Thread: Geometric Night Terrors @ Fever Dreams

I have a theory about all of these people saying things about size perception and large objects moving extremely slowly and why these experiences are so terrifying, could it be that when people see these extremely large objects moving slowly that the objects are in fact further away than you perceive them to be and alongside this they are actually moving a lot faster than you perceive them to be. This means that they would have to have an incredible, unthinkable amount of force to move them at such a speed and your brain simply can't process this. If this is the case then I'd say the reason they seem so terrifying is that they make us feel so small and insignificant. I myself had dreams about huge, dense objects being suspended hanging from a tiny thin wire and thinking about how strong that tiny wire must be to hold up such a large mass was just disturbing for whatever reason. Another very strange dream which is similar is one in which i have a regular cocktail stick and on it there is the biggest chunk of cheese imaginable, the size of a house or so and that it is only kept there because something has meticulously balanced it there and that any tiny movement i make could topple it causing it to crush me.

I have also thought of another way to describe the feeling of the impossible task described by some people on this thread, imagine the second Hobbit film in which Bilbo needs to find the arkenstone amongst the immensely vast halls and chambers full of gold. Just a complete overwhelming sense of helplessness and inability. In actual fact dreams like this could very possibly be where the term needle in a haystack originated from.

I've been coming on this thread maybe once or twice a year since 2009, hoping someone had an explanation for these dreams. Wishful thinking...how could someone explain it? It's 2014 now. I figure I should leave my experience here along with everyone else because this thread has made me feel a bit better that I was not the only kid that went through this.

The dreams would always happen when I had a fever, quite often. I got sick a lot. It would start with me lying in bed. I could feel myself falling asleep, but I would be fully aware of what was happening. My body would become heavy...so heavy it felt like I was being pulled to the core of the Earth, melting into my pillow. Painful ringing buzz in my ears. The walls would come closing in, but seem so far away and when that happened, the dream would begin.

Dark, black void. That's where I was. Nothing but black infinite space. Excruciatingly loud silence. Gold parallel lines evenly spaced would move towards me at a constant speed. I would jump over them, trying to reach the end, but they were never ending. I've never felt so alone in my life. Time didn't exist wherever that was.

I woke up the next day once and found five dots (like on a dice) on the side of my forehead. My mom said it was a rash, but I always entertained the idea that I was abducted by aliens. Lol. I also got really sick once and my mom said evil spirits had gone inside my body. She drained some of my blood at the fingertips and the blood was black.

What does this all mean? Who knows. But last year, when I was spending alone time at the top of the Andes Mountains, that dreadful feeling came back. I started melting into the pillow again, but this time I was a little excited. Since I was 20 years older since it happened, I thought maybe I could rationalize it. This anticipation just led to me being awake and not being able to fall asleep. The next night, I had sleep paralysis 6 times in 2 hours. (Only experienced sleep paralysis once in my life, a year earlier in my haunted apartment.) not sure if there's any correlation between any of this, but it's worth mentioning, in case. Besides, when I tell people of this, they think I'm insane.

I've had similar dreams, except it's not shapes or voids, it's more like an impossible task that I have to do. I've only had 2 so far but since I'm only 15 I'm bound to have more. Both of the times I've had them I had a pretty bad fever and I wasn't asleep either, I thought I was at the time but I know I was awake. It was the same exact dream too, I can't remember how it started but it always led to me trying to "help" these "things" that were fighting each other. The best way I could describe the "things" is that they were really small, almost like insects, but at the same time they were incredibly huge, and it seemed like they took up the whole room. I also couldn't "see" them but I knew what they looked like at the same time, it's weird I know. So in the "dream" , if you could even call it that, the insect things were fighting each other on what seemed to be rectangles that were floating right in front of my face, even though I couldn't see it. Also the fighting was just more of like really fast movements and what seemed to be kind of like "explosions". It felt like I needed to help one of them or something absolutely horrible would happen. Eventually I got up and stood at my parents bedroom door for about five minutes about to knock on the door, but I just couldn't do it. I don't know how it ended either but it just did, and then I went back to bed. It was one of the weirdest and scariest things I've ever experienced. The second time the dream happened It was almost exactly the same except that I kind of took control for a second and thought "why am I freaking out about this? Its not even real?" But I still couldn't get over the feeling. I really hope I don't have another one of these but at the same time I do, so I can try to figure out what it means. Sorry if this didn't make any sense, it's reeeeaaaalllyyy hard to explain.

Good description M1da

weird i can relate my dreams, i have been having recently having, as like a dmt trip;however, not like what everyone else here is describing. i have been having dreams of me floating through these infinite rooms. these rooms form around a circle center, which is hollow, more like a hollow pole. these formations has infinite floors and no sense of direction. whenever i enter a room, which is a perfect square, i observe the rooms wallpaper. the wallpaper are geometric patters. the patterns look like they are no moving, but i know they are moving. if i stare into a room for a while i find my self floating through a endless part in space. i am never trapped in this because i always am able to leave the room. All of the rooms are like this, but with different colors and voids. however there is one room among the infinite of rooms that has an circle in the floor, note the room still has the weird wallpaper and same size. when i floated over this circle a beam of light appears, and this light propels me up. next thing i know i am in another square shape room, but this time the room has no corners nor edges, everything kinda flowed into each other. the wallpaper was way more complex, which is hard to describe. when i leave the room i notice that i was in a higher plane I'm guessing. i guessed this because i see infinite rooms again with the rooms forming around a circle centerpiece again, with endless floors. however this time there where people/souls/spirits roaming around. i could interact with them and talk to them. sad part i really do not remember the conversations with them, plus we talked but with our minds. before i woke up i walked into this room that everyone was going to and leaving from. i entered this room to notice it had no patterns or it did? but i was focused on a statue that was covered with a sheet. i was not afraid to find out the truth of what was under the sheet so i took it off. when the sheet was off i was observing a goblin/elf like statue. it grabbed me and tried pulling me into its mouth. i got loose and got out of the room, only to find out i can not leave the room this time. i accept the fact i could not leave and stayed. the goblin/elf noticed i was not ready to go into his mouth, which now in retrospect it was another higher plane of existence. i stayed in the room with other beings, human like, i saw a loading screen which was at like 25-30% completed. now this being was on a device looking all about me and was impressed on my achievements. i still wounder what achievements, like life ACHIEVEMENTS? but i didn't have all the requirements i needed, but for what? i am guessing the loading screen was stuck since i did not finish my accomplishments. from here everything when into a blur and i woke up. anyone else has had this dream or anything similar? each time i enter this dream. i learn more and more, and i become more aware

