Funhouse

There was a very large multi-story building dedicated to a Halloween theme park, with many displays in different rooms on different floors. How it worked was that your group is given a particular goal to work toward, which has an alphanumeric name, like K196, indicating the floor and display number. Looking for the display sets you on a journey. Actors in the various displays will be willing to help you find your display. You can't ask the actors in other displays about the alphanumeric name, though; there are also hints about the nature of the display you're seeking in the brochure.

The person in our group was sure that the goal we had been given was either a mistake or a deliberate error, and would be impossible to find, because the way through the building we had to take was mostly abandoned and not totally safe -- no active displays and no actors, and some parts of the pathway not fully constructed. As a result, although he didn't want to totally give up himself, he kept intentionally losing group members by going too fast because they were better off starting over with a different group of people.

Every floor had a large tilted section, like an auditorium/theater with the chairs removed, which connected with other floors. This was the most elaborately decorated portion, with real animals put in and stained glass. I wish I should describe it a bit more adequately.

Anyway, once we found the right floor, which was actually the roof, there were plenty of actors around to ask. I was unsure who to ask because I didn't want to interrupt anything. One actor who wasn't going through their routine at the moment explained: "it's embarrassing; my co-workers all died" (her in-character explanation of the fact that they'd finished accruing out their story, which ended in their deaths, and were resetting things offstage). But I didn't ask her for help for some reason. Our guide was still pessimistic, but the first actor I did ask was able to point us in the right direction from minimal information, namely that a queen was involved in the display we were looking for. We were to head to the castle.

At this point I woke up.

River

A pre-teen girl was preparing to go on a camping and fishing trip with her father and crazy uncle, the mother and brother staying back at the crazy uncle's house. The crazy uncle was more or less Doc from back to the future. There was something about sleeping one night in the crazy house he lived in, but I don't remember - in any case, the girl was excited to go camping rather than spend another night in the house. They weren't bringing much food, and she realized that that's because they would catch fish for dinner, which made her more excited (but her brother teased her about it, saying she was going to be living like a cave man or hobo or something along those lines).

The truck they took was full of unusual equipment, which the uncle set up once they got to the river. There was a bridge that was out. The girl soon found that she had a strange power to manipulate the river. She could make things happen by wishing. This was due to a combination of the uncle's machine and the favor of the river spirit. She tried asking for a bridge, and a bridge appeared, but it was built below the water rather than above it, so didn't look very useful. The uncle asked for the water to go down, which she granted, but she told him it was not a good idea because pushing so much water down took a lot of energy from his machine (she seemed very aware of the energy cost of different wishes); she said the machine would explode. The uncle didn't seem to take this seriously, but he soon realized that the lower water level meant the water wasn't serving as coolant for the machine and a key component would soon overheat (the name of the part was given, but I forget).

He sent her back to the house to get a replacement part. (It was not explained how she returned by herself.) She wouldn't say anything about the situation to her mother and brother. Her brother inferred that the camping was terrible, and said that he understood that her silence meant it was a hostage situation and that he'd get her out of it (and he said it so seriously that it wasn't clear whether he was teasing). There was something I can't logically fit in about her trying to communicate something with a drawing of a figure with yellow French-fry hair. Then I woke up.

Truck

There was a long path through the wilderness from where me and my brother were staying to some really interesting town. We decided to walk all the way, which was somewhat crazy (would take all day) but doable. We got involved in an armed conflict which at first involved knights vs dinosaurs. When we were almost to our destination, we decided that it would be wise to turn back and stop at a grocery store which we had passed a little way back, to get some food. At this point the path transformed to a kind of long back-alley path through a city rather than a path through the woods. The route was a kind of "underground railroad" for the faction we had fallen in with in the conflict. It was important that we get back to the grocery store to retrieve supplies quickly, so we stopped at a safe-house along the path to retrieve bicycles. The safe-house was an artist's residence, and also a frequent host to large and wild parties, to avert suspicions about large gatherings there. The architecture makes me think it was a church renovated to turn it into a house -- large entryway with multiple double doors, to facilitate potentially large crowds coming in. We got the bikes and the host was happy to be of service to the underground militia. We retrieved supplies from the grocery store.

Due to an accident, there was a semi truck stopped in the middle of the road. For some reason it was more important to take care of the truck than the trucker, who was unconscious by the side of the road. Maybe I was taking the truck for use of the underground militia, but that was unclear; the battle was more or less forgotten by this point in the dream.

