List of works based on dreams
have been credited as the inspiration for several creative works and scientific discoveries.
Books and poetry
''Kubla Khan''
wrote Kubla Khan upon awakening from an opium-influenced dream. In a preface to the work, he described having the poem come to him, fully formed, in his dream. When he woke, he immediately set to writing it down, but was interrupted by a visitor and could not remember the final lines. For this reason, he kept it unpublished for many years.''Frankenstein''
's Frankenstein was inspired by vivid images that occurred to her while falling asleep:''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde''
dreamed elements of his famous novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, after having "long been trying to write a story on this subject". He wrote metaphorically of Brownie spirits doing "one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep". Of the novel, he later wrote:''Tintin in Tibet''
The Belgian comics artist Hergé was plagued by nightmares in which he was chased by a white skeleton, whereupon the entire environment turned white. A psychiatrist advised him to stop making comics and take a rest, but Hergé drew an entire story set in a white environment: the snowy mountaintops of Tibet. Tintin in Tibet not only stopped his nightmares and worked as a therapeutic experience, but the work is also regarded as one of his masterpieces.''Twilight''
Inspiration for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight came by a dream:''The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane''
The seeds to the plot of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane came to Kate DiCamillo in a dream: "One Christmas, I received an elegantly dressed toy rabbit as a gift. A few days later, I dreamed that the rabbit was face down on the ocean floor - lost and waiting to be found."Music
''Devil's Trill Sonata''
recounted that his most famous work, his Violin Sonata in G minor, more commonly known as the Devil's Trill Sonata, came to him in a dream in 1713. According to Tartini's account given to the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande, he dreamed that he had made a pact with the devil, to whom he had handed a violin after a music lesson, in order to assess whether the devil could play. The devil then proceeded to play "with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy".Tartini said that on waking he "immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream".
"O Little Town of Bethlehem"
American musician Lewis Redner wrote "St. Louis", the melody to which the Christmas carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is most commonly sung in the United States, in December 1868 at the request of Episcopal clergyman and author Phillips Brooks, who had written the lyrics. Redner had not yet written the tune on the night before he was scheduled to rehearse it. According to Redner's account, he "was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony.""(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
claimed to have dreamed the riff to the 1965 song " Satisfaction". He ran through it once before falling asleep. He said when he listened back to it in the morning, there was about two minutes of acoustic guitar before you could hear him drop the pick and "then me snoring for the next forty minutes"."Yesterday"
claimed to have dreamed the melody to his song "Yesterday". After he woke up, he thought it was just a vague memory of some song he heard when he was younger. As it turned out that he had completely thought up this song all by himself, he recorded it and it became the most covered pop song in the world."Black Sabbath"
While the band was previously named "Earth", Geezer Butler wrote Black Sabbath's eponymous song "Black Sabbath", after a nightmare in which he had encountered a tall black figure at the edge of his bed, gazing at him. After he woke up, the book on the occult he had been reading prior to the nightmare had mysteriously vanished from his room. He later told the band about his experience and recorded the song using a haunting riff and a tritone.Named after a 1963 Boris Karloff film, "Black Sabbath" became one of the band's most popular songs, and they even named their debut album and the band itself after it. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked "Black Sabbath" as the greatest heavy metal song of all time.
"Let It Be"
Paul McCartney has also claimed that the idea of "Let It Be" came to him after a dream he had about his late mother during the tense period surrounding the sessions for The Beatles in 1968. McCartney later said: "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'." In a later interview, McCartney said that in the dream his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be.""The Prophet's Song"
said that he was inspired to write the 1975 Queen track "The Prophet's Song" after a hepatitis-induced fever dream he had about an apocalyptic flood. It is the longest Queen song with vocals.''Selected Ambient Works Volume II''
Richard James, who performs as Aphex Twin, has written several ambient tracks while lucid dreaming, saying that:James says that seventy per cent of his 1994 album Selected Ambient Works Volume II was written while lucid dreaming.
