Visions in the Dark

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.

The main character is me, but I do not look like me. I looked like a young boy with short blond hair, wearing a dirty grey jumpsuit and a bright orange scarf, and I was very thin. Every time I mention myself in this dream, picture the aforementioned description of the young boy.

No long before this dream I had to euthanize my first cat, Bambi, because she was very sick. I find it interesting that my memories of her, and the pain I feel from losing her, appear in the dream - but she does not actually appear herself. I also acknowledge my memories and feelings of her in the dream but it does not become lucid when I do so.

Picture of my cat, Bambi:


The dream took place in this beautiful, lush back-country that bordered the ocean with huge rocky cliffs. There was four areas to this place: a flat, grassy field that lead to the cliffs; a lightly forested area that was "hilly"; a farmhouse and country road on the otherside of the lightly forested area; and a heavier forested area that bordered the other three areas.


The dream starts off with me inside the farmhouse, tidying up rooms and packing my belongings because I was supposed to leave that place for good for some reason, though my heart was reluctant to go, because my memories awere in that farmhouse. It felt especially painful because my cat, Bambi, just died and I kept finding cat toys and other things that would bring up memories of her. There are other people there cleaning up as well, but I cannot remember specific descriptions about them. There was a middle-aged man, a young girl, and a young boy who was similar in age as I appeared in the dream.

Eventually I went for a walk because my heart ached for Bambi too much. I cannot remember now how in the dream I got there, but suddenly I was at the cliff overlooking the ocean. The cliff edge was very steep and must have been hundreds of meters above the sea level; it was one heck of a long way down. I cannot remember how or why now, but somehow I got too close to the edge and I slipped over. I grabbed a handful of grass that grew on the edge and it held me up (which totally wouldn't happen for real, but whatever). I screamed for help but I knew no one could hear me. I struggled for a bit and at first I was convinced that I was going to fall. I thought of letting go for a moment, because if I died then I would get to see my cat again, but somehow I found some sturdy handholds in the rock and pulled myself up onto the cliff top and to safety.

I laid there for a long while before gettting up and wandering along the cliff's edge (but far enough away so I wouldn't fall off again) and I came across some stray cats playing and lounging around near the cliff's edge. I pet them for a while and thought of my own cat before walking to the heavily forested area. On the way I kept running into stray cats and I wanted to believe that if I found out where they were coming from, I would find my cat Bambi, still alive. There were many strays that looked like her (gray, stripped tabby) but none that were her.

In the heavily forested area I came across a large hollow tree that many of the strays seemed to live in. I became worried about them because I was going to leave this place soon and there would be no one to take care of them. I wandered out of the forest and back to the farmhouse. I explained to the three DCs about the cats and they told me to stop worrying about it. Just then a large truck pulled up in front of the farmhouse and some construction workers got out. They worked incredibly fast and put up a chainlink fence around the farmhouse and the large hollow tree in the forest. I asked them what they were doing and they said the next people who were moving into the farmhouse were Veterinarians and wanted to make sure the stray cats were safe.

It was a great relief for me to know that the cats were going to be taken care of, and I hung around until all of the construction was done (including an extension on the farmhouse that was going to be a cat hospital), and this seemed to allow me to accept that my cat, Bambi, was gone and I could leave without regret or sadness.

Just at the end of the dream, as I was walking towards the car that would take me away from that place, I turned my head and saw a black bear by the edge of the heavily forested area. The middle aged man was there as well and he was ignoring the bear, which was ignoring him as well, and since I did not sense and danger I ignored the bear as well. The dream ended there.