The dreamscape really resonates with me. And the 'shadow people' like to slip out of those dreams. Sometimes, when you think you see a movement out of the corner of your eye and turn quickly, nothing there, that's them.
A figure in the room, in broad daylight, over there by the lamp? Turn your head quickly, no it was just the jacket you forgot to hang up, draped over that chair...or was it.
I actually try not to dream. Or at least lock them out. I have a particular little ritual I use at night to keep my dreams shut up tight, mostly as I don't find mind too enticing.
Sometimes I think it's that very thin membrane between our timelines, our endless instances of the same ME making choices, this way or that, this road or that, making another path open up. And it feels like dreams are a slit in that fabric and I don't always want to see in or let them through.
I like the opposite of Elanore's advice and I try to do one 'thing that makes me elated' a day. :)
I'll have to check out your books.
I spend a lot of time in the dreamscape. And that makes sense we see people in our periphery - our brains try to "build" objects sometimes when we can't see them clearly.
In my dreams, it often feels like the timeline is an illusion - that the continuity of me is a thin little lie. That I could be anyone or everywhere. In my dreams I often have fabricated memories, entire histories of things that never happened. Makes me think of how fragile these things are in the construction of us.