I’ve been lucid dreaming (or what I would’ve just called “dreaming” until I was 16 and learned that most people don’t naturally lucid dream) for as long as I remember, and there was always a consistency to them: I could fly whenever I wanted, most dreams would start in my bedroom or in one of my classrooms, and Kevin, Lanie, Martin and Louise were my friends. And I could always find them, whenever I wanted. I just had to look for the bright blue door.
I met them for the first time when I was twelve. It wasn’t a particularly special dream. I was skipping class and trying to find something fun to do. Strolling down the hallway in a school that was somewhat familiar but a little ‘off’ from the real thing, I saw a blue door in between the standard classroom doors I was familiar with. Intrigued, I poked my head in, and saw Kevin and the group for the first time. They were all seated together around a small table in what looked like a pretty cozy room.
They perked up when they saw me but kept their composure, like I was a deer that they didn’t want to startle.
Kevin: Hey! You’re not, uh, interrupting anything. Feel free to check out the room, if you want, my man.
I saw the others shoot Kevin a weird glance, before they resumed looking at me and trying their best to seem welcoming. Having been lucid dreaming for this much time, I’d developed a pretty good gut about things, but I’ll be honest: this group was hard to read.
I walked in and scanned the room to find pretty much everything I loved. There was a candy wall, an N64 with an extensive gaming collection, a huge movie collection with a large TV (for the time), I could go on and on… it was exactly what a young me would’ve loved to have had in a room in my real waking life. But alas, it was still pretty fun to check out in a dream. I hung around for a bit scoping out the room. I could tell that they were whispering about me but were trying to keep it low-key.
This is probably a good time to mention that they were all adults. All of them looked to be somewhere between their mid-thirties and early-forties.
I had my quick tour of the room and decided to leave.
Kevin: Feel free to come back anytime man! We love to chill here.
I could sense a collective groan from the others he was seated with. I made my way, and as I closed the door, I could hear one of the others say “You’re trying way too hard!” under their breath to him.
From that point onward, regardless of where I was in my dreams: flying in space, running down the school halls, at a bonkers fun amusement park, somewhere in my house, or getting chased by a bunch of vicious witches in a haunted town I’d accidentally stumbled into, I would always see a bright blue door somewhere in the action. And so I kept stopping by.
It might sound weird to say, but as a kid who always lucid dreamed, having a consistent and cozy place to go to where things were relatively stable, and where all of your favorite things were, was actually pretty appealing. Lucid dreams are still pretty unpredictable and bananas, even if you can control some of the happenings, and so I guess you could say I was pro “Blue Door”.
Hanging out with adults seemingly three times my age was weird at first, but there was something weirdly special about Kevin and the group. They made me feel safe whenever I had the chance to see them. In waking life, I was a pretty awkward and lonely kid, so having a consistent group of pals to talk to, even though they talked kind of weird and were somewhat hard to relate to, was always nice.
While it’s hard to remember exact quotes of conversations we’d had (you know how dreams are), I’d visit the blue door room most nights. Most of the time, the conversations would go like:
Lanie: So how was your day today?
Me: Good, I guess. I’m doing okay with my classes.
Martin: Are you worried about failing your classes?
Me: Uhh, kind of? Not sure.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think they were (unsuccessfully) trying to play therapist with me so that I’d trust them more. While their questions were weird, I found the group to be pretty endearing. They gave me a place to hang out, after all. And dream video games were sometimes much much cooler than the real-life thing, so there’s that too.
It took a pretty good while for them to start asking their other questions. I’m talking months. They started sneaking them in slowly, usually just one or two at a time.
Lanie: What’s the sky look like for you? In your real world.
Me: Uhh. Blue. Duh. Is that a trick question?
Lanie and the group would laugh.
Lanie: That’s funny! And is there anything else in the sky?
Me: Uhh, the sun? The moon sometimes? Airplanes?
Lanie: Interesting!
Most of the time, they’d laugh and nod, but sometimes I’d see them write notes after we were done our conversation (I’d catch glimpses at times when they thought I was distracted playing video games or skateboarding in the room). Just dream characters doing weird stuff, right?
I did think it was weird that they knew there was a “real world”, so I tried not to linger on that too much. For them to be aware of the fact that they were figments of my imagination, and for them to feel as accepting about it as they were, was a bit too weird for my adolescent mind to comprehend. They’d usually just go back to asking me about my day after their specific questions about my “real world”, or they’d just let me lounge around while they sat at their table. After all, I think they knew what would happen if they pushed it more than that.
I remember a specific conversation one random night:
Louise: What does everyone do when nightfall occurs?
