I fell asleep earlier today and had a lighting related dream. In my kitchen there is a fluorescent fixture that has 2x 18 W T8 lamps.

(dream begins)
I enter the kitchen and discover that the lamps have been changed to T12 instead. But I know they are broken, and the phosphor had completely disappeared on one of them (I just know that it isn't a germicidal lamp) and partially from the other. I try to turn them on, but they just flash wildly and the one without phosphor has a thin bright white arc inside it, not like a low pressure mercury discharge should look. My parents then arrive and we stand to look at the arc together. But then the glass starts to crack and seconds later the lamp violently explodes. Apparently no one was injured and I immediately start picking up the glass with paper towels after opening the door to ventilate mercury vapor.
(I wake up)

A strange experience. I have dreams related to lighting quite often (like one per week), but my memory of any dream is usually very weak, but I remember this one clearly.

I dreamed last night I was at a store and they had a few boxes of NOS blackenders, at the original 1970's price as well.

I dreamed last night I was at a store and they had a few boxes of NOS blackenders, at the original 1970's price as well.

You mean 1970 price recalculated for inflation? That would be expensive, i guess...

I've had a number of dreams where it's daytime and everyone's going about their normal business except the sky is black and we rely entirely on electric lighting.

I've also had one where a fire was started at a school I used to go to because someone fitted T8 fluorescent tubes in lamps designed for T12 tubes, I think that's rather unlikely in real life!

Early this morning, I just dreamt that there is a chamber room with HID bulbs inside.

There were 4 stacks of 17 cm (7 inch) diameter globe of Mercury dischage lamp in a clear quartz envelope.  It was not glowing at all.

The next thing I know there is a 30 cm (12 inch) diameter Metal Halide globe quartz envelope right front of the 2nd stack of Mercury dischage globe.  The Metal Halide globe looks so dirty inside due to heavy amount of salt deposit and repeated used.

The next thing I know there is a demonstration film at the same spot I was previously seeing showing a middle age female enter the chamber to be sitting right next to these bulbs.  Once she has sat down, all of sudden, there was a brief flash out of the Metal Halide globe something like a hundred thousand joules of electrical dischage.  Momentarily later, she fell foward to the ground.

Right after that, I just woke up thinking about that dream as if this was a death chamber room

Last night I dreamt that I drove to Turkey to visit one of the guy who collects light bulb (Sorry, not you lantern_vision).  He had a ellipsoid shape envelope that is coated in pink, but the base and the arc is missing.  He also had flame tip incandescent bulb with interconnected filaments shaped like christmas tree.  Then he showed me a desktop fixture that he attempted to light up the CMH bulb, but it failed.  I looked under the desktop fixture, no wonder that there is a bare CMH arc tube fitted in the fixture

I dreamed that my whole room (walls/ceiling) were all covered with rapid start/preheat fluorescent lights, and  I mean EVERY CORNER! The lights WERE the walls! 

Did any of you guys try to recreate that stuff ? I mean underpowering HIDs to get weird colors, using EOL fluorescents in off setups, using electronic controls to get desired effects ?

I sometimes did stuff like that for school theater special FX

I had a dream I was on this roller coaster type ride, only it went slow. The ride went through this gray concrete tunnel lit with many many many 8 foot slimlines, all suspended above but perpendicular to the track. And that's ALL there was, just a lot of gray lit with 8 foots...it was almost beautiful in its stark minimalism 

this doesn't really have to do with lighting, but I know the recurring dreams you are describing. I once had similar dreams about a garage door opener

I had a rather strange dream the other night. Can't remember much but was in a fight and for some reason I ended up glassing somebody with a 4 foot fluro tube...

There was this one a few years ago where our garden (food growing, not the British term for yard) was lit by lights that looked like eastern European cobrahead type fixtures that were all mounted on deteriorating wood poles.  They all used medium bayonet based incandescent lamps.  Some of the fixtures had no lens and they all had heavily rusted mounting arms and were wired with white insulated UF or NM cable.  There was another identical fixture on the floor of the room I was in (this is from the perspective of a second floor room in my house overlooking the garden) that had no lens and was fitted with a brass base inside frost lamp.

There was another time when I was in the attic of a neighbor's house that was going to be demolished and I was gutting it of anything salvageable.  There were a number of plastic bins filled with a mix of PL and helicrap compact fluorescent lamps.  Most were obviously EOL with blackened ends.  There were also cases of 22W and 88W incandescent bug lamps and other oddball power rating GLS lamps.

