Research case · Transformation
Turning ghosts into meatballs
Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study
I was not lucid from the beginning, and I do not know whether the experience can be considered lucid because it was a lucid dream within another dream. I was alone in my father's house, and paranormal events began occurring. At a certain point, overwhelmed by fear, I remembered that I was inside a dream and that I could change what was happening according to my will. I therefore transformed the "ghosts" into meatballs. However, within the dream, this episode was itself another dream. In other words, after that moment was over, I "woke up" and described what had happened, but in reality I was still asleep and still dreaming.
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 S1.5
- 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
- Father · House · Ghost or spirit
- Feelings
- Loneliness · Fear · 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.
Father
Was this your own father as you know him, or a father-like figure? Was there something unsaid between you?
Jung · Objective and subjective level
Jung suggested reading a dream figure twice: as the actual person, and as part of yourself. A dreamed father may be about him — or about your own sense of authority.
C. G. Jung, “On the Psychology of the Unconscious”, Collected Works 7
Confucian classics Classical text
Confucius, growing old, lamented that he had not dreamed of the Duke of Zhou — his model and spiritual forebear — for a long time.
Analects 7.5
Psychoanalysis Depth psychology
The night after his father’s funeral, Freud dreamed of a notice reading “You are requested to close the eyes” — a dream he connected to duty and self-reproach.
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. VI
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
Ghost or spirit
Did you know who the figure was? What did it want from you, and did it speak?
Greek epic Myth & scripture
The spirit of Patroclus comes to Achilles in sleep, looking and sounding as he did in life, and asks to be buried “with all speed” so he can pass the gates of Hades. The dead appear in dreams with a request.
Homer, Iliad XXIII (Butler trans.)
Chinese chronicle Classical text
The Zuo Commentary records that the Marquis of Jin dreamed of a great ghost with hair trailing to the ground, who beat its chest, leapt about, and broke through the gates. A shaman confirmed the dream, and the Marquis died that summer.
Zuo Commentary, Duke Cheng, year 10
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- The shop assistant who had moved England · before 1911
- Two boys said: move your bed Jiankang (Nanjing), China · c. 480 (Southern Qi)
- My mother lacked a pair of gloves London, England · 29 June 1667
- Tiny sleep-spirits with war-clubs Great Lakes region · traditional (recorded c. 1820s–1850s)
- The shower glass that causes no injury Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study
- Two ghosts plotting to enter my father Taiyuan, China · Tang (undated)