Posts from — October 2008

Digging where, exactly?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/10/14/cemetery-death.html

(Male, 30’s) I was showing my wife the farm I grew up on as a child. Everything was changed, weird. We had gotten to the barn. It used to be wood with a concrete floor, a normal barn. But in the dream, it was metal. Rusted dirty metal. Thick pieces bolted together. We walked down the aisle where the cows used to be penned in, where I used to have to feed them while they were getting milked. It was all dark gray. It seems like even the floor was metal. The rafters and ceiling too. Cold metal. We got to the place that used to be where we stored the “chop” – ground up corn and oats, I think. I used to give the cows one section of a bale of hay and half a shovel of chop. But where the chop used to be kept in this open bin, in the nightmare, there was a rusted metal door with a dead bolt lock. I had a big keyring full of keys in my pocket. These were MY keys too, not like I’d borrowed them from someone. My house keys and car keys were on the ring too. For some reason I had to show her what was in there. But also I had to find out myself. I got out the right key but it kept slipping in the lock, like I had to turn the key just right to get it to “catch” onto the locking mechanism. But I eventually got the door unlocked and open and we went inside. It was the same space, probably six foot by twelve foot with a bin built into the side. But everything was metal. A gray metal that was splashed and dirty almost like it had patterns of rot on it. Everything felt so filthy. But really, there was nothing there. We turned to leave and discovered the door had closed behind us. It was locked. There was another keyhole on this side as well. I put my key in the lock and fished it around trying to catch onto the locking mechanism. It didn’t work. Then the door was pulled out of my hands. Some one was opening it from the other side. I felt relieved for an instant until I saw the hand that grabbed onto the door. It was pale and rubbery and it seemed to have too many fingers. I stepped through the doorway since I didn’t want to be trapped and from around the edge of the door there appeared this scary looking figure. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman or whether, really if it was even human. It had a rubbery face with droopy long nose and cheekbones and it wore a black hood. It was one of those instances where I didn’t know if it was someone wearing a Hallowe’en mask and jumping out to scare us or whether this was something that was really dangerous and I should be trying to protect my wife. It was certainly shocking.

(Male, 20’s) I know where this nightmare came from and maybe it’s not that original but it scared the s**t out of me the other night. I’ve been doing a lot of renovation projects at my girlfriend’s house. But nothing quite like this.

My girlfriend leads me down these rickety wooden stairs to the basement of her house. Or at least what’s supposed to be the basement of her place. The basement in the nightmare is dark grey and it seems to go on forever. I can’t quite make out the walls but there’s a bare light bulb that gives enough light to see where I’m supposed to work. There was all this white porcelain tile left over from when I re-did her bathroom and it’s all stacked in these nice piles on the floor right next to the mixing buckets, the trowel, a bag of thinset… everything I’d need. She wants me to start laying tile in the middle of this weird old basement.

The next trouble is that the floor to the basement isn’t really concrete. It’s sort of like maybe cement that someone laid down without mixing enough water with because it’s like very very coarse gravel. I tried brushing away the gravel to see if there’s anything solid underneath but my girlfriend reaches out and stops me. I look at her and I realize that there’s someone buried underneath there. She wants me to lay down the tile so he doesn’t get out. And I know immediately that the guy buried down there is Sid Haig, that actor from the Rob Zombie movies, the scary clown guy. And I also know that it doesn’t matter how dead this guy is, as soon as I reach down there, he’s going to reach up and grab me just like the end of “Carrie.” But if I don’t, then I’ll piss off my girlfriend which might mean that I’m the next guy she kills and buries in the basement. The last thing I remember is reaching for a tile.

And no, I didn’t tell her this dream.

(Male, 30’s) Once I thought about this nightmare, it became rather obvious to me where it was coming from. My mother is undergoing chemotherapy right now and also for as long as I’ve known her, my mom has also tinted her hair with red hair dye. Still, that’s not exactly the same as what I dreamed which was highly disturbing.

I was getting ready to take a shower but the drain in the bathtub was sluggish. I un screwed the drain cap and discovered that it was clotted up with long strands of hair. I pulled out a big fist full of this hair. It was ally matted into each other and it was deep red. It pulled up even more hair from deeper in the drain so I pulled on that. This hair was sodden but not with water, rather with some liquid that was deep red, like arterial blood. Where ever this blood splashed it seemed to stain. The porcelain of the white tub was stained with this blood. I tried squeezing the mats of hair so there were be less staining but all I did was splash more around. There was splatters on an army green t-shirt that I used to have maybe 20 years ago and also on a pair of camoflage pants that I used to have around that time too. They had just come out of the washer and dryer and were neatly stacked on the floor next to the tub. The blood – no use calling it anything else, at this point it was blood – was spattering everywhere and still the drain was clogged. There was a huge pile of hair now, maybe a bushel basket full. But the deep red drops turned brown when they hit the drab green clothing. I looked at the shirt and the pants and tried to tell myself “Yeah, I could still wear those. Nobody would notice.” All while I’m up to my elbows in gore and human hair.