Hi, I would like to share my experience.

I had a nightmare like this about 3 or 4 times when I was a kid, and it was such a heavy experience that I kinda obssessed about it as I grew up, trying to find ways to explain it. In the past months, I came across some things (which I'll talk about) that made me remember those nightmares very vividly, to the point I could almost feel the sensation again. I'll try to describe it as best as I can.

It began with me seeing a clock in the middle of nothing. I had absolutely no way to tell the size of that clock, there were no other references, no other objects in my vision that could provide me with an understanding of the dimensions of that clock. It looked the same size as a normal clock, attached to a wall, but as there was only empty space and a clock, so it could also look like a giant clock in a distance, as CheddarAddict mentioned. It was right there at the center of my vision and no matter how much I tried to look another direction, the clock would remain there, at the center. I couldn't escape from looking at it.


It felt like the pointers on the clock were moving but never changing position. It felt like hours passed but in the clock's time, not even a second had gone by.

This clock was the main part of the nightmare, but wasn't the only thing that happened. Sometimes the nightmare would change to me being in a TV show, like a game show. It felt as if I was, at the same time, watching it on a TV screen and being present there, where the show was being filmed. I felt so confused that. And then, something happened that made me feel even worse: the right half of the "TV screen" became static noise, and since I also felt I was inside the game show, it felt like the right side of my vision was completely static noise. But only the right side, I could still see the game show with my left side. That feeling that everything was moving but never changing position was there too.

Then everything would go back to the damned clock. Complete silence and empty space and the clock that moved so slow that it didn't actually move. You are all probably aware of the concept of limits in calculus, right? That approaching x to a number means it will get infinitely close to that number but never assume that number's value? The pointer of the clock seemed to be getting infinitely close to a number but never reaching that number. I kinda freaked out when I learned about limits in college, because it brought back this nightmare.

And then, recently I was watching adventure time and there was a scene that almost made me panic. I should warn everyone that this scene can cause A LOT of discomfort so I don't recommend watching it if you don't feel well. It's a scene that shows "One second later" for 20 seconds with a very unsettling sound.

-> youtube(.) com/ watch?v=mg3fYnzUKCM (sorry for not posting the link directly, I just registered)

I woke up and started to cry and my grandma came to see what was happening. I don't think she measured my fever, but I suppose I had one. Could be cough syrup too, but I can't recall if I was taking it at that time.
But at that time, when I woke up, everything felt so weird, everything looked like giant objects that were too far away; one of my arms felt heavy, and the other one felt light as a feather. The only other time I felt like this was when I slept over my arm and woke up with very bad blood circulation.
I thought the nightmare had stopped but the clock came up again, then the game show, and another scene that looked like a waterfall. It would alternate between deafening silence and deafening loud and confusing sound of too much people talking at the same time.

I'm sorry if I talked too much and if my description is confusing, I just needed to get this out of my chest. I've been having a bad feeling lately, like a premonition that soon I'll be experiencing these nightmares again. It's been very hard for me to sleep and it's messing with my mind. :/

Originally Posted by spacebf

It felt like the pointers on the clock were moving but never changing position. It felt like hours passed but in the clock's time, not even a second had gone by.
...
That feeling that everything was moving but never changing position was there too.
...
Then everything would go back to the damned clock. Complete silence and empty space and the clock that moved so slow that it didn't actually move. You are all probably aware of the concept of limits in calculus, right? That approaching x to a number means it will get infinitely close to that number but never assume that number's value? The pointer of the clock seemed to be getting infinitely close to a number but never reaching that number. I kinda freaked out when I learned about limits in college, because it brought back this nightmare.
...
everything looked like giant objects that were too far away;
...
It would alternate between deafening silence and deafening loud and confusing sound of too much people talking at the same time.

Not confusing at all, that was spot on!

Adventure Time actually manages to portray a lot of deep and esoteric stuff pretty accurately.

Okay so, uh. This is interesting. I came upon another thread titled "High Fever causes horrifying Dream/Hullicination.. what is it?" ((HTTP)www(DOT)dreamviews(DOT)com/sleep-health/52026-high-fever-causes-horrifying-dream-hullicination-what.html) which lead me here; I actually felt quite uncomfortable at times while browsing through these thread due to being able to relate.

When I was between six and eight years old, I used to have these nightmarish fever dreams. I didn't think much of it at the time, but these are among the few dreams that have stayed with me to this day.

