We asked readers to send us samples of their dreams, and they have started pouring in. Here are a few of the first submissions.

Tina Peters, 37, Bethel Park

I had this dream several years ago but it's one that was so bizarre I'll never forget it.

I dreamed for what seemed a long period of time about a mother deer and her babies that somehow entered my house. The dream itself wasn't very exciting, but I dreamed it early in the morning, right before I awoke. Therefore, it was clear to my mind that morning when I was getting ready for work.

I didn't think about the dream much while I was at work all day, but as I was driving home, down a hill (a little too fast), the deer dream again came back to me. It made me think that perhaps I should slow down, because you never know when a deer might run out from the side of the road.

Well, you guessed it. As bizarre as it sounds, at the bottom of the hill was a huge deer walking across the road! Which I would have surely hit had I not slowed down!

When I think back to this chain of events and my deer dream, I feel like I imagined it because it's so bizarre, but I know that I didn't. I just say that someone must have been looking out for me up there.

Here is my first lucid dream. I had this the night after I was laid off from a job.

I am in a building and there is a man chasing me who is trying to kill me with a gun.

I run through the building and start to run down the steps. I see Terry (a man I used to work with who was a television director), and I shout to him, "Help me Terry. I'm dreaming and there is a man out to kill me." Terry looks at me and says "Come on," and he leads me out of the building. Just as we are entering a playground with me in front of Terry, I hear a shot. I turn around thinking that Terry has been killed but see that he is still standing. Then the man with the gun turns towards me and shoots. I look down to see where I was shot, but I don't feel anything. Just at that moment voices start laughing and say "It's only a starter pistol." End of dream.

(My) interpretation: I was able to learn from this dream that my life was not over because the job was. I am now in a more successful career.

Last week I had one of those detailed dreams just before I awoke.

I flew to the moon with my husband, from whom I'm amicably estranged and who now lives in England. We were going to live in a new housing development there.

The ship we flew in looked something like a cross between the one in Star Trek and a first-class United cabin, and was filled with couples and families. I was afraid to look out the window at the stellar scenery because I wanted to pretend I wasn't really in a spaceship.

When we got to the moon, the development was one of those boring suburban ones with look-alike ranch houses and palm trees. I said, "I don't believe we're on the moon because we can breathe the air." The developers had somehow put a big plastic dome over everything.

We moved in, but right away were attacked by enemy beings which looked like small grubs; when we smashed them, they'd just reattach themselves. They were everywhere! And then we discovered that they also took the shape of palm trees with eyes. Everyone was frightened and wanted to return to the Earth, but we'd signed two-year leases and the company wouldn't fly us back.

Then I discovered that the only thing which would kill the aliens was Vicks VapoRub. If we smeared it on them, the grubs would curl up and disappear. All the families rushed to their medicine cabinets to get out their VapoRub. When we rubbed some on one of the enemy trees, it began screaming in agony and thrashing around. Then I woke up.