When I dreamed of my birthtown and being with family down there, I could smell cigarette smoke, the smell of the air as it is not as clean as where I currently live, and the smell of bus exhaust. All in the same dream. But maybe I am weird compared to some people.

My dreams are like movie reels that I just float along with. I don’t know but I think I am just over sensitive to being there. I’m imaginative so maybe that means that I am to a point that my imagination from my dream is my reality. I don’t know but I love dreaming.

It started out out on a covered deck of a ship, and I was running my hand along the polished wooden railing, and holding it out, looking at it against the setting sun reflecting off the water, smelling the sea smell. It was… not my hand. It was sticking out of a dark suit sleeve, and it was clearly a man’s hand.

I skipped to being in a cabin on the same ship – with dark wood paneling and that that rich oiled smell of polish. I looked in a mirror and saw the dream-me face (a guy with a Mediterranean complexion), and then someone popped in and said we had to go.

I skipped again to being on the deck of the ship, and it was loud with hissing and people yelling and that coal smoke smell – like the one you’d smell when a steam-engine train is in the vicinity. (Anyone who’s gone to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio knows what I’m talking about). It was dark and the ship was sinking by the bow. I was on the port side, somewhere between the middle and the end. There was a gap in the railing where a lifeboat had clearly been, and I figured my only chance was to jump.

So, I jumped, and felt that awful stomach-dropping feeling, and then hit a cold wall of water. I remember swimming for awhile, and seeing an old man bobbing nearby, looking resigned. I could see the lights on the ship, but it was dark by me, with lots of splashing and yelling and cold. I remembered feeling angry that I wouldn’t get to make it to my birthday party at a pub that my friends were planning when I got to Buffalo.

So, I went to sleep (in the dream), and woke up (in real life), feeling incredibly freaked out and disoriented (and cold).

What’s weird is that from time to time, when I’m walking over this one bridge where the road/sidewalk cross over a train track, when there’s a train going by carrying open top cars full of coal, that coal smell brings back memories of this really really freakish dream, and I get all cold, again.

There was nothing special about these dreams, and while I remembered them at the time, I don’t really remember them now (in detail). I don’t remember ever smelling anything though.

I was never able to make myself be in this state, but I was always aware when it happened. I could control the dream once there, but couldn’t get there on my own.

Interestingly, this hasn’t happened in a long time. Actually, it stopped about the time DVDs took over. Since the dreams always rewound like a VCR tape, I wonder if it is connected.

I’ve kept a dream journal off and on for about six years now. I’ve found my dreams to be fairly consistent with one another in a few areas. Most are monochromatic with either blue or tan hues, most occur without sound, and it’s very rare that I have a nightmare or even a dream with a really stressful situation.

So naturally the one dream where I could smell was completley opposite of my “normal” dreams. Complete with vivid colors, deafning sounds, and it completley scared the crap out of me (still does).

It started in the mountains of Colorado where a bunch of friends and I lit a bonfire in a cave. It’s here where I can remember smelling the distinct scent of burning wood for the first time in the dream. The fire gets out of hand and starts burning the forest. Then it gets odd, while in the cave the ground starts shaking and the mountain is coming down around us, caused from the forest fire we just started.

Next thing I know, I’m overlooking the Ciy of Boulder from highway 36 watching this terrifying brillant red sky caused by the forest fire engulfing the mountains behind it. Without warning I hear a deafning roar and watched in horror as the entire eastern face of Longs Peak erupted into a mushroom cloud of lava, ash, and rock. All of which came hurling down onto Boulder and us.

Suddenly it’s quiet, I’m sitting in our cabin, and can see a crowd of people on the porch looking at something. My parents were throwing a party with their friends to watch the lava flow by the cabin because they were told it was safe. (This without question is something my parents would do in real life if they could). It was then I could smell wood burning and much more distincly than before. I quickly knew why, the lava had shifted and our whole place was ablaze. While I tried to drive me sister and I away while our car melted into the lava.

I was in Germany at the time, visiting family and friends. The dream was so real, so vivid, and so utterly terrifying, that I had to get up and check the internet to make sure it hadn’t happened.