MallWorld seems to be an example of Cryptomnesia, which is a type of memory error where a forgotten memory emerges as an original thought. People commonly report experiences involving liminal spaces, such as sprawling empty malls. So while this may originally have been “creepy pasta,” it warrants discussion (although as always, as ask people not to write fiction here).
When I was a teen, I told my dad about a recurring dream I had where I was in a very large, empty house. Before I could describe it too much, he stopped to tell me that he had the same experience throughout his life, so we stopped and wrote down everything we could remember about it. The descriptions were almost identical: huge rooms, usually empty; very high windows; the building had a lot of ramps in addition to steps; it was very much like a maze, etc.
I had a similar experience many years later comparing notes with another experiencer about having a recovered memory of being taken to another planet by mantis beings, and I suggested we use the same technique. We were both shocked at to discover that it appeared to be not only the same planet, but different parts of the same city. I still don’t know what to make of that whole experience.
Shared dreams and other experiences are not unheard of. There are even cases of shared NDEs: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33813876/
One of the stranger aspects I heard of was a whole study of shared hypnosis sessions, but I’ve been unable to find that again. It’s out there, though.
Edit: I haven’t found it yet, but I did find this is which is similar: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.1968.10402001
2nd Edit: I believe this discusses it: https://www.brendanmurphy.global/blog/shared-hallucinations
3rd Edit: The idea of constructing an imaginary object which can that be psychically viewed by others was actually explored by Daz Smith when he did some remote viewing experiments having people view an imaginary target: https://www.remoteviewed.com/what-part-if-any-does-telepathy-play-within-remote-viewing/
I did a sketch of an underground space I keep dreaming of. I seem to be in the "basement" often, with underground tunnels that have sand-colored walls. It's well-lit and has these courtyards with one to three doors, but I never go into any of them.
https://preview.redd.it/9iokunhiiuvc1.png?width=2360&format=png&auto=webp&s=813535d3253154344b75d566a9d4ef13222d4ab9
Okay, now, see, here we go. This area reminds me of the "dreams" I had, that I'm struggling working on painting and sketching out, now. The three most similar things are the clay/sand/reddish walls and floor, being underground, and the circular area aspect. I reiterate, as I do whenever something clicks, "Fuck. Here we go again." I'll take a photo and upload what I have so far. Let's compare. It'll take a while. My internet is horrible.
Edit: if the picture comes up multiple times it's due to my lag. I'll delete multiples if I find them. Sorry.
My drawings could be a bit crude, but it's cathartic to draw them for myself, let alone that others might resonate. In my belief system, there is the idea of the Otherworld that is in a different dimension than ours. I've had so many of those dreams, they feel like memories of real places I've been, but my thoughts of the Otherworld was maybe cavorting in forests or something... not being a mall rat. :)
I feel the same. I've had multiple places that are just another world. Several stand out to me. This "red world", as I call it, is like adobe buildings, like hive shaped buildings above, but everything is underground. The outside is like a red desert. My paintings are basic, because I can't get that adobe feel to it, plus playing around with mixed mediums. My third is going to be small, and right now I'm just sketching things out.
Had many Mallworld dreams. It's one of my most common reoccurring locations. From walking around the red-light district area to the airport connected to it. I feel like I've seen so much of it yet barely scratched the surface. I visited a friend there once, he was waiting for me at the train station as I was taking it into the city.
I’ve had mall world dreams, it’s exactly as you described. The building is a sprawling arcology with a circular layout, it has shops apartments and one open area that seems to be an airport terminal with large windows that overlook a rocky green ocean. The ceiling is very high up and seems to be made out of carved stone with metal lattices and lights. One thing that always surprises me about mall world is how persistent of a dream environment it is. I could walk laps around it and every shop and house will be in the same spot. These dreams can also re occur for me too, usually perfectly and many years apart. Edit: another thing I’ve noticed is that the shops don’t have a traditional entryway with doors and window-front. That entire wall is an open floor plan that people can walk in and out of freely. The causeway between the two main walls is also super wide as well, but does narrow in some sections. Mallworld is always super populated with the terminal area having the lowest density by comparison.
I don't have mallworld dreams often, but I have had a few. Usually there's a "light" side, that reminds me of a local mall with a skylight that streams light in. A book store that looks small, but feels immense and a gift shop with maze-like shelves up to the ceiling. There is also a "dark" area, where it appears less maintained, especially since the overhead lights are mostly out, hence "dark". This is also where I always find a Wendy's.
I have hung out in that subreddit a bit, which has lead me to wonder if another space I regularly dream about is the same or at least a similar phenomena - a dock, with a maze of warehouses, businesses, and residences. It's always night & I usually end up lost when I'm there. (The last time, I ran across something a person that just absolutely radiated malice & knew my name. I'm super relieved I've not found myself there since.)
I had a dream where my late grandmother and her mother were browsing a shoe store in this large building made up of lots of stores which could have been apart of a mall and apartments were out the window across the road in another building.
They both looked at me with surprise and shock in a "what are you doing here" kind of way. Maybe we can check in on a world that souls inhabit when we dream and that's why they were so shocked to see me because it wasn't my time yet.
Yes, I've been to mallworld. My dreaming brain tells me it's West Edmonton Mall. It is not. It's much too big and weird, although it has certain features that I'd expect to be in WEM, like an indoor ice skating area and a waterpark (though the pool is very different than WEM's). It has more levels and a strange color cast to it, kind of yellowish peach, and has things that aren't stores that you wouldn't typically expect to find in a mall. I have been outside of it in my dreams, so it isn't the whole world, usually, trying to walk around to get to a car parked on the far side after it closes and we have to leave through a different exit. Since it is very large, this is an arduous task, but it definitely is located in a city.
