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Just something I did as a bit of fun. These are some of the monsters I've encountered in dreams over the years. I've been a lucid dreamer from the age of about 11 and one of the first abilities I developed was the ability to wake myself up by twitching sideways, so in the main the monsters who do appear are not existentially terrifying. That said, on occasion my subconscious throws up a particularly nasty little idea, which I am often able to appreciate in situ.

The Changelings - one of the few monsters with a discreet, original gimmick which I remember from before I was regularly dreaming lucidly. The Changelings look and act just like your family members, until you get close enough, whereupon they will unhinge inhuman jaws and unfold triple-joined arms to squash their victims like a constrictor. In the dream I was unable to see well; everything was dark and cloudy, which may suggest that the Changelings weren't *that* convincing in normal light. What I principally remember was the triple-joint arms, which were utterly horrifying; this suggested a sort of upright-toad build. I also added the detail that the clothes are actually part of their skin, changing colour and texture like a chameleon.

The Strangers - another shape-shifting enemy, this time from a fairly recent dream. I was fully lucid and able to appreciate the horror-movie esque dynamic of the dream; I and a group of friends found ourselves in a series of halls laid out like a bazaar. We encountered copies of our own group who seemed as puzzled as we were and tried to stick together and keep to 'our' group. Then, one by one, members of the group started acting oddly. They would ask the same question ('How deep is the ocean?', etc.) again and again, before lunging at and attacking us with small knives. I found I was able to 'look through' their appearance and see that they were really, well, Strangers, who were using some kind of illusion (or telepathic) ability. At this point all the Strangers began mobbing us from all sides, dragging each member away. At this point I pulled out a pretty typical power I make use of - weaponised telekinesis - and started slicing them to bits with my fingers, but reflected on the horror inherent in the idea that you don't know if the one you're killing is a member of the original group or a Stranger. Finally, I and one remaining friend managed to get outside, but I look back and realise that despite grabbing their hand the whole time, they are now a Stranger; clearly having pulled them away at some point. And looking around, I realise I am now in the World of the Strangers, entirely populated by Them. The whole time I was admiring the horror-movie-like pacing and twists being introduced; this dream is a good example of why I believe there must be a part of the brain that during a dream is 'consciously' developing the environments the dreamer encounters that is not noticeably 'missed' even by a lucid dreamer; a Dungeon Master, if you will, who responds to the decisions made by the dreamer and bends the dream in a different direction.* The Strangers were very non-descript-looking, generally bald, beige-ish and quite short, and wearing a sort of grubby medieval tunic.

The Sideways Man - a fairly minor antagonist from a much longer dream involving a post-apocalyptic world overrun by Triffid-like plants that impale people on thorny 'limbs'. After falling in with a group of archaeologists, I am led to a building which I realise is my own house. Deciding to flee from the head of the archaeological expedition who is clearly Up To No Good, she sets the Sideways Man on me to stop me telling people that it isn't really a thousand years after the apocalypse but only a few years. The Sideways Man is this really unsettling, child-sized creature that moves by turning through ninety-degree angles, becoming thinner and flatter as it does so until it disappears, and 'unfolding' somewhere else. When it catches you, it encases you in an invisible box that slowly fills with a dark liquid to drown you. Fortunately 'I' (playing the role of a character I am calling the Antikytherean) am rescued by another member of the expedition, who has developed psychic powers after being stung by a triffid.

The Dead Thing in the Hidden Room - I feel I must have stolen this idea from somewhere as it feels like a story-told-to-children-to-frighten-them. In the dream, I am at the house of a childhood friend, and it gets dark. I am told that when a window pane becomes completely dark, it opens out not onto the scene it looked out on in daytime but into a large, empty, lightless space called the Hidden Room. In the middle of this space is the titular DTITHR. If you leave a window with the curtain undrawn in complete darkness, it will see and begin moving toward you, calling your name in a weird three-track voice (hence why I have depicted it with three heads here). You have only a few seconds to close the window and put the curtain across it to stop it getting into the room. It looked like a big grey spider with humanoid limbs which crawled across the walls and ceiling. In the dream, it was a bit anticlimactic as we barred the window it initially saw, then we remembered there was another one on the other side of the landing (apparently it is equidistant to all open windows, which is pretty horrifying). It got in and we saw it, and then... it went away, and the dream shifted to needing to impersonate a property developer.

