Here’s a true story just in time for Halloween. Not so scary until you really think about it. What part of Dreams drift into reality… and perhaps more importantly… what part of reality become what your dreams are made of. Some 30 years ago I had the occasion to visit an old house for one nights sleep. The house was built sometime in the mid 1800’s. It sat atop a hill in Harve De Grace Maryland overlooking the Susquehanna River below. The house was very old fashioned both inside and out. It stood three stories high and if I had to guess, no less than 6-8 bedrooms. Outside the very large grounds had a winding stone driveway, now all askew, that came through numerous old oak trees. It’s hard to tell how old they were, but they certainly had to be very old, large and lumbering their branches old and failing to support their own weight… they actually looked old and as if they were in pain, and I would not have been surprised to know they were well over 100 years old. Everything about the grounds and the house was old, as in really… really old…. like stuff you’d see at a historic house from the civil war era. Statue figures adorned the once great lawns and gardens that were now in decay after what must be decades of neglect. Stone walls and stone pathways crumbling and overgrown… trellises that no doubt once enhanced the garden trails now decayed and falling apart. It truly must have been magnificent to see in it’s day. Someone wealthy once owned this property. The house was not in too good a shape, but certainly better than the grounds. The house had a large 12 foot deep porch that went 3/4’s the way around the house. Porch columns that were once adorned with detailed decorative moldings now falling apart and split from weathering… still sound, heavy construction, but paint barren and splitting. Porch swings made unlike anything I’d even seen before with carved backs and headboard… now with the decayed decorative ropes straining to hold the weight. Decorative moldings on the porch and around the windows like something out of another time. The doors must have been solid 3 inch thick Oak, again with carvings onto the wood of the doors. The house on the inside started with a grand room, several oak columns across the room supported the massiveness of the house… the room must have been 20 some ft deep and 30+ feet wide. There was an old stone fireplace, the hearth being about 12 foot across and the actual fireplace opening about 6 foot wide by 4 foot high. Old decorative iron screens and fireplace tools adorned what was once, and still is a very impressive fireplace. There was a bigger than life size family portrait above the fireplace as well as other painted portraits throughout the room. Everything in the room, as with the rest of the house, was old, like stuff I saw in old photos of my grandparents houses when they were young. The furniture was old and expensive looking. The house looked to have had very little things change for a long time… the few modern things stood out in bold contrast to everything else. I had seen electric lines run across the walls before in square metal tubing… but these were encased in wood moldings… quite unique. The spiral tower type staircases were equally impressive as were the decorative moldings adorning every inch, with arched windows as you ascended the staircase that were somewhat reminiscent of a castle. So much for the quick tour of the house. I fell asleep in the Grand room on the oversized sofa… falling asleep in amazement over everything I had seen… wow… what a house and a bit of history. Thinking about the old saying… If only walls could talk… what stories could they tell. So I fell asleep. Slept very soundly and had the strangest dream… a young girl, perhaps about 10 years old, in a white summer dress that kinda fanned out at the bottom, kept beckoning me take her hand and follow her down the pathway. We were in the garden walking and talking as she impatiently wanted me to hurry. As we walked slowly down the path, she was pulling me by the hand to walk quicker, and I wanted to go slow and see everything along the way. It was a bright sunny day, the sunlight shimmering thought he trees, the air was crisp and clean with a light breeze. The trees and flowers were in bloom and birds were everywhere. We watched in wonder at butterflies that seemed to be attracted to the green ribbon in her hair. Green was her favorite color, and strangely enough, mine too. Such a pretty day, but she still wanted to hurry. She had a very pretty face, beautiful smile, eyes that could make a parent agree to any request, long blonde hair and wore a silver locket with a rose on it around her neck in the shape of a heart. She wanted to know if I liked the water… that’s where we were headed to… she knew a short cut… and we could go out on the boat. All night long (dreaming) we headed down the path towards the river. We walked all night long in the dream. Walking, talking, smiling & laughing… me always wanted to take my time, she always in a hurry. We stopped briefly to pick wild blackberries that seemed to be as sweet as sugar. The dream went that way all night until I woke in the morning… wow… the dream seemed so real… vivid memory of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and of course her smile and laughter as we walked down the pathways… I could hear her laughter vividly in my thoughts. Getting up I thought how strange it was to have such a dream like that… I never had one like that ever before… and didn’t think much more of it. In the morning I got to see more of the house… up the spiral staircase to the second floor. Just above the Grand room was a huge bedroom that spanned the width of the front of the house. Two huge bay type windows with cushioned seats inside each of the bay windows. The windows overlooked the front lawn and gardens and had a good view of the river through the trees. In each window was several dolls. The faces were painted ceramics. Their faces and clothes were badly faded on the side that faced the window from the incoming sunlight… the sunless side was colorful and new. The dolls had been sitting in the window perhaps for years for this to happen. All the furnishings in the room was very old time looking, just like everything down stairs… old wooden rocking crib, old wooden rocking horse, beautiful old canopy style bed, free standing oval full length mirror, dressers, chests, and lots of other toys. Some metal, some cast iron, some just cloth. All very old. The room was spotlessly clean, as was the rest of the house. It was just as if time had stopped many years ago… nothing being moved… nothing being changed… frozen in time. Than I saw the silver locket hanging on a jewelry holder… it was just like the one that the little girl was wearing in my dream... and my focus was on the engraved rose on that heart shaped locket… this was her locket and her room. A strange feeling came over me… than I saw the portrait of the girl… she was the girl in my dream… than I really felt strange… this was really strange… but I wasn’t scared or anything. But I knew that this was the bedroom of the girl I had met in my dream. Touching her things felt so strange but somehow “knowing” and comfortable. Wow… this was a unique experience… should have been spooky or scary… but it wasn’t. I found out later that the old woman that lived in the house was the last of the descendants of the original family that built the house. The little girl was her older sister that had went down to the river and drown when she was 11 years old. Today was the day on which she had died many years ago. Her name was Sarah. Her room had remained the same since her death. Looking back and thinking about that house, the little girls room, her picture, all the things in her room, her locket, and how real that dream seemed to be… how vivid… how memorable… and how she smiled and laughed as we walk along in the dream… heading towards the same river in which she drown. Too much to question and no answers anyway. Still remember the dream to this day as if it just happened. Never returned to that house again. Often wondered what might have happened if I had. Some kind of a connection beyond the normal… still amazes me to this day. So there’s my tale for Halloween… not so scary unless you look at it from a normal perspective. 100% true… and perhaps frightening to some if they had the same experience… but for me… interesting and intriguing… and makes me wonder a bit more about the “What if’s” and things that happen that fall outside the normal human experience. Would I feel the same if it happened again? or be terrified by a bad experience? or take the risk to find out? Who knows. I’m not really sure we have a choice other than by chance be in a special place, at a special time, and be receptive to things outside the normal experience. Other strange things have happened in my life, but this stands unique. I can still close my eyes and vividly see her smile and hear her laughter… for a moments I feel extremely happy, than feel deeply sad and yet privileged to have had the experience… Not that I believe in supernatural things… but I am inclined to be open to the possibilities that unexplainable things do happen that are definitely outside the normal experience. Why do we feel we have been somewhere before, know what’s around the corner, yet never have been there before. How do we experience a vivid sense of recall for sounds, smells, and emotions in places where we have never been before but some dramatic event happen there years before we were born… that sense of knowing. All good questions that may never be truly answered… just to leave us wondering… “What If?”. Draw your own conclusions… but it was certainly a real happening of an unexplainable nature. Happy Halloween!
