In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life.
That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist’s desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life.
The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.
From January 2006 until today, at least 2000 people have claimed they have seen this man in their dreams, in many cities all over the world: Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Dehli, Moskow etc.
At the moment there is no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of seeing this man. Moreover, no living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams.
- to help those who have seen this man in their dreams and to foster communication among them; - to understand who this man is and why he appears in an apparently pattern-less array of situations in the dreams of such diverse human subjects.
Stories of the Dreamers
“I have had this recurrent dream for some years now. A tall, dark man shows me a picture and asks me if I can recognise my father in it. The man in the picture is this man I have never seen before, he looks nothing like my dad, nevertheless I inexplicably answer that I do recognize my father. At this point I usually wake up feeling very peaceful. Other times the dream continues, I am standing before my father’s grave, I place some flowers on the ground and I realise the photograph on the tombstone is missing.”
“I fell in love with him from the very first time I saw him in my dream. Even though if I think about it I must admit he’s really ugly. And yet each and every time, he sweeps me off my feet with his romantic gestures and sweet words. He buys me flowers, jewellery, he takes me out to dinner or to the beach to watch the sunset.”
Sketches of This Man
“I have always had this dream of flying in the sky over my city and observing my friends from up there. Since I moved to another house I started meeting this man while flying. Not every single time that I have this dream about flying, but often enough. He flies too, but he never speaks.”
“The first time I had a dream about this man I was having a hard time at work. I had a dream about getting lost in a huge and deserted shopping mall. Suddenly this man appeared and I started running away from him. He chased after me for what seemed like an hour until I found myself against a wall in the kids’ area in a supermarket. At this point he smiled at me and he showed me the way out towards the cash desks and I woke up. Ever since that night this man has appeared in all of my dreams and he always gives me directions to get out of the dream and wake up.”
“I have never had homosexual relationships or even fantasies. But I dream about having sexing with this man all the time. I must admit he has a lot of imagination and he pleases me. Sometimes when I wake up I discover I have had a nocturnal emission.”
Sketches of This Man
“I saw this man in my dream, dressed as Santa Klaus. When he showed up I felt so happy, just like when I was a little girl. Then he smiled at me and his head became a balloon,floating in the air above me, but no matter how hard I tried to catch it, I just couldn’t reach it.”
” I dreamt of this man when I was in the 10th grade. He hasn’t been in any recurring dreams just one very memorable and terrifying dream. In my dream I was stuck in a room sitting on a stool. A few feet away from me there was a television set. I was ‘visited’ by two men I had never seen before (not ‘this man’) and they both attacked me. I woke up covered in sweat and tears and I was screaming. I somehow fell asleep then I found myself back in the room. I started screaming and crying. Then This Man showed up on the screen. I begged him to not harm me. He didn’t change his blank expression or speak. He slit my throat and I woke up. I suppose he let me out of the nightmare but I couldn’t stop thinking about him for weeks. I still have some of the sketches I drew of him. I know it’s kind of weird.”
” I dreamt this man was in my mirror watching me, saying nothing, and he was wearing glasses. He never moved the entire time I saw him, he was like a statue, so still.”
” I dreamt this man… was Brazilian and very handsome. He was a schoolteacher type with 6 fingers on his right hand. He said if the US had a nuclear disaster: go North!”
” I have seen this man in 3 completely different dreams. He was slightly different from the picture, but I recognized him immedialely. He appeared suddenly and disappeared in the same manner. His message in all 3 of my dreams was:” It’s all over”. That was repeated 3 times in each dreams. The differences in the picture and the man in my dreams are: his hair was a little longer in the top; his eyebrows were not as bushy. Other than that, he is identical. I had no fear of him, but many questions.”
THEORIES
Several theories have been developed to explain the mysteriously recurring presence of this man in the dreams of different people who are not related in any way. The following theories are the ones that elicit the greatest interest among the dreamers themselves.
ARCHETYPE THEORY According to Jung’s psychoanalytic theory, this man is an archetypal image belonging to the collective unconscious that can surface in times of hardship (emotional development, dramatic changes in our lives, stressful circumstances etc.) in particularly sensitive subjects. RELIGIOUS THEORY According to this theory this man is the image of the Creator, that is to say one of the forms in which God manifests himself today. This is the reason why his indications and the words he utters during the dreams should be decidedly followed by the dreamers.
DREAM SURFER THEORY It is the most interesting theory and the one that has the greatest implications, but it has also the lowest scientific credibility. According to this theory this man is a real person, who can enter people’s dreams by means of specific psychological skills. Some believe that in real life this man looks like the man in the dreams. Others think that the man in the dreams looks completely different from his real life counterpart. Some people seem to believe that behind this man there is a mental conditioning plan developed by a major corporation.
DREAM IMITATION THEORY This is a scientific psycho-sociological theory which claims that this phenomenon has arisen casually and has progressively developed by imitation. Basically when people are exposed to this phenomenon they become so deeply impressed that they start seeing this man in their dreams.
DAYTIME RECOGNITION THEORY This theory states that the apparitions of this man are purely casual. Normally we do not remember precisely the faces we see in our dreams. The image of this man would thus be an instrument which, in the subject’s waking life, facilitates recognition of an undefined oneirical image.
