Dreams have tremendous impact on our lives. Have you ever had a dream that frightened or inspired you? Recently, a kidnapper took my youngest daughter at gun point into a Lifetime Fitness. I desperately wished to rescue her, but I was afraid that she’d be shot if I tried. I reached for my cell phone to call 9-1-1, but it wasn’t in my pocket. I located another phone, but had no idea where I was. Once I found the address, I tried dialing 9-1-1, but there was no dial tone. In a panic, I woke up. I was thankful that it was just a dream, but it tormented me for hours. Why do we dream such things? That thought led me to investigate dreams further and here is what I found…

She lived on a remote farm, owned a pet pig and hoarded books from her favorite author. She was his biggest fan and when she finally met him, she told him so: “I’m your number one fan!” She said bizarre things like “He didn’t get out of the cock-a-doody car!” Her name was Annie Wilkes from a book entitled “Misery,” by Steven King. I’ll never forget when the movie came out. There’s a scene in it where Annie hobbles Paul with a heavy sledge-hammer. It shocked me! I saw the movie a second time just to watch the audience’s reaction to that scene. I sat on the right side of the theater and as Annie raised the sledgehammer, I glanced over my left shoulder just in time to see the entire audience jump in unison as it struck home. After falling asleep in an airplane, Steven King dreamed of a fan kidnapping her favorite author and holding him hostage. When he reached his destination, he remained at the airport and wrote the first 50 pages of Misery.

While suffering from a high fever, James Cameron dreamed fitfully. In his dream, a gleaming figure of doom dragged its broken body from a fire using kitchen knives. It was a skeletal, metallic monster with a rictus smile and glowing, ember eyes. That dream led to the unforgettable character—the Terminator.

The year was 1892. Albert Einstein lay sleeping in his bed dreaming of sledding down a snow-covered mountain. As he accelerated, he soon approached the speed of light. At that moment he looked toward the sky. The appearance of the stars astonished him. He spent much of his career trying to understand that dream. Thirteen years later, it resulted in the theory of relativity.

Nikola Tesla was once an employee of Thomas Edison but left to follow his own ambitions. Years later, he found himself competing with Edison for the first major power project in the United States: the massive hydroelectric power plant at Niagra Falls. He won the contract and because of that, his invention, AC power, impacts our lives every day. Why did Tesla win that contract? What advantage did he have over Edison? Tesla was passionate about dreams. He taught himself how to dream lucidly, and used that ability to create a dream laboratory in which he experimented with his ideas while fully awake.

As I read about Misery, the Terminator, Einstein and Tesla, I wondered how dreams impacted my life. It amazed me to discover that almost every story, poem, or invention I’d ever conceived originated in a dream. Dreams play a big role in my novels Detour from Normal and The Road to Amistad. Each novel has several dream sequences based upon real dreams. In some cases, they foreshadowed events that I hadn’t even written about yet, and I didn’t realize that until I read the entire manuscripts for the first time.

My troubling dream about my daughter being kidnapped drove me to learn more about dreams. What I found is that whether they frighten or inspire us, it is difficult to deny the power of dreams.

(Image courtesy of Paul v2.0, Flikr Commons)