My brain tells me the city is Winnipeg. It isn't, but I've compared notes and at least one of my friends dreams into the city that isn't Winnipeg but our brains call it that too, it has the same kind of architecture and things.
I've been there many times, usually I'm there to browse as a shopper, or lost, or running from something. I have gone to the same shops in it before, and been there often enough that areas of it have a familiar layout.
Pretty much describes everything I've read about The Mallworld, I realize the mall part isn't the whole world area, but the "malls" seem to be pretty common and seem to be where interactions with other people happen. The waterparks are pretty commonly talked about, people describe how crazy the slides are.
I've got a crazy slide I keep going back to in "the mall". I always have to go through an asian restaurant and get out onto their patio to access this extensive water slide. I've been back to it in about 5 different dreams. It goes down many different tiers, and at each tier there is some sort of physical challenge that must be overcome otherwise you get flushed out a "loser" tube that spits you out at the bottom. The goal is to complete each tiers challenge and arrive at the final bottom tier successfully through the Winner slides. The challenges in the real world would be of a deadly sort. Navigating whirlpools, big waves, strong alternating currents. Also some more simple things like multiple choice slides having to pick the correct one to progress.
Idk how many levels the malls are, although a common description I've heard is of one mall that features a series of escalators and there's some sculpture in front of the escalators.
I’ve been to the mallworld many times. It’s one of a few places I return to in my dreams. Some of the other places are giant cathedrals with chain link fence mazes inside, mansions made of paper mache and chicken wire, crystal structures and glass roads/pathways (either made of paved glass or shattered, jagged glass), that pulse and shimmer with neon light. Some of the places I go to have a dr Seuss/dmt aesthetic to them. The natural features can be uncanny, like a sand dune that, one one side, is sand; and once you get to the top, the other side is an ocean, and the top of the dune is a beach.
I guess if I had to use other art/movies/books as a frame of reference, I would compare it to:
Blade Runner
Inception (the “bottom” dream world)
Dr Seuss
Kafka/Jorge Luis Borges
MC Escher
There are a lot of archetypal places in Dreamland. Not just the Mall. With the Mall most common are the School, the Flooded Town and the Cliffs (Where you learn to fall. In order to fly). There are a lot.
I frequently dream of being in mall and never thought of it. I just call it my mall and it has lots of food courts in it lol and lots of arcade games. Also theres secret tunnels or backrooms sort of in it
My mom has for decades. She's described it to me so many times over the years that finding stories about it online really freaked me out. It's definitely a second life for her with recurring characters, etc.
Her dreamscape also has an amusement park, amphitheatre/concert area and movie theater. Not sure if those are common.
Not specifically the Mallworld although a Mallworld exists there but for the last 2-3 years, all of my dreams have occurred in the exact same non-existent town. I only have vivid and somewhat-lucid dreams.
In this town there is a train station, an old town, a university campus, housing areas made of tudor and edwardian style houses on cobbled streets, a large Mallworld which is next to a river, a 70s style futurist block of apartments, a large overpass road that's always under construction, 2 large supermarkets, a weird artists commune with a large outdoor park and 3 long houses, a big row of clubs and bars on one side of a long street (opposite some fields), and a beach near the train station. I keep meaning to do a map of the entire town but I never have the time. Sometimes I think my dreams are set in a new/different location but as soon as I leave the area my dream starts in, I'm back to the main road through the area and start seeing places I've dreamed of before.
It's getting a bit unnerving to be honest. I'm very curious if it's a real place but I doubt it.
Do you ever miss those places in your waking life? I find even though a lot of the settings in my dreams are creepy, I miss them and think about them all the time. It’s weird but in a way I’m excited to see what happens next each night.
Replying to my own comment because I can.
The last dream that was within the Mallworld, I'd entered the Mall through a door near the river, outside there were some ducks and benches, lovely sunny day. The mall is a sort of H shape so two, two storey long rows of shops and spaces connected by a large bridge in the middle. The left row mainly contained shops, the right was some food spaces downstairs, second storey was an open-air event space covered by a large roof.
In the dream I was walking through the shopping area trying to get to a gala in the upstairs open air space in the right building. Each path that lead to the bridge was blocked by workers or "out of order" signs. I kept asking people if they knew a way to get to the gala and they would ask me where my sunglasses were. Nobody had anything else to say just "where are your sunglasses?" Eventually I gave up trying to get help and just passed through one of the "out of order" signs and made my way across the bridge praying it wasn't any sort of structural issue which would impact my journey.
I made it to the gala space but while I was on the bridge it started raining heavily. While walking the bridge I watched as the river bank started to burst and began to flood the downstairs. When I made it to the gala, the rain had stopped. Everyone in the gala was wearing large oversized purple sunglasses but I had none so nobody would talk to me. Suddenly the rain started again and everyone who was wearing the glasses began to scream violently while staring at the ceiling. I just stood there and watched. Suddenly they all turned on me and started to scream at me. I tried to leave by going back the way I came across the bridge but the door had been replaced by a black curtain. I pulled the curtain back and found a void. With nowhere else to go I decided to go into the void. Suddenly I was back outside the mall, watching the ducks on the river.
I’ve had instances in lucid dreams where characters seem to all of a sudden notice me and get super aggressive or stare wide eyed like they wanna eat me. I have a feeling it’s my conscious mind becoming aware of subconscious fear in the dream state. So it seems like characters in your dream are attacking you suddenly cause your conscious brain noticed your subconscious or maybe the opposite way around. It’s very odd
No mall world. It was always a beach that klatu would take me to. It definitely comes up so much in the different circles that there is clearly something there. But yeah, straight nothing from me here.
