatchewan.
The Sub Basement
I was in the basement the house I lived in when I was in High School although there were times when it switched to be the basement of the house I live in now. Justin Trudeau was with me, and he wanted to use some tools from my father’s work bench. I couldn’t find them.
I noticed that there seemed to be only a partial wall at the west end of the basement, next to the furnace. I went to investigate and discovered a doorway into a corridor that ran along the outside of the basement wall. I looked down it and it was very long, and I could see doors at several points along the walls.
I didn’t go down the corridor because I noticed a set of stairs going down, so I went down to what turned out to be a subbasement. As the dream went on the subbasement got larger. At the far end there were two garage doors. When opened they revealed some cars crushed under the weight of the dirt above.
By then, the subbasement had grown to several stories and there were walkways at several levels above me. I could see what looked like people walking around on them. There was an elevator that connected the floors.
The Therapist and the Rioters
In the first part of the dream I went to see a therapist or doctor. There were a bunch of other people in the exam room who watched while she examined me. She gave me a small hot-air balloon. When I was in high school, I made a couple similar hot air balloons out of tissue paper and a metal coat hangar. The metal part was hot, so I needed to be careful with it. Then she took me upstairs to a space with a big rotunda. I want to try flying my hot-air balloon there, but I decided not to.
In the second part of the dream, some one had tricked me into joining a group of people who were going to start a riot. I didn’t want to take part. They had given each of the rioters a red bat that didn’t look like any bat I ever saw. I had the impression that it was something used in a game women played.
We went to a room with many people standing lined up in rows. These people were not part of the rioters. The rioters lined up like the other people. I was at the front of the line. Then the rioters started running out through an exit at the front of the room. For some reason a section of the line I was in ran out the other end.
That left me at the end of the line instead of the front. I took advantage of that to lag behind, and then stop and then slip away. I wandered through the big building avoiding the rioters.
Eventually I found my way to an office of the man in charge of security. He seemed to be a very proper military guy. He was John Cleese, but he acted unusually serious. I told him about the rioters. He didn’t seem to be convinced that there was a problem, until some other people came and reported the same thing. I gave my red bat to a woman there. She seemed to know all about it.
C-Train Ride
I was riding on the C-Train in Calgary. I was having an interesting conversation with a man I didn’t know and my brother. In the dream, my brother had moved to Calgary and was living close to where my other brother had lived. I mentioned that I would be getting off the train at an upcoming stop. The stranger and my brother took that as a sign our conversation was over, so they got up and went to sit elsewhere.
When I reached my stop, I got off. Then realized that I’d taken my pants off while on the train and left them on the train. I went back, but couldn’t get back on the train, and I could see my pants were not there.
Somehow, I realized that a fellow filmmaker had picked up my pants and was looking for me to give them back. It was dark out and I chased him down an unlit back street. He was looking for me, but he didn’t hear me behind him. I grabbed the pants.
Strange Events in a Garage
This was a long dream but could only the last part. I was hiding in a car in a garage. The lights in the garage were going off and on while the garage door opened and closed by itself. I was expecting something was going to enter the garage and was afraid to even see it.
The Missing Neighbour
Some people started coming to the front door of my neighbor. They had appointments to see the guy who lived there, but he didn’t seem to be at home. Eventually I went to investigate. Some police came, but they didn’t go inside. When I went inside the house was one long corridor with rooms to either side. The power was out, and all the rooms were dark. When we got closer to back of the house some of the rooms had small night lights that were lit up. Eventually we came to a well-lit room at the back of the house. It was set up as an office with a wooden desk. The room looked as if it hadn’t been used recently. I woke up then with the mystery of what happened to my neighbor unsolved.
Trapped in an Apartment
I had a dream where I was trapped in an apartment building with a bunch of other people. The doors would not open. I was cut off from the main part of the building with just a few other people. This went on for a long time (weeks). I have no idea how we got food to eat. Eventually two of my engineering professors and Sir Isaac Newton, who all lived in the building, managed to free everyone. Just before we were freed, a young woman showed up in our part of the building. She claimed she’d always been there. It turned out that she was an accidental time traveller from the future. I saw her years later playing the drums on the street.