What was the actual alien in Dreamcatcher?

Question

This question is about the book by Stephen King, not about the movie. In the book, and near the end, it is revealed that "Mr. Gray" was somehow a figment of Jonesy's imagination. However, and maybe because King doesn't specialize in writing SF (though I love his horror stories), the explanation seems confusing to me.

• To what extent was Mr. Gray a product of Jonesy's imagination? Was there any kind of infection at all? Did he have any "byrus" inside at all? King seems to imply it was a complete hallucination, but in that case, why was the alien "learning" to be human? Why did he have an "imperative to seed", if he didn't exist at all?
• Were all the "grayboys" a collective hallucination of the main characters and their antagonists from the army?
• Who were the actual aliens? I think King actually comes close to answering this with the non-sentient byrus (the fungus) and the byrum (the "shit weasels"), but it still doesn't make sense... If the grayboys don't truly exist, who built the spaceship? Or was the spaceship itself an hallucination?

Maybe it just doesn't add up, or maybe there is something I missed in the book :)

Answer 1

My take on this is that the actual aliens were just the Ripleys, the colonies of parasitic viral spores that matured into shitweasels. Ripleys were telepathic, and drew archetypes and images from the minds of their hosts. Using these archetypes and images, the Ripleys created a telephathic projection recognized by the humans: Mr Gray. He wasn't a hallucination, he was more of a projection of the byrus's will into the character's minds. This is how I reconciled it, anyway.

Wikipedia claims that the fungus, the shitweasels, and the grays were the three separate life stages of the aliens but don't think there is much support for that. The byrus and byrum were definitely different life-stages of the alien. But I think Mr Gray had to both real (he could infect Jonesy's mind) and not-real (he didn't seem to ever truly have an honest-to-goodness physical form separate from the byrus). So to me, Mr Gray is an image that the infectious fungus causes you to see.

That's how I interpreted it. As for what King meant, I don't know that there is actually an answer to this question. I don't know of any sources from King that solve the question. King deliberately keeps things spooky and metaphorical. A good author often leaves questions unanswered and threads untied.

Answer 2

Just finished re-reading it again. Some definitions, according to my take:

• Byrus: the redgold fungus, the infection, pretty much the aliens' "true form". It's telepathic, intelligent but "not conscious". At times it "divides" into "different colonies" (thoughts of Mr. Gray when comparing human minds arguing with themselves) but is pretty much of uniform mind and purpose (likely simply to spread) otherwise .

• Byrum: anytime some quantity of byrus has to develop as an individual with some rudimentary mind of its own. Mostly applied to the shitweasels but Mr. Gray calls himself a byrum at one time (when it's distressed it's identifying more as Mr. Gray and less as byrum)

• Grayboys: the stereotypical grey alien form seen by Jonesy and standing around the ship before the military wipes them out.

• Mr. Gray: the idea/meme/imperative of the byrus imparted on Jonesy telepathically by the last greyboy before it died. Manifests as a separate personality. Based on Jonesy's perception of aliens as the typical grays but also as an anagram of his name (Gary, Gray, "by their anagrams shall you know them"- Kurtz)

• The dreamcatcher boys: Duddits (the dreamcatcher), Pete, Henry, Beaver, Jonesy.

Now to some questions. My take is:

1. The greyboys were actual physical beings, quite likely their own race once. No way they were hallucinations since several characters (notably in Blue Group which has nothing to do with the dreamcatcher boys say the grays have been messing with us since the 40s. It's basically your stereotypical gray aliens in UFOs with anal probes and what have you.) My basis for assuming they were once their own race comes from something Mr. Gray or Jonesy picking up on Mr. Gray was thinking: "they always came in the ships of the old ones, those relics." It's part of the larger diatribe of "we always lose, we always win". Now 'old ones' isn't capitalized so it leads me to believe the "ships of the old ones" mean the ships of conquered races. Since the byrus is just fungus, what use would it have for ships, let alone how could it build them? But whatever kicked off the spreading of it through space, the pattern is always the same. They show up innocuously diguised as the last race they conquered, they're always seemingly beaten back, but the byrus always takes hold and infects everyone anyway. So there were "grays" once. But then they got infected by the byrus and are just meatsacks for it now. If the byrus had taken over on Earth, some race a few thousand or million years into the future might then have been visited by "the pinks".

2. The byrum- both grayboys and shitweasels, they're byrus given individual fleshy form. The latter are meant to operate machinery and act as decoys until the infection spreads. And the weasels are (or were supposed to be) surveillance bugs,(they're referred to as 'implants' on several occasions) either covertly providing intel/points of control into pockets of resistance or maybe even covertly infecting more with implants since they can lay eggs. They might've even been a means to elicit willing conversion since they were designed as symbiotic and seemingly beneficial to the host.