A woman has been hailed a hero after details of her astonishing work with abandoned children has emerged.
Lou Xiaoying, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned Chinese babies from the streets of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province where she managed to make a living by recycling rubbish.
She and her late husband Li Zin, who died 17 years ago, kept four of the children and passed the others onto friends and family to start new lives.
Her youngest son Zhang Qilin - now aged just seven - was found in a dustbin by Lou when she was 82.
'Even though I was already getting old I could not simply ignore the baby and leave him to die in the trash. He looked so sweet and so needy. I had to take him home with me,' she said.
'I took him back to our home, which is a very small modest house in the countryside and nursed him to health. He is now a thriving little boy, who is happy and healthy.
'My older children all help look after Zhang Qilin, he is very special to all of us. I named him after the Chinese word for rare and precious.
'The whole thing started when I found the first baby, a little girl back in 1972 when I was out collecting rubbish. She was just lying amongst the junk on the street, abandoned. She would have died had we not rescued her and taken her in.
'Watching her grow and become stronger gave us such happiness and I realised I had a real love of caring for children.
'I realised if we had strength enough to collect garbage how could we not recycle something as important as human lives,' she explained.
'These children need love and care. They are all precious human lives. I do not understand how people can leave such a vulnerable baby on the streets.
Lou, who has one biological daughter, Zhang Caiying and now aged 49, devoted her life to looking after the abandoned babies.
Word of her kind-hearted gestures has now spread in China, where thousands of babies are abandoned on the streets by their poverty stricken parents.
One fan explained: 'She is shaming to governments, schools and people who stand by and do nothing. She has no money or power but she saved children from death or worse.'
'In the local community she is well known and well respected for her work with the abandoned babies. She does her best. She is a local hero. But unfortunately there are far too many abandoned babies in China who have no hope of survival.
Only last week there was news of a baby lucky to be alive after having its throat cut and then put in a plastic bag and thrown in a dustbin at Anshan city, in northeast China’s Liaoning province.
The baby – a girl – was thought to be a victim of the country's one child policy where parents restricted to only having a single child prefer boys and girls are unwanted and often discarded.
Infanticide of 'guilt children' is still a problem in rural areas but it is rare in cities, where children are usually abandoned but not killed.
The baby's fate has horrified China. The tot was spotted when a passerby went to throw some rubbish in the bin the and saw what he thought was a dead baby in the bag.
He told police that the child was purple and had not moved until he examined the bag more closely.
A resident who witnessed the girl being taken to hospital said: 'She was still breathing and had a heartbeat. Blood from the wound stained the whole body.'
Doctors said that if the baby had been left in the bag a few minutes longer she would have died of suffocation and it had already been affected by the lack of oxygen hence the purple colour.
They said that the baby had been born premature and was probably between 32 and 34 weeks old and weighing just 1.4 kg.
A medic said that if the cut had been just a millimetre deep in the baby would have died.
An Ontario teen who made headlines when she fought back against cruel bullies who mocked the disfigurement on half her face now has her own television special.
Sarah Atwell suffers from neurofibromatosis, a condition the 17-year-old was diagnosed with at 8 months, and the tumor it caused to grow on just one side of her face elicited cries of ‘fat face’ and ‘slut’ from ruthless schoolmates for years.
But in 2012, Atwell fought back. She posted a video to Facebook in which she made her intentions to live a happy life clear no matter what the bullies called her.
That remarkable strength first won Atwell droves of fans across the internet. Now it’s gotten her a special on Discovery Fit & Health slated to air December 18.
The special documents Atwell, who lives with her family in Nova Scotia, in the weeks leading up to what she hopes will be a life-altering surgery to remove the tumor once and for all.
All eyes are on the high schooler and thanks to her video they’re looks of adoration not fear or hate.
It wasn’t always like that. ‘I thought I’d make a video and say what’s been going on,’ she told Discovery.
She’d dealt with bullying all her life and at 16 she was fed up.
‘I was in grade three and people were calling me names like 'fat face' and 'ugly' and were pushing me around,’ Sarah told ABC News. ‘They said I had a disease. Most of the time, I just walked away and didn't say much to them.’
This night in 2012, she decided to say something. Using notecards, she wrote out everything her life with neurofibromatosis, and the bullies who came with it, made her feel.
‘I have a tumor, that’s all,’ says a card the teen holds for the world to see.
‘I wish people could understand there is nothing wrong with me,’ says another.
But people weren’t trying to understand, something the video makes heartbreakingly clear.
‘I get called names all the time,’ reads a card. ‘Bitch, slut, fat face, fat, ugly…it hurts.’
‘Maybe one day the bullying will stop, but until then I’m going to be STRONG,’ one of the last cards says.
Satisfied, Sarah posted her video to Facebook and went to bed. ‘The next day I got up and my inbox was over 1000 messages or more from people,’ Sarah said. ‘It felt pretty good.’
Among what was likely the millions who saw her video was someone from Discovery and the channel has documented a very exciting, and scary, part of the young girl’s life.
Sarah says she hopes to find a career where she can work with kids. And she’d give them all the wisdom she wish she’d been given.
‘If I could stand up to bullying, and if another kid who was bullied sees me and thinks they can talk to someone and think, 'I can stand up for myself,' then I have helped,’ she said. Watch the Video:
