[Reporter] For all the talking we've done about the absurdity of our pandemic days
maybe it's the nights that have been the strangest.
The anxiety keeping us staring at the ceiling
tossing and turning deep into the night
and drifting into the weirdest of dream worlds.
I dreamt I was watching a movie
and turned around to see my girlfriend
had duct-taped herself to my bedroom window.
[Reporter] Canadian filmmakers have been illustrating the COVID dreams people submit.
Academics, chronicling them in global studies over the last year.
Some of you sending us your bizarre tales.
In my dream, I was like, oh my god what!
It's always me being in an overcrowded area
with people that are neither practicing social distancing
or wearing a mask.
I do not like COVID in my dreams.
The washroom is filthy.
The doors are hanging off the hinges.
And this waitress runs into me and says
"I'm sorry, I have to do this."
And then at the moment when she plunged
I screamed and woke up.
[Reporter] Clearly, pandemic dreaming is by now a global phenomenon
and among the explanations for it
is a pretty simple one.
With so many no longer commuting
something happens around the time we used to get up for work.
Many just don't.
People around the world, staying in bed almost an hour longer in the mornings
according to a Brown University survey.
And for sleep scientists
there is meaning there.
Is that a thing Elizaveta?
That there's a connection between
the types and vividness of the dreams we're having
and what time we're staying in bed until?
Yes, yes definitely.
So most vivid, immersive
kind of spatial-temporal emotional dreams
happen in the morning.
[Reporter] And because morning dreams are more easily remembered
we're all talking about them.
In a year that Elizaveta Solomonova
of McGill has been collecting the stories of pandemic dreams
she's seen a shift.
In those first days of lockdown
when no one was going anywhere
and we felt stuck
we worked through that in our sleep.
So the most prevalent dream theme during the first lockdown
was trying over and over to do something
and not succeeding.
What they dreamt about
they dreamt about being unable to do stuff
they wanted to do.
[Reporter] Those feelings of trying to catch a flight
and missing it.
Making a run for the border but not getting there.
Those dreams happened a lot.
Harvard Medical School's professor Deirdre Barrett
has been studying dream life her entire career.
She says this era is a standout.
Dream recall was just way up this time
and in a way that's
that was not as true of any other crisis.
[Reporter] Imagery in dreams is sometimes really obvious.
Consider what she found after 9/11.
After looking at all that in real life
of course, there were dream submissions of plane crashes or fires.
But in the early days of the pandemic
COVID and the fear of it
didn't necessarily look like anything
so our brains figured it out.
Plenty of dreams of natural disasters
especially tsunamis.
And oddly, bugs.
[Barrett] And it could be any kind of insect.
People dreamed about swarms of bees and hornets
flying at them.
Armies of cockroaches running at the dreamer.
[Reporter] Think about it, she says
bugs are a pretty logical metaphor for viruses
and early pandemic dreams were infested with them.
They certainly were for Mary Boutilier of Toronto
who sent us a deeply creepy COVID dream.
I came in the house
took off my mask
and the inside of my mouth
was coated with sticky, dead houseflies.
Her mouth is full of like houseflies
and she's trying to get them out
and there's like one or two still left.
Yeah, that would be in there.
They're anything from, the bugs are going to kill you
to just the bugs are dirty
and disgusting
and it's more like this is going to make you sick.
[Reporter] Once masks became the ubiquitous image of the pandemic
they took over in dream imagery.
So have you been having any COVID dreams?
Yes, are you?
[Reporter] Trust Margaret Atwood to be ahead of the curve on that one.
I was at this big party
which I, in fact, had thrown
and in the middle of it
I realized
it's a big party
and none of us have got any masks on.
Canadians who sent us their dream stories
like Rosie Grant of Edmonton
can apparently relate.
You know those dreams where you show up somewhere
like work or school
and you're not wearing any clothes
and it's rather embarrassing?
Well now the embarrassment comes from
showing up somewhere without a mask.
[Reporter] To be anxious in our sleep
about a room full of unmasked people
probably says a lot
about how embedded the public health messages have become.
And dreams of feeling trapped or locked away
which so many describe
are potentially important.
And so what what do you think people
should do with this Information?
If you pay attention to some of the nuances
of exactly what you're dreaming about
and what it might be a metaphor for
some people aren't as conscious
that the loneliness is even worse
than the fear of getting the virus
until they have this dream
of being in solitary confinement.
Having bad dreams doesn't mean it's bad for us.
So very often
our dreams are kind of revealing to us
our own existential concerns
our own fears
our own anxieties.
[Reporter] More than a parlour game then
to talk about the weirdness of our pandemic nights.
All the drama in our brains that ramps up
when the sun goes down.