Queeranormal

Just One More Time

2010-12-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

It’s rare that I talk much -- or even read much on dreams. As to the true nature of dreams, I’m about as in-the-dark as the next girl. I have a fair amount of theories, ranging from alternate time-lines/universes to so-called astral-travel and communication. Of course, there’s also the rather dull explanation that it’s all just brain activity and random memories and images that seem to reinvent realities as if it employed some sort of ‘Dark City’ tuning.

I’m willing to take into consideration the possibility that dreams are merely this, ghost-images and voices from the past, creating a moving visual collage, but something inside me says that dreams (at least sometimes) are often something more. And maybe that’s just it - maybe dreams are both. Fragments glued together, summoned by whatever emotion prevails before sleepy-time, and then, on occasion, forms of communication, insight, and actual ‘contact’ with other parties.

At any rate, we dream, and in those dreams we experience emotions, tastes, smells, texture. So vivid are these experiences, that they can feel as real as our waking world. And when we do wake up from our dreaming -- if the dreams are vivid and emotional enough for us to recall them in detail, it isn’t uncommon to experience what I call ‘the dream haze’, which is the kind of foggy feeling left over from the events that transpired while asleep, coloring our daily life with sadness, anxiety, elation -- what have you. We are affected by our dreams sometimes as much as we are affected by our ‘real’ life.

Now, I’m not hoping to crack open any big mysteries here. My theories and considerations are nothing new and have been covered in (I’m sure) countless books, papers, blogs and documentaries. While I don’t often read up on dreaming (or consciousness), I catch the occasional post, show, or podcast discussion. I’ve even seen Waking Life and of course, What the Bleep Do We Know? Yeah, I know -- and I do have my issues with those two films. They are certainly interesting, but I find Waking Life to be a bit wooey, and while Bleep discusses quantum mechanics as it may apply to reality, I get a little eye-rolley when JZ Knight ‘channels’ Ramtha (though, I admit to having a crush on JZ Knight. In my fantasies she isn’t channeling anyone, but she is still using the German-esque accent while topping me. Anyhoo, I digress).

Back to dreams...

My own dreams are almost exclusively nightmare in nature -- always have been. Most times they consist of earthquakes or the rising of the tides and subsequent flooding of damn-near everything. On occasion I’m in the midst of a nuclear war or other invasion, trying desperately to get together supplies and organizing whoever I happen to be with in the dream in preparation for an escape to the mountain(s) (Mt. Hood seems to be the common mountain to escape to since moving to Oregon in 2006). It is rare to find myself in a pleasant dream, and when I do have them, they fade away faster than the nightmares.

Because of the regular intensity of these nightmares, it does leave some room open for the idea of Sleep Paralysis. I’m not opposed to that theory, but I am hesitant to assume that what I suffer from when waking in an immobile state is simply that. In fact, for many years, I have felt that those moments when I wake and cannot move, while witnessing strange atmospheric events and bizarre shapes in my room, are perhaps a product of OOBEs. A controversial belief, particularly in my line of thinking, in which I’m cautious about claims of astral projection and travel. It is a curiosity and interest of mine, nonetheless.

Aside from arguments of hypnogogic states, I have considered that those instances in which I wake to find I can't move, but still perceive my surroundings (and often the strange occurrences within those surroundings) are a product of me leaving my body, becoming frightened by the feeling of weightlessness and snapping back in, waking before my I have fully interfaced with my physical form. But I really have no fucking idea if that’s what is really happening. While I am skeptical by nature, I don't close the door on certain things that remain unexplainable. I’m resistant to stating plainly that ‘Out of body experiences’ are definitely real, but I’m also resistant to proclaiming they lie solely in bullshit mysticism. I have this nagging feeling that there is something more to dreaming than chemical reactions in the brain.

Recurring and continuation dreams are something that I am even less familiar with than pleasant dreams, as there are maybe a handful of times I have had them. When they do strike, however, they leave me affected for days afterwards. In fact, this whole piece is due to a continuation dream which occurred two nights ago. It didn’t continue over different days, but happened in a single night. It was a powerful dream with lots of communication and very few bits of strangeness. While the house and land in the dream were unfamiliar, there was nothing particularly odd about them. Nor was there anything strange about the people involved (other than the fact I was dreaming about them). Most of the dream was laden with dialog, which made it all the more powerful -- especially with what the dialog contained.