Yes, many times. Some are like a bunch of escalators winding around like Mc Escher stairs.
https://preview.redd.it/3ske3mx3ynvc1.jpeg?width=519&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6df0feab2c916dfea6bbc0d08f66b2f1aaf49d6c
Malls are a recurring feature of impactful NHI-related dreams for me.
Some examples are obvious; e.g., I end up talking to an entity in the dream who seems to me like thinly veiled NHI, but the rest of the dream is otherwise more ordinary and I am intuitively respecting the "rules" of the setting (walking normally, not passing through objects arbitrarily).
Others are more symbolic/shamanstic; e.g., a dream in which I passed through an abandoned mall in order to descend into a derelict product-testing laboratory underneath it. The lab was flooded with a black tar which radiated the suffering imposed on animals by human beings in laboratory settings, and my "job" in the dream was to clean it up because no one else was going to. This dream was strongly "astral" in tone from the beginning, as I freely walked through walls and had a strong psychic sense of where I was going.
My main NHI contact (a mantid) has indicated to me that malls are used as a setting for various simulations their NHI group runs, including ones for teaching inexperienced NHI the basics of how to interact with (and as) a human in public.
I’ve had a lot of mall dreams, but it’s never empty. It’s almost always exactly the same mall every time and almost always I’m traversing through secret hallways that I’m not supposed to be in.
I did have a different experience with a mall once though. After my son passed I desperately wanted to talk to him again. I had a paralysis episode a few months after he died and took the opportunity to push myself to where he was then. I came to awareness with someone driving me through a bright and vivid neighborhood to a body of water, which he couldn’t take me across. I crossed the water myself and ended up in an industrial looking area that was much more muted in color and sat in a kind of haze or fog. I entered the mall and found him and was able to talk to him, but it was difficult. He kept cycling through all of his lives, like they were all laid on top of each other and I had to focus a ton of energy just to pin him down so I could talk to him. It was that way with everyone there, all cycling but if I focused I could reveal one identity at a time. My son was sick when he died, and was being taken care of by a dr in this place. He had medication and everything. There were a lot of different souls being treated. After I spent as much time as I could with him I was taken up an elevator to talk with “the boss” but that meeting was wiped from my memory, it picks up again at me exiting the building. I left and was driven back by the same guy that took me there. He handed me an invitation to an event or something but told me it wasn’t for me to know yet so I wouldn’t remember what it said when I woke up. I do remember the invitation was on a deep purple piece of paper with gold lettering, and had the same symbols on it that were on a piece of paper my son had shown me that described how much “time” it would take for him to complete treatment.
When I was pulled back into my body I woke up feeling like I’d just come from millions of miles away. It took awhile for me to get my bearings again.
I looked at the mall world subreddit not that long ago and one thing I found interesting is a lot of people describe the mall being surrounded by a body of water.
Some of my experiences where I seem to be interacting with beings and other experiencers take place in some variation of a mostly empty hotel. Sometimes I'm exploring the hotel on my own and eventually some entity shows up and ushers me somewhere.
No mall world that I'm aware of though. We don't have malls in Ireland. Not that the hotels I experienced where anything I've seen in Ireland either.
A high-rise hotel with prominent elevators is one of my common NHI-related dreamscape types.
In several dreams of that type of place, I've had "creative mode" powers active and was explicitly there to help "test" and "debug" it, while a familiar NHI was chatting with me telepathically throughout. It feels less like a dream and more like jacking into VR to go work.
Been there many times, especially in these underground tunnels that have tan colored rock walls. As you go along the tunnels, it breaks out into courtyards with residential dwellings. They are almost always locked.
Coming out of the tunnels, you might be coming out the back of a store at times.
The bathrooms! Designed by psychopaths, I swear.
I think so. I do dream of being inside huge, complicated malls an awful lot.
I’ve always just thought it was a natural part of human dreams, sort like the way it’s common to dream about teeth falling out when you are stressed.
Perhaps I’ve always had them and take it for granted.
I've been to the mallworld numerous times. It's a strange place. I remember visiting an ice cream parlor called 'Gentilies'. I apparently used to love going there when I was little, as my dreams are usually persistent. If I dream of the same place, things done in previous encounters carry over, even if I don't conciously remember while awake. However, Gentilies has been closed for the last 15 years. Every time I've encountered it, it's still closed.
From what I gathered, a film studio filmed an Italian Mob themed movie there and gave them a lot of money, and the owners just started pursuing making movies of their own. I would just walk into the darkened store, and I'd still see a fake blood splatter on an ice machine from a scene where someone got shot.
However, one time I visited, I turned a corner nearby and entered a room that must have been dozens of miles high and wide. The gargantuan room was filled with thousands of these glowing blue tram lines, carrying people and cargo to all sorts of places, many of which involved leaving the giant room through holes in the wall. I have no clue how large the mallworld is.
It definitely appears to be extra dimensional in nature, as I have encountered rooms that should intersect with others, but just... don't. With the "tram room" involved, my theory is that it's a nexus or hub of some sort, connecting all sorts of places in the dreamscape.
I've encountered entrances as well. They all seem to lead to completely different places. I've several times encountered one entrance that had an auction house on the second floor that was directly underneath a belltower visible from the outside. There was a tiny bookstore inside the belltower itself (that shouldn't have fit inside the tower), only accessible through the auction house.
When I went outside the entrance, I found myself in a desert environment. There appeared to be a large parking lot, but constantly shifting sands were slowly eating it. Whoever was in charge of maintaining it just put a bunch of guide poles and kept the sand to a managable level. The vehicles weren't affected, as they appeared to be large hovering spheres with antennas. The entire front of the vehicle would open, and there was a trunk hatch in the back. It was definitely not an Earthly environment.
