For my entire life I’ve had extremely vivid & surreal dreams. Some of them are happy. For instance, I’ll dream of a friend I haven’t seen in years, & it’s almost equivalent to actually spending time with them as if no time has passed.
Some dreams are precognitive. One example that comes to mind is from 2000 when I was in the United States Air Force studying to be an EMT/Nurses’ Assistant at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. It was the night before my class was to take the skills part of the EMT exam. I had already passed the written exam. I was preparing to take the hands-on section of the test where the instructors (We had 2) give you 3 random life saving skills to demonstrate on a practice dummy. There were quite a few that the instructors could choose from, but somehow I dreamt of the EXACT 3 skills that would be chosen for me the next morning. I also dreamt that myself along with 3 other classmates were the only ones out of a class of roughly 18 students to pass this part of the exam on our first try, which also became reality the following morning. I’m still flabbergasted by this one, and don’t have an explanation for it.
I also have a few recurring dreams. The main one being that I’m back in high school with a handful of people from my 1998 graduating class. For some reason we were all called back to complete our senior year, because the school made a mistake all those years ago by giving us our diplomas when we actually didn’t have enough credits to graduate. I always know that I graduated years ago and can’t fathom why I’d be back at my high school as an adult. Sometimes I’m pregnant in the nightmare. Sometimes I can’t recall my locker combination. The most frequent recurrence is that I’m skipping my math class, because I can’t remember how to do any of it.
However, the reason that I’m posting this today is to tell you about the very first nightmare that I remember having. I was around 6 or 7 years old, yet I’ve never forgotten this dream. I lived in Alabaster, Alabama in a brown a-frame house in a little subdivision called Hamlet.
In the dream I was playing in our fenced in backyard as I often did. Our yard was full of trees, so it was like my own personal forest. My little brother was only a baby, so I played alone back then.
In the dream I’m playing in the backyard when I notice a man & a huge wolf standing amongst the trees. I hesitantly approach them to ascertain as to who they are & why they’re in my backyard. The man starts talking to me as his companion sits quietly by his side.
The man reaches into his pocket & pulls out a folding knife. At this point I realized that there was definitely something sinister about him & his “pet”, so I decided that it was time to go back into the house.
When I looked back up to my house I noticed that the entire back of the house was different. It was like someone had cut a huge piece of it off so that I could now see into the house from the yard. Where there had once been walls, windows, & siding…it was now open to the elements and there was dirt covering every inch of the open area.
The back deck was missing as well, so I ran toward the open side of my home and tried to jump up into one of the rooms. I grasped at the edge of the room, clawing at the dirt trying to pull myself up through the open space. Once I had and was standing in the half of my kitchen that was still there, I started running towards my bedroom. I ran through the kitchen, the dining room, and then down the long hallway leading to my bedroom.
I never looked back once to see if the man & his furry companion were behind me. As soon as I saw my bed I jumped up onto it and hid under the covers. Catching my breath I began to calm down. It was at that point that I opened my eyes and looked next to me. That’s when I saw them. The man & wolf were under the covers with me, but they didn’t have any skin, clothing, hair, or fur. They were complete skeletons, and the man still had his knife. That’s when I awoke.
That was 35+ years ago, and I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I’ve recalled it to both of my sons who are now 20 & 8. My 8 year old still asks me to tell him the story of my first nightmare. He loves hearing all about my dreams. It’s like story time to him, but to me it’s like sharing my worst life experiences, because they all seem so REAL.