(Male, recurrent dream since childhood) It starts with a Staircase, usually leading downward but at least once the Staircase lead up. Usually but not always the Staircase is hidden behind a secret passage.

The Staircase goes on and on ’til it ends at the Door.

One time, the Staircase was at my Grandmother’s house and I discovered it with my identical cousin (someone who incidentally doesn’t exist in waking reality) We chased each other down the stairs, flight after flight, laughing until we found the Door.

Another time the Staircase lead to a small room, a bombshelter done up like a swanky 50′s-style cocktail lounge – one with cinderblock walls and an extra low ceiling. The Door in this instance was round.

When I open the Door, as I always do, I am confronted with opaque black, a dead silence. There is the sense of space but it is a blank space, an empty void.

Once the Staircase lead upward and the doorway looked like it would lead to an attic. When I opened it with the pull cord, there was that sickening emptiness again. But as I stared at it, a tiny black spider emerged, suspended on a thin black web. That was almost worse because something from the dimensionless void “over there” was coming “over here.”

When I’m confronted with that dimensionless void I can’t go backward or close the door, but I can’t go forward either.