I used to describe it as seeing a square inside a square, but the square that was inside the other square was itself the other square. It was the same square, but it was inside itself. For all I know, they might've been cubes or even hypercubes, but that's not the important part; It was one, but it was also separate. Not only that, the whole fucking thing was moving (slowly, and weirdly), and it was almost as if the movement "began" way beyond that which I could perceive, if that makes any sense. These sense of motion also made my stomach turn. I've attributed the movement to the pounding sensation of the headache itself, because I remember there being a sort of looping sensation to it. Part of it could also have been due the slight sensation of having "the spins" due to the high fever; Everything was moving, or spinning slowly, and in this "area" was the shape(s) that was one but also two.

Now, years later, having experimented with a couple of drugs, and having quite some experience with meditation and contemplative practices such as Zen buddhism and Taosim, I've come to see all of this as just another form of ego softening, ego death, perceiving Indra's Net (check out the description on Wikipedia), or sensing the Tao. The reason I think it feels so uncomfortable is partly due to the physical and mental sensation of being ill and having the fever, but also due to a lack of context for the imagery and the whole of the experience.

Neuroscientist Sam Harris recently did an interview (and he just released his latest book on the subject of spirituality as a meaningful neurological phenomenon, called "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion") which can be read here:

(HTTP)opinionator(DOT)blogs(DOT)nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sam-harriss-vanishing-self/

To summarize: The self, the I, the you, the sense that you are separate from nature and the universe, is precisely like the white square in the following picture: (HTTP)graphics8(DOT)nytimes(DOT)com/images/2014/09/05/opinion/stone-optical-illusion/stone-optical-illusion-blog480.png It's an illusion, but it's a convincing illusion. When this illusion is broken down, either by psychedelics, meditation, contemplation, or by a waking nightmare, then there's the potential that great confusion will arise unless one is familiar with lines of thought that deal with this issue of "cosmic unity" and an illusory sense of self.

The intense confusion that arises with these nightmares could very well be due to an incredibly warped perception of the self, and a sort of subconscious drive to answer the question "What am I?", while simultaneously receiving information that tells you that you are not actually separate, and that you do not exist as you think you do. If you do not exist as you think you do, as a separate entity, then the question can not be answered (because it is completely nonsensical), but the question seems very meaningful, and you feel like there must be an answer, so you may end up panicking out of pure confusion.

Here is a video of author and philosopher Alan Watts, explaining the impossibility of the task of answering the question "What am I?" by using the analogy of the feedback loop caused by aiming a camera at its monitor:

(HTTP)www(DOT)youtube(DOT)com/watch?v=J8jzEPXgc4Q&feature=youtu.be&t=6m56s

The geometry and perceived slowness of the nightmares may be a consequence of the fact that these concepts can not be grasped by linear thought, so the experience manifests itself as mental imagery and physical sensations rather than as a pattern of language based thought.

Someone also expressed thoughts regarding slow moving objects that are close and large quick moving objects that are far away being perceived in similar ways; I think that this feeds into these ideas of relativity and duality. Things are not always as they seem, and one thing can be another thing depending on your perspective. Also, sometimes two apparently different things can grow out of the same whole, like the two sides of a coin, or like the self and the non-self, the I and the universe.

I'm about halfway through reading all the responses. I wouldn't have made it this far if I hadn't heard of this thing, almost identically before. One of my best friends had what sounds like this exact experience while smoking the Salvia plant.

He described it as complete blackness, with bluish geometric shapes going out of view, then coming back into view in a circle, and turned around again and again, very slowly by a big wagon wheel turning very slowly. The wagon wheel spun painstakingly slowly and was painful to watch and experience and comprehend. The shapes would collide with him and rip parts of his soul out, then go in the circle and collide with him again and rip more of his soul out each time.

Not exactly a dream, per se, but it seemed too similar to these dreams to omit.

Today, I am sick. I googled 'fever dreams' to avoid going to sleep, even though I know I will eventually. At 101 degree fever, the dream was just annoying - stuck in an endless loop of trying to figure out specifications for a project I am currently managing. The longer it went on, I kept losing more and more of the project details until I had no clue what needed to be figured out. But it was the 102 degree fever that did me in. In real life, I lost my first two children at birth; I dreamed that I was in the hospital, sorting out little baby socks to be donated to mothers who would need them. An aide came to talk to me, and I tried to explain that the socks had belonged to my third baby that had just died. She gently asked me what his name was, and I couldn't tell her. I remember how crushing it was to believe that I had forgotten my newly deceased baby's name. I woke up crying, and I had to verbally coach myself that there was no third name to remember, but t had seemed so dreadfully real and convincing.

I have taken aspirin and I know my fever is currently under the 101 level. I am going to try sleep again.

Hello everyone.

Firstly, omtaozen - Thanks for your post. Really interesting insight.

Wow. Many of these experiences are bizarrely familiar.
My interest in this phenomena reignited after coming across a thread on Reddit - www(.)reddit(.)com/r/AskReddit/comments/2k6786/have_you_ever_encountered_something_paranormal/clicscm
And after reading all of those comments and the 8 pages of tingle-inducing posts here, my mind is all but blown.

Anyway, here are some of my past experiences with infinity. I haven't experienced many of these for a long time, so it is all quite hazy, not that it was ever particularly clear, but by reading all these posts I'm beginning to piece together these fractured memories.

1. The Perfection - Dream state

Often presented to me in the form of spheres. Oh how I hated the spheres. Their texture was weirdly similar to zabbwich's explanation:

Originally Posted by zabbwich

For some reason, this morning I thougt about this dream I had couple times as a kid and once in a horrible fever 2 years ago and this subject really got my interest. It is nice to know there are many others who has had these dreams.