I wasn't very good at driving the truck, so I missed the turn-in for the gas station I was trying to take it to. I looped around and came to a service station specifically for trucks, which was much more expensive. Somehow this seemed like the better option anyway. The place used a truck-lifting device to raise the truck to where it could be fuelled. While I was talking with the employee there, the truck driver (still laying unconscious by the side of the road) began to wake up. I hoped that it would be obvious enough that he should come to the nearby service station. (There was no justification in the dream for why I shouldn't just go to help him.)

I think at some point I discovered that there was already an extra tank of fuel on board the truck which I could use.

It turned out that there was a famous tech startup in the top floor of the service station. There were a lot of cool people who I knew. The space was set up kind of like a university computer lab, with rows of computers on desks, but everything was exceptionally nice; antique varnished-wood tables and sort of a hipster coffee shop vibe. There was a slightly more private space in one corner where the actual work was getting done (somewhat walled-off between computers). The rest of the space was open for anyone to come and hang around.

Art Show

We (ambiguous group of people) were walking from Dad's house to Mom's, and noticed an art sale taking place in Joe's yard (out on the lawn - I was a bit worried about what would happen if it rained). There were primarily lots of copies of two different paintings. They didn't look like prints; they looked like re-paintings of the same thing. They were watercolor. I thought they looked very familiar, like Mom actually painted those a long time ago.

One painting consisted of four or five poppies, viewed from above/side (45 degree angle). The other was a garden, but painted in a geometric way; there were a lot of interlocking triangles to represent plots, in an orderly grid (looking somewhat like a quilt design).

We walked into the show. In addition to the paintings, there were vegetables on sale film Joe's garden. I was trying to figure out if the paintings were Mom's. The layout of the show was very confusing, and I never managed to get close to the paintings I recognized to examine them.

We left, briefly being very renaissance-themed in terms of clothing and surroundings; the exit was a nice brick stairway up to a university street.

At the university, we became modern again. The art show was now all a dream, and my obsession was no longer whether the paintings were Mom's, but whether the people who were with me had dreamed it too. One person readily admitted to that, but I was trying to get details com her/him (the person remained ambiguous) to confirm.

We had to go to a class on morality, which had a very strict/domineering teacher. I was too curious about the dream to pay much attention. We were supposed to bring some props yoto this lesson; I prepared a mental image in preparation for claiming that she hadn't specified that they needed to be real physical objects, but it turned out she had spares for the forgetful. The lecture was about Gods.

After the class, I continued trying to get information about the dream from this person. They started to seem uncooperative. We were now visiting Britain, and it seemed it was some kind of business trip. At an outdoor table, we had a chummy conversation with people we were visiting. I noticed a girl coming down a walkway, who was making a big show of acting as if she was controlling a tendril of fog which happened to be drifting along. I caught her eye and she continued the performance just for me - or that's what I thought.

After the meeting broke up, I went and looked for the girl, who was indeed still close by; but, another meeting attendee had found her first, and actually knew her. There were some introductions, the content of which I have forgotten.

I then tried again to get information about the dream with the paintings from the person I had been trying with before (who was now definitely female). She asked what I thought about dreams. I told her that I try to regard them shamanistically, because it's simply more fun that way; wondering if the dream means something and so on. She was offended by this and no longer had any interest in telling her part of the dream.

After this there was a portion in a very rainy, run-down place. Mom had moved my clothing from out of where I had piled it in a shower, and I was quite upset about this for some reason (even though I recognized that it would be necessary you move the things in order to take a shower). Then, I found some guy's keys in a makeshift drain (made of black flexible tube); but, it seemed a lot of keys had been dropped in there, so it would take a while to sort them out. The guy was big and muscular; I though if him as a security-guard type.

Jungle House

I was making repeated train trips somewhere, by force. The government was requiring these train trips for some reason. Every time I went, I walked to the train station with a priest. The priest and I would frequently have a conversation about Hell. The priest had a strange idea that I, as an atheist, must be OK with spending some time in Hell and would ask me about how long I think I'd be willing to spend, stuff like that.

The train station was not in a very public location -- it was in the back of some other building, like a small church maybe, which stood on a grassy corner away from the busy part of town. The station itself was underground, down a flight of stairs. When we arrived, there would always be some problems with paperwork. I would stick close to the priest, who was better at these things. I think there was also something about changing into clothes more appropriate for the train ride (maybe government-issue uniforms). The destination of the train was someplace very far, like China. After getting things sorted out, we would wait a long time for the train in a crowded room with other people.

