Visions in the Dark

April 24th, 2014 - I dreams I was pregnant, but single and unemployed. I was almost at full term and lived with my family in a small sea side town. I did not want the baby but could not abort because everyone else in my family was excited about it. I could not even talk about not wanting the baby because it would have appalled everyone in the small town. I was expected to be a good little dutiful mother even though I did not know where the father was. (In the dream I literally could not remember who the father of my child was at all). The dream ended with me going to give birth soon and I was emotionless and still conflicted about wanting the baby, even dreading it's arrival, while everyone else around me rejoiced.

April 25th, 2014 - I was male and a vampire with medium length white hair and wearing a long black trench coat. I lived in a small Medieval village that was surrounded by a thick stone wall. Outside the wall was a dense, maze-like forest filled with many nasty creatures like other vampires, werewolves, and demons, as well as normal forest animals. The wall was there to keep the other bad creatures out so they did not attack humans but I was allowed to sit on the roof tops of the villager's houses at night and drive away any infernal creature that tried to attack the people. In the morning, before the sun rose, the people would leave me jars of pig's blood, on their doorsteps, as payment. I slept during the day in an old gated cemetery just outside the town wall, which the forest was slowly overtaking. There was something in the dream that magic was normal in this world but forbidden in town because the blood of magic users would be specifically targeted by vampires and demons seeking to feed off of "powerful" blood.

I can remember only little parts of two dreams I had last night.

In the first on I am in my apartment and for some reason I have a pet alligator. It is still a wild and dangerous creature and I have to be careful where I walk in my own house. I have two cats and constantly fear that the alligator will eat them. On morning I wake up and find the alligator surrounded by bloodstains on the carpet and walls. I fear that is has eaten my cats but I look around and see one of them under a table near my bed. I don't know where the other cat is. With the amount of blood on the floor and walls it looks like something bigger then a cat was killed though. The alligator sleeps contently, in the middle of the floor, like most creatures do after eating a huge meal.

In the second dream I am visiting a friend in another country. Most of the dream is blurry until the end when I have to go to the airport to catch my flight. My friend and her family and friends are having a good time around a campfire and I do not want to disturb them so I quickly and quietly take off alone and catch a bus to the airport, which is 30 minutes away. The airport is small and there is no security checkpoint the the boarding pass desk is just a fold-out table by a collapsable wall. There are only two flights leaving the airport.

I go to reach for my passport, and while I find it, I realize that I have left my suitcase at my friend's place. I am kind of panicking because my boarding pass is in the suitcase. I call and leave several messages on my friend's cell phone asking if she or a family member could drive my bag to the airport because there are no more buses going back in that direction. I look at the clock and see that it is 5:30 pm and my flight does not leave until 9:30 pm so I know I have time. I sit in the waiting area for over an hour and their is no sign of my friend or my suitcase. I call again and leave another message and wait for another hour and still nothing.

I am very upset and panicking for a bit but then I realize that I have my passport, my identification and my money so I can just buy another ticket, even if it is inconvenient. The thought of just returning to my friend's place to get my bag myself never enters my mind. After I have bought a new ticket several waiter's arrive pushing a cart of delicious smelling food and place it on a long narrow table covered in a white table cloth. For some reason I think I am not allowed to have any food and I wander around and watch the other passengers and airport staff eat.

I meet a little boy who is wearing a fox hat and seems to be by himself. He eyes the food while clutching his little napsack but is too shy to go get any. I grab a plate and fill it with candies and sugary pastries and take it over to him and share. He doesn't say anything but seems really happy. His favourite treat seems to be a pasty that has a sweet lemony filling on one side and a spicy filling on the other.

I can not remember any more of this dream.

The dream starts off with me walking through a field. There is a thick and heavy fog and I cannot even see the ground under my feet but I can feel it - it is very bumpy and unstable, like I am walking on frozen pillows or something, if that makes any sense. I am walking up a slight incline and the fog recedes a bit when I reach the top.