What I remember about them: I was going forward in dark space or somekind and there were lots of shapes around and ahead of me, I couldn't understand how sharp and flawless they could be, most of those shapes were really big and yes, there always was that ''noise'', slowness and that feeling it would never end.

In one of those dreams it was the same as I described before but it felt like I was going through some sort of infinite ''production line''. I think that was the most scary of those 3 or 4 dreams that I have had. It would be interesting to have this dream again, but not nice. I'm glad I haven't had these often anymore.

I would like to know have anyone considered these shapes extremely sharp or extremely perfect?

...and with definite similarities to Katla's explanation:

Originally Posted by Katla

I used to have similar dreams as a kid.

I remember being infront of an enormous, spherical object.
It was tremendously huge, perhaps infinite.
This object moved towards me extremely slow.
Their was extreme gravity pulling me towards the object, but I never reached it.

And at the same time this extreme gravity was compressing me into something tiny. Something infinitely tiny!
I remember the object as being the definition of the word "perfect".

Have you ever seen that Green material called Oasis in the bottom of some flowerpots?
When you press it your finger sinks down into the material a bit, along with a cracking noise.The feeling of pressing that green material was constant through thewhole dream.

So incomprehensibly perfect and smooth, to such a degree that they were sharp. I used to describe the texture as something that was once the softest thing imaginable, but had since become petrified, resulting in an infinitely fractalised and "sharp" surface. Sort of like petrified cotton balls or coral, but not quite. As I grew older and the dream became more commonplace, the spheres graduated into an all-encompassing feeling/sensation, in a sense, permeating me with their impossibly perfect and smoothly sharp characteristics. Or perhaps it is more that I became a sphere. I'm not sure. An indescribably horrible feeling, nonetheless. Very much like static noise tearing me apart at some fundamental level.

I am remembering just now that during the dreams, this textual quality of limitless complexity actively increases its perfection to impossible levels, and once this terrifying perfection of rising intensity is almost achieved, I wake up. I guess it is like smoothing out a fractal; a ridiculously absurd notion to the rational mind. I'm guessing that this is quite possibly my version of what seems to be colloquially referred to as "The Impossible Task" dream.

I can't quite recall, but it's possible that the spheres are related to, or the same as, the boulders during The Crushing...

2. The Crushing - Dream state

The feeling of something impossibly tiny and delicate being crushed/popped by something else impossibly large. Once again, it appears I am also not alone:

Originally Posted by jumboguildluver

HAS ANYONE HAD THIS EXPERIENCE BEFORE?? I only remeber having this frightening dream as a child, and maybe once or twice in my early teens. It was only when I was delerious with fever. I had a reoccuring dream that I was in a big cave, and there were horrible terrifying loud noises, like quick bursts of harsh yelling. Then a HUGE MASSIVE BOULDER came voilently rolling towards me as if to crush me. It was SO LOUD, SO VIOLENTLY LOUD and so frieghtening. The Boulder somehow didn't crush me and went away. All of a sudden it was DEAD SILENCE, like a VACUUM, THEN out of the ground over which the boulder had just rolled, a tiny, delicate, innocent little blade of grass sprouts up, with a little flower on it. It was almost as if it was supposed to be a sign of relief, like the sprout of grass was symbolizing "its ok, dont worry". But then the fear came back instantly, because I knew that the tiny little blade of grass could do absolutely nothing to protect me if that boulder was to return. It was a horrible, helpless, miserable and frightening feeling.

and...

Originally Posted by jakra002

That sound very much like the hallucinations I have every time I have high fever! The difference is that in mine there is no "scene" (the cave you were talking about), it's more abstract and it's not a boulder but it's round, sometimes it's falling, sometimes it feels like it's pushing against me and sometimes I get some sort of task-feeling that I have to move it, but that's impossible because it feels like it's as heavy as planet earth itself. And there is a ton of noise, it's something like a crowd of people talking, violently loud, and everyone is bashing me. Suddenly everything turns silent and calm. And then there is that thin and tiny thing (the flower you mentioned), for me it doesn't come out of the ground, instead it just appears out of nowhere, mostly in my hand and it's tiny and very thin but oddly it's extremely heavy as for it's size. Then there is a voice trying to calm me, it's friendly, opposite to the crowd, but it's VERY loud. And suddenly the gigantic thing comes back together with all the noise and continues for something that feels like forever. The hallucination isn't always the same for me (Depending on where I am experiencing it (Mostly it starts by waking me up and I end up standing beside my bed, semi-conscious. But sometimes it occurs while in the bathroom, while preparing to go to bed.)), but it always has the same "basics", the gigantic round thing, the noise, the tiny thing and the calming voice. And it always ends up with the fear, the noise and the gigantic thing coming back.
Sorry for writing so long but your dream just reminded me of it.

When I was younger, I would take the role of the infinitely tiny object being almost crushed by infinitely large and infinitely distant boulders in some sort of void. The boulders would move and rotate agonisingly slowly, but never actually reach me, but I would be filled with the deepest sense of dread and impending doom. I remember once leaping out of bed, running to my nanna while screaming "they're coming... they're coming". This freak show lasted for about 10 minutes.

Now that I'm older, I seem to take the role of the infinitely large object quickly crushing something infinitely tiny and infinitely close, usually a flower or some such thing. When it happens, the sheer insignificance of the event is overwhelming. This seems to mainly happen during hangover-snoozes, usually at the end of a dream just before waking up.