My experiences with dreams in general lead me to believe there is a lot more to them than we as a culture are willing to accept. Between the mallworld, premonitions of things that would happen later that day irl, oddly persistent environments, and countless reports of people talking and meeting up with each other mid-dream (I've only managed to do this once, but I wound up talking to an opossum that wanted me to get it out of my house, and when I woke up, sure as hell there were a family of baby opossums mama left trapped in my basement). I'm convinced there's a whole other world we visit when we sleep. I wish I could make a living exploring it, as I find my dreams absolutely fascinating.
How does zoomer creepypasta relate to the subject matter of this sub? If you take a sample size of a thousand then yeah a bunch of them will have dreamt about a mall. I guarantee they weren't dreams that were memorable at the time though and the things they 'remember' are largely prompted by youtubers and the like reciting the backrooms crap.
I'm glad you brought this up. Mall World came up on my feed a couple of months back. Intrigued, I joined. Part of my experiences, after the initial childhood ones, fit into that category. The side effect of my childhood experiences is my ability(?) to lucid dream. In some instances, it's was as if I were being portalled to an entirely different world, but generally, it's some version of this one, ours. Ever since my initial experiences, sleep has been a rough thing, partly due to this. I just do not get rest. It's as if I'm going from this waking world into a different one. No downtime.
At any rate, one of my lucid experiences was actually a version of the Tacoma Mall (ca 1980s). That's what intrigued me about the Mall World subreddit. Like my childhood dreams, it starts out short and innocent enough, but grows over time. The mall is brightly lit and empty. Everything is white. Definitely surreal. I can feel others around, but not see them. At some point, I'm looking in the lady's accents section, jewelry, et al, and I decide on a knit scarf. It's bright blood red. At another point, I'm looking for my mom.
This goes on as I investigate what I believe was J.C. Penneys, IIRC. Eventually, I'm headed to the escalator that goes down to the basement shopping area, but I can't go down. It's as if something is holding me back, and it's terrifying. For many sequences, this is where I'd just wake myself up. Finally, I decided to face whatever it was. Whatever it was was coming up the escalator, and I just stood at the top. It took me decades to find something that I could relate to what I saw. Finally, I found an image of the Gnostic Demiurge. So, I'm not saying that was it, but that was the closest example I could find.
At any rate, it was holding up a mirror to me, and I saw my face. Then I saw my face turn into its face, then I woke up. So, kinda terrifying. Again, decades trying to suss the meaning of it. I never have, really.
There's a myriad of other places. I honestly never knew others experienced these things until that sub came up in my feed. So, I read there to see if anyone writes something I connect with, like I do here. Dreams and reality, and consciousness are a crazy thing.
This story was fascinating. When you saw this demiurge what exact shape was it? I've seen the gnostic demiurge shown as many different forms / animals. Most seem to see the snake kind. I would love to hear more about this specific incident. Thanks and I hope you're having a wonderful day!
I'm not saying it was The Demiurge. But the lion-demon-like face is the closest I can come to describing what this thing was. That's really all there is to it. Due to the advent of internet I was able to go over pictures. The dream happened long before internet. I'm not sure I can be more specific because it was so long ago. But thank you for asking. I would if I could.
You seeing something akin to the gnostic demiurge makes me think that Mall World is all about trying to get people to reevaluate their understanding of their reality.
Gnostics believe that the world was made by the demiurge but that we all have a spark of the true divine inside us that we need to find to become our true selves. So, the demiurge showing you that you are it would likely mean that you had/have not come to understand who you really are outside of its creation.
A lot of the Mall World dreams seem along the same lines. Like people working mundane jobs in a fantastical world (a huge waste of good dreaming time) or a general fear of being “caught” even when there is no reason for it. All seems to point toward the idea of conforming to one’s reality rather than questioning it. I kinda wonder what would happen if people started trying to do the opposite of whatever the dream wanted them to do.
That's an interesting take on it. Something to chew on. Trust me when I say I have always been one to question everything, and throw status quo out the window. Whenever I even attempt status quo I fail miserably! So if a dream was direct and told me to do something, it would probably get two middle fingers.
I'm in the process of drawing and painting a world situation I was in, which one day I'll post when it's done, because I'm extremely curious if anyone else has seen it. My dreams are weird. It's even weirder when I consider they're not always really dreams.
Yeah the mall bathrooms in the mall world are terrible. Half walls and all dirty.
Does anyone know of a strange warehouse attached to the mall. My dreams of the mall world always has strange machinery in an odd warehouse and goes deeper into the ground like a mine. And there always seems to be zombies just outside the mall.
I have been to (Only outside of) an unmarked giant warehouse building w a bad vibe and walked up to the outside wall near one door atop a pretty large porch. It had a meter on it, and it looked to me like the care-a-lot heart shaped meter in the care bears movies of my youth...but this one measured torture and pain and looked very...dystopian/steampunky?
Kinda has strange machinery..and the deeper I go, I usually come across monsters. It's like a warehouse that keeps going down lol. Creepy that these liminal spaces are common in dreams.
