Effects/Nightmares

[benedict]

the image of johnny borrell in terrible pain, battered and weak is amusing.

[Ana Yorke]

the image of johnny borrell in terrible pain, battered and weak is amusing.

Don't mess with Gob almighty, you daft twat.
He's a great guy and I like the fact that people tend to hate him just because he's not a dim-witted cagebird like Kele Okereke, or stupid, brainless Luke Pritchard.

WHenever you think about Johnny as being anything else but a genius he is, think about this-

DON'T HATE THE PLAYER. HATE THE GAME

[benedict]

Don't mess with Gob almighty, you daft twat.
He's a great guy and I like the fact that people tend to hate him just because he's not a dim-witted cagebird like Kele Okereke, or stupid, brainless Luke Pritchard.

WHenever you think about Johnny as being anything else but a genius he is, think about this-

DON'T HATE THE PLAYER. HATE THE GAME

now that's very amusing.

[Ana Yorke]

Xexexe

I aim to please.

[Solias]

pre-HoL dreams that are HoL-like

dreams

I would like to relate two HoL-like nightmares from my childhood that have recurred (not in the past year though and surprisingly not while I read HoL).

The first one I call the "infinite crayon nightmare". I'm in a general store just browsing through isles. I happen upon a shelf and want to take a closer look at something (I never remember what it is). Accidentally, I knock over a box of crayons spilling their contents onto the shelf. I start to clean it up by putting them back into the box but I keep finding more and more of them on the shelf and the box never seems to fill up or look complete. This continues until I wake up.

The second one I call the "grand mall". My parents drop me off at what looks to be a regular mall. Sometimes I simply appear inside it. At times it is made of marble, and other times there is a lot of glass (transparent ceilings at the least). There's just one apparent problem. The walls are impossibly high and the open air that this mall contains is massive. As if it contained all of the earth as far as the eye can see and all of the sky I can see. No one seems bothered by it though. There are regular stores and mall features. I walk through constantly looking up and about in awe. But sometimes I am here when it is closed and I cannot find my way out. I learn that there are hidden corridors in the back of the stores that connect them all, but still there is no escape. At times when the mall is operating I try following people out, but I find the mall loops into itself and when I think I have left, I turn around to find myself somewhere else. Corridors leads to more stores and restaurants that I am absolutely certain are not part of the mall, they have windows yet I have never seen these places from the outside.

Many of my dreams involve driving or hijacking vehicles only to end up at this mall. Sometimes I walk into a store in this mall and have the misfortune of knocking over a box of crayons....

post-HoL

sleep

When I first started reading of Leaves I was already sleeping irregularly. But it turned to insomnia. No nightmares or anything like that, just plain old insomnia. Then oddly enough, one night, after having read the section about how everyone's symptoms (whichever theory Zampano cited has having that exposure effects list) pretty much disappeared when Navidson returned to the , I was tired and slept soundly at a reasonable time and would wake after 8 hours or so. I've been sleeping well ever since and have finished the book recently (which is why I'm reading here).

effects

The first time JT described how to imagine the invisible stalker always behind us, I tried it, and I felt it. The only last repercussion seems to be that I feel masses of shadow sometimes while I lie in bed. Although I have been sleeping soundly I've done so with a light completely on in the room a few times.

dreams

I've only had two particular dreams that I can recall since finishing of Leaves. As I best understand, these seem almost like disturbing rewards for finishing the perilous book. I went to bed one night particularly feeling alone. I dreamt all night of speaking to my ex-girlfriend who seemed to comfort me though I didn't understand what we were talking about (I felt like a third party observer at times).

The other I had just today. It was a rather *cough*"inappropriate"*cough* dream involving my ex again and but also her older sister who I used to talk to. I awoke thinking all of JTs adventures had corrupted me just a bit because I did smile about it but at the same time felt so incredibly disturbed.

[tothegrave]

I've had a dream where I'm lost in the halls of a house, and I think it came from HoL.

