Visions in the Dark

(There is a "trigger warning" on the content of this dream.)


I am an archeology student working in a museum in Montreal. I have volunteered to document and study items that are in the backrooms of the museum's storage areas. All of the items had been ignored or forgotten about because no previous archeologists thought they were important. The civilizations or cultures and time frame the artifacts come from are unknown and it is my job to find out when and where they came from. The items I found and set aside to look at include various peices of ancient looking jewelry, a few peices of pottery and a roughly triangular peice of metalwork that features some sort bird with its wings spead out and the bird's head facing to the right. The outline of the bird and the outer edge of the peice is orange while the background is a deep blue. I give this item the name of the "Eagle Crest."

I tell my department head (Professor Alberts) about the items and he doesn't seem interested at first but says that I can continue my investigations as long as they do not interfere with my other student studies in the museum. One night, after closing time, I am working on a thesis on a computer in one of the museum offices and suddenly a bunch of screens and files start popping up at random and I cannot close them. The files that are appearing are refering to some of the items I found and disclosed to Prof. Alberts and when the files start being downloaded to an outside source I finally realize that the computer is being hacked and I turn it off.

The next day I tell Prof. Alberts what happened and he tells me to put the items in his office where they will be safe, which I do, except for the Eagle Crest, which I had on my desk, because I wanted to study it that night. When night comes, after everyone has gone home, the museum is broken into and the box of artifacts I had set aside to study was stolen from Prof. Alberts's office, except for the crest which was in my desk in another part of the museum. The buglars stole nothing else and seemed to beeline only for that box of artifacts and this made me think that they knew exactly what they were looking for and knew where to find it. Suspecting an inside job, I do not tell Prof. Alberts that I still have the Eagle Crest and instead I hide it in one of the unorganized and unused storerooms filled with undocumented artifacts, knowing that no one will find it there. I am also worried that if I come forward that I did not put the crest where it was supposed to go the night of the robbery, that people will think I had something to do with the robbery itself or knew about it in some way.

Later I am in my apartment thinking about the crest and the robbery and the nagging feeling that the two are related somehow. It is early in the morning because I have not been able to sleep and I am in my night clothes with are nothing more than an orange tank top and blue panties. I am so deep in thought that I do not hear someone enter my apartment until that person opens my bedroom door. It is a tall, thin, blond man, wearing glasses and dressed in a black suit. He is holding a handgun and demands that I get dressed and come with him. I am freaked out that someone is in my apartment but also angry and embarassed that I am walked in on when wearing so little clothing. I demand that he turn around so I can change but he says no and watched me with no expression as I get dressed. I ask him who he is and where we are going but he ignores me and says that I need my identifaction and passport. I resist leaving my apartment but the man says that I am in danger if I stay and that he is taking me somewhere safe. I demand to know why I should trust him and he says that there are some gangsters on their way to kidnap me because they think I know the location of the Eagle Crest and that they will torture me to get the location of it. I ask the man how I am supposed to know if I can trust him or not but he ignores me again, grabs my arm and drags me downstairs to his car waiting behind the building. I know he has a gun so I don't want to piss him off and just obey.

As we are in his car and pulling out of the apartment complex driveway, a car pulls up to the front of the building and several large, burly looking men in dark suits and wearing sunglasses get out and start toward the apartment. One of them looks our way and they seem to recognize either me or the man I am with because he begins shouting and the other men begin running our way, pulling out guns and pointing them in our direction. The blond man speeds out of there and down the street as fast as he can, even as the gangsters start shooting in our direction. The blond man ignores the traffic lights and roadsigns and races through the streets at top speed but soon the dark car is behind us and we are followed all the way out of Montreal. We speed and weave through traffic and eventually seem to lose our pursuers. I ask my kidnapper where we are going and he says New York City. I begin crying because I am scared and the man says that I should not be afraid because none of this is my fault and that he is just trying to protect me. I say I still don't know if I can trust him or not, and he asks me to open the glove compartment which I do. Inside is a large silver coloured hand gun and he asks me to take it. I protest because I have never held a gun before, let alone use one, and he says that it is for my protection and that he will tell me how to use it.