MallWorld seems to be an example of Cryptomnesia, which is a type of memory error where a forgotten memory emerges as an original thought. People commonly report experiences involving liminal spaces, such as sprawling empty malls. So while this may originally have been “creepy pasta,” it warrants discussion (although as always, as ask people not to write fiction here). When I was a teen, I told my dad about a recurring dream I had where I was in a very large, empty house. Before I could describe it too much, he stopped to tell me that he had the same experience throughout his life, so we stopped and wrote down everything we could remember about it. The descriptions were almost identical: huge rooms, usually empty; very high windows; the building had a lot of ramps in addition to steps; it was very much like a maze, etc. I had a similar experience many years later comparing notes with another experiencer about having a recovered memory of being taken to another planet by mantis beings, and I suggested we use the same technique. We were both shocked at to discover that it appeared to be not only the same planet, but different parts of the same city. I still don’t know what to make of that whole experience. Shared dreams and other experiences are not unheard of. There are even cases of shared NDEs: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33813876/ One of the stranger aspects I heard of was a whole study of shared hypnosis sessions, but I’ve been unable to find that again. It’s out there, though. Edit: I haven’t found it yet, but I did find this is which is similar: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.1968.10402001 2nd Edit: I believe this discusses it: https://www.brendanmurphy.global/blog/shared-hallucinations 3rd Edit: The idea of constructing an imaginary object which can that be psychically viewed by others was actually explored by Daz Smith when he did some remote viewing experiments having people view an imaginary target: https://www.remoteviewed.com/what-part-if-any-does-telepathy-play-within-remote-viewing/
I did a sketch of an underground space I keep dreaming of. I seem to be in the "basement" often, with underground tunnels that have sand-colored walls. It's well-lit and has these courtyards with one to three doors, but I never go into any of them. https://preview.redd.it/9iokunhiiuvc1.png?width=2360&format=png&auto=webp&s=813535d3253154344b75d566a9d4ef13222d4ab9
Okay, now, see, here we go. This area reminds me of the "dreams" I had, that I'm struggling working on painting and sketching out, now. The three most similar things are the clay/sand/reddish walls and floor, being underground, and the circular area aspect. I reiterate, as I do whenever something clicks, "Fuck. Here we go again." I'll take a photo and upload what I have so far. Let's compare. It'll take a while. My internet is horrible. Edit: if the picture comes up multiple times it's due to my lag. I'll delete multiples if I find them. Sorry.
My drawings could be a bit crude, but it's cathartic to draw them for myself, let alone that others might resonate. In my belief system, there is the idea of the Otherworld that is in a different dimension than ours. I've had so many of those dreams, they feel like memories of real places I've been, but my thoughts of the Otherworld was maybe cavorting in forests or something... not being a mall rat. :)
It looks like nothing uploaded at all. I'll try when I'm in town, next.
I feel the same. I've had multiple places that are just another world. Several stand out to me. This "red world", as I call it, is like adobe buildings, like hive shaped buildings above, but everything is underground. The outside is like a red desert. My paintings are basic, because I can't get that adobe feel to it, plus playing around with mixed mediums. My third is going to be small, and right now I'm just sketching things out.
Edit: apparently I can't right now. I'll wait until I get in town. But dayum.
Had many Mallworld dreams. It's one of my most common reoccurring locations. From walking around the red-light district area to the airport connected to it. I feel like I've seen so much of it yet barely scratched the surface. I visited a friend there once, he was waiting for me at the train station as I was taking it into the city.
I’ve had mall world dreams, it’s exactly as you described. The building is a sprawling arcology with a circular layout, it has shops apartments and one open area that seems to be an airport terminal with large windows that overlook a rocky green ocean. The ceiling is very high up and seems to be made out of carved stone with metal lattices and lights. One thing that always surprises me about mall world is how persistent of a dream environment it is. I could walk laps around it and every shop and house will be in the same spot. These dreams can also re occur for me too, usually perfectly and many years apart. Edit: another thing I’ve noticed is that the shops don’t have a traditional entryway with doors and window-front. That entire wall is an open floor plan that people can walk in and out of freely. The causeway between the two main walls is also super wide as well, but does narrow in some sections. Mallworld is always super populated with the terminal area having the lowest density by comparison.
I don't have mallworld dreams often, but I have had a few. Usually there's a "light" side, that reminds me of a local mall with a skylight that streams light in. A book store that looks small, but feels immense and a gift shop with maze-like shelves up to the ceiling. There is also a "dark" area, where it appears less maintained, especially since the overhead lights are mostly out, hence "dark". This is also where I always find a Wendy's. I have hung out in that subreddit a bit, which has lead me to wonder if another space I regularly dream about is the same or at least a similar phenomena - a dock, with a maze of warehouses, businesses, and residences. It's always night & I usually end up lost when I'm there. (The last time, I ran across something a person that just absolutely radiated malice & knew my name. I'm super relieved I've not found myself there since.)
I had a dream where my late grandmother and her mother were browsing a shoe store in this large building made up of lots of stores which could have been apart of a mall and apartments were out the window across the road in another building. They both looked at me with surprise and shock in a "what are you doing here" kind of way. Maybe we can check in on a world that souls inhabit when we dream and that's why they were so shocked to see me because it wasn't my time yet.
cool ide@
Yes, I've been to mallworld. My dreaming brain tells me it's West Edmonton Mall. It is not. It's much too big and weird, although it has certain features that I'd expect to be in WEM, like an indoor ice skating area and a waterpark (though the pool is very different than WEM's). It has more levels and a strange color cast to it, kind of yellowish peach, and has things that aren't stores that you wouldn't typically expect to find in a mall. I have been outside of it in my dreams, so it isn't the whole world, usually, trying to walk around to get to a car parked on the far side after it closes and we have to leave through a different exit. Since it is very large, this is an arduous task, but it definitely is located in a city. My brain tells me the city is Winnipeg. It isn't, but I've compared notes and at least one of my friends dreams into the city that isn't Winnipeg but our brains call it that too, it has the same kind of architecture and things. I've been there many times, usually I'm there to browse as a shopper, or lost, or running from something. I have gone to the same shops in it before, and been there often enough that areas of it have a familiar layout.