The unstable ground I am walking on is covered with thousands of bodies as far as the eye can see. There are so many bodies and they are piled on top of each other so high that I cannot see any natural ground at all. Most of the bodies are men in green or grey uniforms but there are also women and children laying about. Despite all of the dead bodies, many of which are in various states of decay, I don't remember smelling the rot around me.

In front of me is a small pond. There are bodies in the water but not as many as on the ground and the water is a dark reddish brown because it is filled with blood and rotting flesh. I walk past the pond and to the other side of the hill, but it is slow going because stepping across the mounds of bodies is difficult. The fog has lessend, but there are still bodies as far as the eye can see and I cannot get away from them no matter how far I go.

In this dream I am living back at my mom and dad's house,I am in my old bedroom and it is the morning of my birthday. My dad and brother wake me up like it's the first day of school. Dad says that it is his last day off before he has to go back to work (even though he is retired in real life). For some reasons he says this twice.

My brother give me some music CDs and three DVD versions of the same movie, which is a back to school comedy. He puts one of the DVDs on and turns the volume up loud to wake me up. They leave and I groggily get up and notice, against one of the walls in my room, neatly wrapped presents are stacked in a big pile to the ceiling.

I try to turn off the t.v my but instead of shutting it off, the power button only turns the volume up louder. None of the buttons on the t.v seem to work properly and I am tired and frustrated but I eventually figure out to turn off the DVD player instead. Somehow, this fixes the t.v. and I can finally turn it off.

I crawl back into bed and have a dream with a dream where the cartoon character Little Bear and his father are walking through a forest. They are both carring hunting rifles and dressed in hunting vests and hats. They talk about morality and ethics in mainstream religion (specifically Christianity, I think) but from a "bear's point of view" until they come upon a clearing and see a human male chopping down a large, healthy looking tree. Father Bear shoots the man dead and Little Bear makes a remark about all the blood. Father Bear tells his son (cub?) that the killing was justified on religious grounds because the man was defiling the forest, or something like that.

I wake up from the dream within a dream finally get out of bed. I look out the window and see the neighbour (with whom my father has a real life feud) tearing up the front lawn with his car. He is driving in big circles and leaving deep muddy marks.

I get dressed and head outside. The neighbour and his car are gone, but the lawn is still ruined. My dad is outside standing in front of three fold out table upon which are many short sleeved t-shirts. The make and style of the shirts are all the same, but each shirt is a different colour. The entire spectrum of the rainbow is represented. My dad's attention is drawn to the shirts, though he does acknowledge me when I first come outside, but he doesn't seem to notice the sorry state of our front lawn.

Dad starts to talk to me about something but I can no longer remember what and I woke up soon afterwards anyway.

There is an old farmhouse and barn in front of me. I can see an older couple working in field out back. I am not sure which, but the couple is either just really old fashioned pioneers or menonites. There is a doorless shed by the east side of the house and I wandered into it. Along with an assortment of old fashioned farming implements, homemade brooms line the far wall. I ask the old mennonite man if I can buy one when he comes over to see what I am doing tresspassing in his shed. Instead I am hired (or forced?) to become a live-in-maid to keep the farmhouse clean.

The mennonite couple disappear and a new couple appear as owners of the farmhouse. They are still older, but they look like they come from the Victorian era. I cannot think of anyone whom the lady of the house (the Mistress) looks like, but the man of the house (the Master) looked very much like Christopher Walken. The outside of the farmhouse looked the same, as did the barn, but the doorless shed disappeared and a long covered porch now wrapped itself around the east side of the house.

The inside of the house was still mainly Victorian/Edwardian era but seemed to have some seemingly out-of-place modernizations scattered randomly about. Though the house wasn't all that large, there was another maid who lived there as well. We usually worked together and while I was relatively pragmatic, the other maid was extremely superstitious and constantly tried to convince me that every creak, or misplaced object, was caused by ghosts. I did not believe in the ghosts theory and tired to argue that the house was old and prone to creaking and that objects get misplaced all the time, but the other maid would have none of it.