One time, the train took much longer (or much shorter?) to arrive than usual. It turned out that the train was "infested by a Vampire", which really meant that the machinery of the train had taken over its operation and locked out all human control. We were all required to get on the train anyway; there was no alternative, even though now the government was not in control of the situation.

Later in the dream, I was moving into a house in a jungle-like area with an older woman and two slightly younger people who were brother and sister. A lot of the dream was spent on details of moving in; the house had bizarre plumbing and electricity systems to decipher, and a lot of dust and old stuff to move out. We also planted a garden and some other things. At one point I was quite excited to figure out that some red strobe lights which we kept finding around the place must have been part of the original lighting system in the structure, before it was turned into a house; they must therefore have been quite old, although they appeared to be in quite good repair because they were likely never used.

The brother and sister who were moving in with us had no religious upbringing, but they were under the distinct impression that they were descendants of God's chosen people and that this jungle climate really was not for them -- "Surely God wants His people to move back to the promised land.", they'd say. I don't know why they decided to move in with us, but they were quite unhappy and often physically ill.

During this part of the dream, the old lady would occasionally be interacting with strange animals; most memorably, at one point she was cradling an "information weasel" in her arms and taking it down to the road. When asked, she could not explain where the animals had come from or what she was doing with them beyond the obvious; and I could not explain what an information weasel was, even though I apparently knew one when I saw one.

Once we got the house all set up, a deity put a curse on it. The deity was a green floating head. It did not make its problem with us clear, but it dit make it clear that we should leave the place. Poisonous plants grew madly all over the house, and dangerous animals became attracted to the area. None of these ever caused a problem for us, so I was wondering if it was some kind of illusion or if it was a serious threat after all.

I woke up around here, but I shut my eyes again for a little while. In my half-sleep, the dream continued with us realizing that every time the older woman had been with one of her strange animals was a time when we got an important letter or phone call. The information weasel represented information!

Crows

I was aware that this was a dream, but I was not lucid.

I believe I was moving back to my hometown in the dream. (In real life I'm not doing this, but I'm moving back somewhere close.) I was trying to retrieve some boxes I had shipped; it seemed I was attempting to retrieve them from out of a garbage truck. I was doing this with two totally fictitious high-school friends, in the parking lot of a (much more run-down) version of our high school. Somehow, successful completion of the task involved getting access to lockers inside the high school, which we did.

On our way back out of the high school, Evita Moreau suddenly appeared. This was quite a surprise, as she (as far as I know while waking, and also as far as I knew in this dream) essentially never appears in my dreams. (This is a person who I never see in real life either, but who formed a strong impression.) She had aged and wasn't so recognizable, but nonetheless I knew instantly who she was and was trying to figure out what to do about it while we talked.

The conversation reached no special conclusion, and she faded into the realms of mystery once again. (I don't remember any actual words which we said to each other.) I went outside to go home with the two friends. It was getting dark, and the grass was mostly dead and damp as it might be in late autumn. There were many crows in the air. The crows had an unnatural dark shadow/cloud which followed them as they flew; I was quite aware of it being physically implausible, and was trying hard to come up with an explanation for this. Then I saw a skeleton of some large beast, surrounded by dense black fur. The body had been picked clean. All the crows around were trailing (still physically implausibly) black fur from the beast, indicating that they had participated in the slaughter (or at least the subsequent cleanup). I became a bit worried about the crows eating me, and hurried along.

Entity

I released some kind of noncorporeal SCP-style horror. This entity was being contained in a government facility which seemed to be a mixture of datacenter, power plant, and research center. I don't remember exactly why I released the entity, but it might have been malicious on my part. The main effect of the entity was to create pervasive glitches in reality having to do with most kinds of communication channel. Any kind of symbolic communication would be changed randomly, in ways that mostly maintained the pragmatics of the message while destroying epistemic content. In other words, the more a property of the message matters to you, the more likely it is to be preserved by the entity; but unimportant aspects of the message get a lot of noise injected. The communication glitches are inserted into the brain as well, resulting in an altered state of consciousness for everyone. However, spoken language was only mildly effected by the glitches (as compared to written language).

An additional effect of the entity which was not so obvious was that any symbolic act involving a symbol for "up" is interpreted as a call for the entity to eat you. Somehow we were able to communicate this to people without getting eaten, though.

Society gradually devolved into a non-functioning post-apocalyptic state due to the difficulty of things running smoothly under the influence of the entity.