Imaginary creature running along side

[Rixus]

When you were a child sitting in the back of your parents car, did you imagine a strange humanoid creature that ran alongside your car? Specifically as a co-runner that had to follow rules such as which lines to run on, leap from street lights to street lights, or balance upon the crash barriers?

I recently heard how common it actually is amongst kids, yet something we never discussed with anyone. It's not that other kids imagine similar things that I find interesting about this, it's that the details I've heard are almost identical. It runs along side - not racing, chasing or escaping, but alongside as a companion. It doesn't run upright, but somewhat like a humanoid werewolf galloping using both legs. It's not an actual animal, or a human or machine, but a strange humanoid creature.

 

[Black Rose]

The poll lacks the option that describes my situation.

I don't have mental imagery in my head.

I asked my mom to close her eye and picture a cat and she could do that.

I can't do that so I think there is something wrong with me.

 

[nanook]

Sounds a bit like false memory. As soon as i read the description i feel like yeah i know this guy, just because i imagine him. People on the internet love these me-too stories. What kids have in common for sure is the desire to move as described. It's our attention that moves in such ways, as we grow a comprehension of our environment. This is actually an excellent example of what the sensing function does. But projecting this desire into a dissociated day-dream character - "my little Si demon" - is very special and unnecessary. As a former skateboarder i also have the imaginary "fingerboard" character, who skates every object on my desk. I mean, my hands and my attention do this and its not necessary to think of it as a character. This is an example of what the ego does. It personalizes every fucking thing under the sun. If a pine cone falls on your head, god himself must have willed it to do so. If my hand skates the edges of my mousepad, that must have been the doing of greyson fletcher, the viking goddess of skateboarding. Ego is false memory. After the fact fabulation. I wrote this, it must be true because I am not a false god. I totally exist, bitch.

 

[TheManBeyond]

topic destroyed

-

u r not strange anymore when u think u are strange

 

[Jennywocky]

I never had any experiences like this.

Everything was more about perceptions that I filtered to compare to what I deemed tangible reality (versus perceptive reality), and I didn't really have any trouble separating the two.

I do have a vivid imagination and can "imagine" such stuff if I feel like it, superimposing it over top reality, but it's always labeled as imagination to me and not real.

 

[Pizzabeak]

No.

Not really at least. I don't want to implant false memories and say we may have done that once or twice or something.

We did do the raindrops on the window thing though.

Be careful with sharing that information, they'll think you're crazy and you'll get institutionalized.

 

[The Gopher]

I did the same thing but it was generally like a small car or something. I don't think the similar part is the humanoid but it's the game where you have to navigate the imaginary object. Otherwise not that weird.

 

[Rixus]

Well, I don't speak of a hallucination, for one thing. It was something imagined, clearly pictured and imposed onto reality but not something I at any point believed was actually real. I have never confused my imagination with reality. Nor am i talking of a false memory - It's something I've always imagined, and still do if I'm a passenger. I only recently heard of others imagining the same thing and thought it interesting that it seemed common for something fairly specific. When I discussed it earlier in the office, 2 out of 3 agreed and I wanted a larger sample.

What do other people imagine, and superimpose over reality?

 

[JimJambones]

I think I imagined some ninja character running and jumping alongside trying to keep up, sort of like in a rooftop chase in one of my cartoons/movies.

Also, I imagined a large ostrich pulling our car on rope. I would look out the front windshield from the backseat and imagine what the ostrich would look like from behind as it ran in the direction away from us.

I had a very active imagination.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

This doesn't seem very odd or uncommon to me, at least for anyone who has ever been a bored passenger on a long, long road trip. I was driven across Texas at least eight times; long before smart phones were a thing and they started putting televisions in cars.

My creatures were never humanoid; they usually flew and were fantastic beasts from mythology or fiction. I also had large, destructive sandworms and on the pacific highway, leviathan/jörmungandr swimming alongside in the ocean.

 

[Pyropyro]

It is just imagined things to keep ourselves entertained in road trips. Mine is a transformer who changes mode to robot when we hit rough roads and into a tank when we are on smooth ones.

 

[QuickTwist]

IDK what it was that was following along with the car. I have no image in my mind of what that is. That said, it is something that happened a lot. For me the thing needed to "jump" over every obstacle like street lamps and stuff.

 

[Seteleechete]

[No, but I will be sure to emulate that next time we are riding in the back of a car ]

[Sounds like a fun way to pass the time if nothing else.]