The other maid and I were asked to clean out the sothern rooms of the farmhouse because the Master wanted to convert them into a variety store. It was at this time that I started to see unusal things happen, like curtains move when there was no breeze, electrical cords pull themselves from the wall, and doors open and close by themselves. In the main hall, drops of blood fell from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. No matter how many times the other maid and I cleaned up the blood, it always reappeared the next day. Most frustrating was the fact that the Master and Mistress of the house never experienced anything strange, nor saw the blood, and would dismiss our complaints as nonsense.

I was now convinced that the house was haunted afterall, but was still not all that creeped out until the drops of blood from the ceiling became bloody bootprints that appeared decending the stairs and entering the southern rooms. At one point I was cleaning something in the main hall and heard footfalls on the stairs. I turned and saw not the Master as I was expecting, but the bloody bootprints. I quickly tried to duck into one of the adjacent rooms, but the double glass doors either locked of their own accord or jammed. I quickly spun around so that my back was pressed up against the glass doors and the lights in the hall began flickering. The temperature in the room dropped dramatically and I could see my breath. I was frozen in terror as I watched the bloody bootprints slowly and ominously stomp towards me. I cowered and shut my eyes, but just before they reached me, the sound of the footfalls disappeared, the room temperature returned to normal, and the lights stopped flickering. The glass doors behind me swung open and I made a hasty exit from the main hall and ran into the other maid, who saw everything from the other side of the glass doors.

Not only did the other maid quit after that but the bloody bootprints following me around the house became a common occurance. While it did take me a while to get used to, I eventually figured out that if I made no attempt to run from the ghostly follower, or try to clean up the bloody mess, the ghost would soon leave and the bloody mess would eventually disappear on its own.

I was standing in the southern room at one point, brainstorming ideas for the variety store, when I was summoned by the Master. I went to his private study in the north end of the house and when I got there, he lectured me on how no women in his household should leave the premises without a male escort. I realized at this time that I had never so much as stepped out onto the porch in all my time of working there as a maid, let alone leave the property. I got angry and shouted "There is my escort!" I pointed to the bloody bootprints that followed me into the room and the Master finally sees them for the first time, but says nothing.

Almost immediately after the lecture, I began to see ghosts in and around the farmhouse. The first is a little boy in a blue coat and white shorts, playing with an orange ball, near the pond at the front of the house. One Sunday I am sitting with the Master and Mistress and their guests when I get up and go into the kitchen for something. When I return, there is an old man sitting in my seat. He looks exactly like the character Oscar Leroy from the show Corner Gas (baseball cap and all). I recognize him as a friend of the family in the dream and he starts telling me about how it is his birthday. I realize that the old man is a ghost and I exclaim outloud to the Master and Mistress that their friend is dead, but everyone in the room just looks at me like I am crazy. Some get angry because they think I am being disrespectful since they know that man I am talking about and that it is his birthday.

I beg the Master to call the family of their friend but they wil not. The ghost of the old man gets up and asks me to follow him outside into the front yard. I do so, and the family and their guests follow me to see what I am up to, though I suspect it is just to observe me because they think I have lost my mind. The ghost of the old man tells me about how he died peacefully in his sleep, and as a hearse drives by in the distance, he points to the completed variety store at the southern end of the house and to says "Never stop writing down your ideas." The ghost then fades away. I walk over to the pond (though it looks more like a muddy pit at this moment) and stare quietly into the murky water. The Master comes over to me and finally says that he will get someone to call the family of his friend, to confirm his condition, because no one else yet believes that the old man is dead.

The Mistress runs out of the house and proclaims that their friend is dead and that it was self-inflicted. While everyone reacts to the news of their friend's suicide, I walk away saying "He lied to me!" (about how the old man said he died). Later, the Master, Mistress and guests are sitting around talking about how strange it was that someone would want to kill themselves on their birthday, but no one seems particularily upset at the loss of thier friend. I am disturbed and upset at their apparent apathy.


The dream ends there.

The birthday-suicide thing is something that I had been ruminating about for a few days because I struggle with suicidal ideation as a result of clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.