[Navi]

I never had any nightmares or "effects." Except when I moved here to art school, I decided to read it for the second time, and we ended up doing a lot of stuff with blue squares (my favourite footnote is the blue square) and talking about spaces and whatnot.

[AngryJohnny]

Effects

Some nights, while I was up reading HoL... You know, those nights where you just can't put it down, no matter what you need to do the next day or how tired you are, I'd get so scared I'd have to call a friend who had read it and calm myself down. Mostly the parts describing how incredibly massive the great hall is, and the stairs, and the growling... I don't get scared easily but it just got to me. And the presence that Johnny Truant feels, I've felt that. I hate it, it's an awful, terrifying feeling, and no matter how much you tell yourself there's nothing there, in the back of your mind you keep thinking there's no way there isn't. I felt that long before I'd even heard of the book though.

Dreams

When I was nine I had what I consider to be two of my strangest dreams, and only after reading this thread do I see how they relate to the book.

In the first one, it's my birthday party. My family is there, along with the family that would later become my stepfamily in real life, but at that time I had no idea. We go into this hotel, and up some stairs. To the right is a yellowish wall, and the whole room is a large oval, with a hole in the middle and a wood railing. The carpet is pink, and the ceiling is white. To the right, everything fades into black. There are patches of carpet with no floor underneath, and when you step on them the ceiling above you falls. I saved my brother, then hid under a table with my two dogs who were in cages while everybody else escapes. I finally make it down the stairs, and this is where it gets ridiculous. I'm trying to get out the door, but giant Eiffle Tower shaped bubble wands keep blocking my way. I finally trip over one, and look up to see construction workers using jackhammers on the roof of the building. The wall fading to black reminds me of HoL, along with the feeling that the room had no end.

The other one was set at an AA meeting... much of my childhood was spent in those, so it was relevant. My brother, two best friends (James and Samantha) and I saw my cat, Cokey (named after cocaine), running up the stairs. So we begin to climb the stairs, and it takes ages to get to the top, but we finally end up in this library. Oriental carpeting, dim, yellowish lighting, and it's only the size of an average living room. However, there's the feeling that the room itself is huge, but only the shelves block us in. There's a table in the middle, and Cokey disappears. We walk out, and we're on a ledge that extends about five feet past the back sides of the book shelves. There doesn't seem to be a ceiling or walls, and everything fades to black except for the stairs, but we can't see the bottom. By the time we get to the bottom, I'm in tears and shaking, and we see Cokey and follow her back to the AA meeting. Relevance to HoL? The stairs, of course. It was terrifying.

As I was reading the book, and since then, I've been having nightmares about addiction and self-destruction, and even a few dreams where I've fallen in love with and had my heart broken by Johnny Truant. I've also had dreams that involve running through dark hallways, feeling as if there's something chasing me, and hearing that growling... only to end up in my backyard (which is surrounded by woods), in the middle of the day.

[hollowayechoes]

no nightmares to report, but as i began reading it i distinctly remember bringing it with me everywhere, even if i wasn't planning on reading it where i was going. as i worked my way through it i found i was clutching it closer and closer to me, and once i finished i banished it for a few weeks to get it away from me. any time i've gone back to it the same thing tends to happen, but not nearly as intense as the first time i read it.

[moo]

I also became obsessed with the book and carried it around everywhere with me.

I had the nightmare of wandering around in the dark hallways as well. I would see a figure - faint, blurry, dimly lit, - move somewhere ahead of me, and wake up terrified, soaked in cold sweat, and have to turn on all of the lights in the and read something else for a while until i could go back to sleep.

the nightmare book sure messed up my sleeping habits.

[mikelisse]

Does anyone have any vivid experiences with lucid dreaming they could talk about? Anyone ever been able to make themselves fly, anything like that?