The Dark Carnival
, a member of Insane Clown Posse, claimed to have dreamed the concept of The Dark Carnival, a traveling carnival full of spirits, which is described in much of their discography."1000 Oceans"
Singer-songwriter Tori Amos has explained that the idea for the song "1000 Oceans", from her 1999 album To Venus and Back, came to her in a dream. An old African woman was humming the melody to her, and she got up around 5:30 in the morning to record it."It Could Be Better"
Artist Left at London stated in a 2022 TikTok video that she first heard the hook of her song "It Could Be Better" from her album T.I.A.P.F.Y.H. in a dream where "the cast of High School Musical sang it at ".Hit em
In a tweet from July 2024, Drew Daniel of electronic music duo Matmos described a fictional music genre he encountered in a dream entitled "hit em". Recounted to him by a nondescript woman in the dream, the genre is a type of electronic music "with super crunched out sounds" in a 5/4 time signature with a tempo of 212 beats per minute. Following the tweet, numerous artists have tried their hand at creating hit em tracks.Film and television
''3 Women''
Director Robert Altman conceived of his 1977 film 3 Women during a restless sleep while his wife was in the hospital. He dreamt that he was directing a film starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in an identity theft story, against a desert backdrop. He based the film on this dream, although additional story details were added later.''The Terminator''
Director James Cameron said the titular character in The Terminator was inspired by a dream he had under the influence of a soaring fever he suffered while he was "sick and dead broke" in Rome, Italy, during the final cut of Piranha II. He dreamed of "a chrome skeleton emerging from a fire", and made some sketches on hotel stationery upon waking:''Over the Garden Wall''
Chapter 5 of the miniseries Over the Garden Wall, "Mad Love", was inspired by a dream that show creator Patrick McHale had. In the events of the dream, McHale was house hunting and came across a secret library in one of the houses. As he explored further, he realized that he had entered someone else's home. In the episode, the character Quincy Endicott explores his mansion and discovers that he has entered the mansion of his neighbour.Video games and software
''Deltarune''
In an interview conducted a few months after the release of its first chapter, Toby Fox stated that the idea for his episodic videogame Deltarune came from a dream he experienced while bedridden from a fever seven years prior. According to Fox, the dream depicted the emotionally-moving ending to a game that did not exist; upon waking up, he was determined to make the game into a reality.''Omori''
In a video discussing the creation of the 2020 game Omori, developer Omocat describes the game's liminal space area - White Space - as being inspired by a dream they experienced when in high school of "standing in a white room with nothing in it... Something red and blurry appeared in front of me... a giant floating rectangular button with the word 'Live' written across it, just like a video game interface. And... when I pressed it, I woke up."Other aspects of the game were influenced by lucid dreams the developer had experienced. They said that "I would try to escape them through death, by for instance, jumping into a lake. It's all pretty creepy stuff that probably influenced the game quite a bit."
Salesforce
The user interface of Salesforce, a widely used enterprise software platform founded in 1999, was inspired by a dream of its co-founder Marc Benioff. Benioff envisioned an application interface resembling that of Amazon, which included labeled tabs. Benioff said that in his dream:Science
Descartes' new science
It is thought that three separate dreams had by Descartes on November 10, 1619, may have led him to the basis of a new philosophy, the scientific method. Sociologist Lewis Samuel Feuer considers modern philosophy to have been "born during the night of Descartes' three dreams".In Descartes' first dream, a great wind pushed him along the street to a chapel. In the second dream, a sharp noise caused him to wake and briefly see sparks of fire in his room; biographer Adrien Baillet says that Descartes perceived this as "a sign of the Spirit of Truth which descended on him to possess him". In his third dream, he opened a book and read Ausonius's verse Quod vitae sectabor iter?, before searching for a poem called Est & Non, and browsing an incomplete dictionary. Realising that he was dreaming, he interpreted the poetry as philosophy and wisdom, and the dictionary as science. After waking, he considered Est & Non to refer to truth and falsity in the secular sciences.
Modern sleep researchers speculate that Descartes may have experienced exploding head syndrome, a phenomenon which had not been described at the time.