Shortly after giving me instructions on how to use the gun and telling me to hide it in my bag, the blond man loses control of his car when we are rear ended by the dark car filled with gangsters that has suddenly caught up with us. The car skids out of control and comes to a stop in a ditch and before the blond man can reach for his own gun, several of the gangsters open fire through the driver's side window and he is struck several times. I am pulled kicking and screaming from the passenger side and dragged over to the gangster car and forced into the trunk. My bag is still hanging over my side and the gangsters do not search through it. It is hot and cramped in the trunk and we drive for a long time. I do not know how long but it is dark by the time the goons stop at a motel and finally let me out of the trunk. They let me go to the bathroom in the motel room and I lock myself in and cry for a while. Eventually they bash the door down and force me to come out. None of the gangsters talk to me at first, but one tries to get me to tell him the location of the Eagle Crest by saying that they will let me go immediately if I tell them where it is. I say that I don't know and that it was stolen when the museum I was interning at was broken into. This is the answer I give many time when they press the same question many times in different ways. Eventually they give up and let me fall asleep on one of the beds.

I wake up at some point in the night and without moving myself much to alert them to my wakened state I try to see were the goons are. Two are sleeping on chairs by the window and I cannot determine the location of the third, but the fourth is laying on the other motel bed with his pants pulled down and masterbating to a pornographic film playing on the television. I am using my bag as a pillow and I can feel the outline of the gun under my head, but I still lay motionless, fearful to alert the gangster who is still awake that I too am conscious. I close my eyes with the intention of waiting for the guy to fall asleep but just then the gangster that I could not locate comes out of the bathroom and jokes with the other guy that they should rape me while I am sleeping. The other guy thinks that is a great idea and rolls off of his bed and on top of me. I scream and struggle and try to reach for the gun but I am dragged out of its reach by the two goons who pull me to the end of the end and start ripping my clothes off of me. My screams awaken the other two gangsters and they fight off the would be rapists and remind them that I am not to be harmed until "the Boss" can speak to me.

The goons start arguing and even fistfighting and I am able to grab my bag and lunge at the door. One of the gangsters grabs my legs and pulls me to the floor, as the other three goons take no notice and continue fighting amounst themselves, and while the guy who has me struggles to hold my logs with both arms, my hands are free and I pull the gun out of my bag, unlock the safety and stoot the guy holding me squarely in the forehead. The other three gangsters stop fighting and stand stunned for a second as I scramble out of the dead man's grasp and for the door. The gangsters simutaneously reach for their steel and I am sure that I am dead when the motel room door is kicked in and a hail of machine gun bullets rips into the bodies of the remaining gangters and cuts them down where they stand.

I look up and see the blond haired man from before standing there holding two mini tommi guns, blood from his own gunshot wounds all over his shirt and a trickle of blood out of his mouth. He is backlit from headlights in the parking lot and looks enraged as he stands there and stares down the bloody corpses of my kidnappers. His expression softens when he sees that I am alright and I don't know how he survived being shot several times but he takes me away from there and we continue drivng down the highway - I assume to New York City, but I am not sure because I cannot remember anything more from this dream other than that the blond man reveals that Prof. Alberts organized both the robbery and my kidnapping and was "the Boss" behind the whole mess. He also revels what the Eagle Crest is and why it is important (it is magic or something?) but I cannot remember exactly what the details were now.

I am in a house I do not recognize and most of the action takes place in the large kitchen, dining room or hallway to the bedrooms. The house sits at the top of a hill amidst a forest whose leaves are ablaze with all the brilliant, fiery colours of autumn. The inside facade of the house consists of very natural colours and materials: wood floors and earth tone colour schemes.

There is going to be a party if sorts tomorrow, maybe a family reunion or something, and I am in the kitchen making dish after dish of salads and casseroles and other side dishes. I think the party is a pot luck because even though I know that other people are going to be bringing food, I have an almost uncontrollable urge to make as much food as possible. I worry that there will now be enough for everyone even though I am not sure how many people are going to be there (though I know it is going to be a lot).

I have guests who have arrived already and they are going to stay the night. There are two men and two women. I am suddenly in the living room talking with one of the men who has a beige polo shirt and who has a bushy brown beard. He is joyful and always smiling and seems very happy to talk to me. We are related in the dream, but I forget how. From just above the knees down to his ankles his pants become transparent and I can see his leg bones. The transparency effect becomes stronger the further down the leg you go and his feet have completely disappeared. I know this is wrong somehow and I sit back with a white marker to blend the white of his bones with his pants and try to colour in his legs to make them look full. For some reason I think that the man will be embarassed about it if other people notice. Suddenly I realize that the bearded man I am talking too is a ghost and that is why his legs are transparent. I am not afraid or anything but I am confused as to why he has come here and not gone to the afterlife and I think I ask him this and his response is that he is glad that family is getting together. He disappears soon afterwards and I think I realized that there were other ghosts around as well or something but I cannot remember if I talked to them or not.