Zombies - I've had a fair few zombie varieties over the years; here are some of the most interesting:

- Zombie World. This reality is full of sentient zombies, who overran the Earth years ago and are now back to 'business as usual', wearing latex masks and disguising their smell with aftershave. They trade with other worlds, but people tend to go missing every once in a while; and you should never go there on a full moon, when they go full flesh-hungry; when they hulk out they become much larger and can jump multiple storeys. The dream, bizarrely, hinged upon proving they were zombies by breaking into their stock market and finding the price of latex over time (the spike locating the time of the zombie plague and aftereffects). The zombies who were not sufficiently preserved are locked into small catacomb-like rooms by their more able peers and left to fall apart.

- Blue Zombies. This interesting take on the slow zombie is a virus that dehydrates the victim, turning them into prune-like, flaking, blue-ish zombies (a bit Colour Out Of Space with, I am sure, some of the Silver Age Superman story The Leper From Krypton). Touching just one of the flakes they shed all around them will turn you into one of them. They don't seem that aggressive; part of the dream involved a crime boss who was partially immune - she had one hand which was zombified which she used to kill unruly subordinates.

- Burn-Up Zombies. This is an interesting take on the fast zombie genre. This type of zombie is literally burning from the inside as a virus turns their tissues into energy at an incredible rate. They will run towards the nearest uninfected person with great strength and speed, screaming and destroying anything in their way. Just a touch is enough to transmit the contagion, turning the world into a massive game of lethal tag. Within minutes, the zombies burn up and turn to ash.

- Mortis 'Zombies'. Overtly identified as living humans despite the name, these individuals have been infected with the imaginatively named Mortis virus (one of the few actually named in the dream itself). Mortis radically expands the brain tissues, granting incredible intelligence, but the pressure as the brain cracks the skull open also drives victims wildly insane, and they leak infectious fluids from their eyes and mouth. Their fingers also change into sharp blades and they become extremely violent. Sinisterly, a small proportion of infectees show no symptoms at all except the need to congregate together with other survivors. For these carriers, the virus is airborne and they breathe it out without needing to cough or sneeze. In the dream, Mortis very quickly overran the whole world, and Batman (yup) had to figure out whether to save the species by converting the few remaining uninfected into vampires, succubi, or demons. At this point the dream became a job interview as Batman sat down a member of each species and asked them about the pros and cons of the gig. He eventually decided to turn the human race into vampires, because they could feed on the Mortis infectees in the aftermath of the breakdown of the economy (which seems pretty short-sighted to me, but what do I know?).

I didn't include some other memorable dream villains, only because they weren't really as exciting to draw or as clearly defined in the dream:

The Banshee was basically an old woman in a hospital gown who constantly shrieked. It was unclear whether she had any other powers, but she later apologised to me for scaring me (?).

Old Man Cog is a grey steampunk Borg drone/zombie hybrid who seems to eat the dead. However he didn't seem to be that much of a threat - neither did his sidekick Sword Boy (both these names being made up by me after the fact) who was a giggling dwarf-like creature with a sword instead of a lower body, which scraped along the ground as he walked on his hands.

Gravegen (who I later adapted into a character for Zorian Saga) was a grim-looking, possibly undead cowboy who could break through walls and possibly shoot people (?), but most of the dream was just 'He's coming', 'he's here', and a brief glimpse of him breaking through a wall. The name may be a garbled form of 'Gungrave', a game franchise that does include an undead gun-equipped protagonist.

Charlotte Culham is possibly the only monster-type character to appear in more than one dream, albeit she has never actually appeared in person, only in the first as a foreboding presence and in the second as a skull. She's a powerful lich who will appear in an upcoming 'Wizards of the SRegan dreamverse' piece.

* I have yet to see any actual peer-reviewed research into whether dreams are a.) BigGAN-like 'movies' created by the brain continually guessing what the next 'frame' should look like; or b.) a formal simulation where some part of the brain is describing an actual three-dimensional environment and tracks the dreamer's movements within it. The ability to objects and individuals in dreams to shift 'semantically' (i.e. you gradually realise they are something else rather them actually changing shape) seems evidence in favour of the former, but I have also experienced very clear, crisp environments which feel very formal, right down to being able to noclip 'outside' the pre-prepared area of the dream.

