Dream - Beating the Devil, maybe

On the night of Wednesday-Thursday, August 19-20, 2009, I dreamed I was in a large dark house, probably two or three stories, squarish. It was night. It was a huge house, but simply made, with a fairly stark interior, probably concrete or tile floors, and sparse furniture. It was similar to houses in some other dreams. Some other people were there, probably less than ten in all. Perhaps some were family members, but probably most were not.

I went from a room at one corner to deeper into the house, but a few other people came and got me, wanted me to see something, some kind of strange old book I think, maybe with a little dark box of some kind, perhaps eight to ten inches across. It was about something that had happened in the past, maybe 100 years ago. Somebody had either sold his soul or gotten in so deep into evil magic that it was hard to get out. Near the end of his life, which evidently occurred when he was middle-aged, he was having some regrets and didn't want to go to Hell, but the Devil was coming to get him.

He went toward the front door, through the dark living room. Someone who was apparently the Devil, though he looked like a man, was there, and took him outside, to a large square room with open walls, like a picnic area. It was some distance away, but it's hard to say how much, it might have been a few hundred feet or it might have been much more. It had low walls and a roof held up by pillars. The walls were of ornamental brick along the top, which might have been three feet or so, with either stucco under that or more brick or even stones cemented together. The pillars were probably of brick, and were set at wide intervals along the walls.

The Devil spent a long time on a cell phone, talking to someone. The man wandered around the area. There was some thought of trying to escape, climbing over the wall when the Devil wasn't looking, but the man didn't; it didn't seem likely to work in the end.

There was a broad lake to one side, pale brown, dead. Eventually the Devil took the man and was flying out over the lake. It was me living it, though, I had become the man, or was in his body. The change had happened earlier, back at the picnic area probably.

Then it was my grandmother flying me, but a disembodied voice, maybe two or even three, was saying to me that it wasn't really her, that it was really the Devil, and to poke out her eyes. It seemed it was important to inflict as much damage as possible, that it hurt the Devil somehow. As they told me to poke out her eyes, I had a vision of my thumbs going in and black goo squishing out, and I recoiled from it. I didn't want to do it, it might somehow really be her, and even if it wasn't I didn't want to do it. I felt that the Devil was trying to trick me, too, that he was trying to tempt me into doing something terrible.

A little later, we landed on a narrow spit of land sticking out on the other side of the lake, where it divided into two other lakes. Before we landed, it was no longer my grandmother but the Devil again. He went off a few feet and was talking to someone on his cell phone again. He came back and I somehow managed to shove him into the sand up to his neck. The voices were saying again to hurt him, to do various things to his head. The Devil kept on talking, to someone off somewhere far away that I couldn't see I guess. I hit and/or kicked him a few times, though I didn't do what was suggested. The Devil ignored me and kept on talking. I kicked his head off, which had momentarily shrunk quite a bit. It went a few feet off and returned to normal size. I went and stomped on it, smashing maybe half of it to dust, then started to try to smash the rest, but I turned around and the head had grown back, looking slightly younger, still talking.

The Devil then took me back to the picnic area. He went back to talking on his cell phone, wandering around a bit. It seemed the man tried to sneak out then, going under a pale net curtain, on the side away from the lake. The scene seemed to be condensed a bit, like it was more something in memory, and I was some varying distance from it, watching it.

After a while the Devil noticed that he was gone, but the man, some distance away now, said that since he out gotten out that the Devil didn't really have him anymore. Apparently there was something in the rules about things like that. The Devil seemed to accept it, but objected that he was still dead, and couldn't go back to his body, and apparently not to Heaven either, which was off somewhere in the direction of but alongside and past the lake.

The man went back to the house. There was some ritual that could be performed with the book, or a book, that could free him from his connection to Hell. He would evidently be alive, at least for a while, once he got inside the house, but the ritual had to be performed to solidify it, to make it permanent, though I had the feeling it wouldn't be a terribly long life extension, just a brief one.

Then I was back in the present day, and got caught up in it. The Devil came and got me; apparently just being associated with it had drawn him. I was taken to the picnic area for a while, then he flew me out over the water. I think he tried briefly to fool me with my grandmother, and even my mother, but it wasn't working and he didn't try very hard. Then we were at the spit of land for a little while, and then he flew me back. He wandered around the picnic area, then, talking on his cell phone.

I finally sneaked out under the curtain, and was a little ways off, perhaps eight or ten feet, when he noticed. He came and told me I couldn't do that. I went around the corner of the picnic area, getting on the side toward the house, and getting perhaps half the distance from the picnic area that I had been. I told him that since I had gotten out, then I was no longer under his control. The situation was the same as before; I couldn't go to Heaven and the Devil couldn't take me, but I wasn't really alive either.

The Devil took me back to the house, while explaining about the book and what had to be done. He seemed to be trying to be genuinely helpful. I think he was hoping that he would still be able to get me after I died, that though I might be temporarily saved from him, he could eventually degrade me enough that he could come again and take me when I was dying.

I went back in the house and told the people there about what had to be done. Not as many people were there as before, but some may have been in other parts of the house. Probably most of the ones left were women, young women I think. There was some talk of trying to get a priest to do it, but it was felt that there wasn't time, so the ceremony was somewhat nervously begun. I was lowered to the floor, or mostly so, my head and shoulders were held up a little, and a man began nervously reading from the book. It was in another language, Latin perhaps. As he read, the atmosphere seemed to change a little, with drifts of fog inside the dark house and unseen, but felt, presences. It seemed to be vaguely like an exorcism, but more of a dark ritual, one that was in some sense drawing spirits. Whether they were good or evil or something else, I couldn't yet say.


