DREAM GALAXY

Research case · People & kin

The blue telephone in a game world

Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study

I was dreaming something strange. I was inside the world of a game I often play, holding a blue telephone that was shaped like a tube, and I was talking on the phone with a friend. Suddenly, I realized that the situation I was experiencing was not real, but the realization lasted only a very short time and I did not become fully conscious. In other words, I understood that I was in a dream, but it made no difference: I felt disoriented, and within a few seconds I had forgotten it. It was a very superficial awareness. The trigger was the unrealistic scene. I did not perform a reality check in the dream, but I was talking on the phone with someone who was taking part in the same lucid-dream experiment as I was, so perhaps that also helped me notice what was happening.

Original text — Virtual reality as a metacognitive training tool for lucid dreaming — Supplementary Materials, Andrea Signorelli, Francesco Tormen, Bruna Dal Bianco and Nicola De Pisapia

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Source
Virtual reality as a metacognitive training tool for lucid dreaming — Supplementary Materials — Andrea Signorelli, Francesco Tormen, Bruna Dal Bianco and Nicola De Pisapia, 2026. Supplementary Materials, Reports of Lucid Dreams, Report L4
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Record type
Research case
Place
Not stated · Italian
Date
Date unknown · contemporary study
Uncertainty
Moderate — De-identified lucid-dream report. The English text is the study authors’ translation from Italian; the calendar dream date is unknown. Chinese title and translation are AI-generated editorial drafts, not human-verified.
Imagery
Friend · Time · A stranger
Feelings
Confusion

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Friend

How long since you last saw this friend? What were you doing together in the dream — something you used to do?

Dream research Dream research

The “continuity” view in dream research finds that most dream characters are people we know, and that dreams tend to carry on our waking relationships and concerns.

G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)

Tang poetry Literature

Du Fu, not knowing whether his exiled friend Li Bai is alive, writes that “my old friend entered my dream, knowing how long I have thought of him”.

Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (759)

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Time

Did time in the dream run fast, slow, or stop? Were you late for something, or waiting?

Early dream research Dream research

Ellis devoted part of a chapter to the “apparent rapidity” of dreams and the odd sense of time in them, arguing that a dream often feels long because it is remembered like a described picture.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IX

Nineteenth-century case Dream research

Alfred Maury reported dreaming a long drama of the French Revolution ending at the guillotine, and waking as the bed’s headboard fell on his neck. Freud and others debated how so much could fit into a moment.

Alfred Maury, Le Sommeil et les rêves (1861); discussed in Freud (1900), ch. I

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A stranger

Did the stranger remind you of anyone, even slightly? What did they want from you?

Jung · Shadow, anima and animus

Jung read unknown figures as possible parts of the dreamer: a same-sex stranger may carry the shadow; an other-sex figure what he called the anima or animus. These are offered as lenses, not labels — and his gender framing reflects his time.

C. G. Jung, “Aion, ch. 2–3”, Collected Works 9ii

Homeric epic Classical text

In Homer, gods and dreams arrive in borrowed shapes: Athena visits Nausicaa disguised as her friend; Zeus sends a Dream to Agamemnon looking like Nestor.

Odyssey VI; Iliad II

All perspectives on a stranger →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images