I'm only just realising as I type this, but these perspectives seem to be an infinitely exaggerated version of, for example, an ant and an elephant. To an ant, an elephant would appear to be moving very slowly, but to an elephant, the ant would appear rather fast for its size. In the realm of the infinite, the elephant would be essentially motionless to the ant's eyes, but the ant's movements would be essentially instant and infinitesimal to the elephant, in effect non-existent. From the infinite ant's perspective, the elephant is forever. From the infinite elephant's perspective, the ant was never.

3. The Grinding - Dream & (weed trip) waking states

I feel as though it may be the combination of both of The Crushing states. Two sides of the same coin. It is very similar to the agonisingly slow rotation of the boulders, but now that I'm older, this manifests in an all-encompassing feeling/sensation where I am the thing that is forever moving, but at the same time, not. It tends to mainly occur these days during hangover-snoozes, like with The Crushing, but is no less horrifying.

It has also occurred once while awake after a particularly intense bong hit where I thought that everything was repeating. The only time I've tripped on weed. It was as though my short-term memory was non-existent, and so without a reference point and no proof in memory of any of the previously occurring sequence of events, all that existed was the "now". Forever this moment in time, or the absence of.

4. The Chasm (or Alice in Wonderland syndrome - Macropsia & Teleopsia) - Dream & waking states

A seemingly common occurrence amongst other (day)dreamers, it involves the feeling that I am infinitely tiny and everything is infinitely huge and infinitely distant, with an endless rift in-between. For example, I could be just sitting there watching TV, when all of a sudden my perspective would shift. It's as though I become acutely aware of my consciousness being a singularity, and everything in my sight is at the "edge" of the universe.

This still happens to me semi-frequently, and I can somewhat will myself to slip into this perspective during my waking state. This and The Closing are also the only two of these phenomena that don't deeply disturb my soul.

5. The Closing (or Alice in Wonderland syndrome - Micropsia & Pelopsia) - Dream state

The opposite of The Chasm. This sensation usually occurs during The Crushing, when I exist as the impossibly large object.

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Anyway, that's all I can recall at the moment. There are just so many oddly specific parallels that can be drawn from everyone's experiences. Although our individual experiences are recalled with some variation - an expected consequence of attempting to rationalise and communicate something so abstract and otherworldy - there appears to be a singular, common theme throughout. I can't quite put my finger on it. Something intangible. Something fundamental and absolute.

I will definitely be keeping an eye on this thread for further insight, but for now I'm off to look at fractals. I fucking love fractals. Now that I think about it, I get the feeling that the universe is an inside-out fractal. And after spacebf's post up above, I think I'm gonna need to go learn about limits in calculus

Also, if anyone knows of any further material on any of these themes - spiritual, scientific, fictional or otherwise - I would be ever so grateful.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Good description M1da

I'm not sure if anyone still replies or even looks at these threads still, but i stumbled across it while searching for answers.
The Cusp, I myself have had these "fever dreams", both induced by a fever and on a regular day, but also on days that i am totally overwhelmed, should we factor that in on why people get these fever dreams?
I just had one last night, brought upon by my fever I'm guessing. Even though it wasn't my first time, it still brought me a terrible feeling. As most, including yourself have described it, is what goes on in my horrific dream. My way to explain it would be an object that I'm not to sure is, keeps increasing in size, almost like a snowball that you keep trying to shape into the largest one yet. I can't do anything about it, its almost like I'm not there, but i could tell i am and as i try to scream, nothing happens. By that time I'm awake and in cold sweats, scared. I thought I was the only one having these recurring dreams, but obviously not. It's amazing how long this thread has been going, by the way.

I've been feverish lately and having these dreams as well, just as I did every so often when I was a kid. In my case, even after I wake up, the dream, or the intense feelings associated with them, continue to linger in my consciousness, even if I get up and walk around a bit, and it takes a few minutes to "shake it off."

It's as though there's some "small, smooth, tranquil, very perfect piece" that somehow I'm in possession of, or a part of, or is a part of me, that suddenly gets overwhelmed by a "very large, obtuse, aggressive piece" that doesn't fit and will topple everything, crush everything under its impossible weight, upend normality and devastate my world completely. Its approach seems sudden and totally overwhelming, carrying with it an acute sense of terrifying dread and doom, impossible to handle and completely devastating. Like an enormous object that I know, as it's approaching, is too huge for me to "lift" or "fit" or "manage," making everything horribly unbalanced. Like I'm a tiny sailboat that's suddenly been ladened with a billion pounds of unwanted cargo.

Physically I feel very small, almost miniaturized, and it's like the whole world is crashing down on my sanity, like my mind is being squeezed down into the singularity of a mental black hole, slipping, slipping downward as the whole world closes in around me.

It's the most psychologically unpleasant and maddening sensation I've ever experienced, and it reminds me, almost like a warning, of how fragile ones grip on reality really is. But reading this thread is actually a real comfort, and it's good to know I'm not the only one to have experienced this bizarre phenomena.

I've been visiting this place for years but now I just had to make an account. I had dreams like the ones described in this thread and they've been bugging me for years. I've tried explaining them to people but no-one seemed to understand what in the hell I was talking about. So needless to say my jaw fell on the floor when I found this thread. All of these posts are so oddly accurate at describing how they felt.

I've had quite a few of these as a kid, especially when I was bedridden. But this one in particular I can still remember quite clearly. I'm pretty sure I did have a high fever then. If I recall correctly I had the same geometric nightmare 3 times and it always began from a somewhat similar dream.

