Blue_Opossum

Morning of June 10, 1972. Saturday.



I am following train tracks for some reason, but after I walk for several minutes into a more isolated area, the tracks come to an end. There are a lot of trees and bushes around. There are no other people in this dream. It seems to be an unknown location, as well.

I come to an abandoned mansion. Looking around inside, I notice a young deer’s head as a trophy on the wall. I see the ghost of that deer, when looking through the doorway near the fireplace I am standing by; the deer ghost leaps over a few loose scattered boards in another room and leaves the area. Apparently, the mansion is haunted by the ghost of a deer, but there seems to be no real threat at all. I do not really feel bad in any way, but actually feel a sense of peace.

I feel now that there may be some sort of play on the train tracks ending - linked to the idea of the animal tracks and animal “ending”.

Morning of February 19, 1972. Saturday.



Around this time period of my life were some of the last but more unusual dog attack dreams. This was also one of my more vividly “energized” dreams of the time.

I am walking out to the backyard and fairly close to the back of the shed my father had built. Some of the area seems as it was before he built the shed. I notice the somewhat bony remains of a dead dog halfway between the railroad tracks and the edge of the backyard prior to the more weedy area (which we later used for a garden). We also had bonfires in the area in real life during one time period. It is otherwise more featureless in my dream and seemingly slightly more elevated.

My dream takes on an unusual eerie mood, a sort of “antiquity” (or sense of “alternate time” - slightly reminiscent to the eerie feeling I got when watching “Jason and the Argonauts” the first time) that seems to begin to dominate my dream. I notice that a smaller dog seems to be guarding the remains for some reason - from the other side and facing me. The dog soon notices me and begins to growl menacingly. The ghost of the other dog rises up from the bones and seems to pose a threat as well. Soon, both dogs (the “dead one” possibly being a golden retriever and the other at least part Labrador but two-thirds the size of the first) run towards me. I turn and flee into the carport and dive into the front doorway (which apparently was already open) and wake just as I contemplate the idea of the dogs getting to my feet and legs, which are still just outside the doorway. I wake with somewhat of a jolt, but it is an interesting sensation as if I was actually leaping out of my dream’s residual energy. I anticipate the feeling of the dog’s teeth on my feet and legs but this never actually occurs this time, although I have felt severe pain in similar dreams.

As stated before, dogs are most often rust-colored or black in my childhood dreams, and almost always invasive to my in-dream freedom, both lucid and non-lucid (though more common in lucid ones). My wife also had very similar associations with such dogs.

On February 18th, the prior night and into this morning, I had watched “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1963) on Channel 13’s “Shock Theatre” (though found it very amusing rather than scary in any way) as well as the first fifteen minutes or so of “The Mysterious Doctor” (1943) starting from 11:30 pm (apparently about a headless ghost) before falling asleep. However, it is more than likely this dream was influenced by having seen “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (late 1950s version, I think) at an earlier date.

Morning of October 16, 1971. Saturday.



This was another November 6th dream (the first recorded title being “I Married a Ghost”) though the longest, most focused version was on October 16 (very early morning), 1971. In this case, it was mostly based on associations with the movie “Danza Macabra” (also known as “Castle of Blood”, but first seen as “Castle of Terror” on the “Shock Theatre” television series). To this day, I still have not seen, or even made any effort to see, the remake (“Web of the Spider” from 1971). This was quite odd I suppose (especially for a young boy), some sort of catalyst, perhaps, and came years before the “showdown” dream (the castle-of-winds one) between the “other” and my as-yet-unknown-to-be-real wife (in their actual forms rather than being represented by others). Had I not been influenced (or rather deliberately focused on with a higher clarity than with most movies, to be honest) to some degree by a few (to me) archetypical movies, it is likely my path would have been the same, just with a little less movie-based synchronicity and long-term memory of such, perhaps - the patterns and personal themes would likely have come from elsewhere as it is. I would likely have formed similar symbolic aspects from other things I saw or did not yet see.

For many years after, I had this focus around November 2nd (related to the “Night of the Dead” event in the movie - which of course is not Halloween as some have claimed - guess they did not really watch the movie they wrote about so much - which often seems to be the case even with so-called movie critics). Thus, dreams relating to around that date sometimes centered around certain ideas even when I had not seen the movie for awhile. Interestingly, as a young boy, I even perceived November 2nd to be the “real” Halloween even though I never mentioned it to others much at all. I guess because it was sort of like “my” private Halloween.

The main point of my dream was that I was originally going to marry the Julia character (Margarete Robsahm). However, there were scene changes and parts with wandering about in a mist. Eventually I married the Barbara Steele character (Elisabeth Blackwood). I guess the reason was that at least she tried to save poor Alan (me?). I did not die, however - only everyone else was a ghost. The marriage took place in an unusual location. It was outside in a mist on the top of a fairly high isolated staircase (at least twenty steps) with nothing beyond the top landing. Everything had a sort of grayish and bluish transparent look. The preacher (unknown) stood reading for some time. In the background, below, there was a very vague association with a white horse and hippies on motorcycles in the fog - seems to be from the episode of “The Immortal” (“White Horse, Steel Horse”). There are also scenes of wandering around in a library after-hours (recurring). This time, also in a mist. Being in a mist was far more common when I was younger, becoming fairly rare after the age of sixteen unless I instigated the idea with lucidity. (Age sixteen is when I developed what I considered amazing full control over some dreams for nearly a year - usually the last ones of a series).

Curiously, the movie characters, depending on angle, lighting, and expression, were similar to the real-life associations (which of course I did not associate with my wife at the earlier times, as this was years before she first wrote to me), including the same hair colors. I did include an image, but I cannot find the photo where my wife looks so much like the first image I actually mistook it for her once, the third being the “other” symbol. Again, it all depends on angle, expression, and lighting; otherwise, there is not that much of a resemblance at all. It could have been the other way around (hair, looks, and character intent different), but was not.

Night of October 19, 1970. Monday.



I am at a cocktail party very late at night on our carport at Cubitis even though I am only a young child. It may be around two o'clock in the morning. I had been playing with a friend (Eddie from my class), with a large, rubbery and mostly hollow all-orange toy racing car with driver (the “midget” kind that looks a bit like a shoe and the person leans way back to drive them). I clearly hear the glasses and ice-cubes clinking and party chatter, and see that everyone is fancily dressed. Suddenly, there is a much enhanced silence as I suddenly feel lucid. My dream becomes extremely vivid, of the “like real life” perception, even after waking. The silence ends with a few whispers and talk of the ghost of a wolf that haunts the railroad tracks just beyond our back yard beyond the usually weedy area. Soon, there is an eerie howl, and the white, glowing wolf moves quickly down the railroad tracks, going south. For a moment, he seems frozen in time in mid-leap. This is not nightmarish at all, but very enjoyable in its intense eeriness and nonthreatening event.

This dream is type EC2. The orange (associated with October, the month of this dream) toy racing car seen at the adult cocktail party on my carport (while fully in-body throughout as a remarkably stable dream self) foreshadows the waking transition as a downsized conduit symbol. The train coming down the track is my emergent consciousness. The ghost wolf that could be perceived as either “leading” the train, or being “chased” by the train is the hybridization of my temporary waking self (a ghost almost always being a thread of the “incomplete” conscious self in the dream state) and sublimated dream self, offset from the adult cocktail party as reflecting the “pack” - yet as a singular ghost wolf. The imagery is beautiful and extremely vivid and seems to occur in infinite night. The transition echoes as an eerie, but beautiful and very “familiar” howling sound.