Originally posted by badgerprints
I still don't have an explanation for my reaction to the picture on the cover though.
I don't understand people who claim to have seen one and not be disconcerted.
If I was to actually see one I think I'd really freak out.
I've never been afraid of anything except heavy artillery and gunfire.
Getting nervous looking at an illustration doesn't add up for me.
Umph. Well, I have a bad problem with hypnogogic/hypnopompic dreams, myself, worse when I'm stressed out. Have always had them. It's familial.
A really bad one - it's hard to tell it from reality. When I wake up, it's sometimes still going on for a few seconds. That's really disorienting.
As a 5 year old kid, I used to have a number of recurring hypnopompic dreams that involved mostly little dwarf looking guys about 4 feet tall, heavy
set, wearing dark brown robes, with big round eyes, really warm dark blue skin and hands sort of like dog feet with fingers. They always had really
great senses of humor, and you just weren't scared of them. They generally were teachers - there was a 'school' in a clearing in the woods near the
house where the other kids from nearby farms and my brothers would occasionally go at night. They always had the neatest toys and gadgets. They
carried this one thing that would let you in and out of buildings through the wall, looked like a flashlight. I remember being fascinated at what was
inside the wall - someone had written something on one of the 2x4s in the wall we went through in my bedroom.
As an adult, it sort of changed character, you still saw little blue guys at times but now it was quiz time. Questions all night long. And
occasionally it was something else, and if it was "greys" it was a bad trip all around.
I used to wonder about it, but my wife (who learned really fast if my eyes were open and I was twitching like a dog to get out of range...) used to
sit with me right after and say nothing was there. I still ended up stalking the house and grounds half the night looking for it. But a few nights she
recorded me having the dream. No abduction, just a really bad night terror.
That being the case, I don't think ANY of it was ever real.
But.
That book you read, they made a movie with Christopher Walken in. And in the movie were little blue guys in robes. They were really, really similar to
what I remembered. There were a couple of other things in the movie that were awfully familiar too, to the point I couldn't watch the damned thing
all the way. I'm given to understand, didn't buy it myself, that his next book involved schools in the woods at night for farm kids.
Now, if it's not real, but others remember the same thing, wtf. I suppose you might be hardwired some way to produce the same sorts of horrors on
command - a lot of people with hypnopompic dreams seem to see the same things, apparently. And I think I recall someone using an induction helmet was
able to cause people to see 'greys' with a button push. I've wondered if it's a racial memory thing, maybe it was Neanderthal vs Greys in our deep
past and we ate 'em all.