I have had the "classic dreams in a way...
I .live off the grid, and dreamt that my generator was failing for some reason and the lights went really dim.
I had a dream about a month ago that I was at my mom's neighbor's house (he's an electrician) and found a GE mainlighter in the trash.  First of all, I rebuked him for chucking any flouro lamp in the regular curbside trash, and second I didn't want to see a GE mainlighter get destroyed.  It had a bent pin, but I remember saying something like, "If you don't mind I am going to take this" because I somehow knew I could fix the bent pin with a pair of pliers. (in real life  moved a bunch of warm white f40t12 mainlighters that were warm white and some cool white Norelcos, both of which were NOS.
The second part of that dream was that I was in the same guy's garage looking for a lightbulb, but to get to the regular bulbs I had to move two cases of vintage f40t12s. They were Norelco and GE  Mainlighters. The boxes went flat, though and every bulb broke.


In real life there are two f32t8 wraparounds in my kitchen.  I dreamt that there was like a LOT  more fixtures but they were f40t12.  My Dad had for some reason put in BLB and vintage colored tubes with the mainlighter style General (GE) Electric etch and when I flipped the switch everything started flourescensing. or whatever.  Then, the dream somehow moved outside where the effect was ruined by a bunch of white christmas lights.

This is so cool I found this post!  I too have had two lighting related dreams!  I loved them but they were quite eerie!  One I had involved a power Substation by my parent's old house that I would often drive into its parking lot to hear the transformers humming on rainy days.  I love this kind of stuff as i am very inlive with electronics as a whole LoL. In the first dream I had walked down to the substation and it was a warm rainy foggy night and I could hear the arcing typical of the high kV lines but there were inductor coils and slow spinning fans there as well!  In reality there never was!  There is one mercury lamp, old school there and a High pressure sodium wall pack, however the mercury lamp had a frosted bulb in it and was buzzing and glowing pinkish blue and the hps fixture was now a Phillips LPS wall pack I still dream of owning and always wanted!  I decided in the dream that I might be able unwire the fixture live and take it but it was dangerously close to one of the step down transformers and I moved closer and closer hoping to not come within zapping range!  It was quite exciting, all the while watching for people or cars driving by...then I woke up LoL!  

The second dream was even neater.  In real life a few years back also down from my parents, they had recently installed two brand new clear lens 400 watt HPS cobra heads down at an intersection pretty much in the middle of nowhere where I live (but there have been a few accidents there hats probably why).  Sonin the dream I remember being down there on another warm foggy night and the cobra head poles were sagging low like maybe 7 feet off the ground, they were within grabbing height and they were broken, just droopy as if Salvador Dhali painted them.  They were LPS instead though! And were in the neon red starting mode but also in hang in glow with flicker lines! That was it, but really neat dreams.  I've always lived worn out fixtures with the bulbs aged as well doing neat stuff, and the sounds and effects oh high voltages and currents.  This last summer we had a torrential flooding here in PA and one foggy night I had to make a run for groceries while the wife works 3rd shifts.  It was probably 3 am and on the way there is this run down shack of a store abandoned but with an old mercury vapor lamp that lights dimly, clear bulb, very blue old school, yellowed reflector, cracked as well and I had to pay it a visit in the rain, the water was running all around the darned thing and it was buzzing and glowing flickering some, I probably spent 10 minutes parked there at this abandoned place, maybe this summer I could video it starting up or something for here or in a rain storm doing its thing LoL!  Much Thanks for this post!!

I have recently been having dreams of scenes lit with clear MV lamps...
In one (this is gonna sound weird) I had a dream that kittens were being born in my woodshed, which in real life is lit by a Westinghouse Bug-A-way (60w) was lit by a 40w incandescent on a variac, which was slowly dimming down, There was a F40T12 shoplight in the Generator room (I live off the grid) that had True Value Gro-lux lamps, and the rapid start ballast was making the lamps stirate due to the dropping voltage.  i then looked up and there was that greenish glow coming out of my bedroom window 9you know, the one from a clear MV lamp). I ran upstairs, and I saw only the feeble glow of a restriking lamp in my yardblaster (again due to the fact half the house was apparently on a variac).
I've also had other dreams about MV lit scences