Visions in the Dark

I am in a three storey house made in the Victorian architexture style. The outer facade is large grey stones and the interior is all wood. I do not recognize the house from anything I have seen in waking life but I know that I am in modern times because the furniture and appliances are modern and there are two cars parked outside in front of the house.

It is dark outside and I go outside to look at the cars. One is my family's old 1986 Volkwagen Westfalia and the other is my dad's previous car, a dark blue minivan. I don't know where I am but it seems to be a rural town or something. I have a horrible feeling when I go outside and feel like there are many "dark things" watching me. I run back into the house where it is warn and lighted and where I feel safe.

Back in the house I find a young man sitting in the living room in front of the fire. I recognize him as one of my dream characters who shows up rarely but I know him by his black hair and green eyes. We exchange a few words but I cannot remember what we talked about now. I went upstairs to the second floor for some reason, feeling compelled by some invisible force.

I cannot remember any more of this dream.

Dream starts off with me in the downtown section of city I do not recognize. The streets are empty of cars and people. It is daytime but the sky is dark with fast moving, stormy clouds. It is not raining but very windy. I have a portable radio with me and the news report says that there is a severe tornato warning in effect. In the distance I can see several tornados twisting and crisscrossing along the horizon and they are coming closer. Every door I try to shops or homes along the street are locked and I start to panic because I cannot find any shelter.

At the end of one street I can see a park with a cement wall bathroom facility. Thankfully the door is unlocked and I can go inside. There are five stalls and I hide in the middle on and cover my head, fearfull that the windows will shatter and drop broken glass all over me when the tornados hit. The sound of the wind howling increases to an almost deafening level and the building starts to shake as the tornados approach. The windows shatter and part of the roof is ripped off as they hit. Everything that is not bolted down gets sucked out of the hole in the roof. I have to cling desperately to a metal bar above the stall door to avoid getting sucked out myself, though I fear the worst when the bathroom stalls begin to shake violently and start to unbolt.

The tornado passes and there is sudden silence. I have a permanant marker in my pocket and I write "This metal bar saved my life" on the bar that I clung too desperately. I turn on my radio again and the news report is saying that more tornados are on the way. No longer feeling safe in the ravaged bathroom facility, I risk going outside to find a better place to hide. Beyond the park is a cemetary and a two storey church. The door has been shaken loose by the storm and I can slip inside. The inside of the church looks like any other except for hundreds of vinyl records laying on the pews and altar. I think that coming here was a bad idea because those vinyl records would be deadly projectiles if airborn, but I cannot leave because several tornados are closing in rapidly.

The church has a basement and I go downstairs to find a place to hide. I am surprised to find that there are four people already taking shelter down there. There is a black couple dressed like they just stepped out of the seventies, a Hispanic man in grey business suit, and an old hippy man with long grey hair in braids and a long grey beard. The black woman introduces herself as Cleopatra (or Cleo for short) and her partner introduced himself as Ben. I cannot remember the suit dude's name but the Hippy introduces himself as Leo as he is rolling a joint from a large bag of marijuana that he is carrying.

I ask the hippy why he is rolling a joint at a time like this and he says "If I'm going to die, man, than I'm going to die high as a kite, man" which amuses the black couple and myself. The Hispanic man scoffs and tells the old hippy that he is wasting his time. I mention that it is funny that Cleo and Leo have such similar names.

The building begins to shake as the wind howls wildly. A tornado hits and debris and vinyl records start flying down the basement stairs. We are all huddled in the far corner behind a cement pillar and are safe from most of the debris. There is a huge crack and crashing sound from upstairs and we discover after the tornado has passed that the church has collapsed on itself. There is enough room for us to slip out of the collapsed building though and get out alive.

I listen to the radio again and hear that the storm is far from over and Cleo points out more tornados in the distance that are approaching. The Hispanic dude gets scared and runs away by himself, ignoring our pleas that we should stick together. The old hippy says that he has a storm shelter within the city in the industrial section but it is far and we'd have to find a car to get us there. His Westfalia microbus just happens to be sitting on a side street near by and it is undamaged to we get in and drive through the back alleys to the industrial section of the city. Along the way we have to dodge many other cars scrambling to get out of the city before the next tornado hits, including a blue semi which almost runs us off the road.

Leo's shelter is located between two large factories and when we go inside we find other people who have taken shelter there, including a mother with two children, some vagrants and a man who is passed out in the middle of the floor. Leo closes the door and we all listen to my portable radio and wait out the storm (as Leo rolls some more joints and passes them around). The announcer on the news says that half of the city has been destroyed by tornados and that they are still coming. No one knows when the storm will end.

