Ghost in a Box
It must be the medication. The dreams have been vivid these past few days. Spiders, strange obstacles to overcome, and now…ghosts. This isn’t the first time I’ve dreamed of the dead coming back to haunt me. There have been several that I can remember. The most vivid ghost dreams involved an old buddy of mine. I was good friends with him many years ago. We were young and a bit on the wild side, I must confess. After moving away and many life changes, I hadn’t talked to him for almost 20 years. He kept coming into my dreams and taking them over. He was a rowdy guy, always drinking, carousing, having fun, so the dreams always involved him in car chases, or getting into a fight and beating up somebody. He even threatened to kill me in one dream. Held a knife toward me. Very menacing. After each dream visit, I’d awaken and wonder why the hell I was thinking of him. I began to ask him, in my dream, to leave me alone. I’d be having a very normal dream and suddenly, there he was, riding up on a motorcycle or convertible muscle car. He take me away and we’d find our selves in some drug filled party or elaborate scheme too convoluted to be remembered upon waking. Upon waking, I’d wonder out loud, why? And ask him to please go away. Finally, I did an internet search for the guy and found he’d died the same month I started dreaming about him. That was a little freaky. And sad. It was chilling seeing his obituary photo and realizing he was no more. He died young, but I wasn’t surprised. He’d lived hard and died young, just the way he said he would.
I’d had another series of dreams where my old roommate of four years kept showing up, only each time the dream was about him renting out my room. I’d come home to find a strangers cluttering up my room, my bed gone, a series of cots installed and me, in a state of shock and despair, climbing over people to get to my bed. Variations of this dream repeated for several months, always involving strangers taking over my room, often they were drug addicts and derelicts. I’d moved on and lost touch with my former roommate several years ago. Out of frustration and curiosity, I performed an internet search. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I searched his name and home town, his alma mater, Facebook and found nothing. Finally, I asked him to please leave me alone and I haven’t had more than a few dreams of him in the last few years. I am assuming he has passed. Probably a long time ago, of complications from drug and alcohol addiction. He, too, was a hard-party guy, and loved that life a little too much. (Don’t ask how I found these guys, because I am a wimp. I don’t even drink anymore)
Ghosts have been a theme in my dreams since I was a kid. My first ghost nightmare came in the form of a leathery, gray haired old hag, rocking in her chair and staring at me, a knowing squint in her eye, and somehow forcing me to giver her a kiss. I remember screaming, “It’s the old hag!” and I became hysterical, bit her, then ran off.
But last night. That was a good one. It involved a ghost on a television. I and my family, who were a mixture of my current family and the family I grew up with, rented a haunted house by the sea. It was an old, white Victorian home, with many large rooms, all trimmed in wood, with great windows and high ceilings. We were unaware of the ghostly residents, until in the middle of the night, the lights came on, a cold wind ripped through the house blowing everyone’s hair around like flopping wigs, and the TV came to life, depicting a wailing ghost, screaming for us to get out of her house. The feeling of fear, panic and anxiety was palpable. As we scurried to leave just as a fire broke out and dashed past wind whipped flames and laughing specters.
Later in the dream, I was talking to another friend about the experience and he suddenly become very serious and wanted to know all he could about the screaming, fire-starting spooks. I remember telling him about the ghost on the TV, who was young, maybe about twelve, a girl, with wild hair and crazy eyes. I also mentioned that the fire department had come, and that we’d gone back to the house only to wander through the partially singed, smoke scented rooms. The Victorian stood on a cliff, near the ocean, next door to a boyhood summer home we’d had. (This configuration was impossible, but so was the dream) I suggested we rent the other house, but no-one seemed to know or care about that, because, as usual the dream began to decay into a unfocused jumble. And then I woke up.
I immediately went on Facebook to look-up the friend who had shown an interest in the ghosts, but he hadn’t posted since November. I’m sure he’s fine, alive and well. It’s not knowing for sure that stays with me, in the back of my mind. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. Maybe it’s the sleeping meds I took last night. I don’t know. Seems I always tend to dream of dead people, whether medicated or not. And spooky kids in a box.
If you want, you can read more about ghosts and dreams in my psychic detective series, Dream State, on Amazon.
The Lucid Spider 