26 July 2021 – The Hall

The Hall – A Lifelong Nightmare

Some recurring dreams are pleasant; most are not. In fact, the most reported type of recurring dream is the nightmare. These are disturbing to say the least, sometimes to the point where professional assistance is a helpful option.

The dream in this post is very personal. I am so intimate with it that sometimes I “see” it during waking hours. That means the images come to mind inwardly; I do not experience hallucinations, but rather they intrude on other thoughts. I’m not alone. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that over 50% of adults report having occasional nightmares; some occur far more frequently; these occur more often with children than adults.

Why do some of us experience these nightmares, and others do not? Some of the identified causes include stress, anxiety, PTSD, anger, depression, and guilt. Over seventy per cent of those with PTSD report having such dreams. A large number of recurring dreams replay a trauma in specific images (flashbacks); others present as symbolic of the underlying cause.

Enough about the study of the mechanisms of recurring dreams/nightmares. We won’t go into treatments here. After all, this is a poetic post, not a medical essay. Of interest, however, in the context of the Wannaskan Almanac, is a recommendation for ameliorating such dreams: Rewrite the dream – thoughts, images, feelings, and anything that stands out as significant. Don’t record the original dream. Rather, recreate the dream as a pleasant or neutral story, group of images, and other relevant topics.

I hope none of you experience recurring nightmares. I do. The poem below describes a “dream story” that has been with me as long as I have been verbal and aware enough to separate dreams from daily life. I’ve attempted to ferret out meanings and causes with little success. All I really know is the dream is there, a part of my nighttime landscape that so far I’ve failed to be rid of.

The Hall

At the end of

the long dark hall

it waited

In the dark I watched

 hidden by fear

Impossibly thin

arms, legs, and neck

Gollum eyes

Hungry ghost mouth

It stands swaying

limbs flaccid

Me in the dark

staring at it

I tremble to see the open throat

red-streaked teeth protruding

Asudden

Utterly heavy

it hangs clutching my back

boney arms and legs

python my torso

My head disappears

Background

A few dreams last a lifetime. Do you experience a dream like that? Where do they come from? Why do they recur? What does a particular dream “mean”? Does it mean anything, or is such a dream a random firing of brain electricity caught in an eternal neuronal loop? I have no answers. I only have the experience. The location of “the hall” in reality is in the house where I grew up in which the long hall was almost always dark. From the main part of the house, we had to walk halfway down the hall to use the bathroom. My bedroom was farther down at the far end of the hall. In the hall’s ceiling, an industrial size fan rumbled throughout the hot months. Perhaps the separation from the main part of the house and my room had something to do with the terror. But there was/is no terror – only clarity about what was going on. This dream isn’t likely to release me, nor I it.

Exploration 1: Do you have ideas about where long-term, recurring dreams come from and why they come in such frequent form?

Exploration 2: Have you or anyone you know had such a dream? Would you be willing to share its contents, images, frequency, and the like?

Exploration 3: Have you had recurring dreams about pleasant things? Describe, it you will.