While I am the same person in the dream in mind, my body has suddenly aged significantly and I am now an old lady. Also quite suddenly I am in a foul mood (though not because of the aging) and start throwing plates and cutlery around roughly and pushing the two women guests (one is a blond middle aged woman in a baby blue sweater and the other is younger with brown hair?) around in the kitchen . They are visibly shaken by my sudden mood change and though they say nothing I can tell by the expressions on their face that they wish I would retire for the night so they could finish their work in peace. I stomp out of the kitchen in a huff and scream "Dont touch my fucking cheese casserole or I'll fucking kill you!" as I enter the hallway to my bedroom. For some reason I think they will eat it when I am gone and it only adds to my sudden and inexplainable rage.

I go up to my bedroom and lay down on the bed and though the house has three other people in it downstairs I cannot hear them at all. They have either gone to bed or are tiptoeing around because they think I am trying to sleep, but honestly, to me it feels like they are not there at all. The house feels empty again like it did for a long time before they arrived. The window is open and I can feel the soft night breeze coming in the window and hear the rustling of the leaves on the trees. A few autumn leaves are blown in with the wind and scatter across my bed and my floor but this doesn't bother me and I find that I am no longer so full of rage but feel very lonely. I become confused and start to think all the planning and cooking was not real and I imagined the whole thing. I get up and head downstairs. I cannot find my three guests but there is indeed many plates of food prepared and scattered through the kitchen and in the fridge.

There is a knock at the front door and I open it to see a young black man in grey clothing standing on the path leading to my house. He is smiling and asks me to walk with him for a while. Even though it is the middle of the night and I don't know this man I go with him anyway and we walk through a path that leads to a forest talking, though I cannot remember any of our conversation now, but I am very content to be with this man because I feel like I know him but I cannot articulate how. The sun starts to rise and we go return to my house and stand at the very top of the hill and I am surprised to see a very long line of people outside of my house consisting of thousands of people, most of whom I do not recognize as family or friends. I have trouble believing that all of these people are here for the party and the young man in grey just responds that these are all the people whose lives I have affected or who love me.

I start to realize that something is amiss and suddenly I am back laying in bed, half conscious and vagely aware that I am waking from a deep sleep. Instead of being in my bedroom though I am in a hospital room surrounded by the three people from before who were my guests. It dawns on me that I had died the night before and the walk through the forest with the young man was actually a walk through a replay of my long life with my guardian angel, though I did not realize it at the time. I was able to talk to the ghost of the man with the transpartent legs before because I had been a ghost too.

I reach out and take the hands of the people surrounding me and tell them I love them. I feel so full of love for them and for the whole world that I feel like I am going to burst with joy. Even though I had just died the night before the doctors let me leave the hospital and go back to my house for the pot luck party. There are not thousands of people there but there is a lot and everyone is happy, filled with good food and enjoying life and the company of others.


This is a very unusual dream for me, because it ended positive and there was lots of positive feelings in it, when usually my dreams are dark and depressing and scary. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying...

I am at a campsite near a lake. I am poor and have few posssessions and I think I either live there or am staying their until I move on to a new place because I am essentially homeless. The roads and campsite grounds are mostly gravel, with tress scattered here and there.

I keep to myself and mostly stay on my site but for some reason a group of three adolescent boys start throwing small rocks at me. I ask them to stop but it only provokes them and soon their are five boys throwing handfulls of gravel and rocks at me. People on surrounding campsites do nothing to help and only stare. My tent offers little shelter and it collapses. I suddenly remember that I have an archer's bow and I go and get it. The bow I find looks like it was constructed of plastic and duct tape and I only have three arrows. I try to fire an arrow at the boys as a warning shot, but it turns out my bow IS made of platic and duct tape and it falls apart.

A vagrant old man suddenly appears and hands me a dart gun and some darts, telling me that this will be much better. Suddenly something happens (but I can't remember what) and the boys throwing the rocks suddenly stop and run away. I have not fired the dart gun so I don't know what scared them off. I am exausted and sore but my tent has been destroyed and the only possesion I have left is a blanket, a sleeping bag and a pillow.

I leave the campsite to find a slab of concrete near a building to sleep on, but other vagrants have picked spots around the building and space is scared. I don't know what the building is or used to be and the windows and doors have been boarded up. There is a road that either leads deeper into or exits the campsite and it runs right only where all the vagrants are trying to hunker down for the night. Many people shout unkind things or throw garbage at us and it is near impossible to sleep. I become so frustrated I go for a walk and when I come back a blond haird man has stolen my spot and is sleeping in my blankets.

Suddenly I cannot cross the road because it is a deep chasm filled with a raging river and I feel depressed and tired and want to throw myself in.

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.