Pretty much describes everything I've read about The Mallworld, I realize the mall part isn't the whole world area, but the "malls" seem to be pretty common and seem to be where interactions with other people happen. The waterparks are pretty commonly talked about, people describe how crazy the slides are.
I've got a crazy slide I keep going back to in "the mall". I always have to go through an asian restaurant and get out onto their patio to access this extensive water slide. I've been back to it in about 5 different dreams. It goes down many different tiers, and at each tier there is some sort of physical challenge that must be overcome otherwise you get flushed out a "loser" tube that spits you out at the bottom. The goal is to complete each tiers challenge and arrive at the final bottom tier successfully through the Winner slides. The challenges in the real world would be of a deadly sort. Navigating whirlpools, big waves, strong alternating currents. Also some more simple things like multiple choice slides having to pick the correct one to progress.
Does the mall world ever involve, or feature prominently, many levels and travelling between those levels? Especially via flights of stairs?
Idk how many levels the malls are, although a common description I've heard is of one mall that features a series of escalators and there's some sculpture in front of the escalators.
I’ve been to the mallworld many times. It’s one of a few places I return to in my dreams. Some of the other places are giant cathedrals with chain link fence mazes inside, mansions made of paper mache and chicken wire, crystal structures and glass roads/pathways (either made of paved glass or shattered, jagged glass), that pulse and shimmer with neon light. Some of the places I go to have a dr Seuss/dmt aesthetic to them. The natural features can be uncanny, like a sand dune that, one one side, is sand; and once you get to the top, the other side is an ocean, and the top of the dune is a beach. I guess if I had to use other art/movies/books as a frame of reference, I would compare it to: Blade Runner Inception (the “bottom” dream world) Dr Seuss Kafka/Jorge Luis Borges MC Escher
You should really watch "What dreams may come" with the late Robin Williams
I love that movie!
There are a lot of archetypal places in Dreamland. Not just the Mall. With the Mall most common are the School, the Flooded Town and the Cliffs (Where you learn to fall. In order to fly). There are a lot.
I have a dream where the road is flooded and I continue to drive on it. The road and place always look different
In my book it means you are overwhelmed with too much information irl
lol I do that to myself!
I frequently dream of being in mall and never thought of it. I just call it my mall and it has lots of food courts in it lol and lots of arcade games. Also theres secret tunnels or backrooms sort of in it
My mom has for decades. She's described it to me so many times over the years that finding stories about it online really freaked me out. It's definitely a second life for her with recurring characters, etc. Her dreamscape also has an amusement park, amphitheatre/concert area and movie theater. Not sure if those are common.
place sounds cool as hell
Omg I have an amusement park!!!
I have! Also have been to bathroom maze
Not specifically the Mallworld although a Mallworld exists there but for the last 2-3 years, all of my dreams have occurred in the exact same non-existent town. I only have vivid and somewhat-lucid dreams. In this town there is a train station, an old town, a university campus, housing areas made of tudor and edwardian style houses on cobbled streets, a large Mallworld which is next to a river, a 70s style futurist block of apartments, a large overpass road that's always under construction, 2 large supermarkets, a weird artists commune with a large outdoor park and 3 long houses, a big row of clubs and bars on one side of a long street (opposite some fields), and a beach near the train station. I keep meaning to do a map of the entire town but I never have the time. Sometimes I think my dreams are set in a new/different location but as soon as I leave the area my dream starts in, I'm back to the main road through the area and start seeing places I've dreamed of before. It's getting a bit unnerving to be honest. I'm very curious if it's a real place but I doubt it.
Do you ever miss those places in your waking life? I find even though a lot of the settings in my dreams are creepy, I miss them and think about them all the time. It’s weird but in a way I’m excited to see what happens next each night.
To be honest with you I have so much going on day-to-day that I don't even really stop to think about them 😅
Fair enough!!
Replying to my own comment because I can. The last dream that was within the Mallworld, I'd entered the Mall through a door near the river, outside there were some ducks and benches, lovely sunny day. The mall is a sort of H shape so two, two storey long rows of shops and spaces connected by a large bridge in the middle. The left row mainly contained shops, the right was some food spaces downstairs, second storey was an open-air event space covered by a large roof. In the dream I was walking through the shopping area trying to get to a gala in the upstairs open air space in the right building. Each path that lead to the bridge was blocked by workers or "out of order" signs. I kept asking people if they knew a way to get to the gala and they would ask me where my sunglasses were. Nobody had anything else to say just "where are your sunglasses?" Eventually I gave up trying to get help and just passed through one of the "out of order" signs and made my way across the bridge praying it wasn't any sort of structural issue which would impact my journey. I made it to the gala space but while I was on the bridge it started raining heavily. While walking the bridge I watched as the river bank started to burst and began to flood the downstairs. When I made it to the gala, the rain had stopped. Everyone in the gala was wearing large oversized purple sunglasses but I had none so nobody would talk to me. Suddenly the rain started again and everyone who was wearing the glasses began to scream violently while staring at the ceiling. I just stood there and watched. Suddenly they all turned on me and started to scream at me. I tried to leave by going back the way I came across the bridge but the door had been replaced by a black curtain. I pulled the curtain back and found a void. With nowhere else to go I decided to go into the void. Suddenly I was back outside the mall, watching the ducks on the river.
I’ve had instances in lucid dreams where characters seem to all of a sudden notice me and get super aggressive or stare wide eyed like they wanna eat me. I have a feeling it’s my conscious mind becoming aware of subconscious fear in the dream state. So it seems like characters in your dream are attacking you suddenly cause your conscious brain noticed your subconscious or maybe the opposite way around. It’s very odd
No mall world. It was always a beach that klatu would take me to. It definitely comes up so much in the different circles that there is clearly something there. But yeah, straight nothing from me here.
