Lucid dreaming
Lucid Dreamer Uses an EEG Reader to Turn His Dreams into Image and Soundscapes
Colin Harrington has weird dreams. “So what?” you might be thinking. “That’s like saying you saw a weird French film. Or like saying you discovered a weird sea creature at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone has weird dreams.” But you don’t understand.
Ever since he was small, Harrington has had very intense lucid dreams. These dreams last all night and leave him exhausted in the morning, and unlike many sleepers, he remembers all of his dreams, which sometimes leads to moments where he has to ask himself “Am I remembering something that happened, or something I dreamt?”
As an adult, Harrington went to a sleep clinic to see if anything could be done about his chronic exhaustion. With his head haloed by an EEG reader and two technicians watching through a mirror, Harrington went to sleep. The results: Colin Harrington has weird dreams.
Unlike a normal sleep cycle that moves from REM to deep sleep and back a few times through the course of the night, Harrington slips into REM and stays there, dreaming for hours, without slipping into the restorative deep sleep cycles. The sleep technicians told Harrington that his brain had been as active asleep as it would have been if he’d stayed up all night watching TV.
Besides the physical issues, Harrington just wanted to be able to talk about his unusual experiences with dreams. All too often, however, people would respond by immediately discounting his experiences. “Everyone has weird dreams.” It was hard for him to get people to take him seriously.