I have had many a lucid dream. In my dreams I can often notice that I am dreaming and I will explore. It is usually farmiliar places, but with a twist. Like I will be in a room with the same paintings, and colors as my room, but it will be arranged differently. That is when I usually realize it and I seem to take control; I explore and have only once been able to soar from different plateaus [in one instance I stepped outside of my house and was on a mesa in the desert]. Anyway, after watching the movie Waking Life I actually do certain things. If anyone has ever seen this you know what I mean [ie. flicking the lights]. If you haven't seen this movie I highly suggest it.

[fatwoul]

I have had many a lucid dream...

If you lucid dream a lot, you might want to talk to a doctor or something. Lucid dreaming screws up your REM sleep, which is important in keeping you sane. I read somewhere you can take suppressors which help you get REM sleep if you feel you are becoming sleep deprived.

[senbdib]

A few mornings ago, I had this weird half-awake lucid dream type thing where I saw a group of people sitting around in a room. Unwittingly, I started to overanalyze every single aspect of the kids and their lives, drawing insane conclusions and connecting non-existant dots, and the feeling of getting twisted up in all of that bullshit got so extreme that I kept rousing myself from it. Every time I lay my head back down, the feeling came back to me. Note that this happened at least five times.

I feel like I've had lots of feelings like this since reading HOL. Maybe it's just since I started trying to figure out HOL, and realizing that I could make any possible theory work if I thought about it.

[timlarsson]

I've had a dream... which I havn't had in about a year now...

It starts with me, sitting on a chair, with really red curtains around me, and I cannot move. I try to, and I'm not tied up, but I still can't move.
Loud really evil laughter is filling the whole place, two voices... you know, like the classic "scary" evil: "Bwoahaahaahaa"... I whisper to my self "what's going on? I must get out of here" and then try to scream... but nothing comes out of my mouth....

then my mind goes blank... and now part two starts.

I am at home... Though it's not any home I ever had, but I still know it's my home. I walk out, it's chilly... go towards some small house, like a trash station, or a bicycle garage... walk through the door, and end up down town.
I walk a bit more, go into a shop and end out in some mall (which is NOT what I went into).
there is a café.. and in the ovens are dolls, melting dolls... screaming real loud, with a static noisy screech... and men in tuxedos are hanging from the celing... (hanged as in... executed)....

I panic, and start to run out... going through the door, to end up in a harbour... running towards a cute little boat, with three melting dolls chasing me... I'm going inside... and now I am coming out from the first shop I went into... Like if nothing had happened, I walk towards a black house, which glows red from the windows. (the same red as the curtains). (A SIDE NOTE: In the album art for Chiodos - All's well that ends well; there is this black house, with red insides and bleeding dolls! about thirteen years later than I had my dream for the first time).

I walk inside the house and it is ten times bigger on the inside, and no windows can be found here... (and no, I'm not copying house of leaves now).
everything is red... really glowing with red... I walk up a long staircase, and am about to go around a corner: Now I know there's a doll walking towards me... I know it, but still I get so scared my heart skip some beats... and it is REALLY frightening... even though i know its there...

running straight forward to find a door.. which leads out of the house, and a red curtain falls over me the moment I step outside the house...

(I think maybe the first part is the ending... or something?)

and on later days, There's a slight modification to the dream...
After the stairs, and the doll.. I run into another room. where there's one more stair, which leads up to the children's room (somehow... this is my own house (?)) and my children (babies) are laying in their beds there... but when I come to them I see they've been killed... they are really really killed... brutally... and when I rais my head I see a melting doll standing on a shelf, smiling, screaming, with a bloody screwdriver.... then I start running, out through a dorr, and then the curtains, like before.

I fucking hate that dream, And I've had it since I was about 5 years old...

but at the same time I like it.. cause it is quite a good story...if I just try to write it a bit better...... :)

[hello?]

Ever since the remastered full-color edition came out, I've had to dream about even rarer editions of HoL with, like, orange pages and additional material. Some day...

[Ruzinus]

The other day I was walking through previously unseen parts of the tunnels, driven underground by the cold. The tunnels started changing. For a silly moment I wondered if they would just keep going and going and changing and changing. Eventually of course I exited them. I went through the snow instead of the tunnels on the way back.

