Have you ever been asleep and realized, “Wait a minute—I’m dreaming!”
With a little bit of work, some people are able to turn this realization into a “lucid dream.” This is where you’re asleep and dreaming, but maintain a significant amount of control.
From here, you can do pretty much anything you want. Most first-time lucid dreamers use the opportunity to just fly around and have a good time. Some, however, want to test the limits of their dream world. As a recent TikTok video shows, this can produce some pretty scary results.
What Happened In Her Dream?
In a video with over 1.8 million views, TikTok user Shiv (@shiv_happens) recounts a bizarre dream she had—and the frightening message that came along with it.
According to Shiv, she’s a frequent lucid dreamer. Recently, she had a lucid dream in which she was in a restaurant that appeared similar to a ski lodge. The restaurant had around 60 or 70 people.
Once she realized she was dreaming, she decided to have a little fun and try talking to the people present.
“I stop at one particular table. There’s a … young man with dark curly hair, and he’s talking to someone,” she recalls. “I saw a watch on his hand. I stopped at his table and said, ‘Excuse me, do you have the date and time?’ He then turns to me, looks at me, and just says, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’”
“In that moment, literally everybody gets up, and they walk out the door,” she continues. “I’m sitting here like, ‘Hey, where’s everyone going?’” And no one talked to me. Everyone ignored me, and they left.
From here, Shiv says the storyline of her dream changed.
What Answers Have Other Lucid Dreamers Received?
The internet is filled with lore about all of the “bad” things that can happen if you ask someone in a lucid dream for the date or time.
Across social media, there are lucid dreamers who claim to have actually had frightening experiences after asking this question.
“Don’t recommend, I asked in a lucid dream last night while in a car full of people, they all turned around and looked at me and it was like a glitch. They then drove the car into a tree and it went black after that,” claimed an internet user.
“I asked this guy what time it was in a dream and suddenly he got all crazy and started chasing me!” exclaimed another. “I was trying so hard to wake up because I knew it was a dream, but when I woke up I was just in another dream of my room. It was so f—– creepy. I felt trapped.”
However, many other internet users received totally mundane responses from dream characters. One user claimed they were simply told it was August 20th, 2020. Others reported non-answers or a simple “I don’t know.”
In these threads, some users speculate that users only have “scary” experiences as a result of asking this question due to the lore itself. This means that, by hearing the scary stories about asking the question, they’re effectively tricking their brains into giving them a scary experience.
Why Can’t You Ask Someone For The Date And Time In A Dream?
To be clear, you absolutely can ask someone for the date and time in a dream. The real question here is, “Why can’t anyone in my dreams give me a straight answer?”
Studies have found that, in dreams, we’re pretty good at doing activities that are, in simple terms, mindless. These activities include basic, everyday things like walking and talking.
When we have to get into specifics, however, our brains get a little garbled. This is why things like clocks or actions like writing rarely appear in dreams—and if they do, they’re often messy or inconsistent.
It’s possible that asking someone in a dream to directly confront this issue could lead to frightening or confusing experiences, as experienced by Shiv. It’s equally possible that asking the same question to someone in a dream will lead to a stunningly normal answer.
Both of these results are simply your brain acting in ways you might not understand—not necessarily your brain trying to convey something secret or hidden.
@shiv_happens Storytime: I asked someone the date and time in my dream. #luciddreams #dateandtime #luciddreaming #scarytiktoks #dreaminterpreter
♬ Spooky, quiet, scary atmosphere piano songs – Skittlegirl Sound
BroBible reached out to Shiv via email.