Many, many years ago (nearly two decades past), I fell in love for the first time with a woman we’ll call ‘Libby.’ Libby and I had a very deep and seemingly magical relationship. It was chock full of synchronicities, art, music, and love. It was the most powerful relationship I had experienced, and would remain as such for many years after. Sadly, our relationship took a turn for the worse around 8 months in. It began with a growing distance on her part that seemed to come from out-of-the-blue. The magic became buried under life, work and so on. When I would bring it up, she would argue about how we have to live in reality -- something that we didn’t pay much attention to in those first few dazzling months. It appeared that some external thing had infiltrated our love story, kicking apart the carefully crafted paragraphs.

Eventually, I grew wary of this struggle as the sense of distance and loss began to smother me, and decided to end the relationship. I didn’t go about it in the best manner, but I was young, hurt and wanting to get back to some version of pleasantness, the feeling of being desired again. Anyway, the relationship ended and we moved on. Sort of. Outwardly I appeared to have moved on, but I really hadn't. In my heart I still loved Libby dearly, and our once blissful romance would haunt me for the next 15 years. It took nearly 10 before they really began to dampen, but because of the imprint of our love on my heart and my inability to let her go, I may have elevated her and our romance even further into celestial status.

It’s been a few years since I really thought too much about her -- at least in the way I once had. My memory of her did fade finally, though not altogether. I think that some part of me has always had her floating around in back of my head, as I measured people up against the Goddess I built her up to be, but it has been a long time since she was dancing about the forefront of my mind. For years I had imagined scenarios in which I would run into her someday and have the opportunity to explain exactly what happened, just how much I did love her, and how much of an impact she had made on my life. But I have moved many times over -- states and states away -- and such a day has never come to pass. My memory of what she look liked clouded up to where I only could recall bits and pieces -- never an entire, accurate representation of her face.

Then two nights ago I dreamt of her. Now, I have only ever dreamt of her on 2 other occasions, and they were very loose and hazy dreams. But this particular dream consisted of a very real and complete Libby. She was older, though still very much the woman I once knew. Her parents were also present (they never much cared for me, something I feel played a part in our demise). She appeared to be living a good life, and I felt genuinely happy for her.

The first parts of the dream consisted of me watching her at a small dinner party to which I had been invited. It wasn’t until after dinner that I approached her in private. I had to get something off my chest that I had wanted her to know for many years, and throwing caution to the wind, I said:

“Libby, I need you to know something, and I’m not sure if you want to hear it or if it even matters to you. I have thought about you every single day of my life, since our relationship ended. You have haunted me and from that I have created an enormous body of work, both written word and musically that has everything to do with you.”

As I was spilling my guts, she smiled and slowly nodded. Not the kind of ‘uh-huh’ nod you get when you are relaying a story to someone, but that kind of acknowledgment and understanding that says “The same thing has happened to me.” The feeling of happiness that came from that smile and nod was overwhelming and we embraced, holding on to one another tightly.

Later, we went for a walk around her large back yard, and then for a short drive where we talked a lot about the past, some of that discussion now lost to me. Then, just before the dream ended, she asked me the question I had both dreaded answering and wanted dearly to explain: "Why?"

I couldn’t give her an answer, though. I wasn't ready. I knew the answers but they were all jumbled, so I told her that there is not one simple answer to her question, and I need some time to organize my response. I did explain that it had absolutely nothing to do with not loving her any more. Libby seemed to understand this and accepted my rain-check. And she did so in such a way that gave me the impression she no longer carried any anger for me for how things ended. I felt calmed.

I woke up shortly thereafter. The dream had happened in three parts, separated by brief waking moments. It appeared to have gone on the entire night, but time in dreams doesn’t really equal time in the waking world, so who knows. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter to me is that in some unorthodox way I got a chance to tell Libby what she has meant to me (explaining the reasons behind our demise was always secondary, anyway). And though it appeared as 'just a dream', I felt a sense of closure that I had been unable to attain in the many years that passed between us. Maybe it was inner-closure. Maybe through the dream I had forgiven myself or made peace with the past in a way which could never have happened in ‘real life’. Maybe my hangups about Libby were really internal issues that stemmed from self-loathing or guilt. Or perhaps somehow, for whatever reason, Libby and I connected for one last time -- beyond this realm -- to say our goodbyes properly.

The psychologist in me would want to bold and underline the first possibility, that the dream was really a vessel in which I could finally make peace with myself about a woman, a love, and a situation that plagued me for nearly two decades-

-but I can’t help but feel that Libby and I finally met once last time and found our closure in the early hours of a Sunday in December.

