'Electrical Night Jester' is a term I created for a very specific types of creature/entity/archetype which seems to be appearing more and more frequently in people's dreams and especially during sleep paralysis episodes.
The effect and nature of the experience is reported as being the same in many personal recollections: both terrifying and almost comically absurd with strong energy harvesting aspects. However, with a sensation of terrifying levels of 'evil' and terror.
Often the sensation is that these dream vision entities are composed of visual static eletricity similar to the 'white noise' on old analogue TVs without a broadcast signal input, coupled with a 'toy like' scary clown sensation.
Often the sensation is that these dream vision entities are composed of visual static eletricity similar to the 'white noise' on old analogue TVs without a broadcast signal input, coupled with a 'toy like' scary clown sensation.
My Own 'Electrical Night Jester' personal dream diary entry from September 29, 2012. Easily the most terrifying dream I have ever had.
Painting of a recent dream by Steven Goggin
A very realistic cinematic portrayal of an Electrical Night Jester style experience in the 1989 movie Communion staring Christopher Walken and based on the book by Whitley Striber.
Not forgetting this guy; Jigsaw. Notice the theme of either spirals or concentric circles seen in many of these archetypes.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
ReplyDeleteCarl Jung
At one point in my life I was much concerned with our perceptions of reality, what we perceive as real, and conversely what we attribute as unreal or fantastical. I even mused about these thoughts and notions on a well- known forum, Salusa Secundus I think it was called.
The problem with this type of collective enterprise is that at some point – an insight into the elite preoccupation with closed systems and entomology in particular I seem to recall - I literally came to the realization that I was the insect being studied.
Now, I hold no grudges and I certainly do not blame anyone in particular. This is just part of the stratified and hierarchical nature of the systems implemented to maintain the entrenched structures of knowledge and power, which coincidently have been in place since the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and beyond even that to the dim recollections of pre-diluvian antiquity and Gilgamesh.
However, at some point even the fool on the hill sees the world spinning round, and eventually the sleeper must awaken.
“Between the poles of the conscious and the unconscious, there has the mind made a swing:
Thereon hang all beings and all worlds, and that swing never ceases its sway.
Millions of beings are there: the sun and the moon in their courses are there:
Millions of ages pass, and the swing goes on.
All swing! the sky and the earth and the air and the water; and the Lord Himself taking form:
And the sight of this has made Kabîr a servant.”
Kabir (1440 – 1518)
Cheers
Hi Thomas,
ReplyDeleteLoving your series.
RE: your request for a database/sortable intake form made me think of the google forms feature for gmail account owners.
you can embed an intake form into an HTML page and ask people to input their dreams into your form - it can have multiple choice questions, radio buttons, free form text boxes etc etc.
it is free and provides sortable output columns, it completely depends on how you set up the form so you might want to have distinct columns for themes, buildings. assorted, daytime/night time friends/strangers .. you understand.
the google forms then time stamps and dumps data into a spreadsheet that is password protected and belongs to the original gmail address that was used to set it up.
Fast and free.
good luck,
from an Irish farmer in west Quebec
I remember having scary dreams with the Blue Meanie character in, from the Beatles Yellow Submarine. He was always laughing and tickling me and sometimes I really could feel fingers digging into my ribs.
ReplyDeleteHi Thomas.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you may find some dream association with this; The Emerald Tablets of Thoth The Atlantean, Tablet 6. Links nicely with the Lovecraft stuff of late :)
https://youtu.be/D116EMojfdM
All the very best.
Interesting to note that in contemporary culture, the spiral generally denotes hypnosis (e.g., sleep) or non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness more generally.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the Twilight Zone intro: https://youtu.be/nEBN30I5Voc
Where can I download your velocity of now shows as Mp3?
ReplyDeleteDear Thomas
ReplyDeleteI don't use social media and have been unable to locate your email address but this comment is a contribution to your dream research. Hoping it is helpful to you in some way. In a childhood dream I was also chased by the ape-like entity you describe in your TVON broadcast. I remember hiding underneath a yellow tarpaulin in the marshes as the thing searched for me in the darkness. I ate spiders I dug from the muddy water to survive.
Dream #1 In another haunting childhood dream, I gave my one and only doll to a little blonde girl. It was quite the gift, because I grew up in abject poverty and abuse and didn't even own a doll. We were alone in a huge, silent house, all white and sterile. She disappeared upstairs and I could hear water running in the bathroom. I followed and to my horror found her bathing the doll in a bathtub filled with blood. She then held it out to me wordlessly, offering it back to me, blood dripping from the doll.