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I'm floating above a peaceful green plain. There's a light blue river flowing just below my viewpoint. The colors are very exuberant. Suddenly I feel myself to be sucked into another world. My view starts turning into this white, vast void of nothingness. Whatever bodily sensations I still had are gone. I think I was lucid before (used to have them regularly as a kid) but I'm not anymore. It was as if I had moved into another plane of reality. There were these possibly black shapes. I couldn't make out what they looked like, they just felt like some incomprehensible formations of infinite amounts of energy. It was like I was observing that world in it's entirety yet I only actually saw hazy snippets of it. The shapes moved in odd motions, they were insanely slow and followed their own seemingly random tracks but I knew exactly where they'd move. As if the shapes were already in their future positions but they weren't.

I was overwhelmed by a sense of despair and discomfort. You know that uneasy feeling when you can't seem to get sleep in less than a few hundred short chunks and keep rolling in your bed, sweating while stuck in a state between dreams and reality, trying to get up so the torture would end but to no avail? Anyways, it was like that, but even worse. The shapes just kept moving in a slow, grinding motion. I felt like I was supposed to make an end to it but I didn't seem to even exist there but as some helpless, uncontrollable and meaningless entity. I was assigned to do something but I simply couldn't. Time felt like it spun over years. I don't mean that I felt like I actually was in the dream for that long, it's hard to explain. It was like the dream was never going to end and I'd be trapped there, in an unruly geometric hell, for an eternity. It was like the shapes had some kind of an endpoint but as they approached it it kept being just there, beyond grasp, forever. And as the shapes kept moving my sense of dread just kept getting worse and worse. I felt like I was slowly dying but there was no end in sight. There was nothing I could do but keep observing those transcendent things endlessly move towards something they'd never reach.

-

The dream just abruptly stopped every time and I'd wake up feeling empty, that dread still looming there. I can try to write down the other ones if I happen to recall them more vividly.

It'd be great to have that dream once again, as soul wrenching as it was.

This. So much this.

Originally Posted by Burns

I searched the platonic solids, but I think mine was a wheel shape - not a sphere - but a wheel.
I remember being sick in bed, or on the couch, with the flu. And I'd close my eyes and see total blackness. Then the wheel would appear - it was moving agonizingly slow, so slow I wanted to vomit. It's so hard to describe the feeling. Everything was silent - deafeningly silent and slow. But the wheel turned and moved toward my vision, growing larger, and the larger it got, the sicker I felt. I wanted it to stop but everytime I closed my eyes, the whole thing would start over again, making me sicker and sicker, and dizzy - like spinning, like laying facedown on the rocking floor of a pitching shipdeck. I remember trying to stay awake and trying not to close my eyes to avoid that godawful feeling. Then the vision would creep at the corners of my vision and overtake my senses, going through another cycle.

I don't know if that's anything like what you guys have experienced, but that's the best i could put it into words. There's really no way to describe it. I think The Cusp explained the horror of it well.

I used to have these often as a child. Whenever I told other people about them, I described them as fever dreams, but I was never ill or running a temperature. I never saw the platonic solids, but I can relate to sensations. There would be a great stretching and squashing, as though I was being pulled and morphed into different sizes while the rest of the space around me was doing the same. At this point there were no visuals, just a horrible, agonising feeling. I would feel as though I had become incredibly small, and then I would change and my surroundings would become incredibly distant, and then suddenly snap back into being very close.

This would then lead into the visuals. The visuals instilled me with a sense of absolute horror. They also would not stop after I awoke. I would get up and run to my parents' room, still plagued by the dreams. If I ever felt them coming on, I knew that I would be in for a rough night. Someone here mentioned a 'production line' type dream, and I can definitely relate to that. While there were several different recurring visuals, one that I can still recall involved the view of a sidewalk with a man walking down it, but he was repeated several times. He would continue walking, and as he would leave the frame to the left, another clone of him would appear entering the frame to the right. It was incredibly agonising. While he wasn't moving particularly fast or slow, it gave the feeling of terrible slowness but with a very manic, frenetic energy as well.

The other recurring visual gave me such a strong association of fear to the imagery, that it took me many years to get over it. The visuals were simple, but instilled more information than was given. They were completely still, there was no movement, but still gave of the same horrible sensations as above. The background would be plain, normally an off-white colour. A 'figure' would be in the centre. It was a circle on top of a long, upright stick, much like the shape of a lollipop or street sign. I would get the feeling of 'queen', coupled with terror. Sometimes there would be more than one. On the 'ground' around them, would be smaller figures, but these were prostrate. They had a similar circular head. The ground around them was covered in curly, wavy lines, reminiscent of vines.

All I can say now, is that I'm glad I don't get these anymore.

Glad I found this thread, I will add my experiences (as well as my families) as well:
Im also 15 m1da and the last time this happened to my while unconscious was probably a year ago, I haven't had a fever for a long time, but when I was a kid and got fevers I had the same exact dreams, and I found out that the same exact dreams happened to my dad and sister, as well as some other conscious phenomena - We all have the same three fever dreams. Pretty much every time I had these dreams, and they would happen almost every night and not fever induced, when I was younger I would "sleep-scream" because they were so scary. My parents told me that I would wake up and bang on all the doors and scream, all while mumbling random stuff about "growing" and "slow".

