Watch filmmaker’s ‘scarily realistic’ depiction is of a dream… or is it more of a nightmare?

Your face stares back at you in the bathroom mirror. The laundry basket behind you feels familiar, but you’ve no idea where you are.

You drop a double-headed toothbrush into the glass on the sink, it tinkles against the sides, slotting beside a pair of scissors. On the shelf above lie your extracted teeth.

The images fade as you blur from slumber, a faceless woman, a child bound in police tape and a collection of VHS tapes emerge and quickly pass.

What the hell was that dream all about?

A filmmaker has created hauntingly realistic depictions of dreams by attempting to simulate the bizarre way hallucinations are seen by billions of people every night.

Steal Adcock’s scarily ‘realistic’ depiction gives a first-person perspective on what a dream – or a nightmare – may look like, with all the ‘strange’ and ‘nonsensical’ things people cna experience.

The US filmmaker is known for producing simulation videos on his YouTube Channel ‘HandintheBoxInc’. His most popular video being a sleep paralysis simulation, which has more than 113,000 views.

Filmmaker Steal Adcock’s bizarre movie recreates the strange and often confusing mix of things people experience during a dream… or is it more of a nightmare?

Some of his latest projects include ‘symbolic’ dream simulations, a ‘false awakening’ simulation and nightmares involving a dentist, a car accident, and fishing.

The films, produced during Mr Adcock’s school, college and grad school days are confusing, colourful and sometimes stressful, just like real dreams.

The description on the Channel’s page reads: ‘Truth hidden behind comfortable veil. Expectations falsified, fantasies emphasised.

‘Common to think outside this Box, but Wonder at what’s inside. Our films take people Places they Never Imagined to Dream. You Never Know What you will get from the Box.’

However, this particular video is the one that stunned viewers, who branded it ‘super realistic’.  

d it ‘super realistic’.  

The creepy footage gives a view of a person who starts from the bathroom and slowly makes their way into a ‘pit of darkness’.

The person, played by Mr Adcock himself, then ends up in a forest and later finds themselves in a strange tunnel.

Throughout the clip is the scary sight of a young girl named Jayda who, one moment is tied up in police tape – and the next, travelling upside down on a moving wheelchair.

Despite the random nature of the simulation, viewers have said it ‘captures the cluttered, almost claustrophobic nature of dreams’.

Before you awake, the haunting vision of a child bound in police tape enters your mind 

You sift through a series of books, and find an old VHS cassette, which turns into torn up paper

One viewer wrote: ‘Every time I think of the dreams I had, I always feel they’re claustrophobic and this emulates it pretty damn well. Good job.’

Another added: ‘Bro this is super realistic, I didn’t even think anyone could reproduce what it’s actually like to be in a dream.’

A third said: ‘Can totally relate my dream to this video. The way it moves from one scene to another skipping few moments. It is really beautiful and scary version of dream. Nice work.’

Another commenter said: ‘I was laughing for the first few seconds because I never really knew how others experienced dreams but this is quite literally a perfect example of how I experience them.

A faceless being emerges through the blur in your mind… what on earth does it mean?

‘Just jumping from one thing to another, everything confusing as hell when I try to recall what happened after I wake up. Super entertaining.’

Not everyone agreed with these assessments though, with several people noting how frightening the simulation was.

One said: ‘Bruhhhh if ur dreams r like dat i wouldn’t even go to sleep lmaoo [sic].’

Another said: ‘This is terrifying, who’s dream is this?!’

Someone else quipped: ‘That’s not a dream that’s a nightmare.’

According to sleep researcher J Allan Hobson, there are five basic characteristics of a typical dream, which appear to line up with Adcock’s simulation.

Professor Hobson, an American psychiatrist known for his research on Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, outlined these characteristics in his 1988 book ‘The Dreaming Brain’.

He wrote that dreams often feature intense emotions, are frequently disorganised and illogical, strange content is accepted without question, people often experience bizarre sensations – and, crucially, they are difficult to remember.