The dream seemed to end around there. It had a lot more earlier, but I don't remember it anymore. I had been listening to the radio that night, to the Coast to Coast AM show, which was on both before and after the dream. The show had something about lucid dreaming, and also something about spirits and maybe astral projection. Though I missed most of it, probably some of it got incorporated in the dream.

Dream - Dreams, synchronicities, grandparents, the radiator shop, the wedding, and the autism tour

On Saturday, July 26, 2008, late in the afternoon, I dreamed I was driving on McKellips or a street farther out, going way to the east. It was night. I was thinking about, even experiencing, strange dreams I had had in the past, some about my grandfather on my father's side and some about my grandmother on my mother's side. It seemed that at some point my grandmother was with me in the car. I had dreamed (in the dream) that she came to visit me in an astral projection, maybe I was in an astral projection too, and I had taken her around to a lot of places, showing her things, and we had spent a long time doing it.

Now I was going back toward Scottsdale and was almost there. I had picked her up somewhere or she had somehow joined me, and she was talking about how she had had a dream where I had taken her all over the place and showed her things. She was happy and seemed amazed at it. I was agreeing with her as she talked.

Then somehow it was a later time, and I was going back toward Scottsdale with my father, on the same road. I'm not sure who was driving, sometimes it seemed to be him and sometimes me.

I was telling him about strange dreams I had about my grandfather (his father), and my grandmother. I didn't remember much now about the dreams with my grandfather, but I assured him I had them written down. I didn't have it with me, though, which made me feel a little disturbed or bad, though I kept a happy air.

I told him briefly about what happened with my grandmother. I thought sadly to myself that I should have told her more about it. She was dead now, though, she had died maybe a few months afterward and had been dead now for several months, maybe more (in real life, she died in December 1984).

At some point we stopped and were no longer in a car, though he was with me for a while. It was daylight now, morning.

I walked along looking for synchronicities, trying to show him how this and things like it were happening with me now. We went along lanes lined with tall green bushes, almost like hedges except they were not trimmed. I saw a newspaper laying on the ground and leaned over and peered at it, looking for synchronicities. Nothing popped out at me, but I still thought something might be there. I hadn't the time or inclination to examine it closer right now, though. I was going to the radiator shop on Scottsdale Rd., and it was getting late, like it was taking too long.

I finally came out of the bushes to the side and back of the radiator shop, coming from the south. I was alone. I met Scott, a worker at the radiator shop, out there. Someone else was also out there working, some lesser worker. It seemed I had to go somewhere now, I don't remember why, perhaps it was to get something. I left with someone, a woman.

We went back out through the bushes, but then we quickly got past them and I saw with surprise that we seemed to have somehow taken a different way. It appeared to be a little to the east of the way I had come, though it also appeared to be the other side of 68th St., near Thomas Rd., which would have been to the northwest. The light was dimmer now, like later in the day.

We saw a big Chevrolet car, like a Caprice, maybe something from the 1970s. We were not far from the back of some eating place, it was a perhaps a couple of hundred feet away. A crowd of people were off near the back of the eating place, but no one was around the car. I thought the car must be the one I had left, which was a big white Chevrolet, though I didn't know how it got where it was. A part of me that was just mind was off a ways and slightly above and watching, and kept raging in frustration, "Don't they see the 'Just Married' sign on the back of it, don't they see that this is a wedding and this is the car the bride and groom will go away in, the car isn't even white, it's actually a pale blue, can't they see that?"

We went toward the car, talking wonderingly and looking it over. I finally decided that it was a light blue color, almost white but not white, and so it couldn't be the car I was looking for. We went toward the back and I finally noticed the sign. At first it seemed to be on the back window, but now it was mounted on a long, squarish, heavy metal tube going from a very small trailer, just two wheels perhaps two or three feet apart and a metal frame, toward an attachment low on or under the bumper of the car. It was a huge sign, and going back to the other side of it we could see that it said "Just Married". I was pulling at it to get a better look and I think the woman was some, too. The sign bent back and twisted some under the pressure. It was firmly mounted, though, and was not damaged, just showing a little flexibility. It was of some fairly stiff white material, shiny, with black letters. We left then.

I ended up going toward Tempe on foot. The woman was with me, I think. We were eventually going up someplace along or around University Drive, but it was like a wide winding passage with uneven, somewhat soft looking walls, like it was made of some type of fiberboard and paper-mache. We were going east, toward Rural/Scottsdale Rd.

We met a woman with a group. She was apparently giving a tour. She was talking about autism (in real life they were talking about autism on the radio, on KFYI, with host Jan D'Atri). There were posters on the uneven wall about it. I had been looking at them before we met her, and at a newspaper in a vending machine, trying to find some evidence of synchronicities. I didn't notice any, though. There may have been some, but if so they were not immediately evident.

The woman led the group into and through a large art/poster/book store, that was completely open to the passageway and blended into it. She was still talking about autism, and stopping at various things to show them to the people, as part of the talk/lecture.

Celebrities, or not

In the late 1960s, my family was visiting a town in northern Arizona, and while in a restaurant we saw a celebrity, an old man, sitting in a booth not far away. My father didn't know who it was, but recognized him enough to think it was someone he had met, and was one of his customers or potential customers. My father went over to his booth and sat by him and talked to him for a long time. I think the man was Ed Begley, Sr., and had been in some westerns.

A few years ago, while standing in line at a grocery store, a man a few people behind me thought I was a celebrity. He mistook me for Michael Grant, a man who used to host a local PBS news/talk show, Horizon, and he kept insisting I was him. I finally convinced the man that I was not Michael Grant, at least enough for him to say that I looked a lot like him and stop insisting that I was him.

Michael Grant (television)

A picture of me taken in November 2010