The Houses in my Dreams (ACTUAL DREAMS)

The reason why I put (ACTUAL DREAMS) up there in the title is so you didn't get baited into thinking this was a post about tabletop games with a weird or evocative title. It isn't. This is a post about my dreams, specifically, the houses in my dreams. I've written about my dreams before, and how they offer inspiration to tabletop game content, but this time this is just pure writing.

The Horror-House in my Dreams & Inside the House in my Dreams

This house is arranged a bit like a carnival ride. It may actually be a carnival ride. I've had this one twice, or one and a half times. I either walk or ride an airboat on a tract like an amusement park- but with scary things. Every room is a jumpscare. I get used to it pretty quick, though I'm pretty sure the ghosts are real. Eventually, I start getting excited about it- the room wide mirror becomes a new opportunity. I can feel the ghostly woman appearing and I know she will scream, the hair on my back rises as I smile.

Once, the dream was on an air boat ride. The air-boat ride went down into the scary basement- the current pushed us towards the end of a large rectangular room. The door behind us was closed; the water was freezing cold. The spikes at the end of the hall were real. I don't remember what happened next.

I'm trying to leave the house, or trying to see every room. The only way forward is to go through tight places. It's like that power from modern Wolfenstien- I can go through impossibly tight pipes. They start wide enough for me to crawl, then I'll hit a smaller hole. I squeeze through by pushing my face in- it's like my eyes are my whole body. I move by just pushing. The Freudians might attribute this to some kind of symbolic desire to be birthed, but it's more like getting pissed out a really long dick. Gross. But I don't think of it like that in the dream- I'm not so concerned about getting stuck, moreso just concentrating on the effort, perhaps even elated.

The Cars in my Dreams

Side note- the cars in my dreams are fucked up. I know hating the “subconscious fears and desires come out in dreams” thing is the new vogue, but there's gotta some truth to it. At least, things you think about are more likely to manifest in a dream, OR you just remember those dreams that are poignant to you. Right? Or I thought I read somewhere that dreams are ways to prepare yourself for things in the waking world? Only way I can explain it- because my brain must think I really need to practice driving more or something. My dream car is fucked up. I'm always slamming on the breaks and rolling through red lights as though my car is sliding on ice and not decelerating. It gets up to speed and doesn't stop- often times I'll turn backwards and be driving my car in reverse. I takes my car like two full city blocks to slow down, so it ends up I run through two lights or one and a half lights and finally slow down in the middle of a busy intersection. I don't think I ever really hit anyone, just run a lot of red lights and get honked at a lot. I think I'm more scared of my mom finding out then the police, which is weird because I've lived alone and driven my own damn self around for over 7 years now. I guess it's like getting in-class dreams years after you graduate.

In these “car” dreams I'm usually trying to get somewhere, and using my intuition of the homes and buildings around me to find my way through a mixture of residential and commercial zones. These neighborhoods are often like the ones from my childhood, but the houses are all different. Not different as in “weird” just different in that they aren't what I remember. I'll circle a neighborhood trying to pick out my grandma's house from the line and I'll come back a second time; all the houses are different. It's like the streets overlap, not that anything has consistency when not observed in dreams. It's a very strange feeling to be aware of the unreality of everything and the vagueness of form in a dream and knowing that it's not solid when you stop looking at it; but not being aware you are in a dream.

Often these dreams blend into each other. I often get disappointed when I wake up and I can't go to the fictional fast food places in my dream world. But sometimes I'll try to take a shortcut, or drive through a shady, tree-filled residential zone. And that's the last dream I'll talk about today.

The House at the End of the Lane

It's not a specific dream, but it's a specific place in a dream. I've had this one twice, I think. I'm driving down a road in a residential street- an area where its hard to see out into the city and know where I am or where I should be going. I just want to drive down this road until I come out the other end. But the road keeps getting smaller, more isolated. It feels like I'm squeezing through the pipes, but cramped up in a car instead.

Then I reach the end. The road keeps going until it stops at a residential foot path, closed up with a big fancy metal gate, looking more like the entrance to a golf course. It's like the end of a cul-de-sac but there's no turn about. There's no easy space to move, the road just ends. For some reason, I think there would be two houses here, one on each end, but I always remember the left one the most.

This house is big. It's the house at the end of the lane. It's nice, it's a two story ones you see in the nicer neighborhoods. I don't know why I'm so pissed at this house. Maybe it's a disconnected sense of jealousy towards the obvious wealth of the owner, or the nice greenery and local privacy of where they live. Maybe I just blame them for not letting the road go all the way through, for some reason.

This house is very reminiscent to me. I drew it when I first woke up that night. It had large dark bay windows with potted plants, a nice front lawn with a reddish brown stone path leading up to the house, and away from a central dais to the side yard, which was also fenced. The house itself was light blue in color, with white siding and stylish supports. It was a nice and “fancy” house, but had no pillars or anything like that. It was a respectable upper-middle class home. At least, that's how I would define it. The roof was made of dark blue tiles, giving the whole thing a very handsome look.

I remember this house very well, because I thought I imagined it. Now this could be the part I lie to you and tell you some long story how I saw this house in real life and I bought it like it was destiny, or then I learned it was a real house connected from me somehow through a long lost twin or something. Sadly no such luck. I had however assumed I had made the house up. But it was only a day ago at the time of me writing this- I looked outside my front door and right across the road and a little vacant lot from where I live and there was the house. Not a house though- it's not a real house. But there is a group of apartments with the exact same color- the baby blue and white almost nautical theme for the paint, the dark blue matching roof shingles, it's just like that. I had this dream some time near the end of 2017, and it was only now, years later, that I actually realized it.

Note- I'm not claiming at all my dream somehow influenced reality- I've lived here years before and after that incident. I know full well the house in my dreams was taken from this real life place; I don't claim some kind of supernatural power or precognition in the slightest. I just find it crazy after I finally where the inspiration for that house in my dream came from. I see those homes, those mini-houses, every single day when I leave my home. They were hidden in plain sight the whole time.

And that's all the Houses in my dreams.