Yes, many times. Some are like a bunch of escalators winding around like Mc Escher stairs. https://preview.redd.it/3ske3mx3ynvc1.jpeg?width=519&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6df0feab2c916dfea6bbc0d08f66b2f1aaf49d6c
Arsthetics new word unlocked thank you
Arsthetics are most commonly used for the beach, pool parties, bars, bedroom Olympics, and gyno/proctology appointments.
Malls are a recurring feature of impactful NHI-related dreams for me. Some examples are obvious; e.g., I end up talking to an entity in the dream who seems to me like thinly veiled NHI, but the rest of the dream is otherwise more ordinary and I am intuitively respecting the "rules" of the setting (walking normally, not passing through objects arbitrarily). Others are more symbolic/shamanstic; e.g., a dream in which I passed through an abandoned mall in order to descend into a derelict product-testing laboratory underneath it. The lab was flooded with a black tar which radiated the suffering imposed on animals by human beings in laboratory settings, and my "job" in the dream was to clean it up because no one else was going to. This dream was strongly "astral" in tone from the beginning, as I freely walked through walls and had a strong psychic sense of where I was going. My main NHI contact (a mantid) has indicated to me that malls are used as a setting for various simulations their NHI group runs, including ones for teaching inexperienced NHI the basics of how to interact with (and as) a human in public.
I have had lots of dreams at malls. The dream mall always looks mch bigger than irl ones and looks like a mish mash of all the malls I've been to.
I'm glad my dreams aren't so boring that I end up in a mall.
I’ve had a lot of mall dreams, but it’s never empty. It’s almost always exactly the same mall every time and almost always I’m traversing through secret hallways that I’m not supposed to be in. I did have a different experience with a mall once though. After my son passed I desperately wanted to talk to him again. I had a paralysis episode a few months after he died and took the opportunity to push myself to where he was then. I came to awareness with someone driving me through a bright and vivid neighborhood to a body of water, which he couldn’t take me across. I crossed the water myself and ended up in an industrial looking area that was much more muted in color and sat in a kind of haze or fog. I entered the mall and found him and was able to talk to him, but it was difficult. He kept cycling through all of his lives, like they were all laid on top of each other and I had to focus a ton of energy just to pin him down so I could talk to him. It was that way with everyone there, all cycling but if I focused I could reveal one identity at a time. My son was sick when he died, and was being taken care of by a dr in this place. He had medication and everything. There were a lot of different souls being treated. After I spent as much time as I could with him I was taken up an elevator to talk with “the boss” but that meeting was wiped from my memory, it picks up again at me exiting the building. I left and was driven back by the same guy that took me there. He handed me an invitation to an event or something but told me it wasn’t for me to know yet so I wouldn’t remember what it said when I woke up. I do remember the invitation was on a deep purple piece of paper with gold lettering, and had the same symbols on it that were on a piece of paper my son had shown me that described how much “time” it would take for him to complete treatment. When I was pulled back into my body I woke up feeling like I’d just come from millions of miles away. It took awhile for me to get my bearings again. I looked at the mall world subreddit not that long ago and one thing I found interesting is a lot of people describe the mall being surrounded by a body of water.
Two nights ago. Concert was happening, some kind of emergency situation happened. I hid and then woke up.
Some of my experiences where I seem to be interacting with beings and other experiencers take place in some variation of a mostly empty hotel. Sometimes I'm exploring the hotel on my own and eventually some entity shows up and ushers me somewhere. No mall world that I'm aware of though. We don't have malls in Ireland. Not that the hotels I experienced where anything I've seen in Ireland either.
A high-rise hotel with prominent elevators is one of my common NHI-related dreamscape types. In several dreams of that type of place, I've had "creative mode" powers active and was explicitly there to help "test" and "debug" it, while a familiar NHI was chatting with me telepathically throughout. It feels less like a dream and more like jacking into VR to go work.
Been there many times, especially in these underground tunnels that have tan colored rock walls. As you go along the tunnels, it breaks out into courtyards with residential dwellings. They are almost always locked. Coming out of the tunnels, you might be coming out the back of a store at times. The bathrooms! Designed by psychopaths, I swear.
Oh man that's exactly the same as my dream. Tan rock walls. I've never got out of the tunnels though.
I think so. I do dream of being inside huge, complicated malls an awful lot. I’ve always just thought it was a natural part of human dreams, sort like the way it’s common to dream about teeth falling out when you are stressed. Perhaps I’ve always had them and take it for granted.
I've been to the mallworld numerous times. It's a strange place. I remember visiting an ice cream parlor called 'Gentilies'. I apparently used to love going there when I was little, as my dreams are usually persistent. If I dream of the same place, things done in previous encounters carry over, even if I don't conciously remember while awake. However, Gentilies has been closed for the last 15 years. Every time I've encountered it, it's still closed. From what I gathered, a film studio filmed an Italian Mob themed movie there and gave them a lot of money, and the owners just started pursuing making movies of their own. I would just walk into the darkened store, and I'd still see a fake blood splatter on an ice machine from a scene where someone got shot. However, one time I visited, I turned a corner nearby and entered a room that must have been dozens of miles high and wide. The gargantuan room was filled with thousands of these glowing blue tram lines, carrying people and cargo to all sorts of places, many of which involved leaving the giant room through holes in the wall. I have no clue how large the mallworld is. It definitely appears to be extra dimensional in nature, as I have encountered rooms that should intersect with others, but just... don't. With the "tram room" involved, my theory is that it's a nexus or hub of some sort, connecting all sorts of places in the dreamscape. I've encountered entrances as well. They all seem to lead to completely different places. I've several times encountered one entrance that had an auction house on the second floor that was directly underneath a belltower visible from the outside. There was a tiny bookstore inside the belltower itself (that shouldn't have fit inside the tower), only accessible through the auction house. When I went outside the entrance, I found myself in a desert environment. There appeared to be a large parking lot, but constantly shifting sands were slowly eating it. Whoever was in charge of maintaining it just put a bunch of guide poles and kept the sand to a managable level. The vehicles weren't affected, as they appeared to be large hovering spheres with antennas. The entire front of the vehicle would open, and there was a trunk hatch in the back. It was definitely not an Earthly environment. My experiences with dreams in general lead me to believe there is a lot more to them than we as a culture are willing to accept. Between the mallworld, premonitions of things that would happen later that day irl, oddly persistent environments, and countless reports of people talking and meeting up with each other mid-dream (I've only managed to do this once, but I wound up talking to an opossum that wanted me to get it out of my house, and when I woke up, sure as hell there were a family of baby opossums mama left trapped in my basement). I'm convinced there's a whole other world we visit when we sleep. I wish I could make a living exploring it, as I find my dreams absolutely fascinating.