3. Mr Gray- is a split personality of Jonesy, infected not by byrus but the idea of the byrus (and why not, since the byrus is telepathic). But more to it, he is infected along his gift from/connection to Duddits, i.e. the dreamcatcher, which is what ends up making the whole thing possible. It's implied that people who are immune to the byrus may be immune to telepathy as well, or at least the receiving of telepathy, (their minds can probably still be read). There are some immune people in the barn at Gosselins' who explicity do not pick up the telepathic urging of "now now now!" when Henry breaks out, but go with the flow of the mob anyway. So a Jonesy that never met Duddits would've probably gotten off scot free even with a gray exploding right in his face (though he still might've gotten killed by the weasel from McCarthy). But because he was connected to Duddits, he could hold the idea of the byrus, the imperative, without succumbing to the physical effects. This also suggests that telepathic susceptability might be more of a vector for the byrus than any physical factor. Finally it's mentioned in both the book and the movie that Jonesy's accident may have also been a contributing factor, changing his brain enough to allow both his and the Mr. Gray personas to exist within the dreamcatcher. Without it, he may have been subsumed on the spot. There's also some hints that Duddits may have caused the accident, knowing it would come in handy (Jonesy thinking he sees Duddits right before he rushes into oncoming traffic).

4. Duddits the dreamcatcher- After the four friends rescue him, Duddits binds them together with his telepathy. They each get a bit of it; Pete gets his find anything trick, Beaver and Henry get general telepathy and Jonesy gets the strongest dose. When Duddits dies, the connection is broken and the survivors, Henry and Jonsey are back to being normal. Although it's implied Jonesy's youngest son Noel also has Down's and may also be a new dreamcatcher as when the three of them are physically connected, Henry and Jonesy "see the line" again.

5. Pennywise- has nothing to do with anything, beyond being an easter egg. When Mr. Gray gets to the Standpipe (or rather, where it was) and sees the plaque dedicted by the Losers' Club, someone has painted "Pennywise lives" in jagged letters. Mr. Gray wonders who the Losers' Club and Pennywise are, things he would be well versed in if he were Pennywise.

Answer 3

Remember that Mr. Gray is mentioned in the first pages of the book, making the schizophrenia thing even more probable... Maybe it was a split personality that was "revealed" by the infection? Maybe even a side effect to Duddits psychic powers? I mean, if Jonesy was immune to the fungus, maybe that physical phenomenom that prevented the fungus made the psychic powers have a psychological side effect on Jonesy, especially since Duddits mentions Mr. Gray in one of their flashbacks. If I'm not mistaking, it's that flashback that mentions Mr. Gray that they gain the psychic powers. I don't remember, but if it is, then I think I'm going to stick with this.

Answer 4

I just finished reading the book a few days ago. It seems to me that there must have been a physical form for the aliens (beside the byrus and "shit weasels") that could use tools, how would a virus/fungus or a limbless worm pilot the space ships? The humanoid alien appears to be a psychic infection of Jonesy's mind by the telepathic byrus which Jonesy interprets as a personality he calls Mr. Gray. But there must have been a large mobile form that humans saw as the Grayboys. Were the black ops gunships just shooting at fungus? As for the UFOs, Kurtz states that the US Military has been studying the alien craft since 1947 and have been adapting the technology for human use. Also Mr Gray refers to "the others" who built the ships that the byrus uses to invade other worlds. If has occurred to me that the "Others" may be the same aliens in "The Tommyknockers" who were space travelers.

Answer 5

Gray and Pennywise are the same and are most likely a form of low men as outlined in Hearts of Atlantis/Dark Tower books.

My thoughts are that Pennywise (an empathic 'alien/demon') evolves after his seeming demise at the end of It. He becomes a being without form. Perhaps the Gray creates the alien species, becomes them or finds them. Gray himself takes route in the mind of Jonesy due to his strong psychic ability.

In some ways Pennywise becomes the embodiment of Derry itself.

Answer 6

It could be stated that since all the boys were from Derry, names like Pennywise and Mr. Gray would be legend in that little town like the bogeyman, so when the fungus projects the image of the Alien that appears to Jonesy, it's terrifying nature syncs up in Jonesy's mind with the only thing even remotely as scary, that legendary bogeyman, Mr. Gray. The mind looks for patterns and since the delusion is based upon these it could name itself Mr. Gray, when in fact it's Jonesy doing the naming.

Answer 7

I think it's because duditts wanted to save the world and they said another time and duditts put in there minds an evil being that could exist in order to save the world when he gave them powers hence the saying scooby doo we got some work to do even in that show they tryed to stop monsters but in the end they where never actually real

It is also weird how he could possibly be it because when they save the girl notice how she's under ground in some kinda tunnel which is where it's victims ended up.. Don't mind the bad gramer i was terrible in English

Answer 8

Well it seems to me that the Shitweasels grew up into mind-altering large shit weasels that could control,via the byrus, the perception of humans into seeing Greys, or anything else, for that matter

Answer 9

I think that the reason Jonesy was taken over by the alien was because he was hit by the car meaning we had a near death experience meaning he was in the middle more vulnerable to the supernatural and yes I know they had the powers beforehand but the accident heighten everything. And Duddits picked Jonesy because he was the only one who wasn't going through life problems. Pete had a drinking problem, Beaver had just divorced his wife and henry was thinking about killing himself. Duddits was an alien and he was getting them ready for Mr.Gray. The reason Duddits didn't fight back was because he was sick he knew all he had to do was stick Mr. Gray in the back and inject cancer into him. Those are my thoughts