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.

(via Warren Ellis on delicious)

Warren tagged this as “weird”, also “probably+a+marketing+stunt” and “quite+a+good+one+though” which seems about right. The page leads with the statement, “every night throughout the world hundreds of people dream about this face”, and the second thing that struck me was, billions of people dream every night, many of which will dream of strangers, and aren’t there supposed to be only about 2,000 discernibly different faces in the world anyway? Do the math, as they say.

The first thing that struck me, though, was, isn’t this face rather close to the face of this well-known Dream Man?

Doubtless it is mere coincidence that my bedtime listening last night was a reading of The Call of Cthulhu, in which the primary intrigue concerns a shared dream amongst sensitive types, all over the world…