Me: Nightfall? What?
Kevin: Like, when the sun goes down.
Me: Oh? Like, night time?
Louise: Yes. At the… “night time”.
Me: …. What do you mean by “everyone”?
Louise: Well… what does everyone do?
Me: I’m not sure? I think everyone’s different? My parents usually want me to come home before it gets dark.
Martin: Because…
Me: I dunno, because it’s dark. It’s just kind of a thing parents say.
Louise: Do your parents go out when it’s dark?
Me: Well, like, yeah. People go out still. Adults and stuff. Dinner. Movies. Sometimes we go to movie nights together. I also have sleepovers sometimes with friends.
As I continued talking, I started hearing a rumbling. The room slowly started vibrating, and I felt this weird skin-curdling feeling all over my body. The team looked tense, but Louise kept pushing. She wasn’t hiding the fact that she was taking notes, either.
Louise: So, when it’s dark outside, people still choose to leave?
Me: Yeah? Is that weird?
The rumbling got even more intense. It was the first time in a while that I felt unsafe in a dream. I saw Louise gearing up for a follow-up question, but Martin quickly intervened.
Martin: How was your day?
Me: You already asked me that.
Kevin: Well, we’d love to know again!
I let the weirdness of them repeating their questions linger. The rumbling slowly came to a stop. I saw the group’s collective sigh, and just tried to forget about it.
The visit to the room that night was particularly weird, and I think they all noticed it, so they played it low-key for a while. Most of my visits after that in the coming months were filled with the standard fare of “how was your day”, “anything interesting happen” sorts of questions. That weird rumbling thing didn’t happen again during those hangouts, which was relieving.
A few years had passed, and adventurous 15 year old me was a bit more curious about this recurring group of adults behind the bright blue room in my dreams. Anytime I’d find the door in the middle of a dream, I’d spend a few minutes pressing my ear against it to see if I could hear them talking about anything. Most of the time, it was really incoherent. Not another language I didn’t understand, but really big words that they’d never use in front of me when I was in the room with them. I could never really make them out, but words that still stick in my mind are “coordinates”, “emergence”, and the one that I always heard them use the most when I wasn’t around, “timeline intervention”. In case you’re wondering what “adolescent me” thought at the time, I was convinced that my subconscious was one smart S.O.B. who was taking me on for a wild ride.
This was also around the time that I started developing manners, as it would so happen. So I opened one of my dream visits to the room with what I thought was a harmless question:
Me: I never ask you guys. How was your day?
They all looked at me, stunned. I could tell Kevin was covering when he said:
Kevin: Good! Nothing too strange. Right guys?
They all nodded. It was here that I saw the weirdest thing. I saw that Louise was holding back tears.
A light rumbling began. Martin took her aside to the corner of the room and comforted her. The rumbling slowly dwindled down. Kevin and Lanie tried to play it off but I knew something strange was going on in my subconscious.
It was only a few weeks later that Lanie asked if I could do them a quick favor. I could tell, when they asked, that there was somewhat of an urgency to this request.
Lanie: Do you have binoculars?
(Keep in mind, she pronounced it like “bye-no-que-lars”)
Me: Binoculars?
Lanie: Yes. Those.
Me: Uhh… I don’t. But I can get some?
Martin: Let us know. When you have them. In your real world.
And so I figured, what the hell? In my real, waking life, I had a little bit of spending money. And so 15 year old me decided to purchase some binoculars. My parents thought it was cool that I was getting a hobby outside of sports (they’re both academic types), so I withheld it from them that a group of adults in my dreams were having an impact on my purchasing choices.
I went into my dreams, awaiting further instruction from my dream pals, but I wasn’t able to find the Bright Blue Door. The next night - same thing, I had some bonkers off-the-wall crazy dreams, but no Blue Door in any of the madness. This went on for about a week.
Finally. I saw it again. It was a super mundane dream. I was walking around a warped dream version of my local mall, and I saw the door amidst the stores. I have to admit, it was relieving. These awkward adults had become a part of my life at this point.
I went in, relieved to see them. Needless to say, they looked a little stressed out but were relieved to see me too. But… it did feel like they were a little bit out of character.
Lanie: Please tell me you got the binoculars?
Me: Yeah. I got them.
Lanie: Okay, so it’s probably best you don’t hang around this room too long today.
Me: Awe, why? It’s been like a week guys, I thought we’d–
Kevin: Please. Please. Listen carefully. As a favor to us, can you watch the skies with your binoculars? And this part’s really important. Catch the sky from different angles. You’re looking for four bright stars in a diagonal line across the sky. Very bright. Brighter than the other stars. You can’t miss them.
