Hello, my name is Lucas Smith. I’m from Net County DE, USA. And I’m a survivor of a missing persons case back in 2001, and my friend’s dad was a cult leader
You may not have heard of “The Dream Circle Cult”, and I wouldn’t blame you. Net County is a small town in the middle of nowhere. Yet me and my friends would start something… regretful. Before I begin my story, you as the reader should know that I’m the only survivor of this case. There were 7 of us in total, 5 went missing… and I’m the only one left to tell the story. The other two went into witness protection when I was found. I don’t know how to explain what happened. I’m terrified of my own memories because I know there is a real threat and danger to dreaming. So please, bear with me as I recount my memories… it’s been a long time.
The year was somewhere in the early 90’s, me and my friends were over at my friends house, her name was Zoe. We all used to play this game called “dream circles”, where we could run around in a circle around a single person, then once the person in the middle fell asleep, we all slept as well. And then we and then we all dreamt. All of us… together somehow. The purpose of this was so one person had a dream, and we all joined in and enjoyed whatever was happening. And the terrifying thing was… anything that happened within the dream, somehow affected us in real life. Xavier, for example, had constant dreams of food. Ranging from anywhere between a literal all you can eat buffet to Candyland. And his most common dream was one of an infinitely tall restaurant that went on forever. And in those dreams whenever we ate, we were full when we woke up… it’s a miracle we never had nightmares. I would always get anxious one of us would have a nightmare as there was no telling what kind of dream a person was having unless we went inside the dream.
I remember that feeling… the feeling of going into that dream like state with the fear of an upcoming nightmare. I was never afraid I would have a nightmare, but that it would be someone else. I’ve always been afraid of that… never knowing what was going on in someone else’s mind. Usually that stuff never affects you… but in my case, it did.
What was once an innocent game was twisted by a power hungry man. Remember how I mentioned a “cult” before? Well here’s where it’s important to remember. When we were all about 13 years old, Zoe’s dad started watching us… a lot more closer than he normally would. I remember one night when we were all sleeping over at Zoe’s house everyone had fallen asleep but I was still awake. I stared up at the ceiling for nearly half the night when my gaze was broken my a man peering into the room from the door. I jumped up and stared at him, my heart raced as my mind tripped over itself, unsure of what to do. I wanted to scream, to hide, to move out of the way. I just wanted the man to stop staring. Suddenly he walked out of view yet I didn’t feel safe. I knew that he was in the house and that he could’ve hurt us. If only at the time I knew who it was. I told my friend Jackie about it and she told me of a time she was at Zoe’s house, and it was just the two of them and the dad
Jackie had told me that one day she wanted to spend the night at Zoe’s house. The reason being that Jackie’s parents were in the middle of a divorce and got into a really heated argument. She couldn’t be there for much longer… she says she tried defending her mom as best she could but just couldn’t handle it that night. So she called up Zoe and snuck out of the house. When she got to Zoe’s place, Zoe had prepared a small make-shift bed for Jackie to sleep on. After talking for a bit the two girls had fallen asleep Jackie recounted a nightmare she had of her own father murdering her mother and backing Jackie up into a corner. Jackie had said it felt so realistic and thought it was all a dream until she woke up to see Zoe’s father looming over her. His large frame blocked the moonlight and her own body froze up, she thought to herself “this is how I’m going to die”. Jackie closed her eyes, hoping that Zoe’s father didn’t see that Jackie was awake and would go away. But he watched Jackie for what seemed like hours. She told me how she remembered him reaching his hand over her forehead and feeling his breath on her face. She held her breath in that moment and kept herself from crying. She was afraid of what would happen. And luckily nothing did, at least nothing she could remember. The only thing that happened that night was her forcing herself back to sleep and leaving before Zoe woke up.
I never told Zoe about the experience, neither mine nor Jackie’s. Especially not after what her father did. I couldn’t look at her in the eyes anymore. But it seemed the reason her father did all that was for his own gain. He studied me and my friends. Taking in every detail and trying to document every time we had fallen asleep. You see, Zoe’s father was the leader of a failed cult, known as, Dream Circle’s. I know it seems like this is going all over the place, imagine how shocked we all were when we saw the commercial of her father promoting the cult. He claimed to have found a way to “escape reality” and “live your Dream life”. Like it was lucid dreaming on crack. This grown man believed a game we played as children could actually be real. And he was right. Yet he hurt so many people in the process. Eventually the cult was shut down and he was put behind bars. But our friend group was never the same. I couldn’t talk to Zoe… Emily was afraid, Nathan wanted nothing to do with us, Jackie kept silent, Xavier was upset that Jackie said nothing and Zella… she wanted us to come together again… but who knew that would be the last time we all met…
I’m going to take a break and post the rest of what happened later… too many thoughts are resurfacing. I promise I’ll explain everything… but in the meantime… just remember to never dream again…