Submitted by Adoniram1733 t3_120q67k in books
I distinctly remember my first lucid dream (long before I read any Stephen King). I was in second or third grade, playing in my living room, when I looked up, and there was a leg from an AT - AT Walker (those big four legged Imperial walkers from the Hoth scene in Empire Strikes Back) just standing there in my living room. I remember thinking waaaait a minute… That doesn’t go there. I’m dreaming! and I immediately did what all 8 year old boys do when they realize they’re dreaming. I ran through our third floor apartment (in slow motion for some reason, like I was running underwater), out the back door, and jumped off the porch. But, of course, instead of flying, I fell like a stone and startled myself awake.
From then on I can recall having the occasional lucid dream, maybe once or twice a year. I typically tried to fly or kiss girls and I don’t think I ever succeeded at either, and I pretty much always woke myself up.
Fast forward to my mid 20’s. I started reading The Dark Tower a few months before the final book came out, so I would be ready when it did. At some point while reading the series (I believe I was into the second or third book) I had a lucid dream. Not strange, as I said. Then a few days later, I had another. Then another. Then more and more. By the time I finished book 7 I was having lucid dreams almost every night. Probably five nights a week.
I got good at it.
I had a sort of breakthrough dream where I’m alone in an old shack with light coming through the cracks between the boards and an old roommate of mine appears like some sort of stoner dream guru and says “you know you’re dreaming, right?” and I say yes, and he proceeds to tell me I can do anything I want, and I explode the shack with my mind. We’re in the wilderness and I raise my hands and I make a city around me. Megalithic skyscrapers blast out of the ground and I fly straight up like a bullet and I drag my hand along one of the buildings and the concrete feels like pouring sand through my fingers and shatters at my touch, and I spiral and dive and my stomach doesn’t drop and I can do literally anything I can think of. I build and destroy and I am capital G God in that world and it all feels perfectly real, and I don’t wake myself up until I’m good and ready.
Not all the dreams were like that, but you get the idea.
When I finished the series, the dreams continued for a time with decreasing frequency, and these days I’m back to my old once or twice per year pattern. I’ve read plenty of good fiction since then, including fantasy and sci-fi, but the dreams have never returned. I have not reread the Dark Tower.
Anyone else experienced anything like this, or any other odd side effects of reading books?
Just curious.
pineboxwaiting t1_jdigjf6 wrote
I read Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers when I was in college. Actually, I should say I read most of it. It made me so paranoid that I was becoming agoraphobic, and I had to stop reading it.