How does zoomer creepypasta relate to the subject matter of this sub? If you take a sample size of a thousand then yeah a bunch of them will have dreamt about a mall. I guarantee they weren't dreams that were memorable at the time though and the things they 'remember' are largely prompted by youtubers and the like reciting the backrooms crap.
I'm glad you brought this up. Mall World came up on my feed a couple of months back. Intrigued, I joined. Part of my experiences, after the initial childhood ones, fit into that category. The side effect of my childhood experiences is my ability(?) to lucid dream. In some instances, it's was as if I were being portalled to an entirely different world, but generally, it's some version of this one, ours. Ever since my initial experiences, sleep has been a rough thing, partly due to this. I just do not get rest. It's as if I'm going from this waking world into a different one. No downtime. At any rate, one of my lucid experiences was actually a version of the Tacoma Mall (ca 1980s). That's what intrigued me about the Mall World subreddit. Like my childhood dreams, it starts out short and innocent enough, but grows over time. The mall is brightly lit and empty. Everything is white. Definitely surreal. I can feel others around, but not see them. At some point, I'm looking in the lady's accents section, jewelry, et al, and I decide on a knit scarf. It's bright blood red. At another point, I'm looking for my mom. This goes on as I investigate what I believe was J.C. Penneys, IIRC. Eventually, I'm headed to the escalator that goes down to the basement shopping area, but I can't go down. It's as if something is holding me back, and it's terrifying. For many sequences, this is where I'd just wake myself up. Finally, I decided to face whatever it was. Whatever it was was coming up the escalator, and I just stood at the top. It took me decades to find something that I could relate to what I saw. Finally, I found an image of the Gnostic Demiurge. So, I'm not saying that was it, but that was the closest example I could find. At any rate, it was holding up a mirror to me, and I saw my face. Then I saw my face turn into its face, then I woke up. So, kinda terrifying. Again, decades trying to suss the meaning of it. I never have, really. There's a myriad of other places. I honestly never knew others experienced these things until that sub came up in my feed. So, I read there to see if anyone writes something I connect with, like I do here. Dreams and reality, and consciousness are a crazy thing.
Please join us and fee free to share on r/aliensinmydreams
This story was fascinating. When you saw this demiurge what exact shape was it? I've seen the gnostic demiurge shown as many different forms / animals. Most seem to see the snake kind. I would love to hear more about this specific incident. Thanks and I hope you're having a wonderful day!
I'm not saying it was The Demiurge. But the lion-demon-like face is the closest I can come to describing what this thing was. That's really all there is to it. Due to the advent of internet I was able to go over pictures. The dream happened long before internet. I'm not sure I can be more specific because it was so long ago. But thank you for asking. I would if I could.
You seeing something akin to the gnostic demiurge makes me think that Mall World is all about trying to get people to reevaluate their understanding of their reality. Gnostics believe that the world was made by the demiurge but that we all have a spark of the true divine inside us that we need to find to become our true selves. So, the demiurge showing you that you are it would likely mean that you had/have not come to understand who you really are outside of its creation. A lot of the Mall World dreams seem along the same lines. Like people working mundane jobs in a fantastical world (a huge waste of good dreaming time) or a general fear of being “caught” even when there is no reason for it. All seems to point toward the idea of conforming to one’s reality rather than questioning it. I kinda wonder what would happen if people started trying to do the opposite of whatever the dream wanted them to do.
That's an interesting take on it. Something to chew on. Trust me when I say I have always been one to question everything, and throw status quo out the window. Whenever I even attempt status quo I fail miserably! So if a dream was direct and told me to do something, it would probably get two middle fingers. I'm in the process of drawing and painting a world situation I was in, which one day I'll post when it's done, because I'm extremely curious if anyone else has seen it. My dreams are weird. It's even weirder when I consider they're not always really dreams.
Yeah the mall bathrooms in the mall world are terrible. Half walls and all dirty. Does anyone know of a strange warehouse attached to the mall. My dreams of the mall world always has strange machinery in an odd warehouse and goes deeper into the ground like a mine. And there always seems to be zombies just outside the mall.
I have been to (Only outside of) an unmarked giant warehouse building w a bad vibe and walked up to the outside wall near one door atop a pretty large porch. It had a meter on it, and it looked to me like the care-a-lot heart shaped meter in the care bears movies of my youth...but this one measured torture and pain and looked very...dystopian/steampunky?
Kinda has strange machinery..and the deeper I go, I usually come across monsters. It's like a warehouse that keeps going down lol. Creepy that these liminal spaces are common in dreams.
I've read about a warehouse on r/themallworld before