When I was a child, a distant relative told my mom that I was "gifted" and given the family history, my mom knew what she meant.
From an early age, I have possessed this uncanny ability to dream things that come true. Often times the dreams are pointless; just random conversations that play out word for word at some random future time. Other times, they are warnings or appear to be horrible experiences that I witness others suffering. Sometimes, I don't dream about people but about houses or buildings.
Sometimes, the time period is current while others, it is obvious that the events I'm dreaming of took place at a time that predated my own birth. Sometimes I am an active participant while other times, I am the proverbial fly on the wall. These dreams are intense, nonetheless, as I can smell and feel and hear and even read in these dreams. Often parts or all of the dreams are in color. I may know the people or places in my dreams intimately while other times, they and their locations are complete strangers.
I can't explain why I have them and thankfully they don't happen all of the time. It is just an oddity that I have accepted as part of what makes me who I am. For example, prior to the tragedy of 9/11, I kept dreaming about being at work with a specific group of people. I remember where we were standing and what each of us was wearing. In this dream, we were standing around the desk of another employee and we were watching TV. We were watching a news broadcast of a building fall. I remember the disquieting silence broken only by the occasional sob and I remember one specific employee, a very tall and typically jovial gentleman wiping tears from his face with a handkerchief embroidered with a red C. I would wake up understandably shaken and uneasy; almost as if my very core was grieved by the dream. Though I would always think how absurd the dream was because the company I worked at on the ill-fated day was a fortune 500 company and we certainly weren't allowed to stand around and watch TV. Beyond that, where would we find a TV?
Then it happened... Just like I dreamt; the same people, the same clothes, the same smells, the same location, the same actions, all of it just as I had dreamed even down to the red C on Chris's handkerchief. As it turns out, our director had brought in her own TV so that we could stay abreast of the situation throughout the day. In my dream, I never knew what led up to the building falling nor did I know what building it was that we were watching fall. That's the dilemma, I don't always get all of the details and the dreams often don't make sense even after they have come true.
Another time, in a more random dream, I was standing with my brother in the aisle of a store having a conversation about what color of markers come in a standard 8 count box. When it came true, I wondered why I would dream that moment and that seemingly useless conversation before it actually happened? It just doesn't make sense. But that's how it happens for me.
More often than not, I dream about houses and places. I've dreamt about a mountaintop camp with a high tower overlooking a large lake lined with small, dark brown cabins only to drive past that very spot several years later when I was lost and had no phone or GPS reception. Though I had never stepped foot physically on that property, I knew where the bathrooms, where the main hall with the cafeteria, the nurses office and chapel were all because I had dreamed about them.
Once, during my college way back in the early 90's, I was dating a guy who had family in rural West Virginia. Now, I had never been to West Virginia before, much less to this very remote, mountainous area where many of the homes still didn't have indoor plumbing and even some that had no electricity. The guy I was dating was quite the skeptic who refused to believe that I had dreamed about things that had actually come true. So, as we started down this very narrow one-lane road, I gasp and remarked that I had been to the little farm house we had just passed in a dream. Seeing an opportunity to challenge me, he began to ask me about the house; what did it look like on the inside, how many doors led into the house, and so on. I described the floorplan and the furniture and the hideous color of the living room. Unbeknownst to me, this was the home of one of his cousins and with devious delight he decided to prove me wrong. We turned around at the next driveway and went back to the quaint little farm house.
Imagine his shock when we walked in and it was exactly as I had described it to him just moments before. His cousin had remarked that his wife had painted the living room the hideous color after the home had been vandalized by their daughter's ex. Turned out that the ex-beau had sprayed lewd words and pictures in black spray paint along the living room wall after their break up. The hideously dark color was all they had been able to find to adequately cover the graffiti. He never doubted me again for the rest of our relationship.
Sometimes I have very vivid reoccurring nightmares. One in particular haunted me for months. In the dream, it was winter and there was a thick blanket of snow. I could hear it crunch beneath my feet as I walked. In the distance I could hear the sound of music from an old Victrola and I struggled through the cold and snow toward the scratchy music. Down in what old folks would call a holler sat a very large, white, farm house. It was almost hidden in the snow. As I got close, I started to walk in the slush made my tires and wagon wheels. The house had those very elongated and narrow windows. It was a very unfriendly looking place as icicles hung like fangs along the roofline and from the tops of the long, dark windows. There were a few chickens roosting on a bench seat on the porch. Sitting on the side of the porch, with feet so purple they were almost black was a small boy, maybe 7 with dark, unkempt hair and big, pleading eyes made darker by the circles. I asked him where his parents were and he pointed at the house. In my dream, I thought how it was too cold for him to be barefoot and I wondered why no smoke came from either chimney at the far ends of the house.
I could hear the creak of the porch and the clank of my boot as I walked toward the open door. The smell of garbage and rot was overwhelming inside the dark and dusty house. The only light was what little gray light that the windows let in. There was trash and dirty tin plates everywhere except this thin trail that led down the middle of the dark hallway. I walked passed the stairway and on into the kitchen. The table was covered with left-over food and what appeared to be homemade butter. In the sink, there was blood and what appeared to be raccoon hides. The air was filled with the coppery smell of fresh blood and I gagged. Behind me I heard a sound and it was the silent little boy. He didn't say a word, just pointed up the stairs.
I was stepping on dead flies and rat droppings and papers and God only knows what else as I climbed the stairs. It was a horribly filthy place and I wanted to vomit but something stopped me. When I reached the upstairs landing, to my left was a door nailed shut with barn wood. To my right was an open door leading to two sleeping areas separated by the open-faced fireplace that sat empty and cold. I started towards the right but I heard something behind the boards. It was faint at first but I knew it was a person. I ran to the boards and started knocking and to my horror, someone was knocking back. I could hear them and from the sound I could tell that they were female and weak. I started down the stairs to find something to use to pry those boards free and there he stood, that sad, silent little boy. He had a tear running down his face. I grabbed his shoulders in my hands and he turned his head to the left and pointed toward the front door and I would wake up. Each time my heart would be racing and I would have this fear that I needed to save the person walled up in that room. I had this dream over and over and over.
Well, I shared more than I intended but I wanted to know has anyone else has anything like this happen?
Loading comments....
