The Lamp Story is a story that was originally posted by u/temptotosssoon on Reddit in 2012.
In summary, the story talks about the original poster losing consciousness when he was attacked by a football player.
While he was unconscious, he had a dream about meeting a girl, marrying her, and having a daughter and a son.
However, he realized that everything was fake when he stared at a lamp and it started distorting.
Although the story was posted multiple years ago, it’s still trending on social media platforms like TikTok.
This article contains the original lamp story copypasta from Reddit by u/temptotosssoon that was posted multiple years ago and if its real.
The lamp story
During my last semester at a certain college, I was assaulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs and I was 120lbs).
While unconscious on the ground, I lived a different life.
I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, and I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over.
After two years, we got married, and almost immediately, she bore me a daughter.
I had a great job, and my wife didn’t have to work outside the house.
When my daughter was two, my wife bore me a son.
My son was the joy of my life, and I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.
One day, while sitting on the couch, I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted.
It was still in 3D, but…just…wrong (it was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade).
I was transfixed, and I couldn’t look away from it.
I stayed up all night staring at it—the next morning, I didn’t go to work—something was just not right about that lamp.
I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn’t eating or drinking.
I stared at the f*cking lamp for 3 days before my wife got worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, but by this time my cognizance was breaking up, and my wife was freaking out.
She took the kids to her mother’s house just before I had my epiphany…the lamp is not real…the house is not real, my wife, my kids…none of that is real…the last 10 years of my life are not f*cking real!
The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, and it took up my entire perspective.
All I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain…a f*cking sh*t ton of pain…the first words I said were “I’m missing teeth” and opened my eyes.
I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn’t know, lots were freaking out, and I was completely confused.
At some point, a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass, and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.
I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn’t want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and given CT scans and sh*t.
I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed.
I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams.
I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.
Edit: (24 hours after post): Never thought anyone would read this, I changed a line so that it no longer seems that my 2-year-old daughter bore a child.
I have never seen Inception or the Star Trek episode that many users have mentioned (but I will eventually).
I will not do an AMA.
I’ve had many PMs describing similar experiences, and 3 posters stating such experiences are impossible, I’d say more research needs to be done on brain functions.
Pre-med students, don’t assume you know everything.
A few have asked if they can write a book/screenplay/stage play/rage comic etc, please consider this tale open source and have fun with it.
Is the lamp story real?
The original thread was a question asking Reddit users if they ever felt a connection to a person that they met in a dream on r/AskReddit.
Here’s the question, “Have you ever felt a deep personal connection to a person you met in a dream only to wake up feeling terrible because you realize they never existed?”.
A Reddit user, u/temptotosssoon, posted his experience and described how he went unconscious and started dreaming about having a wife and kids.
Whether or not the lamp story is real is a mystery because the original poster is anonymous and Reddit is a place where you can come up with fake stories.
However, the original poster did emphasize the intricacies of brain functions and that pre-med students don’t know everything.
In addition, the r/AskReddit thread contains hundreds of stories, and some of them are more absurd than the lamp story.