[UA] MAGIC, Hag Dreams, and Dream Precog

Fri Apr 13 10:29:55 PDT 2001

--- ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu wrote:
> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 21:41:04 -0600
> From: Stuart Anderson <stuartanderson at qwest.net>
> 
> Kevin Mowery wrote:
> 
> > Of course, nightmares about store mannequins could never
> > compare to the horror that was the commercial for the 
> > movie "Magic."
> 
> Damn. I remember that. It *was* scary.

Me too. Fats' head gave me nightmares for years.

Extra point: Find the MAGIC easter egg in my UAN chapter. It's
right out there.

> From: cpl1 at midway.uchicago.edu
> Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 00:18:42 -0500 (CDT)

> I started having hag dreams when I was in high school; for a
> long time I had one or two a year, usually during high-stress 
> periods.  The form they usually take is for me to "wake up" 
> in whatever room I'm sleeping in, lying on my back, able to 
> see the ceiling very clearly (unusual since I really can't 
> see detail more than a foot or two away without my glasses; 
> it's also interesting to note that the light is always 
> correct -- if it happens while I'm napping during the day, 
> then it's daylight, etc.).  I lay there a while, gradually
> becoming aware of a vague physical discomfort; eventually I
> try to shift position -- and discover I can't.  At this 
> point, I begin to perceive another presence in the room, off 
> to one side, somewhere beyond my peripheral vision -- if I'm 
> near a window, it's often right outside; otherwise
> it's usually to my right and behind.  It then becomes very 
> important for me to *look* towards the presence; there's a 
> feeling that I'm in some danger if I can't look at it -- 
> only of course I can't move.  Eventually this develops into a
> full-fledged panic atttack, as I desperately try to move to
> dispel the growing Evil Presence before it can Get Me; 
> usually I end up making enough noise to make myself wake up, 
> though sometimes I'm also awakened by a loud noise nearby. 
> Curious thing, here -- when I wake up, I open my eyes; the 
> room loses detail as I do (glasses, remember?) but otherwise 
> is the same as the "dream", including the lighting.  I've 
> never been able to properly rectify this with the standard 
> explanations of sleep paralysis.

I have similar experiences. Do you get a roaring sound in your
ears?

For the freaky monsters in my skull see below.

> So when I started having a hag dream, I tried to take
> to control; I started trying to speak, while thinking to
> myself over and over "It's only a dream.  I just need to 
> wake myself up.  The Evil Presence is just my own panic. 
> Stay in control.  There's no one else in the room..."
> 
> Then a voice spoke:  "That's exactly what I want you to
> think."  And I felt a hand suddenly laid on my chest -- 
> It's been nine years but I can still remember distinctly 
> feeling each finger on the hand, and the scrape of the
> long fingernails as they slid across my ribs...

My sophmore year in college, my roomate was a friend going
through some serious emotional problems, though I didn't realize
it at the time. I had a hag dream where I saw a prescence
standing over him.

Picture a standard Gray alien, only a deep matte black, no eyes,
with long pointy elf ears. And gleaming white fangs. It was
feeding on him. When It saw me looking at it, it started for me,
and I woke myself up. That's all I could do.

This monster is, I'm sure, my visualization of my friend's
issues, and problems we were having. It didn't make it any less
real.

About 3 years ago, I had a hag dream where a reptile demon in
full hooded cloak and carrying a big thick evil looking book
came into my room. As he strode over to threaten me, I acted.
Better equipped to deal with hag dreams, and knowing that my
body was immobile but my mind was free, I *crushed* the thing
with my mind down to a single point, after which it fell down
through the floor, fast.

The last "hag dream" I had was incredibly positive. I had all
the symptoms (immobility, roaring, visualizations), just laying
there, when I saw two glowing figures (one male and one female)
fly through one wall of my room  and out through another, as if
they were taking a shortcut. If the previous two episodes are
classified as "monsters," I classify these as "angels." They
were featureless humanoid figures, glowing in a sort of rainbow
pattern. And I felt *good* as they passed over me.

Patrick wrote:  
> I get utterly worthless flashes of precognition -
> I'll dream something... and not remember I dreamed it - 
> usually a scene, a few moments or even minutes of time - 
> and then experience, when it happens, a sense of terrible 
> deja vu, as I realize that I had *dreamt* this already.
> So, worthless, because I don't recall them until they're in
> the midst of being.

I get these, too. Sometimes they're just an image or perspective
(which is probably just brain debris), but I've had complicated
and extended precog/deja vu moments involving elements, people,
places, and situations I had *no idea* of, often years in
advance.

But I don't always consider them worthless because a high
proportion of them are "choice points," those moments when you
do or say the wong thing. I usually dream that I do the wrong
thing, and the situation goes very badly. So I've taken
advantage, and chose differently. A few times I've had one of
those choice points where I choose PARTICULARLY well, so I
follow those.

The most annoying thing, however, is that I almost never have
access to the dream memory until about 4 seconds before the
"moment" or as the moment is upon me.

> UAized:
> A) The human mind is a powerful instrument for gathering and
> collating data. Unlike some theories that simply  say the 
> mind is taking all you went through in a day and storing it 
> (in weird, eerie form) as you "dream", in fact dreaming is 
> the attempt by your mind to take relevant data - say, 
> butterfly wings flapping - and determine useful information -
> say, what a conversation with a girl will turn out like.
> A scientist gathering information on this has become the
> center of a fierce battle between a cabal of three friends who
> were blasted awake and left behind by 101, a man making a bid 
> to create the Prophet, and another group which for shadowy 
> reasons wants the PCs to check it out.

Interesting.

I think a neat idea is that human consciousness is a
higher-dimension wave state, and precog/retrocog moments happen
when the current brain wave state matches/syncs with another.
SInce your thoughts are more likely to resemble your thoughts,
most people precog within their own lifetime and experience. If
you can get your brain state to match, say a a 19th century
woman from Cork, Ireland, say hello to Bridey Murphy.

=====
Chad Underkoffler [chadu at yahoo.com]
http://www.geocities.com/chadu/index.html
God isn't silent, he just speaks very softly. In Etruscan.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. 
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua