[Note From Frolic: We have a thing for novellas. A BIG thing. In the next installment of an ongoing series, we bring you a piece from author Elisabeth Naughton, whose novella ‘Ensnared‘ with our friends at 1001 Dark Nights is out now!]
Do you remember your dreams? What was the last dream you recall? Was any part of it real, and if so, how would you know?
Dreams occur mostly during REM sleep, which is the deepest form of sleep a person can experience. They’re usually conjured by the subconscious, and scientists think they’re the brain’s way of processing emotions, stimuli, memories, and experiences during the waking day. We usually know or recognize the people in our dreams. According to Psychology Today, “One study found that more than 48% of dream characters were recognizable by name to dreamers.” Our dreams come in many forms—nightmares, night terrors, recurring dreams, even lucid dreams (the kind where the dreamer is vaguely aware they are dreaming and can consciously manipulate the dream in sequence.) But the bottom line is…everyone dreams.
Dreams have always fascinated me, probably because I’ve had some wonky ones in my lifetime. For example, the other night I dreamt I was mountain biking with a baby giraffe in pajamas, and we were being chased through the forest by truckers. (Go ahead, analyze the heck out of that dream, I dare you. I would blame that bizarre dream on cold medicine, but I didn’t take any!) Sometimes I have recurring dreams, where the same person shows up again and again. I’ve even had dreams that later almost seem to come true…those are the ones that really wig me out. A feeling of déjà vu where I think, “I dreamt this…didn’t I?” My middle child suffered from night terrors for years. He would scream nonstop, and nothing would console him. I’ve always wondered if he was remembering something, or if his mind was making up some horrid situation. And it always flabbergasted me that he had zero memory of the night terror in the morning. Couldn’t remember a single thing.
Regardless of what we dream, how we dream, or when we dream, dreams affect us all. To this day, scientists still aren’t certain why we dreams, but you will always find people willing to try to interpret your dreams. One such explanation is rooted in Greek mythology. Morpheus (no, not the Morpheus from the Matrix) was the god of dreams, also known at the messenger of the gods. He had the unique gift of influencing mortals’ dreams, and as such, the Olympian gods used him to relay messages and prophecies to kings and heroes and anyone they wanted to mess with. Many images of Morpheus depict him in human form, which calmed his targets, and with wings on his back, which I suppose aided him in reaching those targets.