And I thought that I had left the house.

[benedict]

The other day I was walking through previously unseen parts of the tunnels, driven underground by the cold. The tunnels started changing. For a silly moment I wondered if they would just keep going and going and changing and changing. Eventually of course I exited them. I went through the snow instead of the tunnels on the way back.

And I thought that I had left the .

aaahh... the joys of acid.

[The_key_looker]

True thing I started seeing insects that weren't there after I started reading again.

[allansianadventurer]

I can't imagine daylight. Whenever I try it's just darkness.

[fearful_syzygy]

True thing I started seeing insects that weren't there after I started reading again.

Formication again, eh? Seems kind of common around these parts.

[The_key_looker]

so it would seem.

[Ruzinus]

aaahh... the joys of acid.

No no, I mean the way they were constructed changed as I went along.

[Tremula Metacarpi]

I had a dream about an unusual last night. It was an old two story that had several new additions to it. The rooms constantly shifted around but only those that consisted of the old in the center- the new rooms never moved.
I don't really know how to describe it but it was a very beautiful (expensive) . Very creepy though, I found myself running away from the shifting rooms only to end up in the same rooms over and over. There were a lot of odd characters roaming around the too...old maids and butlers who were like ghosts except not...spectral. And there was a man, a previous owner still stuck there watching the shifting walls from afar.
I kept trying to wake up to forget the dream but as soon as I would fall back asleep I would find myself back in the .


I haven't had a dream like this in a while...must be because I'm reading HoL again.

[leafdarking]

When I first got the book I dreamed about wandering through a dark house until I came to a room where a bunch of corpses were piled on each other. All I really remember of it was the huge mass of them with thick, pale blue/mottled black arms and legs sticking out at all sorts of odd angles. I was camping with my mom in the middle of no where and woke up to her snoring and the tent shaking because of the wind- it scared the living shit out of me, I thought the tent was growling and about to shift.

[sutrix]

I had my first one. And as far as the ones in here go, it was neither a nightmare nor very strange at all.

I was on a bus with my father and girl I don't know. They were sitting side-by-side, and I was standing in front of them. The girl was reading my copy of The Fifty Year Sword, except that she was turning the pages carelessly, and had marked her place in the book by folding the top corner of a crisp page.

I snatched the book off her, about to say something about handling books with care, but then I looked at my father, who was reading my copy of the Remastered HoL, and he had folded the book upon the page he was reading, holding it in one hand and resting his chin upon the other.

I went ballistic on him, of course. Something like: "I'd told you to handle this one with care, Dad!" When I took the book from him, a page--p. 95, to be precise--fell out. The front collage was unaffected. The book, it still smelled new.

We got off the bus with me holding both books at my side to find us parked on the docks of a huge ocean liner. Colored blue and white. There were two entrances, a staircase running up in the center, and one off to the far side. The one in center, I climbed it to the top, but the top most step was twice as tall as me, and I couldn't make it aboard the ship. I climbed down, took the other set of stairs (which the others had taken long ago), and got on the ship.

And almost instantly, an old woman popped up in front--no pretty wrists or ankles on her, sorry--and asked if I was hungry.

What's strange is, I spoke with my father in English. I never speak with him in English.

[modiFIed]

You need to find the girl and do her.

The old woman was your grandmother, the one who makes all those tasty meals.

You want to kill your father.

[fatwoul]

Or he could just do his father, which we all know is what he wants to do anyway.

EDIT: Oh, and I recently had a dream where people were getting skinned and dismembered. The following night I had what seemed to be a very realistic dream where I was in prison. I don't remember doing the skinning or dismembering myself, nor do I remember any interim dream in a courtroom, which seems a little unfair.

[saevitia]

I've had a couple HOL inspired dreams.

In one of them I was Navidson wandering around the corridors of the . That one was terrifying! I eventually met up with Karen and she wasn't supposed to be there, and I had this awful feeling that something was closing n on us.

I've had a few other scary dreams of just wandering around dark 'house' corridors where I'm totally alone and something is coming after me.

