Month: November 2024

Later that night I had another dream. This one was unsettling and somewhat sad.

I was in a room with E, and we were standing holding each other in our arms. It felt like one of the bedrooms of the cabin in the community garden from when I was a child, although it looked quite different. This was not the real, physical world, because I knew that E, and possibly both of us, were dead.

I asked if she was indeed E, or if she was my dead grandmother in E’s body. I didn’t get a clear answer, although I asked in several ways. Then I asked if she was both E and my grandmother. This too elicited no vocal response, but I thought I perceived a slight nod. But I realized that it couldn’t be true, because my grandmother had still been alive when E was born, so one could not be the reincarnation of the other. I expressed as much, which made E take my hand and lead me to the living room. Several old black-and-white photographs hung on the opposite wall. In silence she led me to one depicting some people standing some distance apart from each other, neither of them facing the camera. She pointed her finger at one person, then the other.

A few days ago I had two vivid dreams that I was able to recall parts of.

The first was a nightmare, but it was an unusual one – for me.

Throughout my life I have often had dreams where I’m partially aware that I’m dreaming or at least that what I’m experiencing is not fully real. At some point as a child, I started using this insight to force myself to wake up from nightmares. It didn’t always work, but more and more it did, as if I was training myself.

What made this dream especially terrifying was that I experienced it as if it was entirely real. I was lying, half sitting, in bed feeling sick. Even thinking back, I don’t know when the dream started.

The room was completely dark. I suddenly became very afraid that there was an evil presence in the room, a ghost like in a Japanese horror movie – a person that would suddenly be sitting in the room staring at me, or a hand that I would suddenly notice on the side of the bed. I thought now that it could be under the bed. Sometimes in nightmares I get an urge to go towards the scariest place, to confront the evil head-on, even though this is scarier than avoiding it.

I jabbed my hand quickly under the bed – but felt nothing. So I reached further in, back towards the wall, and to my horror I felt some clammy skin. I grabbed hold of this body part. I was holding a hand, and I pulled it; somehow that was better than leaving it there, although I was also terrified of what would happen when I pulled this body out from under the bed. Having the light on seemed better, so at the same time I was desperately trying to reach the light switch with my other hand.

Then I woke up, in the same room, in the same bed, in the same position, very surprised that I had been dreaming.