Scarey dreams; significant spoilers for both Metroid Prime 4 and The Endless (2017 film)
**tldr** - i dreamed about metroid prime 4 awhile back. my dream ended up like 60% true, because it featured a creepy ice laboratory, which showed up in prime 4. wow!
# Tunnel vision events - rapid onset Fucked Up Horrors
**tldr** : i have a cool type of nightmare sometimes, which i almost had in my metroid prime 4 dream
> I'm seven or so, I woke up on the couch. I'm looking at the blinds, and motes of dust seem to dance on them. Like an optical illusion, I can look at them as if they're rapidly ascending or descending. I look around the room, and soon, I'm looking down at myself from the ceiling above. This can't be right. I scream, but there is no sound. I can't take in a breath. I call for anyone to help me, but it isn't happening. I can't turn my view from where I am. Everything is black and white. Something impossible is happening and I can't fight it. I can't turn my head. I wake up- it's night time, and I scan the lights outside and rimming my door frame, confirming that was all a dream.
I admittedly take some delight in nightmares. These are genuine moments where the whole of my soul is gripped in some kind of malaise, terror, or dread. Dreams are dope and nightmares are neat- I'm sure I'm not alone here.
But I also have many sleep phenomena. I have sleep paralysis, weird lucid stuff around that, exploding head syndrome, and so forth. (These aren't like the nipples I thought I had! These sleep phenomena are more certainly real.)
But also a class of nightmares that I will refer to as "**tunnel vision events** ". I don't know how common these are, but they're particularly fucked up and gnarly. They're far more intense than sleep paralysis, but mercifully more short lived.
> I'm ten or so. I'm walking around the back yard I share with my neighbors. K----n is there, maybe with her sister, we're running around. Most of the dandelions are white and fluffy, but one is yellow and heavy. I pick it up, and find a granny smith apple in the middle. I bite into it, and underneath the bite is Adolf Hitler's face. I can't break eye contact. Everything is grayscale now, just like his face, and I can't turn away. K----n screams-- I just bit into a poison apple, and I am about to die.
>
> (This is incredibly goofy, in retrospect.)
These "tunnel vision events" end with a rapid spike in anxiety, and me waking up with a racing heart, being short of breath. I suspect I'm simply holding my breath in my sleep, and having a rapid-onset nightmare as a result?
But in every one of these, my dreams take on a fixed camera angle. I can't turn away from this thing I'm looking at. All the details except this one aspect fade away. I am filled with terror.
> I'm twenty, I bought my first cell phone. I'm laying down in bed, in my off campus apartment, holding it. It look at the screen, but notice it's cracked. I'm dismayed- this was a very expensive purchase for me. Then, a static image appears on the screen. Paused for a beat, but then it belts out a blaring buzz, bright and screaming. I can't turn away. I wake up.
>
> I would go on to have many instances of sleep paralysis in this apartment. I would go on to hear a sound like this again, in real life when a tree collapsed on power lines and caused powerful, buzzing arcs.
There are some things which remind me of this class of nightmare, but the "tent scene" from The Endless - a _very good movie_ - captures everything about it.
# Metroid Prime 4 and acoustic environment design
Metroid Prime 4 does something Halo 4 did very well: They have a lot of very subtle sounds in their environments, which heavily reward players who play with headphones. And so I did so.
When I visited Ice Belt in Metroid Prime 4, I was so rewarded, but because this was eerily close to something I dreamt about years ago.
In fact, it's so similar, I feel that I have to write down what I _dreamt_ about, to differentiate from the newer memory of having had played the game.
## Metroid Priime 4 (dream edition)
In the dream, I'm playing Metroid Prime 4.
The graphics are _so good_. (This is not a surprise- Metroid has always punched above its weight in terms of graphics).
I'm in an ice laboratory, with a three-room circular structure around a central chasm which runs deep and dark down the middle. (To Metroid fans, this is very similar to the map structure in Torvus Bog.)
The hallways are long and ambling, with deep blues and dim lights. The abandoned laboratory tells tale of a horrifying discovering. The game has started to border on creepypasta and is genuinely unsettling, and I'm very cautious when turning any corner. This long circular hallways is uneasy- it's _all one long corner_! You are always peering ot a shadow.
The reason is that there is a Presence hunting you, and if you make eye contact with it, it will immediately lock you into _something_. (I am not sure what it was I feared in the dream)!
It can lurk in any shadow. Any turned corner is a potential death sentence. It's psychologically horrifying to be in that dark, frigid, circle.
It _felt_ like a Tunnel Vision Event was impending. It's hard to explain.
Scary! Tense!
## Metroid Prime 4 (the real one)
In Metroid Prime 4 (the real one) you visit a location very similar to this: A frigid laboratory, with an important circular structure, telling the tale of horrifying discoveries.
There is a tiny bit of psychological horror in the game. In lore, the Lamorn tried to save resources by giving themselves psychic powers, but those with psychic powers instead transformed into horrible monsters. This was irreversible, and so they were put into stasis.
Near the body of one of these monsters, you start to pick up this gaping, horrifying static. The deceased body of the Griever is either transmitting psychic audio,
I was _immediately_ thrust back into that dream! Wow!
## im going to go sleep now