The dream ends about there.

This is the third dream I had on September 21st, 2009.


I am at Lake Whittaker, the trailer park my parents go to every weekend in the summer. The park looks as it did as I remember it when I used to go there regularily with my parents when I was younger. My parents and I are in our old 1986 Westfalia and are parked down the hill, a few lots away from our actual trailer in a lightly forested area. The forest is similar to the one my aunt was dragging me through in the previous dream. Many of the lots surrounding the one we are on are occupied and everyone is inside their trailers or cars because there is a large brown bear on the loose.

The creature is going from lot to lot roaring and scratching and shaking the trailers like it is trying to get in. When it comes to our Westfalia my dad tries to put it in reverse and drive away but the bear has no problem grabbing onto the vehical and keeping us in one spot. It shakes the van violently and almost flips it over before losing interest and walking over to another trailer and attacking it. Several men, including my father, sneak out of their vehicles and quietly make their way over to a creak to the left of where we are. There are men handing out semi-automatic weapons to kill the bear. Many people are armed and head back towards the lots where the bear was causing trouble but it is now nowhere in sight. I am relieved because, even though I was scared, I did not want to see one of nature's creature be injured or killed.

Some time has passed and the trailer park is still trying to recover from the bear attack. Trailers, vehicles and trees have been badly damaged and many peopler are still trying to clean up their lots and repair the damage done to their property. I am at the park by myself now as my parents and the Westfalia are gone. I am walking from lot to lot looking for large peices of wood, either as fuel for a fire or peices large enough to carve. I come across a lot where a medium sized, grey barked tree has been felled and a man who looks like a young Steve Smith (Red Green) is cutting it into sections. Beside his trailer lot is a cemetary containing small gravestones dating from recent times back to hundreds of years. The graveyard is surrounded by a low iron fence and much of it is covered in autumn leaves that have fallen to the ground. I look around a bit before I start helping the man section the tree but I have a small hatchet while he has a chainsaw.

The man's wife, a portly woman with short blond hair lights a coleman stove and cooks up some hotdogs. Many people come to eat but the woman doesn't offer the food freely and people have to pay. Apparently many people in the trailer park are starving because they haven't been able to get their own food because they have been too busy trying to make repairs their lots, or as the case with many of them, for some reason they do not know how to cook. I realize that I myself am very hungry but only have small change on me and cannot afford a hotdog. The dream gets blurry and I cannot remember a bit but there is someone about me freely giving what change I have to the lady, but not getting a hot dog, but not being bothered by it.

Because I am starting to stave I decide to go fishing in the lake. I stand on the shore at the boat launch and try to catch some fish, even small crappies because I am so hungry. Three or four people come down to where I am to watch me fish, hoping that I will give them some of my catch. I do catch three small fish and take them back to my trailer to skin and cook, but because I am not the greatest at preparing fish and because they are so small I do not get much meat off of them and what meat I have I give to some of the starving people in the park because they cannot fend for themselves and I feel bad for them.

I am starting to feel delerious because of lack of food and manage to capture three or four black cats that I noticed appear around my trailer. I calmly capture them, knock them on the back of the head to kill them (like you would with a fish) and start skinning them like I would a fish. After skinning them and cooking the cats I eat my fill of meat and have enough to share with some other hungry people. In the back of my mind I am appalled at what I have done, but another part of my mind thinks that it was okay to kill and eat the cats because I was starving. I do not feel too upset though at what I have done but I remember wishing that things could have turned out differently.


The dream ends there.

This is the second dream I had on September 21st, 2009.


I am at Grandma Currie's house though it is somewhat distorted on the inside. It is winter and everything outside is covered in snow at first. Inside the house are my cousins Summer, Bailey, Keelan and Caleb as they appeared about a decade or so ago. Grandma Currie is there, as well as my parents, brother Ryan and Aunt Beth. For some reason Grandma Carelsa is also with Aunt Estelle. My family still owns the 1986 Westfalia (now sold) and it is parked outside.

The inside of grandma's house is distorted and everything is shaded in pale blue colours. At first there is discussion among the adults about where everyone is going to sleep because there are not enough beds. I suggest to dad that I would not mind sleeping in the our 1986 Westfalia camper if he hooked it up to the house to work the heater. The convesation changes and I lose interest and go and see my cousins Sumer and Keelan. They are upset because even though there are two computers in the house, neither one have sufficient internet capabilities for their satisfaction. One doesn't connect at all and the other is extremely slow having only a dial-up connection.

