Writing this article that was planned for Oct. 28th a couple days late, but that works because last night on All Hallow's Eve 10/30, I awoke around 2 AM from a nightmare a couple hours after falling asleep. It's rare I get haunting dreams like this that disrupt mid-rest. Normally my dreams are euphoric, surreal in design, and feel like a second preferable life. This one was spookier, didn't quite feel like a world of my choosing, and left me feeling dissociated and questioning reality after waking up.

The Dream

I was driving an old country backroad alone at dark, appreciating the tall creeping mountains and falling leaves illuminated by moonlight. I pulled over to check out an old rustic house's Halloween decor. No one was around or awake, it was peaceful at first. Abruptly, I was strongly overcame by what felt like a predator's visitation. It was an invisible presence. I couldn't see or name it, but it was an entity far more powerful than myself with abilities to implant thoughts and control my movement.

This was scary, because in real life, there isn't a type of technology that can fully get inside your thoughts and dictate your maneuvers by sheer frequency. I tried getting back in my car but struggled to speak or turn the key. Whatever was lurking didn't want me to leave. It wanted me to feel its magnitude and question it. The energy was so intense that I automatically fought and tried to flee, but after struggling some time to get out of there, I decided instead to spend a moment curiously observing its energy. Soon, the power seemed to sense how uncomfortable its expression was, release its ghostly grip, disappeared, and I regained self-control and left.

The ambience of the Halloween decor and invisible nature of the predator's spirit made me first think of ghosts, but in the dream I knew it was an alien taking advantage of the spooky season's scenery. Halloween is the perfect time for a creepy alien to try and communicate. It's a time where people consider the veil between worlds thinning. In the waking world, I'd been contemplating the possibility of advanced aliens existing somewhere out there in another universe, possibly with telepathic powers and "supernatural" abilities like frequency manipulation and viewing humans like bugs in a jar. It made sense I would have such a dream with it being Halloween and my sci-fi alien conspiracy interests.

In the dream, when the energy sensed I wasn't willing to stay in its presence, it did let me go. That stood out to me. It's tough to ethically reason whether that's a redeeming quality of the alien, because its initial overtaking of me came unexpectedly and without consent, almost as if this was the alien's baseline skill and not something it'd spend too much time debating, like sport or child's play. However, it had respect in its performance, it didn't linger too long or hurt me. Maybe it thought I could handle the exposure, but it did depart after seeing the experience was too powerful for my human body. It had sympathy in its recognition its energy was too much, somewhat unnatural for my DNA and rejected by it. When I was freed, I was also somewhat sad, then I left to drive back to an apartment complex and tell other residents and family members about the haunting encounter.

As crazy as it is, I wanted to go back to that road when I fell back asleep. I wanted to experience the full-body encounter again, the thought-control, the restriction of movement, not as a servant but as a scientist. I wanted to experiment with something bigger than me and test if it is truly out there. This dream was the paranormal encounter I've often wished to have in the natural world, to be proven that something more is real, but I've never had physics-bending experiences like this beyond dreams despite going on more ghost hunts than I can count.

What It Means

Maintaining a scientific, non-mystic mentality as I do, my thoughts after waking up and documenting the dream are that this was indeed a world of my choosing, an ethical dilemma of future alien coexistence. Dreams are powerful landscapes of creative play, mine are usually far more colorful and pleasant. But 'tis the season for trick or treats, this nightmare was ironically a gift. The reality of a higher predator species above mankind is a valuable consideration in the broad scheme of the multiverse, and not outlandish in context of religious and spiritual mythos. Here on Earth, man is the greatest predator in the food chain, but what if there is some species out there in another universe with powers like this? Powers that are outcomes of a longer period of evolution? A quick glimpse at our own technological advancement on Earth is a scale to predict future abilities, with brain-computer-interfaces like Neuralink already demonstrating powers of telepathy.

It doesn't make sense to me as an agnostic materialist to frame this advanced species like a ghost or god but rather an alien. They're not our authorities, perhaps they don't have immortal lives or liberty to rule mankind, but nonetheless they still have incredible powers. If such a species exists, they too live in a physical state similar to our own universe with families and stories of their own. In my dream, it felt as if they were communicating mostly by signal. An alien civilization could harbor capabilities like this, and no matter how haunting it appears to us Earthly people, it's a thought worth considering as we explore deeper space. Who knows what creeping things lurk in the dark unknown?

I've thought often how Biblical accounts of angels could've been advanced visitations by aliens in the way their presences and powers are described. This would also resolve why their intervention is so sporadic, even more so as we enter an age where documenting aliens on camera and radio telescopes advances. It's harder for them not to be caught. Consider an alien that has powers to control human thought or manipulate our movement by frequency alone. Physics proves these frequencies can still be measured. Earlier human civilizations lacked the tools to properly assess, but we are growing.

Consider that this alien would, like us, have a life, civilization, and moral code of its own to maintain. Maybe they have laws that limit their involvement in the human species given our impressionability. As religion demonstrates, humans have strong inclinations of worship. Perhaps we'd depend too much on their species if we knew they existed with supernatural interventions like weather and mind control, and they don't want that responsibility amid their personal dealings. Many of us invest considerable time exploring prayer and spiritual phenomena, seeking to have encounters with beings we may frame as gods or authorities above us. Maybe we'd demand they serve as us gods, when in truth they're simply aliens further along in evolution who don't want to be tasked with that mission.

Reminder: there is no scientific basis for anything I'm saying here aside from interest in neuroscience and the chemistry of dreams, sleep, and the subconscious mind. It's a fun sci-fi thought, but also one I think is important if humanity continues exploring the stars (and I think we should). Is it bizarre to fathom a civilization may have already developed "supernatural" technology, and that humanity should have proper preparation for this in case we do come across these beings who are magnitudes further than us in evolution? Not at all, in fact that is wise. As much as humanity can steward its sovereignty, we should aspire to understand anything true about the universe including aliens or aspects that may appear supernatural. It's also important to consider in context of our own influence over other species as we advance human technology. The same way we are concerned about encountering more advanced species than us, it could be us someday encountering a lesser-developed species, and there's a lot of moral discussion about how this should be handled. Even concerning human-to-human, what does it mean for some of our people to be technologically telepathic while others refuse machine synthesis?

The most unsettling aspect of this science fiction reality is that, if a greater species like the one I dreamed of is real, humanity is no match to it, and we can't force the evolution they've already survived on ourselves. Technology takes time. As eerie as it is, there were good aspects of the dream in the entity's willingness to let me go. It reminded me that there's likely a strong code of ethics that evolves simultaneously to technological power. The more advanced technology becomes, the greater our moral experience enriches also. As we step further into the future with our own technological capacity, it's important to discuss and debate the dilemma of supernatural, or superhuman, powers and skills that can influence the development of other living species. As BCIs like Neuralink already hint to, amid the enchantment there is also great choice and responsibility in how the technology is used.