Me: Uhh okay, I guess I can do that.
The rumbling starts up. Fuck, it was always the worst feeling.
Kevin: Sorry. I promise we’ll be more normal next time. And hang out longer. You should go on with your dream. We’ll speak more when we see you next, okay?
I nodded and left the room. And went off with the rest of my dream.
Waking life was weird from this point forward. I honestly felt like I was entering a negative headspace which was permeating into my dreams. Nonetheless, I kind of haphazardly looked around with my binoculars from time to time. Occasionally I’d give it a good ol’ college try and really try to find a line of bright stars, but it pretty much always felt like I was kind of forcing it. Never really found anything close to what they described, beyond the standard smattering of constellations.
It really felt like my mind was going haywire a bit. I mean, telling me to scan the sky with binoculars instead of a telescope? The fact that I would’ve been able to see the sky pretty clearly without binoculars anyways? etc. etc. I knew it was all in my head, but it was at this point that I took the whole ‘blue door room’ thing less seriously.
And just like that, the room was gone. Right around the time I turned 16, I had my first prolonged hiatus from the room with the blue door in my dreams. Maybe I was just growing as a person and having a recurring place in your dreams was just a weird phase of life? Maybe realizing the whole thing was silly made it disappear? Who really knows?
I naturally got much more invested in the internet at this time (2005). Did some googling about a diagonal line of four bright stars close together and I didn’t really find anything. I also googled around about dreaming of a recurring room with a blue door (I googled other colors as well), or a recurring cast of people that always show up in your dreams - anything and everything about perfect consistency between different dreams.
It was eerie. There wasn’t a whole lot about this topic that I could find online.
For the few testimonials people posted online about experiences that were in the same general universe, they were vastly different from anything I’d experienced. I’d never really given it proper thought before to this extent, and in hindsight, the whole experience was starting to feel a bit unsettling. The consistency between dreams where I’d visit the room and hangout with Kevin and the crew had gotten to the point where we could reference conversations we’d had weeks, even months ago. It was the one part of my dreams that had the consistency and throughline of waking life. And I’d just assumed that this was likely a totally normal phenomena for all people.
Life went on. I scanned the sky for that diagonal line of bright stars from time to time. I’d kind of shake my head every time I did it. It was just a weird series of dreams, and I needed to move on.
Three years passed. Three full years.
Over this period, the consistency of my dreams becoming “lucid” had also dwindled. I tried not to think about this aspect either - it still felt like I had lucid dreams much more often than the average person. But they were less now, and that was okay.
I missed the group sometimes, despite the weirdness of it all. It wasn’t fun to think about having a uniquely strange potentially paranormal experience specific to yourself, but when you spend years hanging out with a group of folks every day (even if they’re just figments of your subconscious) you naturally build some sort of connection.
And so, I had a pretty strange mix of feelings when I saw that bright blue door again. In a dream that I just happened to be lucid in. I can’t remember what the context of that particular dream was, but the sight of that door shook me.
I made my way to it slowly. I pressed my ear against the door, eavesdropping for the first time in a long while.
Now, I wasn’t a brainiac, but some of their adult-speak was making a bit more sense. Some of the buzzwords I’d already heard before, but then…
There was some discussion of various world events. Some I knew had already happened. Some I was unfamiliar with. It almost sounded like they were yet to happen. They discussed elections with specific names (as one example), and spoke candidly as if these things were a done deal for them. I held myself to trying to remember the specifics long enough to write them down when I woke up - more on this in a bit.
I opened the door.
There they were, Kevin, Martin, Lanie, and Louise. I was older now. And the weird thing was… they were too? Maybe I’d never noticed their subtle aging in my dreams when I was seeing them daily, but it was clear now. And they didn’t look great.
Despite that, they smiled to see me. And it felt real? Truly genuine. And I smiled back.
We talked for a while and caught up. They asked me about my day. I didn’t ask them about theirs (true manners, I guess?), and I sort of lounged around for a while, like old times. I didn’t want to bring up anything serious if they didn’t want to. But I guess at some point, they had to ask.
Kevin: Did you end up looking at the sky?
Me: I… did. Quite a lot actually. I didn’t really see anything.
Kevin looks at the others and nods. Lanie starts taking notes, like old times. Not hiding it. I kind of snickered.
Me: This is weird guys.
Lanie: We know.
Kevin: And uh, do people still go outside? At night?
Me: Yeah. They always have. And still do. I go a lot now. Privilege of being older, I guess.
Lanie: That’s good. That’s good to know.
Lanie continues writing.
