Dreams

Dreaming Wide Awake

/ C.R. Hinckley / Leave a comment

Dreaming Wide Awake

Prologue

The dead steal my dreams. They come into my head and play pinball with my thoughts, my emotions, my very life. Pick a night, any night:

My heart pounds. I can barely make out the digits on my clock as they jump in a frantic dance. Are my eyes that dry? I can barely make out the numbers. My guess is four AM. The ringing in my ears is louder. I close my eyes and breathe deeply.  Cool air fills my lungs. I open my eyes, a dark spot, like an evil cloud in the shape of a man in a long robes hovers in front of me. As my eyes adjust, the dark man dissolves into shadows. My back is drenched in sweat. I shiver and wrap the sheets around my body. Another clawing death dream has shaken me to my core.

I turn on the bed-side lamp and grab a pen and look around for paper. I tear the cover off a magazine and take notes. It was dark. Outside, perhaps. In a park. The woman was in her late thirties. Dark shoulder length hair. Somebody was attacking her. Did I see a knife? A mugging? And her scream. The same bloody scream I’d heard in countless dreams. Just remembering it sends shivers down my back.

I sip water from the glass I keep by the bed for just such emergencies, and take another deep breath. My heart begins to slow. I lie back, saying aloud, “Please, Just make it stop….”

But in that clawing plea, the only thing I’d managed to make go away was my girlfriend of six months. She’d had enough of the nightly carnage, the fitful dreams, screaming in the night, pushing her out of bed. After almost strangling her in her sleep, she finally moved on. Because I couldn’t. I’d give up everything, all my measly possessions: my clothes, prized record collection, new computer, TV, bank account, everything I own, if only it would just stop.

Ripping through another person’s fate is exhausting. The violence is terrifying. I’ve seen people hit by cars, shot, crushed by busses…you get the idea.

My last case began with black sedan careening over the side of a bridge and falling a hundred feet into a raging river. Both occupants were killed. But that was my precognition. That was just a dream. They hadn’t died…yet. So, I sought out the victims and tried to warn them. But they wouldn’t listen. (Most my warnings often unheeded.) They were killed a week later in the exact same accident I saw in my dream. But, hey, who doesn’t have quirks? I’m a damn good detective.

Ghost in a Box

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ghost

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.

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-State-Sleeping-Detective-Book-ebook/dp/B01M5CO8UC/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=

 

 

The Lucid Spider

/ C.R. Hinckley / 7 Comments

 

Below is the spider I saw on the ceiling this morning. I drew him in ink and took  this photo to show you what he looked like. I’m calling him Gray Ghost. He appeared above my head and walked toward the bedpost before fading away. I closed my eyes and quickly reopened them, to see the spider back in original spot. It walked toward the wall, again, as if on repeat. My first thought; It’s not real. Probably a lucid dream.

Lucid dreaming is when you become aware you are dreaming and sometimes even begin to actively control your dream. (Comes in handy with certain types of dreams, but I won’t elaborate) Although, each time I become aware I am dreaming and try to control my lucid dream, it quickly evaporates into the ether and I awaken. Apparently, lucid dreamers have a more highly developed area of the brain that allows for self-reflection. If what I’ve been thinking lately can be called self-reflection (rather that self-deprecation), then yes, I would lean toward this notion. I tend to self-reflect quite a bit. Not because I’m self-absorbed, as much as the fact that I am a writer, a thinker and an artist. You must think to write and paint.

However, upon some research, I realized this was probably a Hypnagogic Hallucination. I’ve been having that type of hallucination for years. Several times I have awakened to find a dark figure standing at the edge of my bed, and although I can’t see a face, the figure is apparently staring at me, as if this ungodly creature was wanting something unfathomable.

Another particularly vivid hallucination came after playing a video game entitled, Red Barron, a WWI bi-plane aerial combat game. I awoke to observe a small red bi-plane fly into my bedroom and come straight at me. It was so tangibly real, I sat up in bed, threw a pillow at it, and yelled, “Get out!” My wife did not understand, nor appreciate my reaction.

The thing that’s strange about the spider hallucination though, was after closing and re-opening my eyes, Gray ghost reappeared, in the exact same spot on the ceiling as before and began its short, spidery journey toward the wall. I know it wasn’t real, because of the way it looked. It was a ghost. A large, Gray Ghost of a spider, crawling slowly across the ceiling. And yes, it was as creepy as it sounds.

Why a spider, I ask myself? Why not something else, like a flower or a beetle? I have no hatred or fear of spiders, beyond that of any normal person. I haven’t been bitten by a black widow or nuclear infused spider. I haven’t been seeing them in the yard or the house, lately. And yet, I saw the damn thing in my strange half-sleep state. So next time, if there is a next time, when it comes, I’ll be ready. I’ve been training myself to lucid dream. Part of which is to remind yourself (if you can, it’s quite difficult) that you are dreaming. If Gray Ghost spider comes back, I’ll be ready. I’ll remember to remind myself to fall back into a lucid dream and then I’ll kill the little bastard! I wonder if Gray Ghost spiders leave any splatter?

 

The Lucid Spider