Blue_Opossum

Morning of July 2, 1978. Sunday.



There were a few different versions of this dream (including a couple “resets” during the same sleeping period) which was likely influenced by the television series “Gunsmoke”. I make my way to an old, smaller (unknown) ghost town on my own. There is a skeleton hanging from an old noose that had never been taken down. I had understood the town to be “cursed”, yet it also has some sort of secret.

It turns out that the town is some sort of portal to the past. As I am walking along, I see an upright oval portal (higher up) in another area that is looking into the past. It is a man (about thirty) who still seems to be alive (but dying) and hanging from the noose. The “vision” soon fades. The town had been “cursed” because of his wrongful death - by the tavern entrance being turned into an active portal and the people being “pawns” of time itself.

Later on, when I walk through the batwing doors of an old tavern (wooden floor), I am transported into the past, into the time when the town was at its peak in population and prosperity. Someone is playing the song “There is a Tavern in the Town” on a newer (and properly tuned) piano.

I talk to a few people, including the man who had been hanged. Apparently, he had been hanged for murder. However, he seems very friendly and claims he did not do it. Eventually, a knife is thrown into someone’s neck from behind, just as they are leaving the tavern, and the friendly man I know is blamed. I go in and out of the batwing doors and back to the same time portal entry point. The song “There is a Tavern in the Town” keeps repeating (a thin man in a dark purplish vest and a white shirt and with a mustache and smoking a smaller cigar - is playing it), as I do this a few times, so the scenes repeat. Finally, I am able to see who actually throws the knife (an older, chubbier man of about forty with a black beard and dressed in ragged clothes). Eventually, as the cycle repeats, I am able to warn the other person. The villain gets away, though, but promises to do harm at some point in the future.

Soon, I am in my own time; there is an unserviced player piano (originally thought to be a ghost involved by some visitors) playing “There is a Tavern in the Town”, but it is very out of tune (or in an unfamiliar minor key) and playing very slowly (similar to a particular Johnny Bond recording I used to own in real life - not sure, but it may be from the “On the Wagon” narrative - have not heard it in many years). It seems that the town was eventually made into a tourist attraction for a short time, prior to it finally being abandoned.

I see a very eerie in-dream vision of an empty noose swinging in the wind (it was the same noose that had originally been used to hang the innocent man but is now empty). I had saved the young man from the hanging. He comes out from the portal and thanks me, but then tells me that time may eventually reset itself and he may have to face the idea of “being hanged again” and he then returns to his own time. Still, the skeleton and noose are gone when I make my way home. The “resetting” may not occur in my lifetime.