Dream 1 - Race Car
This dream is very simple but very terrifying. It is the plain outside view of a race car going faster and faster but relatively moving deathly slow. Kind of like viewing a car going fast in real life, but comparing it to the incredibly faster planetary motion. The car never seems to budge but I can feel the momentum and the forces pushing it. My dad made a song about this dream and I realized I had the same dreams as well as my sister

Dream 2 - Dividing
This one was the most prevalent growing up for all of us. It is very much like the dreams everyone else was describing but for us it was only two dimensional elipses, but not perfect, as they were always dividing, but the part that scared me the most was that they followed no law of conservation of mass. The kept dividing but they all had the same weight as the original blob. They would all pulse as the divided and I could hear a deafening pulsing roar which would make my head hurt a lot. This was all happening at what seemed like a reeeaaallllyy slow pace but the blobs would undoubtedly divide every second. For me sometimes these dreams happened without fever. The dreams scared me so much that I started to sleepwalk and start screaming and crying in my sleep because I couldn't make sense of it.

Dream 3 - Talking
This dream also has ties to our real lives. The unconscious version was a picture of someone talking but they talked so monotone and at such an odd predictable pace that it grinded into my soul. It felt like every word they spoke would get longer and heavier and slower and bear into my skull. The scarring part of this dream was whenever someone say at church or school would talk while I was young, this started to happen if they started talking at the same pitch and pace and I would start to zone out and everything would shrink. Still happens sometimes if someone is talking for a really long time at the same pace

I also had a conscious symptom that would happen between us three. This was mostly random but would happen more often during fevers. Everything would start to feel really weird, its hard to explain, but everything got unexplainably heavy and light at the same time. Like the density was getting lower but it was also getting heavier and then everything would start shrinking. I would touch my fingers and they would feel really sharp and brittle but really heavy, and playing the piano was impossible because everything would shrink really small and i felt like I would break my fingers If I played too hard.

(Edit) Dream 2.5: Multiplying
Oh, and also I would other random nightmares that had some super important task that was impossible to do, and these dreams felt like they lasted forever which scared me to death. I usually cant remember the details of these dreams except for the part where there is a lot of one thing and it usually multiplies so fast that I cant control everything and then I have to do this one thing a lot of times but it doesn't make a difference because it is impossible to account for all the multiplying.

(Edit) Dream 4: Hero
These dreams were more random but still terrified me. It all started like a cliche teen hero novel, I had to save something, but then I found out it was impossible to do so. But for some reason I kept trying and trying to help and nothing would happen and sometimes this would combine with Dream 2.5 and things would start multiplying and people would die and it was all my fault


I think it would be fun to find a scientific explanation for this stuff, but for now I am deathly afraid of falling asleep when I have a fever

After so many years i finally know i am not alone! Many thanks to the threadstarter.
reading this topic made me subscribe to share my experience with fellow dreamers.
a big happenning in life made me overthink my past, and here it is, one of the first memories i have from this life is the overwhelming reoccuring dream about solids.

I feel they might be triggered by fever, but i know they could also develop under normal conditions.
The experience of this type of dream, is much more terryfying, than a nightmare about dark places, heights, or strange creatures.
They felt as something totally different from everything i experienced when learning to live, when i think about it nowadays it feels as if it was a leftover from the beginning, very elemental, dense, heavy and noisy.
At first i was completely surprised, but when it became a frequent happening i became partially used to it, mainly because i noticed the dream had an introduction while being almost fully awake.

It started with seeing my bedroom and its content in pixelated particle like appearance.
then the noise came like pulsating power fields with very deep subbass content sweeping arround.
Then i knew i was there in this field of solids with their noise, i can not say for sure because its so long ago, but i felt most of the solids had their own type of noise i could remember from them passing me by.
besides those solids there were also lines with smooth curves towards the horizon, there was some elevation in the field but, the lines were never going vertical.
they were quite large and pulsated, they looked like a pathway, but they were in motion just as the solids, i can't remember stepping on one.
This whole thing i saw, manifested itsself in the same particle like appearance as my bedroom before the dream came up.
The slowness of the happening made me feel like if i was large
and slow , most of the time the slowness stayed with me for some time when waking up, and my hands felt heavy like they weren't mine.

I,ve dreamt a lot in my life, especially in the early years, this dream
which i had so often made me search for my parents bedroom to sleep with them, but then the dream often came back when i was lying down again.
Often i fell down the stairs in search for my parents if they were in the living room.
I think the slowness and bigness made me misjudge the spacing of the steps, even in later years when i had this dream.

I do hope to contribute to this long going thread by sharing my dream of the solids.
A dream which might be much more than a dream.

Thanks for reading.

Bram

Ok I was reminded of this thread because I had the most horrendous fever just yesterday. The worst parts was that I couldnt sleep so I was just stuck between hot and cold sweating on the couch all day. I did have some frustrating dreams the night before but they were not terrifying. As my fever was just coming down and I thought it was over, and through this whole experience I was definitely conscious, everything started to get extremely small. It was kind of like when I used to zone out as a kid. But this was way different, it was kind of like the room perception that Wings had above, but there was absolutely no noise even though the tv was on really loud in the other room. As it was happening I tried to look across one of my arms but it literally took 5 minutes to go from my shoulder to my fingers. I went outside because I thought that would help but I fainted when I got out the door. I got up after 30 seconds then went back to the couch but as soon as I sat down things started happening that are still messing me up right now.

