Two weeks had passed since the imposition of the closure due to Corona, when a young Filipino woman in her nineteen years began to see in her dreams a series of strong dreams.
“I dreamed that I was in a hospital in the middle of the night, and a doctor was operating on one of my hands,” says Elisha Angelis. “Within a few minutes, I left the hospital with one hand.”
"I remember how the doctor was walking close to me playing with my hand, which he had amputated before proceeding to dissect it, and at that time I felt lost."
In the following nights, Angelis dreamed of losing other things: "at times money, at other times my tablet."
Inglis is not alone in this regard. The coronavirus crisis is changing the world powerfully, and so are dreams.
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Many people report seeing clearer and more intense dreams since the outbreak of the virus in more than 175 countries and the imposition of closures.
Anxiety and stress
Deirdre Barrett has been collecting such dreams since March in an attempt to understand how they have changed since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Barrett is an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Sleep Committee.
"Any strong stress trigger increases the number of strong anxious dreams - and my surveys have a large number of these types of dreams," says Barrett.
A number of respondents recounted seeing dreams clearly related to the crisis: “After watching Contagion, I saw in a dream that I had contracted COVID-19.”
"I was suffocating and in physical pain and my vision was black in front of my eyes. That's when I realized I was dying. But then I got a number of things to relieve the symptoms in an attempt to treat the disease, but it was not proven that it was effective."
Researcher Barrett has researched dreams during many stressful events in the past, such as those after 9/11, the rights of Kuwaitis after Iraq invaded their country, and British soldiers in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.
From her experiences, wars produce clear images that appear in dreams - but the situation with the current epidemic is different.
Invisible Enemy
It's a hidden enemy, Barrett says, and there are a lot of things that symbolize it in dreams. ".
Charlie, 24, from England, thinks his worst fears are coming to him in his sleep.
Since the lockdown due to Corona, Charlie has been seeing strange dreams with huge spiders.
"I saw in a dream that a huge spider crawled into my bed from under the bed. A spider the size of a cat, pale in color, with legs like tree branches. Then I ran out of the room screaming for help. Then my mother managed to catch it and lock it in the trash before she threw it away outside the house, where the huge spider kept bumping into the sides of the basket before I woke up from my sleep.”
Spiders vary in size and shape - but Charlie's dreams always fall into the house.
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"Spiders always attack me in my safe area, especially my bed, which adds more realism!"
The researcher Barrett believes that the procedures for staying at home due to Corona may leave some people more able to recall the details of dreams, and this may be due to the fact that they sleep for a longer time now, and sometimes without an alarm to wake them up.
"Many who were previously sleep-deprived because they spent long hours at work or in a social life may now be getting more sleep," says Barrett.
Another dreamer, who was surveyed, says he had a dream that he was sitting in a park on a sunny day and then it turned into a nightmare.
He says: "My friends and I were sitting on a wooden bench talking, and suddenly we heard a noise and saw a flying machine gun in the sky, coming in our direction very quickly. The gun was changing its direction quickly and targeting people to death. Then it came towards us, at which point I started jogging in search of a hideout."
Dreams represent that eternally obscure part of our minds, and they are still one of the strangest and least obvious phenomena to us, yet there are millions of people who see dreams every night.
Luigi De Gennaro studies the dreams of Italians forced to stay home by the pandemic.
Luigi says she saw a significant increase in dream recall under these conditions.
REM
Researcher Luigi has found that poor sleep quality due to generalized anxiety may inherit disorders such as REM, the frequent awakening of some people during the night.
In the case of REM sleep disorder, the eyes experience rapid jerking, breathing and circulation changes, and the body enters a state of muscle relaxation. This occurs in waves of 90 minutes each during sleep, and at this stage the brain tends to dream.
If the sleeper is awakened during this REM state, it is more likely that he will remember the details of his dreams.
"Dreams are also an emotional reaction to the epidemic," Luigi says.
Niamay Devereaux, from Dublin, tells of seeing a naked ghost in a dream in the garden while she was attending a party at home.
Twenty-eight-year-old Devereux says: "A terrifying naked ghost was roaming around all of us, and not far away there was also a goat."
"I almost went crazy"
"No one looked at either of them, but I almost went crazy and didn't take my eyes off them, especially from the ghost who was a big male."
The researchers agree that what we experience in our daytime vigilance has direct effects on our dreams, especially what was emotional from those experiences, making people on the front lines more prone to nightmares.
The authorities in Italy recently adopted the use of the contact tracing application "Emione", in an attempt to prevent the spread of the epidemic.
Carlotta followed these developments on news sites and found traces of this in her dreams.
I dreamed that I felt something strange on my forehead. I immediately went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. I pulled the hair off my forehead to find three small buttons, two with a red light and the third with a green light. Someone told me that the green button is an app GPS positioning to control people's activities.
Carlotta continues: "I didn't know what the red buttons were for, but I pressed the green button before I woke up."
University of Dreams
Erin Grevely shares her dreams on the idreamofcovid website she launched during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Erin, who lives in California, is not a researcher, but the idea came to her after she saw in a dream people following social distancing measures.
"They were standing six feet apart, not shaking hands," she tells the BBC. "I wonder if this crisis has found its way into other people's dreams as in my case."
Erin hopes that the project will help monitor the differences in human dream patterns based on differences in the world.
It is possible to find common denominators between dreams in the same geographical area. For example, New York State has more coronavirus infections than any individual state, according to the statistics.
This is a woman in her fifties who resides in New York. "I took me to the beach. There I saw a lot of rocks in front of me. Then I woke up."
But the dream does not seem so far from reality.
"I think the first wave symbolizes COVID-19, and the second wave symbolizes climate change."
Positive Dreams
Some people may think that everyone sees negative dreams at those times, but this is not true.
The researcher Barrett says: "It may have been surprising, but a good number of people these days see positive dreams in their dreams. Some see a future without this amount of pollution, and some dream of discovering a cure for the virus."
Niru Malhotra, from New Delhi, India, has positive dreams.
"Since the lockdown began, I have been dreaming of going to fancy hotel rooms, like the ones I see on TV. These rooms have large windows that look out to the sea and sometimes to vast green areas. Then I feel happy and relaxed. There is no crowd, there is no one at all." in the scene."
Dear reader, if you are now wondering how you can make your dreams safer, researchers advise you to prepare for your dreams!
Yes, you can suggest to yourself as you prepare to go to sleep what you would like to see in your dreams.
The researcher Barrett says: "Think of your favorite person and your favorite place. Bring back in your memory a good dream you had before. Repeat to yourself what you would like to see in your dream."
Sometimes this trick deceives the mind, which in turn fulfills the request, and happy dreams appear in the dream.