In the past few weeks, I’ve had at least two dreams involving time travel.

The first, I found myself in 1995. It was that strange variety of time travel involving the human consciousness — I inhabited the body of my younger self. Most of the dream, I spent my time trying to convince everyone that I was from the future. I rattled off a few major events — 9/11, etc. — but I couldn’t remember anything specific about that time in our lives that would convince anyone of the truth.

The second, I was in 1985, trying to buy some rare video game or something at a mall. Just good, old fashioned time travel on this occasion  But oh, wait — I couldn’t buy anything, because all my money was from the year 2000+ and no one would take it. It looked weird.

And so I stumbled upon two time travel quandaries: proving you’re a time traveler from the future, and getting along with the past.

Those, of course, were just dreams (or were they?…heh). But they got me thinking about a strange story I saw on Reddit not too long ago.

It was about a man who may have traveled through time and space in his sleep.

Split Perspectives

About a year ago, Reddit user OutofH2G2references (ha) posted the following:

“One night when I was 7-8, I had a bad dream about being old. I went out to the living room to talk to my Dad who always used to play with legos with me when I had a bad dream.

This time, we got the legos out but there was a man in a chair. I went to introduce my self, and to my surprise my dad shooed me away, got out my legos and proceed to talk to the man instead of play with me.

The man and my farther talk for sometime about things I don’t understand and neither say a word to me. It was weird, but I was young and the legos were fun and eventually I forgot the whole thing and went to bed. Never thought about it again.”

- My father stops me from disrupting space-time when I travel back in time.

That is, until 12 years later, when he had a bizarre, though incredibly vivid, lucid dream experience.

“In the dream, I am sitting in a chair talking to my dad about what I have done with my life. He is happier than usual and very interested. In the distance I hear a young person calling for him. He gets up, walks out of the room, and returns a minute later with me as a child and box of legos. Young me approaches me, my dad shoos child me away, young me goes and plays with legos.

My dad and I commence talking about the danger of the butterfly effect and how everything could change if we spoke. He insist we wait until young me falls asleep to continue talking about the future. I then have 2 more similar dreams where I see myself from perspectives of mysterious forgotten people and situations. All with my father, all discussing time travel, my future life, and the consequences of changing things.”

He later asked his father about the strange dream, if it meant anything. Apparently, he had nothing to add…or maybe he was just protecting the space-time continuum.

“…we could theorize that if I am a time traveler in my dreams and he is protecting me from myself, he would probably not tell me how to foil him.”

- [Follow Up] my father stops me from disrupting spacetime when I Travel back in time

Of course, you could chalk the entire experience up to false memories, simple dreams, or something more ordinary. But it’s much more fascinating to consider the alternatives.

I, myself, have had a handful of lucid dreams. The one constant, for me, is that they’re always very difficult to move around in. Something like being underwater, and when it happens I find myself struggling to stay in the dreamworld, to not break the illusion so I can explore a bit. Never lasts for long.

At any rate, Astrology.com’s Dream Dictionary suggests that dreaming about time travel may indicate some kind of “wish-fulfillment,” a desire to relive the past.

But who knows; perhaps there’s something more to our nightly dreamscapes than meets the inner eye.

Have you experienced any strange dreams, lately?

Images courtesy Andrew Beebe and DieselDemon.