The Spaces Between | The Signal

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The experiencer often finds themselves in the spaces between, between night and day, between

the forest and the city, between death and life.

Witnesses of the anomalous, often report being in transitional moments of life before an

experience.

Family moves to a house they are renovating before haunting activity occurs.

The witness of a UFO is grieving the loss of a loved one, or podcast series about these

spaces takes a break between seasons.

And this is the in between we find ourselves in.

The signal will be off air for the next few months while we focus on other projects,

gather tape, and leave room for the things that occur in that liminal space.

But before we go, and since I opened this new series with a few of my own stories, I

thought we could once again break through the fourth wall and end with some of my own

encounters.

And more specifically, the space between a wakey life and the dream world.

We wonder how any of us can know we are awake now.

You think you know you are awake because you remember waking up this morning and getting

dressed.

But for all you know, you woke up falsely and you're just in a false awakening that's

been going on ever since.

The first lucid dream I had would probably be considered by most to be unremarkable.

Earlier that day, a good friend of mine was telling me about something he read about called

lucid dreaming and that you could in this state control your dreams, that you would have

to first be aware that you were dreaming and then you could kind of do whatever you want.

That night when I fell asleep, I realized I was dreaming.

I remember being in a very empty room and there was a table in the room and the first

thing I did was make a sandwich.

I remember thinking about the sandwich and the pieces of it appearing at the table.

I vaguely remember something about the ingredients floating like an astronaut's dinner in space.

And because I knew I was dreaming and the table was a ways away from me, I decided instead

of walking, I would float to the table to grab my sandwich.

That's essentially all I remember of the first lucid dream.

Fast forward to several years later, I'm 19 years old, I have my first apartment and

while staying in that apartment, I would lucid dream and have sleep paralysis, essentially

every night.

It was like a second set of eyes opened up.

I would walk around the apartment, realize that I was dreaming, float up out of the apartment

and then fly around the city, go to these strange places, often not remembering every bit

of the dream, just fragments.

I would also think that I woke up, but then being a dream again.

Sometimes this would be layered three or four times, I think they call it false awakenings.

But another thing would happen was sleep paralysis.

It got so bad I was having so many nightmares and so much sleep paralysis that I stopped

sleeping in the bedroom altogether.

I would just sleep on the couch because when I would do that, I wouldn't have sleep paralysis

as often.

I would still have lucid dreams, but not sleep paralysis and not nightmares.

At this point, I had a mattress on the floor in the middle of the living room.

One night, I fall asleep, I start to lucid dream, and I start to float.

But this time, I wasn't trying to float.

I just started floating, and then I felt a tug.

I was being pulled toward the room, that the doorway was empty.

Just a black void.

I was pulled into the room slowly.

I remember being in that black void for quite a while.

Suddenly, I was in a nightmare realm of the dream world.

I remember a hospital like setting, people in gowns walking around.

I remember feeling uneasy.

The people in this room started mutating into terrifying creatures.

I couldn't handle it anymore, so I tried to shut my eyes, but when I shut my eyes, the

lights just went out.

I could see everything still, but I was in the dark.

I don't know how long this lasted.

I think my memory has protected me and blocked out quite a bit of it.

The next thing I remember is floating back into the dark void again.

Once again, there for quite a while, before floating above my mattress in the living room,

drifting down, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I woke up.

Now this sealed the deal, I was terrified of that room.

The door was always closed, essentially it was a big closet after that.

One night, I was in the living room reading.

I got up, I walked over to the bookshelf to grab a different book, which was right next

to the door of the room.

I bent my head down to grab the book, and on the other side of the door was three loud

knocks.

It seems that the nightmares from the dream world were starting to drip into waking life.

I had a lot more scary dreams, a lot more shadow people, and I was so relieved to leave

that apartment once I finally did.

About a year later, I moved to Bellingham, Washington, with some friends.

During that time, I was still having, you know, the random, lucid dream occurrences, but

they were somewhat slowing down.

One night, I remember being in a field, wasn't green, it was yellow, dry, and I don't

know if I would consider this a lucid dream.

I somewhat remembered knowing that I was dreaming, but I didn't feel in control here.

The field went as far as the eyes could see, I don't remember anything except the field.

And suddenly I looked up, and I saw a black cloud rolling in.

This wasn't a storm cloud, it looked different, thousands of small moving parts.

It wasn't until it was directly overhead that I realized it was thousands of black birds

creating a giant murmuration.

And as they were above me, I felt a sense of impending doom, and then eventually, acceptance,

and then I woke up.

And then afternoon, a few of my friends and I were driving back from Bellingham to Cila,

Washington, to visit our family and just go home for the weekend.

I told my friends about the dream, how scary it was, and how strange it was.

So on the way home, we're driving on the freeway, and both sides of us, there is this field.

You know, it's an agriculture area of Washington, and all of a sudden, we see a huge murder

of crows flying around this one area of the freeway.

And we drive through until it's directly above us, and they say, oh my god, John, you're

dream.

We're kind of freaked out at this point, and we pull off the nearest exit to stop at

a 7-Eleven, get some snacks and some drinks, but also just take a breather for a moment

after that, really strange experience.