Kevin: And, uh, this is gonna sound a bit weird, but… what city do you live in? Where people go outside at night and there’s no diagonal line of stars.
I hesitated. I know it was a dream, but the question felt intrusive.
Me: Are you guys real?
I forgot how much I hated that rumbling. The room shaking - the relics of early 2000’s stuff I loved getting thrown about the room. That unsettling “unknown” feeling crawling up your back. It came back as I asked that, and I regretted it immediately. They looked at each other, worriedly.
Lanie: If you trust us, and know us now, whatever we are. Please say your city.
Kevin: Please.
They all said please. They were desperate. I was afraid. What the fuck?
I did the thing that both seemed reasonable because it was a dream and unreasonable because this was a weird fucking situation - I told them the city I lived in.
They were so relieved. I remember a few of them crying. It was kind of a blur. They wrote some notes and starting talking amongst themselves - I don’t think they were trying to ignore me or anything - just that they were focused on some sort of breakthrough.
I can’t recall exactly what they were talking about, but the jist of it boiled down to them knowing something concrete. Something about a city, a year, the state of the sky and what happens at night? Seemed like it was enough information for them.
Me: What is this for, you guys?
The rumbling hadn’t subsided. They looked at me with what felt like sincere human gratitude.
Kevin: We thank you, friend. We thank you so much. It sounds like nothing, but knowing this gives us something.
The rumbling was intensifying enough that it felt like I was gonna get knocked out of the dream or something. They were whispering amongst each other again. They turned to me.
Lanie: A final favor. Tell the world about the diagonal line of stars. Four stars close to each other. Burning much brighter than usual. Very, very visible. Draw attention to it. They have to know. They can’t miss it.
I started stumbling away from them. I don’t know why but I felt mortified. They kept saying thank you in this really emotional way. I felt afraid of them for the first time. I stumbled out of the room and woke up immediately. I didn’t scream, but I wanted to.
The next few weeks, I could barely sleep. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to see that fucking room. I was afraid they’d show up in the real world. I was afraid they’d find me. I was afraid I’d broken some sacred separation between the world of dreams and our waking life.
I was afraid I’d start seeing the same bright blue door in the real world.
I was afraid that something fucking sinister was going to happen. Like I’d given up a human secret to something non-human.
Like I’d brought on the invocation of some fucking demon.
It was a bad few years. I was able to skirt on by with having a “normal” life, but barely. I wanted to check myself into a psych ward. I wanted to tell people I needed help. I needed some fucking help. Was this in my head?
I tried to forget it. But those fucking events they talked about when I last saw them and was eavesdropping… I’d written a list of them down from the ones that I could remember (and for the ones I couldn’t fully I still wrote some random keywords here or there), and like clockwork, they happened as the years went by. Some of them were predictable enough that I think my subconscious could’ve just guessed them, but others were fucking specific… and mundane, and random? I’m talking relatively minor incidents around the globe, from natural disasters to elections in major countries that I knew next to nothing about. Random technological advances… Key words of things that didn’t exist before that I wrote in a misspelled fashion based on how the words sounded phonetically. Logically, this all wasn’t coincidence. There was more than enough there to confirm that, somehow, my subconscious had communicated things to me that there was no reasonable way for me to know.
I tried not looking at that list, but every now and then curiosity would get the best of me, and Google was there for me to confirm things in real-time. This was real. Fuck.
It took longer than I’d like to admit for me to finally get past all of it. Maybe six years until the thought was fully gone from me? That even if something genuinely supernatural did occur to me, that it wouldn’t harm me or influence my life in any way.
I was able to skirt on through university with mediocre-ish grades, but I was ultimately able to develop a career. And have a life. And a long-term partner.
And we’re here now, in the present.
Lucid dreams? Nah. Never. Thing of the past.
Traumatized by the whole ‘Bright Blue Door’ thing? Nah. Creepy, supernatural shit happens from time to time. It was what it was.
I have a life to live and I can’t be arsed to think about the implications about the supernatural. I’ve had enough of a run-in with it. So, really, it wasn’t in the cards for me to make this post.
Until last week.
Last week. October 13, 2022.
I was in a non-lucid dream. Can’t really remember what it was about. But at some point, I turned a corner, and I saw a bright blue door. And maybe by association to a different time, or I don’t really know (“reality checks” are a thing in the lucid dreaming community, so maybe it was something like that), it triggered me to become lucid in the dream.
There it was, in front of me. After what? 14 years? Would I be the dumbass who opened it again to create another paranoid spell for my waking life?
Yes, yes I would be. The truth is, as scary as the whole ordeal was, I was at least a bit curious. And at this point, it felt like my neurons had been zapped from years of anxiety. I was desensitized.
