Blue_Opossum

Night of October 24, 1968. Thursday.



Newly researched and enhanced entry updated on August 31, 2014. Sunday.

This was one of my favorite childhood dreams, and I became fully lucid by the end of my dream. I was firstly in the living room of my Cubitis home very late at night, probably around midnight. There was a very unusual storm occurring with a lot of thunder and lightning. Over time, I decided to go into my own room, but only opened the door enough to see a very small ghost gliding across the floor. As one of my original titles for this was “The Pillowcase Ghost”, you can imagine what it looked like. There were hardly any features other than the white “pillowcase” with vertically oval eyes and a mouth. He had no legs and only a suggestion of hands to drag his chain. He had a very young voice, like a young boy, as he was “booooooing” (more like moaning and dragging out the word “boo” for some time), and in fact, I could actually see the letters moving in the air above his head in a long, wavy sequence. I was not scared at all. I found it rather fascinating and bordering on pure entertainment. He was dragging a small chain, which looked a little like an animated charcoal drawing. The lightning I watch for a time through mostly the east windows of my bedroom also seems somewhat animated (in an implied letter “Z” sort of way), and is fairly thick and yellowish. I watch the little ghost for a fairly long time. However, he eventually notices me and seems to vanish, as if he had been only practicing his ghostliness and did not want anyone to see what he was doing.

I look around for him and he seems to be under the couch watching me. I imagine that we are playing some sort of game, but I wonder what I should do. For a short time, I am wondering if he actually took the pillowcase from one of my pillows and was now wearing it.

I go into the entrance to the kitchenette and crouch down near a chair (one from real life, with metal legs, in the same position as from last seen in reality). Eventually, the small ghost is in the living room, moving around and gliding very slowly across the floor, almost reminding me of a snail. He does not seem to be aware of me at that point. All in all, my dream is extremely vivid, yet with a cartoon-like atmosphere (but still with full life-like depth perception).

I find myself holding a “Spooky (the Tuff Little Ghost)” comic book (the one in the image, issue number eleven with a cover date of July 1957). I jump out from behind the chair (although technically I was not hidden, as the chair’s legs vertically blocked only a small part of me), and I let out a very loud, staccato “Boo!” At the same time, Spooky flies out of the comic book, growing bigger in flight, until he is my size, as I am holding it open, raising his arms and also shouting “Boo!”

The other poor little ghost’s eyes widen as he cringes dramatically (and diagonally in the opposite direction) in seeming terror and he slides swiftly across the floor backwards, to the other side of the room (he cannot seem to fly at all). He no longer appears in my dream, and Spooky is also gone from the scene (having returned to the comic book, I assume). Eventually, I wake up, and have a false awakening of retrieving my pillow case from under the couch.

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A short time after this, my mother (without knowing about my dream) gave me a glow-in-the-dark plastic ghost figure similar to the one in my dream but wearing a clock necklace (most dreams have at least one precognitive layer or association, but not always as obvious).

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The main influence was “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, which aired earlier that evening. The Spooky comic book cover (that was apparently printed eleven years earlier as well as being issue number eleven) set the climax and resolution into play with a clever scenario, especially of a ghost coming out of the cover of a comic - that comic book cover in reality also showing the ghost coming out of the cover of a book! (and it was from behind a kitchen chair rather than an arm chair which would have hidden me fully - this seems one of several important facets of my dream). The “ghost” was possibly a representation of a challenge in easily “defeating” the Charlie Brown mentality - almost in the manner of “tough real ghost” vs. “weak and fake ghost Charlie Brown”. This seems important because in my dream, it was almost as if I was in full control of the Spooky presence regardless of how short the event. The layers of this dream still seem quite intriguing even as an adult. The later versions of this dream did not have as much impact as the first semi-lucid version.

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This dream had one of the most intriguing and marvelous dream signs I have ever seen. A glowing white “pillowcase ghost” (both a moon symbol and a very obvious dream sign - what could be more obvious a dream sign than a pillow?) serves as the induction and soon becomes the main feature of my dream. Even though Spooky is also technically a moon symbol (“downgraded” consciousness within the nighttime dream state) as are most ghosts, he wears a derby and is thus a “covered moon” in this case, and emerges from the comic book to “send my dream’s moon away” as the waking precursor.