Research case · Cities & buildings
Water entering the seaside house
Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study
I was in a seaside house, lying on a bunk bed with my family, when water began coming in through the door and windows. I remembered a previous experience abroad and wondered whether I might be dreaming. I checked the door again and noticed that the water did not come through in the same way each time: sometimes there was a great deal of it, and sometimes very little. I then realized that I was dreaming and calmed down, but I was unable to change anything in the dream and woke up shortly afterward.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- 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, Semi-lucid Dream Reports, Report S1.4
- 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
- House · Water · Gate · Storm · Road
- Feelings
- Wonder · Calm
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
House
Whose house was it — one you know, or one you only know in the dream? Which room did you spend the most time in?
Jung · The house as psyche
In 1909 Jung dreamed of a house whose cellar led down into older and older layers — Roman, then prehistoric. He later took it as an image of the psyche, with the oldest layers at the bottom.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
Phenomenology Philosophy
Gaston Bachelard argued that the house “shelters daydreaming”: the attic and cellar of a childhood home stay with us as places to imagine from.
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958)
Chinese fiction Literature
In chapter 5 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Baoyu dreams his way into the Land of Illusion, a palace of cabinets holding registers of the household’s fates.
Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber, ch. 5
Water
Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?
Jung · The unconscious
Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.
C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.
Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”
Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture
Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.
Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I
Gate
Was the door open, closed, or locked — and did you want to go through it?
Ancient Greece Classical text
Penelope says dreams come through two gates: those through polished ivory deceive, those through horn come true. Even in Homer, not every dream was to be trusted.
Homer, Odyssey XIX
Anthropology Dream research
Arnold van Gennep described rites of passage as separation, a threshold (“liminal”) stage, and return. Doors and gates are where many cultures stage that middle step.
van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909)
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- The island that kept backing away Imaginary sea voyage · c. 170 CE (satire)
- The land of Huaxu Legendary China · legendary; text compiled c. 4th century CE
- Already at the hospital, so no need to go Vienna, Austria · c. 1895
- He woke on the far side of the sea Lanka (story setting) · c. 1070 (compiled)
- A cup that was never empty Great Basin, western US · traditional (recorded 1870s)
- A living globe made of drops Russia · 1869 (novel)