There is a meal being served and my cousin Caleb asks me to get a can of soda pop from the basement for Grandma Carelsa. I go downstairs and in an alcove in the stairwell is a pop machine selling a variety of sodas including a lemon flavored one. There is a small picture of a loonie near the change slot and I assume that this how much currency I need. Because I don't have any money I go back to Caleb and tell him so. He becomes upset and insults my stupidity because family members don't need to pay. I return to the machine and get a lemon soda and take it to my Grandma Carelsa, who is sitting in the distorted living room with Grandma Carelsa. I get the sense that they are watching t.v. yet I cannot see a t.v. in the room which is weird.

Nighttime is approaching the the issue of where everyone is going to sleep arises once again. Again I tell my dad that I wouldn't mind sleeping in the Westfalia if there isn't any room in the house but he tells me to stop being ridiculous. Mattresses and roll-out beds are placed on the floors throughout the house, three specifically in the basement. At first there is some confusion on whether I or my cousin Caleb is going to sleep on one of the matresses while my brother and one of my other cousins take the other two. Instead of discussing it Caleb just lays down on the mattress he wants and goes to sleep, while my brother and other cousin do the same to the last two mattresses. They won't even consider what I think or want and I am then left to sleep on the solid floor because all the other beds in the house are taken.

The dream distorts and on wall of the basement opens up to a hilly forest area in the midst of fall or winter, but there is not snow. The tress are bare of leaves and there are none on the ground. It is cold. At the bottom of a nearby hill my Aunt Estelle's car is parked and because the three mattresses in the basement are occupied, my aunt says that she will get me a sleeping bag from the trunk of her car. The sleeping bag is dark blue and zips up all the way to my head.

I crawl in it to sleep but notice my aunt returning to her car. She doesn't want it parked at the bottom of the hill and wants to move it somewhere else. She starts driving and the sleeping bag I am in gets dragged behind her by the foot end. I cannot see how the sleeping bag is attactched but I am terrified because the zipper is stuck and I cannot get out. My aunt starts driving very fast and circling aroung a very bumpy area of the forest. There are no roads so she is constantly driving over roots sticking out of the ground as well as rocks and sudden inclines or declines. Through my pain and terror I realize the forest we are in is at Lake Whittaker, the trailer park my parents go to every weekend in the summer. (I used to go as well when I was a kid.)

After a long time my aunt exits the forest and finally parks her car at the top of the hill which is somehow outside of my Grandma Currie's house. Aunt Estelle goes inside without noticing me still trapped in the sleeping bag behind her car badly injured. My cries of pain finally rouse my parents but they don't believe me at first what happened when I try to tell them. They become upset and demand I get inside but I cannot because I have two broken legs as well as an assortment of other injuries. Only after examining me do my parents finally believe me, but rather than sympathy they seem upset that they have to go out of their way to deal with me and call and ambulance.


Dream ends there.

The dream starts off in some sort of airport terminal. Everything is white and shiny and it looks very futuristic. The place is virtually empty, save for a few darkly dressed individuals wandering here and there. I cannot remember why I there but at some point I wander over to a row of arcade games situated against a white brick wall. As I am looking at the machines a robot approaches me. It is designed like an anime style woman in a lavander coloured maid's outfit. The robots face is vapidly blank and the eyes stare straight ahead in a fixed and unnatural way. I think it keeps asking me if I need something but it is malfunctioning because it keeps trying to say the same thing, before stopping suddenly, twitching and buzzing, and attempting to try again. I am disturbed by the machines inability to function, and it's unrealistic, inhuman looking face. I turn from the robot and walk away.

The scene behind me changes to a dimly lit bar and I can hear the sound of pool balls cracking together, bottles of alcoholic beverages clinking, and I can smell stale cigarette smoke. The din of people talking quietly surrounds me and it is only broken by random outbursts of loud, boisterous laughter. There are still arcade games around but they seems brighter and more flashier in this dimly lit bar than in the bright and sterile airport. I can hear a whurring sound behind me and I turn around to see the same robot I saw in the airport. It it still stuck in place and malfuntioning, though the face and breast plate have been removed, exposing the gears and wires underneath, and it's arms and legs are glowing softly like dim blue florescent lights.

