10: What Dreams May Come Part 3

You've heard the song, Turn Around, Look at Me. The lyrics go something like this:

"There is someone walking behind you

Turn around, look at me
There is someone watching your footsteps
Turn around, look at me"

It's one of the creepiest songs you'll ever hear, made even more creepy during the film Final Destination 3 in 2006. The Vogues nailed creepiness for all time with the song. It was fitting to include it in a horror film with the imminent threat of death looming with every character in the movie. 

We all get creeped out occasionally, whether walking down a lonely stretch of walkway or simply going to the bathroom down the hall. That eerie sense that someone or something is near you becomes more than present sometimes. Sometimes it's because we get spooked by stories of ghosts and goblins.

When I was a kid, my parents owned a shop called Innervisions. They rented a large, white mansion-looking home for their business. However, the house reminded me of the Amityville Horror house from the movies. It was very old, with many nooks and crannies that let the imagination run wild. From the claustrophobic back stairwell to the basement below, this house gave the feeling of being haunted very easily.

One night my mother was alone in the shop while my dad and I were watching The Last Star Fighter at the movies. I believe she still had to work, and Dad wanted to take me to see it, so Mom stayed to finish and straighten things up until we left the movie. She went about her business, cleaning up and getting ready for us to arrive to pick her up when she took a stroll down the hallway. As she did, she felt the presence of someone behind her. You know that sense, right? You can feel someone near you at that moment as if walking directly behind you. Then my mom felt breath on her neck. At least what she thought was breath. Naturally, she assumed this was my Dad sneaking up on her, and she turned to confront him. 

The only problem was...no one was there.

Mom was alone in the house, staring down an empty, dark hallway, and she distinctly felt the presence of another person breathing on her neck. My mom said she got goosebumps and ran into the bathroom, locking herself in until we came to pick her up.

I remember Dad getting frustrated that my Mom wouldn't answer the door right away as we stood outside. Apparently, he had left his key to the shop inside with her and couldn't open the door from the outside. So, he banged hard on the back and then the house's front door to get her to let us in. All the while, back inside, Mom was afraid to come out because of what she had experienced.

Eventually, my Mom heard my Dad fussing outside and knew it was him, and ran down the stairs and through the house to us waiting on her. She immediately wanted to leave. For this reason, as I grew up, I never wanted to be alone in that house at night. I was not sad at all when my parents wanted to move into a new place for their business and said goodbye to Innervisions. The place was creepy to me.

I do scare easily, and I'm afraid of the dark to this day. I don't even like being alone in my own home sometimes, let alone at night. When that happens, I sometimes run to reach my final destination.

I love that movie franchise too. The film's producers took everything in life and turned it into a way you could die. Everything from airplanes, race tracks, bridges, highway accidents, and roller coasters are the big events at the film's beginning. It doesn't include the kitchens, drive-throughs, showers, apartments, movie theaters, escalators, gyms, swimming pools, elevators, fences, Lasik eye surgeries, tanning beds, and dentist's offices you could die in too. Whoever thought they could actually die at a dental visit??? It could happen if the building collapsed on you. Yeah, that happened, too, in the movies.

The notion of something or someone sneaking up behind you, stalking you has always terrified people. But in this dream, something was after me. I've heard that if you dream of being chased, you're running from some sort of stress in real life. But in this dream, I wasn't being chased. I was being stalked. And in this case, it caught me.

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Dream Three: "There is Someone Walking Behind You" (May 4, 2020, 7 AM)

I was at my grandparent's house on Johanna Circle in Anderson. I could see the den and kitchen area with the air conditioning unit in the window, as they customarily were back in the 1980s. But this was not the past again. It was the present day, and my parents and I were over at Johanna Circle visiting my grandparents, Maw Maw, and Paw Paw.

Maw Maw was in the kitchen cooking like she so often did, and Paw Paw was up walking around the den as I started making my way down the hallway to the bedrooms. The house on Johanna Circle was small but lovely. It still had three bedrooms, two baths, and a laundry area, and was quite nice for a small family. Perfect for Maw Maw and Paw Paw.

I could hear Mom and Dad in the bathroom down the hall and went to go ask them something as they were getting cleaned up and flossing together. Like, actual flossing, not the dance. Cleaning their teeth.

They both exited the bathroom when they finished, and I saw my Mom look at me. I was still coming down the hallway, which seemed unusually long. This was not a long house, but my walk down the hall took longer. Then I saw the look on my mother's face.

My mom's eyes got wide, and her face seemed pale. She looked terrified and was looking beyond me. She told my Dad to go toward the back bedroom on the other side of the hall, which he did. When she got to that room, she closed the door slightly, putting the door between her and the hallway, which included me. I then asked my Mom what was wrong.

"Someone's behind you."

I could hear Maw Maw and Paw Paw in the room behind me talking but in the distance. Then, I could feel someone behind me. I could feel them standing right there, so I spun around.

There was no one there. It was just an empty hallway, with light coming in from the outside through the windows, and I could still hear Maw Maw and Paw Paw talking. I went into the bathroom that was now dark, where my parents had been, and turned on the light. No one was there. 

This ended the dream.

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A few things about the setting:

1. The house on Johanna Circle had been in the family since 1981 until the mid-2010s. My grandparents, Maw Maw and Paw Paw, lived there until 2007, when they moved in with my parents. They started renting the house after that until they sold it. So, unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of the hallway in that house for this post. Thus, the image you see is from my own home.

2. Returning to that house on Johanna Circle had more to do with seeing Maw Maw and Paw Paw again. Maw Maw died in 2012, and Paw Paw in 2019. What I experienced in the dream, however, was not a memory. They were alive and well as if still living today, just like Niney had been in the current day. My parents and I were apparently at their house visiting them, as we often did.

3. My parents cleaning their teeth was a funny moment in the dream. My parents have always been adamant about dental hygiene. They always made sure I went to the dentist growing up and continue to do so to this day. So hearing them do that was a fun moment. However, the rest of the interaction was much different. In the dream, my mom looked past me with wide eyes. She did this sort of thing in jest to me all the time growing up. It was to get a scare out of me as a child. But this time, the look was all too real. It was the look I imagine she had at the shop that night when she turned around to find no one standing there. Terrified, to say the least. She even ran away to hide, leaving me in the process. This is not how things might have gone in real life, as my Mom would have stayed with me. What that told me in the dream, something awful was coming up behind me.

4. Turning around to find nothing didn't really scare me in the dream. It was unnerving, but I wasn't afraid. I was confused. That's why I went into the bathroom to try to find whatever was behind me, but nothing was there also. But something had been behind me. I would have never doubted my Mom for saying that. If she saw something there, then it was there. But where did it go?

5. You might recall me saying this dream occurred on Star Wars Day. You may have been expecting Yoda or someone to appear in the dream, but the date was inconsequential. That day just happened to be the day the dream occurred. But two old, wise people were there in my dream that I adored and respected most of my life. My parents were also there, like masters overseeing me, as I was their apprentice. The dream had similarities to Luke's walk into the cave where he confronted Vader. However, in my case, there was no Vader to be found. The enemy was within and was only beginning to show itself.

That enemy was overtaking everything, and with the final dream, it revealed itself as the monster that it truly was...