We can't see the 7-Eleven, we pull around this corner, and we find our parking spot.

And of course, there are hundreds of crows on the roof of this 7-Eleven.

Luckily it wasn't a harbinger, there was no impending doom that happened during that trip,

but telling people about it and then witnessing that together was another example of the

dream world leaking into my waking life.

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Our conclusions, if dreaming and lucid dreaming of the same are as follows, firstly, the detailed

memory is possible.

Secondly, that the dream body in all the ways that we've tested it seems to be precisely

coupled to the real body.

Next, thinking, counting and using the mind seems to be very similar in dreaming to

what it is in the waking state.

Next, our sense of time in a dream, that subjective time in a dream, seems to be the same as it

is in the outside world.

And finally, we've been able to show that there is an interaction between the dreamer

and the outside world.

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Own the dream.

Around my mid-20s or so, my lucid dream experience has really started to slow down, including

the sleep paralysis and the nightmares, but they didn't go away.

I would have the occasional lucid dream float around, fly around, create things, visit

these strange, liminal places.

The last year, so I've had a few sleep paralysis experiences that went beyond shadow people.

This first story is one that I recorded about a year ago for an audio collage project

on the Nameless Wave's network.

I'll just share that now.

Pretty much every night before I go to bed now, I think of her.

I've had sleep paralysis, lucid dreams, but this one's different, and it's lingering with

me every night before bed.

So, the classically paralysis woke up or at least thought I woke up, looked around,

realized that I couldn't move, that I could see everything around my room, everything

was normal, except there was a person standing at the edge of my bed.

Now, I've seen shadow people, I've seen cats walking around, and more recently, an

African, I'll tell that story another time, but never a person, she was wearing a white

gown, she had dark hair, and really pale skin.

I remember that I couldn't really make out the details of her face, and I'm trying

to think of it now, I can't.

I just know that there was a face, and I don't know how long I was looking at her before

I realized that my feet were hanging out of the blanket, which always creeps me out

even to the day I try and cover my feet at the end of the night, and as soon as I realized

that, that they were out, and that she was right by there, I heard her say, I'm going to have

to cut off those little toes, that's all I remember.

Now when I wake up in the middle of the night, my feet are out, I get extra creeped out.

So that was the first time that I had seen an apparition that was something more than

a shadow person, and that must have opened the door, because a few months later, I fell

asleep.

I opened my, as I would call it, my second set of eyes, I realized that I was in a sleep

paralysis state, I couldn't move, but I could see the bedroom, I could see the doorway,

suddenly I heard what I can only describe as a childlike giggle from outside the hall.

In the doorway, I saw the apparition, what I would describe as a young boy, completely

golden, and as he walked, it appeared that he was made of a sort of mist, he continued giggling

as he slowly bounced toward me.

No giggling, still approaching, I still couldn't move.

He got right next to my face, and I finally tried my best to reach out and touch it, and

that's when it went black.

I no longer could see an apparition, but only a black mass.

And of course, with this, I felt an extreme sense of dread.

Because I used to have so much sleep paralysis, I had taught myself how to wake myself up

from these dream states, sometimes it took longer, and took a lot of effort, and this time

it took a lot of effort, and I finally woke up, but I didn't fully wake up.

I kept drifting between this waking state and sleeping state.

I didn't feel like it was in my control at all, and every time that I would fall back

asleep, the black mass would be at another area of the room giggling.

This happened three or four times until it was right next to me in bed.

I know I was in this sleep paralysis state, I was able to slowly move my hand toward it,

and when I did, I felt three ice cold claws against my fingers.

I eventually fully woke up and was of course terrified to go back to bed.

This happened about a year ago, and I haven't had anything quite that intense happen since.

Being into weird things, part of me hungers for those experiences, but the other part

of me says, it's okay, I don't think we need to have another one of those.

Don't get me wrong, many of my lucid dream experiences have been wonderful, but there

is a price to pay, at least for me, because with the lucid dreaming also comes the sleep

paralysis.

And honestly, sometimes it gets too hard to tell whether you're awake or dreaming.

By the practice of lucid dreaming, I'm adept can learn that in his memory and his experience

there is no real distinction between reality or illusion.

He must then learn to let go of both of them.

Only then can he step towards the final reality that is beyond both, and can say all reality

is illusion, and all illusion is reality.

Thank you for tuning in to this season of The Signal.

The Signal is a euphemic production for And If Studios, edit, original music, and sound

design by John McEdward.

We'll be back shortly, and in between now and then we are looking for stories from listeners

like you to contribute to our feedback series within The Signal.

Check the show notes for a link to our contact form and the signal hotline.

You can send recordings directly to gymatufamette.com.

For more information about ufamette, go to ufamette.com.

Join the Society of the Strange for Add Free Episode feeds and bonus episodes exclusive

to members.

Join the Society at patreon.com slash ufamette.

For more of my work, go to anomaswaves.com or join the free patreon group anomaswavesnetwork

at patreon.com slash anomaswaves.

I look forward to hearing your stories and thanks again for tuning in to this episode

and this season of The Signal.

Until next time, keep looking up.

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