I think I actually experienced ego death because the whole room turned into, I guess what I thought was one note, or vibration. The room seemed like I was looking at it from miles up, and the room was miles wide. I tried calling for help but I didn't exist anymore. Then that vibration (the vibration was actually something visual, and it was the same loudness the whole time) started to exponentially grow. The first half of the vibration would replicate and then then half would replicate again, and it all kept growing and this was the part that was kind of unexplainable. I saw infinity and it was terrifying. The vibration should have never been able to reach infinity, but it kept on going past infinity. The vibration was kind of like a song that had grown way too long and had then enveloped the whole universe. I know that other stuff happened after it reached infinity, but I have no recollection of the actual events that happened. It was kind of like everything turned into grains and then was "eliminated". All I knew was that the vibration had turned so infinitely entropic and so infinitely vast, and that I (or whatever I was at that point) was still able to experience it in whole. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about an hour, Everything went back to normal and my fever was gone.
And I swear I was not on drugs

I had these kind of waking dreams several times as a child. Later in life I found these were called night terrors. They were usually associated with a fever. Sometimes it would be about rope. Coiling, tightening, stretching. I would often get extremely uncomfortable visuals and tactile sensations associated with it. I felt I was the rope and at the same time I could see it being pulled taut. Other times I'd have a dreadful feeling about something I'd done wrong. There was one time I imagined I'd lost a million pounds. I was so convinced it was real, and that all manner of dread and despair washed over me for the wrong I'd done and the punishment that would ensue. Past life memory maybe? I would run around the house screaming and crying in fear while my mother tried to pacify me without luck. Other times I'd have shapes, such as triangles appear as I closed my eyes, and just a feeling of utter confusion, like I was trapped between worlds. They were like hypnagogic hallucinations but much more terrible and unpleasant. I would feel myself being stretched apart, spinning round, twisting, becoming one with the shapes. Worst of all, they were impossible to wake up from, and would continue every time I closed my eyes. There was also a time I was having my tonsils out in hospital. I was put under general anaesthetic which was accompanied by the longest, weirdest, and one of the most unpleasant dreams of my life. I wouldn't even call it a dream because there was no script being played out like in a regular dream. It was just shapes, furniture, and ugly feelings synasthetically wrapped up into one long horrible trip. I partially woke up without sight and the nurses had to restrain me because I was struggling so much. They said I'd pulled the drip out of my hand when I'd woken up fully.

I discovered this website only yesterday and I would like to share my foundings. Yesterday I was reading Carl Gustav Jung's book "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" and I came across an interesting passage about geometric dreams of sizes. Then I remembered having them too when I was a child and a teenager (now I'm 23 and I don't have them anymore). The dream always began as just a grey background. Then, something as small as a tiny snowflake appeared. The smallness of the object was terrifying. Then it became huge and extremely heavy, simply crushing. I saw something like a giant boulder that crushed my whole existence. I recall seeing some kind of a grey man-like figure carrying the rock, as if it were Atlas carrying the whole world. The dreams were extremely terrifying and I feared them. I now sometimes dream of counting, and then it feels as if I am trying to solve mathematical equasions all night long and don't get any rest.

So, I would like to share the passage from Jung's book that triggered my search on the Internet and finding of this website: "I had anxiety dreams of things that were now small, now large. For instance, I saw a tiny ball at a great distance; gradually it approached, growing steadily into a monstrous and suffocating object. Or I saw telegraph wires with birds sitting on them, and the wires grew thicker and thicker and my fear greater until the terror awoke me. Although these dreams were overtures to the physiological changes of puberty, they had in their turn a prelude which occurred about my seventh year. At that time I was sick with pseudo-croup, accompanied by choking fits. One night during an attack I stood at the foot of the bed, my head bent back over the bed rail, while my father held me under the arms. Above me I saw a glowing blue circle about the size of the full moon, and inside it moved golden figures which I thought were angels. This vision was repeated, and each time it allayed my fear of suffocation. But the suffocation returned in the anxiety dreams."

This is actually the first instance in books that I've encountered regarding these dreams. Also, there's a brief explanation that they may just simply be a result of growing up.

Originally Posted by caterpillar

... Also, there's a brief explanation that they may just simply be a result of growing up.

Well that's comforting that we will outgrow these. But also frightening, why does growing up exhibits itself in such a scary experience.

I have experienced a few geometric hypnogogic hallucinations (beginnings of a dream when falling asleep). But those were truly geometric. Repeating patterns or squares or triangles or similar. These were not scary.

I did have some sensations as a child when falling asleep. I thought I grew out of them but I did have it again later in life. I can't discribe it even to myself, it's so alien. Only thing I can say that when It happens, i feel relaxed, my tongue feels huge, bigger than my mouth and it shouldnt fit in there but it does and it's confusing. I get similar strange feeling to some other parts of my body. I can snap out of it easily just by wanting to. I never figured out what that was. Maybe some day I'll ask this in Beyond Dreaming.

Hi, I am new here and found that threat by accident in google looking for similar kind dreams.
I was reading about it in other site, people sharing dreams like that.
I also read that this could be caused from small epilepsy seizures, you can have them more often when you were young and grew out of them eventually.
Or having them occasionally as older too.
Do you know anything like that?

Huge thanks to thread starter. I've remembered about having such night terrors in past and I was trying to find something on this topic.

I didn't read all of the posts yet, some of them tell exactly the same thing that happened to me a few times, when I was a pre-teen/teen. I think maybe I was about 20 when it happened last time. As most people say, it was during the fever (a friend of mine told me he had the same thing when he got sunstroke, so it possibly has to do something with brain overheat). It started with an infinite grey space, where I'm just a detached point of view. Then perfectly shaped, infinitely small spheres appeared and started growing to an infinitely large size, filling all the space around. Nothing in my whole life scared me more. Still gives me shivers when I start thinking about it.

A couple of my friends had different variations, but it was always about one object having the opposite properties: deafening loud whisper, feather that weighs thousands of tons, etc.