I opened the door. And the room was basically the same. An N64, collection of movies, candy wall, the table in the middle. Nostalgia.
Lanie wasn’t there. Neither was Martin. Or Louise. Just a disheveled, miserable-looking Kevin. It looked like he’d been crying.
He saw me, and for a brief moment, he lit up. I saw him smile. That “actually human” smile. It didn’t undercut his misery by much, but it’s something that’ll stay with me forever.
Kevin: It’s nice to see you again.
Against my better judgment, I sat across the table to sit with him.
Me: It’s nice to see you again too. You know, this whole thing has been very weird.
Kevin laughed. And kind of cried.
Me: How was your day?
Kevin: It’s been bad. My life has been bad.
He looked at me sternly. For the first time, it felt like he was really talking to me as himself.
Kevin: It all gets very bad. We weren’t able to stop it. Those… beings. From the (air quotes) stars. They’ve gotten most of us.
No rumbling. But that same sinking feeling.
Me: Gotten most of you? Like… they’ve killed people?
Kevin laughed. I wish I could describe the laugh. Not maniacal. Not sad. Like… the laugh of someone forty floors beneath what you’d think rock bottom was.
Kevin: We’re a stupid species. We think in binaries. Alive? Then dead. We convince ourselves it’s brave to accept that death is pitch blackness and you cease to exist forever. What a comforting thought right? That you can get out of this situation. But it’s fairytale talk. We can’t escape. There is so much horror beyond life or death. So much we can’t know.
Me: What does that mean?!
Kevin: Exactly what I said.
Me: You have to be specific.
Kevin laughed.
Kevin: I’m ready to go. I know they’re going to locate me soon. I don’t want to be alone when they get me. Will you stay with me?
Me: Are they gonna get me too?
Kevin: No. They can only get me. It’ll be in my waking life.
Me: I knew it. I knew you were real. I knew you were fucking real.
The rumbling began, but I didn’t care. I don’t think Kevin cared either.
Kevin: We were trying to find a way to change our circumstances. We’d found a way to communicate with the past. But we had no control over the mechanism. Where it went or who it reached. Time or space. We have very little knowledge of the past. Most of it’s been eradicated. Most of us are gone.
The rumbling was stronger than it’d ever been in my life.
Me: What year are you in? What year are you from?!
Kevin: You’ve got many good years, still. Be happy, and watch the stars. Pay attention. Remember the knowledge when all of you are not connected.
Me: What if we can still change the future? Like the butterfly effect?
Kevin laughed again.
Kevin: Maybe for another timeline, however that all works. But me, here, the real me right now, this is my only life and my only existence. I am Kevin. And they’re going to find me soon. They’re aware of threats to their existence, across all of time and space. And things beyond time and space. We’re smaller than ants. It’s why we could only talk so much. Why we could only talk sometimes. Or else they would’ve found us.
(I said something here that was super important but I genuinely can’t remember what it was.)
Kevin: I don’t want to be alone when they get me. It’s beyond death. I don’t.. I don’t mean to -
(he started crying here)
It killed me this guy was apologetic on the cusp of something this awful. It’s weird, but I ended up getting up from the table and I held him while he was still seated. The rumbling continued and he didn’t let it subside. He kept bringing up specific things and asking me random specific questions, and the rumbling kept on getting worse and worse, worse than it’d ever been before.
The whole thing became a blur at this point, but I remember there was a point where he was just gone and I wasn’t holding him anymore. The room was still intact. I was sad and mortified and confused and just… yeah.
Since then, I’ve been trying to lucid dream intentionally and I’ve had some luck. I haven’t seen the room again since though. I’m holding out hope I can see him again.
I have so many fucking questions I wish I asked him during that last visit. I’m also working hard on just… general memory stuff, in case there were any useful tidbits.
Naturally, I just have a skin-curling feeling about everything. I watch the skies again when I can. Life is so routine that I’m shocked this hasn’t possessed 100% of my attention since it happened. But today has been a bit hard, so for those who made it to the end, thank you for the free therapy.
For my old friends from the room with the bright blue door: I hope this can change things, somehow.
A final piece of housekeeping: I tried to organize the dreams and conversations neatly, but dreams are fucking weird. They’re immaterial and random and kind of unpredictable, so it’s really really hard to recall the exact wording and flow of specific conversations. Sometimes conversations were a mix of words and strong feelings. I tried to recall as much as I could and tried to quote whenever things were more concrete memories, but it’s very very hard to provide anything like “exact quotes” from anyone. Figured that’d be clear from the jump but just wanted to reaffirm that.