There is a group of four men dressed in black jackets and sunglasses at one table and they are all looking at me. They look like cops or federal agents and I try to ignore them and walk over to an arcade game but the men get up from their seats and come over to me. One of them asks me to come and look at something and I follow him to the otherside of the bar where it there is better lighting and less people. There is a group of about eight monkeys, some sitting on table tops, some on the floor, one hanging from a ceiling light, and they are all causing trouble. All of the monkeys are completely white, except for a ring of black fur around their faces and black beady eyes. I am not sure exactly what type of monkeys they are, but in the dream they are refered to as gibbons. Several of them have upturned chairs and smashed glasses and lights, and the biggest gibbon of the group has ripped wires out of the wall from a nearby electrical socket.

The men in black jackets ask me if I can fix this problem and tell me to look out a window near where the gibbons are. When I do so, I am not longer in the dimly lit bar, but looking out of my parent's bedroom window at the monkeys, who in turn are now sitting on a wooden fence in my backyard. It is daytime and sunny and there is a breeze blowing because I can see the tree branches swaying softly. I am home alone but I have a great desire to go outside to the front yard to see if my van is okay. I cannot explain it, but I just know that the gibbons are a threat to my vehicle. Sure enough, when I go out to the driveway, the monkeys are there and attempting to damage my 1986 Wesfalia van. One has successfully pulled a strip of rubber off one side and the others pound and jump on it while screeching angrily.

I pick up a large branch that has fallen from a tree in the yard and take a swing at the nearest gibbon. The branch is heavy and too large for me to handle with any decent dexterity and the creature easily dodges the sluggish maneuver. It jumps down onto the grass, runs in a few angry circles before charging me. I anticipate it's attack and swing again, this time making contact and knocking it back across the lawn. The monkey lays motionless, face down in the grass, but I have not killed it because I can still see it breathing. The rest of the gibbons, who had stopped destroying my van to watch the fight, become enraged and all attack me at once. I remember bracing myself and swing the branch but I cannot rememeber the end of this dream.

I had a dream where my family's old 1986 beige-coloured Westfalia Vanagon (example pictured above) was sitting in the driveway. There was another car in the driveway beside it but it was a metallic orange-coloured Aveo. The Aveo actually belongs to the neighbours directly across the street and I do not know why their vehicle was in our driveway. Anway I dreamed that the cars were there in the drive way the first night, then the next day the Aveo was gone, and the day after that the Aveo had returned but the Westfalia was gone.


I don't recall any other details about this dream.

Image courteousy of some German language Volkswagon forum.

There is a punk or rock band doing an interview while walking through a dense field along a small, shallow creek. I am a camera operator trying to keep up with them as they walk and talk. I follow one of the spiky haired dudes into the creek and try to keep pace without getting my camera wet. As we trudge through the creek it slowly becomes wider and at one point (and quite suddenly) deeper. The band and other camera operators disappear as the sun starts to set and I am left to struggle out of the creek alone.

I see my family's old 1986 Westfalia sitting a distance away, near the edge of a dirt road. Still soaking wet I drop the camera and get into the vehicle, where I find myself with Dad, Mom, and brother Ryan. It is dark now and we seem to drive around aimlessly. I cannot see where we are going. Ryan is doing something to annoy me (but I can't remember what) and I feel angry. We pass small towns or buildings in the dark that are adorned with lots of bright lights and decorations). We are supposed to drop Ryan off somewhere (he is to meet up with his friend James, I think) but he disappears from (or exits) the van before we find the destination.

My parents drive past a few more small, brightly lit towns and then back into the dark country side. They suddenly turn off the van's headlights and drive in the dark. I can still feel (and vaguely see) the backseat that I am sitting on, but otherwise am completely surrounded by darkness. I can no longer see or hear Mom and Dad, but I assume they are still there because I can still feel the vibration of the van moving (though I can no longer hear the vehicle's engine as well).

The darkness surrounding me feels thick and heavy and I feel like I am being suffocated.

In the dream I appeared as I looked at about age 11 or 12. I was with my mom and dad and we were in our old 1986 Volkswagen Westfalia. We were driving down an urban street that was lined with old Victorian and Edwardian style buildings, as well as many trees. In the dream, this was supposed to be our hometown of London, Ontario, but the areas we travelled through looked nothing like any area of London that I recognize. I don't remember many of the buildings, but one stuck in my memory for some reason. It was a three story bulding made of dark grey bricks and a black tile roof. The front door was a dark red and there were vines growing up the entire front side. This building sat opposite of a three-way intersection and I recall noticing it the first time my parents and I drove past it because my dad had to make a left turn. Though it had a unique and vaguely farmiliar look in my dream, I cannot recognize it as anything I know in waking life.