The most recent dream I had like that was the least scary. because there were like 6 other people there with me, even if they did keep getting killed. Unusually, the monster was visible and real in this one; it was in 2 separate pieces, but one monster, this shambling grey tentacled thing. (I think I've been reading too much Lovecraft)

Also, like 'hello?' I had this one dream where I found some pages o HOL that I'd never read before, and I had this big revelation about the story because of them. But when i woke up I couldn't remember what they sid o what it was. :(

[Shadow Girl]

Nightmares
When I was a kid my mother had given me a bunch of Spanish dolls, each dressed in the costume of a different country, but my favorite was the spanish girl and I used to take her out and look at her a lot. I used to get this dream where I would be playing with her and I would trip and let her go and she would fly from my hand and though a mirror. I would go through the mirror to find her and find myself in the reflected room with no way to get back through the mirror and so I went to my door in the room and there would just be this blackness where the living room was supposed to be and I would walk into it and find that I was in a long dark hallway and the room I left dissappeared. So I would try and walk down the hallway but I never got any closer to the end and then I could hear my mother calling me, screaming for me actually, and I would start running and running but the hallway just kept going and going. Then the light at the end of the hallway starts to get smaller as I run toward it and I start to scream for my dad but no one would come for me through the light and it would go away and I would be left there clinging to the doll. Then a growl would start from far away and get louder and louder and progress into a full blown roar so loud that I couldn't hear my own scream...then I'd wake up. (All of this when I was 5 O.o)

There was another one that I used to get a lot where I was in my best friends apartment and the power went out in a storm. Everything goes pitch black and then a light flickers on; we go to the light and find a door that we open to see a fire blazing in a fireplace (needless to say this was not anywhere in my friends apartment) there are also a sofa and chairs in the room. We settle into the room and talk about how the hell we could have possibly made it to this impossible room. I start to doze off in the room and am jerked awake by some unplaceable sound somewhere else and find my friend missing. There is a candle light on a table in the middle of the room and I take it and leave the room to find my friend. I find myself in what seems to be an infinitely large house and the sickening echos of my footsteps. I finally find a room that seems to be electrically light from the inside and I go in there and the door slams shut behind me and I am left in a room drenched in blood and there are bodies hung in blue plastic from meat hooks dangling from the ceiling and I hear someone sharpening something in the distance. I find this person who ends up chasing me through this room with a meat cleaver and this room doesn't ever really seem to stop expanding till the man has caught up with me and blocks me in a corner. He swings at my head and I wake up.(This stopped just before HoL though...huh)

Effects
I noticed the colors RED BLUE PURPLE YELLOW and GREEN are the colors my family painted our new house. Each room, except my brother's, is painted in one of these colors (mine's red). His room is the only one with no ceiling light and the source of what I'm sure is an HoL inspired dream in which I'm talking to my brother through his door when it turns black and he starts screaming from what sounds like far away and I run through the area where the door is to try and get him but can get out because everytime I turn areound everything's different and my brother starts to scream like he's being hurt. The creepiest part is when his screams stop mid scream and I can't hear anything anymore...then I wake up.

I can't help but carry the book around with me all the time...even when I don't think about it I notice it it my book bag or next to me somehow.

[juppu-kun]

I dreamt something weird last night.

I dreamt I was in the country side of a weird city and people came looking to kill me and to be able to escape, i had to hide with the cover of the night in a small river of filth, sewers or whatever it was. I could actually smell the horrible scent (scent of rotting stuff experienced by Johnny?)and I could feel the water on my face and I could also wake a monster (minotaur?) who lived beneath the earth just by disturbing the calm surface of some clean water inside a well (well = Navy's dream?) in the backyard of someone's house.

It also often happens that in the morning, my pillow is wet with sweat but i'm totally dry...

As for some effect, I'm more daring and I don't really take trouble from people anymore. I want to change my ways and meet new people. In fact, the book turned me for the best actually....
Thank you Danielewski!!!!!!!!