Morning of December 18, 1980. Thursday.

Summary: A town called “Circus World” does not seem to exist regardless of billboard indicators.

I am riding in a car in the back seat - with my older sister Carol also in the car in the front seat, and her husband Mel is driving (it seeming to be the car they own at the time in reality). It seems to be nearing six o‘clock in the evening. We are looking for an actual town near La Crosse or West Salem apparently called “Circus World”, though that is actually an attraction in Baraboo, Wisconsin in reality. Mel is regarding the billboards to determine where to go, but we never reach the town. It almost seems as if the fictional town of Circus World had moved years before. We go past some of the same sketchy billboards a few times over - most displaying an elephant head (back and forth in both directions, north and south, on a few occasions, Mel trying to determine if there is a main road that goes to the east or west). It may also turn out to be, I reason, a small town at the end of a back road, but we do not stop anywhere or get out of the car at any point. Perhaps it is not the right “season” for the town to be visible and is somehow invisible otherwise (or more reasonably, named differently during off-season).

In real life, a few years prior to this dream, I had given Mel my paperback copy (which I read) of Alistair MacLean’s “Circus” as a Christmas present when I was a teenager (which was a spy fiction story or thriller). Though I saw it on the bookshelf in their home some time later, I was never sure if he would have read something like that and I never asked. That was possibly at least partly the “trigger” for this dream scenario. I also thought that perhaps he did not know what the plot involved due to the “unlikely” cover and title.

Conclusion: A self-interpreting giveaway occurs; an inadvertent revelation that reveals that what is first read as “All star (Circus)” is actually “Alistair” upon closer examination. This is during hypnopompic dissolution.