My parents and I drove out into the country, though it did not look like the country surrounding my hometown (as I know it in waking life, anyway). We drove for a long time and came to a thicket of trees which seemed to have a picnic area in the middle. My dad drove the van towards the picnic tables but the westfalia got stuck in some mud that we had not noticed before. My parents got out of the van and walked towards the picnic tables and it was then that I noticed an old man in a blue uniform. He looked like a thin Captain Highliner. I walked amongst the trees while my parents talked to the captain. I found a little stream and noticed something moving in the water, but my mom called me back to the van before I could get a look at what it was. As we drove out of the grove (and almost got stuck in the mud again) I watched the old man walk towards the little stream with a blank expression on his face. He waded into the stream before the van turned onto the road and I could no longer see him.

We drove for miles again, past farmland and forests. I noticed that we travelled fairly far without seeing a single building. Soon though, my parents spotted group of white houses and they wanted to go check them out. Parking the westfalia behind one of the houses my mom and dad got out of the van and started snooping around. I was afraid of being caught doing something illegal so I stayed in the van. When my parents had not returned for a long time, I got out of the van and went to look for them. From the window of one of the white houses I could see someone looking at me and I was afraid that they were going to call the police on me for tresspassing. I started back to the van but I suddenly heard a group of people laughing and carrying on. Following the noise I came across my mom and dad and some strangers on the front balcony of one of the houses, opening champagne bottles and having some sort of celebration. The old man in the blue uniform was there as well. Apparently it was his house and he had just won it in a sweepstakes or something (and that is why everyone was celebrating?).

My parents had one glass of champagne before returning to the van and heading home. The trip home didn't seem nearly as long as the trip out there, and I don't recall seeing the picnic grove on the way back. When we returned to London, it again was the strange London with all of the Victorian and Edwardian building. When we came to the three-way interesection and my dad turned, I watched the vaguely farmiliar dark grey, three story bulding grow smaller and smaller in the rear view window. When we were some distance away I saw the dark red door swing open, but I woke up before I could see what was behind it.

I had two dreams this night but I can only remember minor details about the first one.


#1) The first dream took place in a vast plain. There was a giant half woman, half snake creature that was battling another creature that I could not see clearly. The serpent woman was talking one hell of a beating and there was blood everywhere. I do not remember anything else, not even how it ended.


#2) The second dream had me walking down a long cave-like tunnel. There were many rooms along the way that were like classrooms or workshops in a college. I was not in this place alone as there were many people participating in the classes and workshops. Most of the people were young adults and I did not recognize any of them as people I know in real time.

Passing through the first few rooms was uneventful, but in one workshop there were many bandsaws and other electric wood cutting tools that were tightly cramed together, making it very difficult to get past (and I had to get past them to get the the next room). All of the electric tools were on, adding to the danger. I did make it through, but not before almost running into and knocking over a table saw.

Another room I came to was empty of desks or tools, and the floor was made of a very smooth, reflective marble. There was a lady standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by many handsome young men lounging about on pillows. She was tall, graceful and very elegant looking. Her skin was a porcelain white and she had very long vampire-like fangs coming out of her mouth. She did not saying thing, but I got the sense that she was the caretaker of this cave-tunnel place and protected the people inside.

I was not afraid of her, and she made no threatening gestures towards me. She just smiled at me, then turned to a young man laying on a pillow and reached for him. The lady took him in her arms and opened her mouth. The young man stroked her unnaturally long vampire-like fangs for a moment before she leaned in and bit his neck. The price for her protection I suppose, but I did not see what happened next because I was anxious to move onto the next room.

I walked through a doorway and found myself outside. I was at the base of a mountain and there was a river in front of me that was draining into a vast ocean. In the river I could see parts of my family's Westfalia floating down the river. I panicked and dived in. Despite the size of the peices, I grabbed them without problem and easily pulled them to the rocky shore. A shadow fell across me and I looked up the see the procelain-skinned vampire lady and the young man she had bit smiling softely at me. I felt silly and said it was stupid to love a car so much that you would risk your life for it, but the lady said it was because I had a good soul and a lot of love to give or something like that.


When I had this dream my family was about to sell our 1986 Volkswagen Westfalia and I was sad because I had a lot of good memories in it. I have been from one end of Canada to the other in that vehicle and I miss it, even though I know that it was "just a car." I think this is why I jumped into the river in the dream to retrieve the Westfalia peices - I was reluctant to see it go.