 

[Starfishtea]

I actually have seen and heard other people talk about this specific thing before but I myself have never experienced it, and I'd say I'm quite acquainted with hallucinations.
I can only envision it clearly now because I saw a gif someone made trying to explain it when I was around 16.
Actually thinking about it, it did look exactly like a humanoid yet doglike creature. Maybe we've seen the same gif. It was quite popular. Not that I'm saying that specific gif inceptioned that memory in you

 

[Architect]

I don't specifically remember that but it is very familiar so I suspect that I did have exactly that kind of imagining. Especially the part about how the animal follows some specific rules as to how its running, I recall seeing imaginary things but they followed their own internal rules.

So yes I frequently had such bizarre waking dreams as a kid, and even as an adult. Once while working in Japan I had one where, while eating a Udon soup in a restaurant, I looked over Tokyo and started seeing giants sitting on top of the buildings playing horns or bagpipes. Being in Japan as a Westerner is bizarre after many weeks (or is for me), you're so isolated from the other people, while being completely surrounded by them that it induces this kind of detachment (and it's a kind of STJ culture which enhances the detached intuition for me). The experience was very similar to when I was a child, where in a large Sensing family I always felt separated.

Intuition dominants like my INFJ wife has this more frequently. Just yesterday she described feeling like she's going through the day but nobody can see her. We were just driving to a party, and she felt like an invisible person. Clear demonstration of Ni dominant I think. The Ne dominant or auxiliary sees outward manifestations, but the introverted intuition is directed at the self, e.g. seeing oneself as invisible. That particular kind of intuition I've not experienced, mine being outwards directed (Ne it appears) as mentioned above.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Holy shi-, yes, yes I did!

clearly, these creatures are real

 

[Happy]

Yes, but I was the creature, and I could only touch shadows.

Close enough!

 

[AndyC]

Cars blowing up, moving cars with your mind. My mind is full of crap.

 

[kora]

Yes absolutely, not a weird humanoid creature, sometimes it was myself, sometimes it was a cat or four legged winged thing. My boyfriend described this to me out of the blue one day and I recognized it, it's not a falsified memory, I remember clearly doing it.

 

[Minuend]

A cheetah. It was the result of boredom, so I have slightly negative feelings attached to it.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

I quite like the effect that this thread has had on me - I spent much of today in active imagination, for example, today there was a giant serpent following alongside the bus, amongst many other creatures. The reaper often seems to follow me around.

Active imagination of creatures and patterns in the environment around one is a highly enjoyable, and enlightening experience as one comes to recogise the spiritual world which is constantly all around oneself. And voices can come to one from this world, which is perhaps where most of human knowledge comes from.

I attain meaning from such a process, and I highly encourage others to do the same.

 

[TheManBeyond]

Sure there is

 

[RaBind]

no my visualisation abilities aren't and never were developed well enough to be able to overlay an imaginary image onto the real world

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

no my visualisation abilities aren't and never were developed well enough to be able to overlay an imaginary image onto the real world

Well - get to work!

 

[Niclmaki]

I have no idea what this is about, so Im gonna have to go with no.

 

[INTPWolf]

Yes, it ran along the power lines, and vaulted off of streetlights, and rode on the tops of other cars when we were on the highway.
I could never see it for say not with my eyes, but my minds eye, i knew what it looked like, and my eyes followed it. It was like a dog, sometimes it rode a hover bored thing that slid across the power lines, it stood on two feet.

 

[StevenM]

It was an entertaining thing to do during boring car rides. With mine there was no animal or human, it was just the point of where my eyes were focusing. It hopped and dodged as others here described, or just followed the power lines. If someone noticed, it would probably look like I was developing some serious neurological disease.

In waiting rooms, I'd try making interesting spiral movements of my dangling feet, or construct imagined mazes out of the floor tiles. I wonder if any of this has to do with introversion.

 

[Nebulous]

When you were a child sitting in the back of your parents car, did you imagine a strange humanoid creature that ran alongside your car? Specifically as a co-runner that had to follow rules such as which lines to run on, leap from street lights to street lights, or balance upon the crash barriers?

YOOO I had a white wolf named Storm and she would run alongside the school bus in the morning, jumping over obstacles and doing badass flips and stuff

When it was raining she would climb up onto the seat beside me and curl up and fall asleep
--

This should be the true furry test

noun informal
an enthusiast for animal characters with human characteristics, in particular a person who dresses up in costume as such a character or uses one as an avatar online

 

[ZenRaiden]

A cheetah. It was the result of boredom, so I have slightly negative feelings attached to it.

I imagined a cheeta too.

Not sure why people think this is wierd or odd or even close to mental illness. As far as I can tell its called imagination.
People and children especially use it all the time.
Some of you guys sound like you never used imagination or something.