Description

Just something I did as a bit of fun. These are some of the monsters I've encountered in dreams over the years. I've been a lucid dreamer from the age of about 11 and one of the first abilities I developed was the ability to wake myself up by twitching sideways, so in the main the monsters who do appear are not existentially terrifying. That said, on occasion my subconscious throws up a particularly nasty little idea, which I am often able to appreciate in situ.

The Changelings - one of the few monsters with a discreet, original gimmick which I remember from before I was regularly dreaming lucidly. The Changelings look and act just like your family members, until you get close enough, whereupon they will unhinge inhuman jaws and unfold triple-joined arms to squash their victims like a constrictor. In the dream I was unable to see well; everything was dark and cloudy, which may suggest that the Changelings weren't *that* convincing in normal light. What I principally remember was the triple-joint arms, which were utterly horrifying; this suggested a sort of upright-toad build. I also added the detail that the clothes are actually part of their skin, changing colour and texture like a chameleon.

The Strangers - another shape-shifting enemy, this time from a fairly recent dream. I was fully lucid and able to appreciate the horror-movie esque dynamic of the dream; I and a group of friends found ourselves in a series of halls laid out like a bazaar. We encountered copies of our own group who seemed as puzzled as we were and tried to stick together and keep to 'our' group. Then, one by one, members of the group started acting oddly. They would ask the same question ('How deep is the ocean?', etc.) again and again, before lunging at and attacking us with small knives. I found I was able to 'look through' their appearance and see that they were really, well, Strangers, who were using some kind of illusion (or telepathic) ability. At this point all the Strangers began mobbing us from all sides, dragging each member away. At this point I pulled out a pretty typical power I make use of - weaponised telekinesis - and started slicing them to bits with my fingers, but reflected on the horror inherent in the idea that you don't know if the one you're killing is a member of the original group or a Stranger. Finally, I and one remaining friend managed to get outside, but I look back and realise that despite grabbing their hand the whole time, they are now a Stranger; clearly having pulled them away at some point. And looking around, I realise I am now in the World of the Strangers, entirely populated by Them. The whole time I was admiring the horror-movie-like pacing and twists being introduced; this dream is a good example of why I believe there must be a part of the brain that during a dream is 'consciously' developing the environments the dreamer encounters that is not noticeably 'missed' even by a lucid dreamer; a Dungeon Master, if you will, who responds to the decisions made by the dreamer and bends the dream in a different direction.* The Strangers were very non-descript-looking, generally bald, beige-ish and quite short, and wearing a sort of grubby medieval tunic.

The Sideways Man - a fairly minor antagonist from a much longer dream involving a post-apocalyptic world overrun by Triffid-like plants that impale people on thorny 'limbs'. After falling in with a group of archaeologists, I am led to a building which I realise is my own house. Deciding to flee from the head of the archaeological expedition who is clearly Up To No Good, she sets the Sideways Man on me to stop me telling people that it isn't really a thousand years after the apocalypse but only a few years. The Sideways Man is this really unsettling, child-sized creature that moves by turning through ninety-degree angles, becoming thinner and flatter as it does so until it disappears, and 'unfolding' somewhere else. When it catches you, it encases you in an invisible box that slowly fills with a dark liquid to drown you. Fortunately 'I' (playing the role of a character I am calling the Antikytherean) am rescued by another member of the expedition, who has developed psychic powers after being stung by a triffid.

The Dead Thing in the Hidden Room - I feel I must have stolen this idea from somewhere as it feels like a story-told-to-children-to-frighten-them. In the dream, I am at the house of a childhood friend, and it gets dark. I am told that when a window pane becomes completely dark, it opens out not onto the scene it looked out on in daytime but into a large, empty, lightless space called the Hidden Room. In the middle of this space is the titular DTITHR. If you leave a window with the curtain undrawn in complete darkness, it will see and begin moving toward you, calling your name in a weird three-track voice (hence why I have depicted it with three heads here). You have only a few seconds to close the window and put the curtain across it to stop it getting into the room. It looked like a big grey spider with humanoid limbs which crawled across the walls and ceiling. In the dream, it was a bit anticlimactic as we barred the window it initially saw, then we remembered there was another one on the other side of the landing (apparently it is equidistant to all open windows, which is pretty horrifying). It got in and we saw it, and then... it went away, and the dream shifted to needing to impersonate a property developer.

