Haunted attic

The Attic

   Dream Journal

I WAS AT A PARTY being held in a community hall. There was a long narrow table running the length of the hall at which lots of people were eating food. There was only one child there and he was making a nuisance of himself, running around and making lots of noise. I told him to go outside and play, which he did.

A few moments later a policeman came into the hall and told me that the boy was dead. I asked what had happened and he replied that the child had come to the police station which was over the road from the community hall. In the waiting room was a murderer who was waiting to be checked into custody. The man had murdered the boy. I went over to the boy’s father and told him what had happened. He went into a rage and tried to attack me. I fled to the other end of the hall and through a door leading to a staircase. I ran upstairs and found myself in a dark room with dusty wooden floorboards. The room was empty except for a large cardboard box in the middle of the floor.

All of a sudden a voice began calling out from inside the box. It was the father of the dead boy! I opened the box and looked inside expecting to see him but he was no longer human. Instead, he had become a collection of electronics—printed circuit boards, wires, and a loudspeaker. He was shouting at me through the loudspeaker. I looked at my hands. In my left hand, I had an enormous kitchen knife. In my right hand, I was holding a huge pair of scissors. I began to stab at the loudspeaker until the man became silent. Then I doused the box of electronics with petrol and set fire to it to destroy the evidence of his “murder”.

Shortly after, I found myself in the town standing at a market stall that was selling clothing. A man came up to me and pushed me over. He grabbed the bag I was carrying and removed my (now ex) wife’s purse from it. Then he ran away. I phoned my wife and told her what had happened. As I walked along I began to feel poorly, as if I had been drugged. I went from shop to shop asking for help but I was unable to speak.

Next, I was in a house full of people who were staying with me. Upstairs was a bedroom full of clutter including lots of cushions, bedding, and old toys. There was an Indian man laying on a mattress on the floor. The room felt strange. There was a staircase to one side leading up to an attic. I went up the stairs into the dusty attic which was empty except for a ball and a scary-looking doll in the middle of the room. Suddenly the ball rolled towards me. I picked it up and rolled it back to the doll. It rolled back to me and I realised that the attic was haunted.

I returned to the cluttered bedroom and saw a young girl. I told her to get her doll from the attic. Instead of going up the stairs, she climbed a ladder and opened a hatch in the ceiling. I held the ladder and she passed her doll down to me. We then walked downstairs to the lounge where all the other people were. The girl was carrying a piece of paper on which was a list of names. I recognised one of the names. It was the name of a now-estranged friend of mine called Shem. The girl said to me, “You know Shem then?” I replied, in a Cornish accent, “Sure, he talks like this doesn’t he?” We joined the group downstairs who were all sitting on the floor. There was a small guinea pig running around the room.

It was then that I noticed my youngest daughter was missing. I called the police and we went out looking for her. While we were out I phoned back home and spoke to my oldest daughter. She told me her sister had been found in a cupboard and was safe.

Back home I saw my mum in the kitchen. She wanted to fit a cutlery rack to the wall above the oven but told me it wouldn’t fit. I told her it would and started to screw it to the wall. As I did, I burned myself on the oven. Across from the oven was a small sink. Standing at the sink were two of my old friends doing the washing up. I walked across to the freezer to get an ice cream, but the box was empty. I became upset and asked my youngest daughter if she had eaten them. She said she had. I asked her how many she’d eaten that day and she told me she had scoffed five of them. At this point, an old friend called Ruth showed up. I referred to her as “nurse Ruth”. She told me I shouldn’t be eating ice cream because it was bad for me. Still upset, I began shouting at my oldest daughter. As I did so, her nose began to bleed.

Then I found myself at a concert. My best friend from childhood was on stage playing the piano and singing with a band. He was playing the piano really well, but he couldn’t remember the song lyrics. The rest of the band kept referring to him as “her”, saying things like, “Leave her alone, she’s doing great!”