One thing that I can say is a wonderful and exciting part of my life is the fact that I have extremely vivid dreams. My dream life is almost as real to me as my waking life, I have had many a moment where I thought about a memory and had to stop and think about whether the memory really happened or was from a dream. My dreams often tend to be what most people would describe as nightmares. They are murderous, zombie filled, violent, and many a dream is filled with heart pounding, muscle straining, hair pulling fights. I wont even mention the sexual content. Dreams are just the minds way of defragging, we all must dream in order to stay sane; this doesn't mean we have to remember our dreams or be able to make sense of them. Also, we experience something like a major dream an hour while we sleep. I simply tend to have more vivid dreams than most people, for instance, let me tell you about one of the dreams I had last night...
It all started in the haunted apartment. Joel (my brother) and I were investigating my new home. I have no idea what happened to Lee (my husband) in this dream, but here I was alone, moving into my very own adorable apartment in the tower district of Fresno. It was a corner apartment in a Victorian style building with it's steeple roof, textured shingles, asymmetry, bay windows, and a turret. I was giving my brother a tour as we chit-chatted about family and work. We noticed doors and drawers around the place were opening and closing seemingly at their own whim. When the lights began to flicker I decided to put my foot down.
"OK, that's enough. Show yourself or go haunt someone else!"
Behind Joel, appeared a translucent man floating about three inches above the floor. When Joel saw the refection of the ghost in the bathroom mirror he turned around and ran through the ghost, leaving a ripple effect through the specter and a trail of blue smoke in the wake. With my brother scared off, I was left to face the ghost myself. I felt no fear but more annoyance and decided it would probably be best to try and live peaceably with the dead man than to try and get rid of him. I started by asking a series of questions in an attempt to better get to know the ghost and my situation. His name was George Sides and he died in this very apartment back when it was still a mansion in 1940. George informed me that he had been murdered by his brother-in-law and that the murderer was never brought to justice. Come to find out, the murderers son now owned the home and was living on the premises.
"Hello." A man called from the front porch.
Speak of the devil. George didn't speak so much as project his thoughts.
My landlord, Mr. Wallace, had come to see how I was fairing with the move-in. I let him know that all was well but that I had not expected to have a roommate. As we walked into the kitchen area he asked what I meant by roommate. I recounted my mornings discoveries to him, as I spoke his expression turned from curious confusion to horrified anger.
"In all my years of renting this apartment, you are the first to learn the truth." He grabbed a steak knife from a packing box and came at me. I first dodged the man and came about behind him and grabbed his weapon wielding arm. He yelped at the pain of having his arm twisted behind him and released his grip on the knife. I caught the falling knife and stabbed it into the back of his neck. He gargled blood as he fell to the floor and died.
"Oh my God; oh, my God; oh, my God." I trembled from a combination of adrenalin, shock, and terror. I thought somewhere deep in the clouded mire of my over stressed mind that I should call the police. Before I could bring myself to move, George decided to complicate matters.
Why did you do that? This was not a calm question, but one lathered in anger.
Even if I could have brought myself to look him in the eye, George was not materialized. I tried to rationalize my action, it was self defense, he came at me with a knife, he was trying to kill me so I had to kill him first, right? George was not buying it and made this clear by causing the entire apartment to rumble. I asked with a trembling voice why he was mad, this was the son of the man who had killed him, shouldn't he be happy?
He was my nephew, not my murderer!
At this moment I decided I did not want to live there anymore. I ran from the apartment and found Joel sitting in the drivers seat of his car. I leaped into he passenger seat and told him to get us the hell out of there. As we sped down Olive avenue everything seemed to become darker as if the mid morning sun was being eclipsed. I tried to ignore the darkness as I told Joel of what I had experienced in the apartment. I lied and told him that George had killed Mr. Wallace. We drove out of town and up into the mountains of Yosemite. During the entire drive I felt as if George was still with me but every time I asked him to make himself known there was no response.
Joel and I hiked around Yosemite for several days, too frightened to go home. I can't speak for Joel but I was more frightened of the police than of ghosts. I knew that George was with us, I could feel his presence looming over me like a bitter child. It was nearly five days before we decided to buck up and go back to town. Along the walk back to Joel's car I came across a little black and white kitten; scared and damp from the rain, it cried out in a tiny pitiful voice. I picked it up and cuddled it in my shirt. It would be months before I learned that the kitten was harboring the spirit of George.
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