Zombies - I've had a fair few zombie varieties over the years; here are some of the most interesting:

- Zombie World. This reality is full of sentient zombies, who overran the Earth years ago and are now back to 'business as usual', wearing latex masks and disguising their smell with aftershave. They trade with other worlds, but people tend to go missing every once in a while; and you should never go there on a full moon, when they go full flesh-hungry; when they hulk out they become much larger and can jump multiple storeys. The dream, bizarrely, hinged upon proving they were zombies by breaking into their stock market and finding the price of latex over time (the spike locating the time of the zombie plague and aftereffects). The zombies who were not sufficiently preserved are locked into small catacomb-like rooms by their more able peers and left to fall apart.

- Blue Zombies. This interesting take on the slow zombie is a virus that dehydrates the victim, turning them into prune-like, flaking, blue-ish zombies (a bit Colour Out Of Space with, I am sure, some of the Silver Age Superman story The Leper From Krypton). Touching just one of the flakes they shed all around them will turn you into one of them. They don't seem that aggressive; part of the dream involved a crime boss who was partially immune - she had one hand which was zombified which she used to kill unruly subordinates.

- Burn-Up Zombies. This is an interesting take on the fast zombie genre. This type of zombie is literally burning from the inside as a virus turns their tissues into energy at an incredible rate. They will run towards the nearest uninfected person with great strength and speed, screaming and destroying anything in their way. Just a touch is enough to transmit the contagion, turning the world into a massive game of lethal tag. Within minutes, the zombies burn up and turn to ash.

- Mortis 'Zombies'. Overtly identified as living humans despite the name, these individuals have been infected with the imaginatively named Mortis virus (one of the few actually named in the dream itself). Mortis radically expands the brain tissues, granting incredible intelligence, but the pressure as the brain cracks the skull open also drives victims wildly insane, and they leak infectious fluids from their eyes and mouth. Their fingers also change into sharp blades and they become extremely violent. Sinisterly, a small proportion of infectees show no symptoms at all except the need to congregate together with other survivors. For these carriers, the virus is airborne and they breathe it out without needing to cough or sneeze. In the dream, Mortis very quickly overran the whole world, and Batman (yup) had to figure out whether to save the species by converting the few remaining uninfected into vampires, succubi, or demons. At this point the dream became a job interview as Batman sat down a member of each species and asked them about the pros and cons of the gig. He eventually decided to turn the human race into vampires, because they could feed on the Mortis infectees in the aftermath of the breakdown of the economy (which seems pretty short-sighted to me, but what do I know?).

I didn't include some other memorable dream villains, only because they weren't really as exciting to draw or as clearly defined in the dream:

The Banshee was basically an old woman in a hospital gown who constantly shrieked. It was unclear whether she had any other powers, but she later apologised to me for scaring me (?).

Old Man Cog is a grey steampunk Borg drone/zombie hybrid who seems to eat the dead. However he didn't seem to be that much of a threat - neither did his sidekick Sword Boy (both these names being made up by me after the fact) who was a giggling dwarf-like creature with a sword instead of a lower body, which scraped along the ground as he walked on his hands.

Gravegen (who I later adapted into a character for Zorian Saga) was a grim-looking, possibly undead cowboy who could break through walls and possibly shoot people (?), but most of the dream was just 'He's coming', 'he's here', and a brief glimpse of him breaking through a wall. The name may be a garbled form of 'Gungrave', a game franchise that does include an undead gun-equipped protagonist.

Charlotte Culham is possibly the only monster-type character to appear in more than one dream, albeit she has never actually appeared in person, only in the first as a foreboding presence and in the second as a skull. She's a powerful lich who will appear in an upcoming 'Wizards of the SRegan dreamverse' piece.

* I have yet to see any actual peer-reviewed research into whether dreams are a.) BigGAN-like 'movies' created by the brain continually guessing what the next 'frame' should look like; or b.) a formal simulation where some part of the brain is describing an actual three-dimensional environment and tracks the dreamer's movements within it. The ability to objects and individuals in dreams to shift 'semantically' (i.e. you gradually realise they are something else rather them actually changing shape) seems evidence in favour of the former, but I have also experienced very clear, crisp environments which feel very formal, right down to being able to noclip 'outside' the pre-prepared area of the dream.