Demons in the Wood

2010-07-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

When I was very young, I used to be terrified of going to bed. I was convinced there was a demon in the wood paneling of my tiny bedroom. Somehow, a small irregularity within the faux wood grain had appeared to me to be a miniature, demonic entity. Furthermore, like all paneling, these patterns repeated along all four walls of my room. I was probably 3 or 4, so I hadn't thought to question why there would be a static demon impressed in a form of decor that should have been outlawed in the late 70s -- not that questioning it would have calmed the fear. Maybe that even says something about how our perception changes as we age. At that young age, such an idea seemed plausible to me, a young girl who, having not very many years before, burst forth into this world in a glory of blood and embryonic fluid.

At night I would usually hear strange noises along with creaking sounds in my room, as if someone were walking towards or near me. It also wasn't uncommon to have items of mine end up in peculiar locations. I decided to test the latter issue once, to confirm it was actually happening and wasn't just my parents moving my toys around. Just before leaving the house one evening with mom and dad, I had placed a stuffed animal on my bed and said out loud "If there is someone else here, move this teddy bear", or something to that effect.

We left for a time -- presumably for dinner or shopping, and returned a few hours later. I had all but forgotten about my plan at this point, but when I flipped on the light in my bedroom, my teddy bear was lying on the floor in the middle of the room. I think that was about all I need to convince me, at that point. Between the recurring nightmares, the noises, the tiny-demons, and the dark woods behind our house, I was convinced something out of the ordinary was occurring. Scared shitless, my parents did the logical thing and, uh, had a priest visit our home.

I thought this was pretty cool, at the time . Priests reminded me somewhat of knights, at that age. Paladins in cloth armor. I had seen The Exorcist at this point, which helped propel that idea, and likened the priest sitting in our living room, to Father Karras. It was just the four of us sitting there talking, Me, mom, dad and Father Whathisname. We didn't discuss anything intense, just general get-to-know-you conversation. He engaged me regularly and I remember feeling like I was a a grown-up in the way he addressed me. Eventually we spoke about my fear of the bedroom and the demons imprinted on the walls. As a result, a blessing was performed in my room, complete with holy water -- and it worked. I felt safe, protected -- for a while, at least.

I'm not sure the chronology of some of the following, so I will present them as my mind feels it they happened. By the time I was 9, I was sharing my tiny bedroom with my sister and brother. Bunk-beds helped save some space, but as you can imagine, it was pretty tight quarters. One night, while laying in my bed thinking about God knows what, I heard my grandmother's voice coming through the vents. We lived in a duplex in the Chicago suburbs and my grandmother lived in the apartment below us. I couldn't make out what was being said at first, but just prior to hearing her speaking, I had felt something was 'off' in the house, and the feeling caused my skin to prickle. I climbed down off my bed and moved towards the vent at the base of the wall opposite of me.

My grandma appeared to be talking to someone, but there were, bizarre sounds mixed in. I cannot, for the life of me, recall what they sounded like, but one thing was certain -- I was becoming terrified. It almost sounded like my grandmother was in a whirlpool of sound. The only words I could make out (or at least what I was pretty sure I could make out) was her sobbing the words: "Oh my God, it's Mike. It's Mike!"

The only Mike I knew of was my grandfather. He had died earlier that year (which would make this around 1983). Before I even heard her say his name, I think I had already known -- or felt it, rather. The strange discord that permeated through the house seemed to carry the feeling of my grandfather. This particular event would serve as the end of an era, for me. Soon after, my experiences were no longer restricted to just sounds or feelings of a presence. Those things still did occur, with regular frequency, but now visuals would begin to creep into my reality.

Briefly Speaking

2010-07-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

My name is Deirdre and this is Queeranormal.

For those who don't know me, which is probably most of the people in the world, I run a fairly satirical UFO-themed website called The Interstellar Housewife. It's not strictly UFOlogical. I also cover general Space stuff -- new discoveries and whatnot.

I started Queeranormal to cover some other esoteric topics that interest me, but don't really fit the theme of The Interstellar Housewife. This site will, on occasion, also include my own experiences with strange phenomenon. Aside form those experiences which some might consider as 'ghostly', I probably won't cover that topic in general. What you'll probably find are items relating to time, consciousness, perception, synchronicity, & interesting findings and theories in physics.

I don't believe in magic and I do not prescribe to the Woo. However, because of my own exposures to the bizarre, I believe there are certainly mysterious and unexplainable happenings in this world. The kinds of events that people often lump into spirituality or the supernatural. I just tend to believe that at the core of high-strangeness, there exists physical properties.

And that, as they say, is that.