Dream#2 Some time ago I dreamed that I was lying on a bed in a strange darkwood house, watching the night breeze playing in the turquoise curtain. An intruder crept through the open window. I quietly escaped the house through another window and made a run for it across an open field. It was near daybreak and pale winter, the grass slippery with frost. He caught up with me and cut my throat from behind, both of us still running. Like those wildlife scenes where the predator collides with it's prey. I actually felt the life draining out of me. I felt what it feels like to die. The sheer violence of the attack was breathtaking. He also urinated on me as he was cutting my throat. I have many disturbing dreams, but this one cut my soul.
I include candle smoke drawings of the little blonde girl who bathed the doll in blood and the man who cut my throat in my dreams. Here: http://fumagefaces.blogspot.com/ The faces appeared some time ago with the fumage art technique, when I used candle smoke as drawing tool. I'm glad I saved it now. It's nothing like your electric night jester, which I imagine The Cure had in mind with their song Lullabye, but perhaps it is helpful in your research. Strange thing is, I don't see monsters or evil entities in my dreams, only people. The dark entities you speak about I see in my waking hours. I have never used drugs in my life. Sometimes the candle flame burnt the paper, when I didn't move it around fast enough, so I apologise for the quality of the drawings. I have abandoned this technique because some of the faces that appear from the smoke are clearly cadavers.
Kind regards, Em
i have those electrical night jester dreams at least once every 6 months. it always has something coming up or rather morphing out of the bed or walls (once I remember coming out of it this phrase that I kept hearing or thinking stuck with me "shadows rise from shadow; demons cloaked in darkness" and couldn't catch my breath or calm myself until I finally wrote it down afterwards.) then a man's face with a smile stretching his entire lower half of his face is leering at me blocking any exit, i was scared before but now blind terror comes over me as i realize that i am actually awake sitting straight up and i'm screaming but it's an out of body moment as i punch and kick at the man, and as he's leaning in, my dog's face gradually fades into view as he walks right through the shadow or visual echo of the smiling man. i then realize that my throat hurts, then remember that i was screaming in a dream, then remember i was awake, go through momentary emotional aftershocks, and then realize I'm crying from uncontrollably laughing like a maniac, that's why my throat and lungs ache then i think, wait, no I think I was screaming, why am I shaking, wasn't I sleeping with my head over there? What the hell just happened to me? (all this flashes through my mind in the space of one or two seconds) then fall right back asleep again. it seems to happen more when i'm visiting my folks and they will hear one or two long sustained blood curdling screams and then will run in and i'll be sitting straight up in bed, eyes firmly shut out of fear that I might see some other horror, while laughing this deep hearty laugh and will then just fall backwards and immediately go into a deep sleep and they think I'm playing a prank on them and get really upset and I'm sure they're scared to death having to walk in on that, I don't know who has it worse when it happens, them or me. the last time it happened they didn't even get out of bed. when they tell me about it the next day or if they wake me directly afterwards i then remember it in a way that's both detailed and hazy. for example, every moment a strong emotion was felt and they can be best remembered by calling upon the emotional reaction, but because emotions can skew perspective so are the memories they represent. it's a surrealistic experience and you never really shake it or rather it seems as if once you do, it happens again. i am glad other people have had similar dreams. i love your show, it's always a synchronistic experience and an absolute blessing in my life. you are so tuned in to the collective unconscious; thank you for the work you put into deciphering it for us who are tuned in but still trying to find a better signal. you're the best.
ReplyDeleteIt's so chilling to see those images. I've had the electrical night jester dream and it was basically the same guy from Steven Goggin's painting. But the lines were horizontal rather than vertical. It was made from black TV static which filled the whole space. It had a humanoid body like a shadow body (also made from TV static) and that blended with the rest of the buzzing space. It had a white cap like the figure in Thomas' drawing and the image from Communion is relevant in this respect. The feeling was of being shaken into a numb, nihilistic state by the presence of this entity and of being trapped in it like a prison. The story of the dream was about me having to go to prison and the prison was the vibrating shadow body of the being. I've also dreamt about Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's IT, in as much as, banal sadistic gestures made by an unseen being in the dream called to mind the exact feeling I remember from IT when the characters are messed with by the clown. He leaves them balloons full of blood and that sort of thing. In my dream the object was just a banana skin (which sounds like a joke) but it created a hellish situation to do with crushed bodies and claustrophobia. It was like an ethereal, clownish presence was mocking me on the basis that I was experiencing horror. The lack of sophistication to the humour is part of what makes it so sadistic. After all the likes of Ronald McDonald and Louis Walsh are out there. It's a total myth that evil was ever cool.
ReplyDeleteI've been hearing a specific voice during my sleep paralysis episodes both prior to and during the "out of body" part. Never seen. I always recognize that voice.
ReplyDelete