This is Home, Part 43 - Psychic ability

This is part 43 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Psychic ability

Some members of Mom's family have had psychic ability to one extent or another. It doesn't work on everything.

Mom, herself, was psychic. She and Aunt Gertrude had made a pact when younger and unmarried that whichever one died first would try to come back to tell the other if there was a Heaven and the things they believed were true. A few months after Aunt Gertie died, this happened.

One morning, Mom was standing in front of the dresser with the partly marble top that belongs to Stephen now. She said she was combing her hair and thinking about what she was going to fix for breakfast when Aunt Gertie appeared, behind her in the mirror. Aunt Gertie was smiling.

Mom said she was so shocked, she just stood there and stared at her. When she finally turned around, Aunt Gertie was gone.

Aunt Gertie died in Colorado from pneumonia, when I was a new baby.

Mom's sister Edith also had psychic ability. She could make a table move. Daddy and Uncle Doc asked her to come one time when a horse had got wrapped in a barbed wire fence. He was cut and bleeding a lot while still fighting to get away. Aunt Edith placed her hands on the horse and the bleeding stopped. He let himself be cut out of the fence.

Other members of the family with psychic ability that I know of so far are Jean, Stephen, David and me. But that came much later than the sale of the farm.

These psychic incidents are only for family. Mom used to say, "Don't tell anyone that." So, I'm trusting you not to tell.

There is another incident. When Uncle Elliott died on the way home, no one could find him. It sounded to me as though he had been missing for days, maybe a week. Finally, in desperation, a psychic in Macon was consulted. She described where he had fallen. Thanks to her, they found him. Mom didn't want this repeated, either.

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 - Shaking hands with a ghost

On Thursday morning, June 12, 2008, I had a dream in which I met someone, then later shook hands with his ghost.

A lot happened earlier in the dream. At some point, I was at a mall that sometimes seemed to be a school, or partially a school.

Someone came there who I think was a former senator or representative of some kind. He was there, I think, to make a speech as part of some school event. At some point, either he or I was leaving. I shook hands with him. He was concerned more with someone else, but turned to me and shook hands. He had a firm handshake. He was perhaps around 60, with dark gray thinning hair on top and whitish hair on the sides. His face was somewhat thin and rectangular and his hair was slicked down and combed to the side.

I left and went out to the parking lot and then went back in. He was talking to someone. Other people were around coming and going. He turned slightly and looked at me and frowned a little, no doubt wondering why I was back. I'm not sure now exactly why I did go back.

He left not long afterward, getting into a car with some people that were with him, a car that had pulled up by the curb. A few days later I heard that he had a heart attack and died.

Sometime later, perhaps a week or two, maybe less, we were outside somewhere at some school function, a picnic or something like that. Some kind of game or dance started where people held hands in a circle and went around in stops and starts. A photographer was there, and now he was in the middle of the circle taking pictures. I came to realize that the person taking pictures was the dead politician. Although at first he didn't really look like him, he looked more and more like him as time went on.

I shook hands with him again. It was firm like before. He smiled at me, leaning into the handshake. The circle of people had dissipated and I was telling someone from the circle, then, a man who was a school administrator of some kind, about the photographer being the dead politician. The photographer was gone now, apparently having faded out after going a few feet to the side.

The administrator kept asking about it, going through some papers that were stapled together, trying to find who was assigned to be the photographer, asking was I sure. I took him to the camera, which was sitting on the ground now, an odd device with a broad back that had an LCD display low on it. When activated, the name of the photographer crawled across it, with some letters between them, perhaps three, that were evidently a company name. The first name was ANDY. I don't remember what the last name was, it was perhaps ten or twelve letters. It was the name of the dead politician, though, though I don't think I ever knew it before that point.

I was then going toward a car parked at the street in the city. Everything was gray. Some people were standing by it in dark clothes and long coats, talking and looking around somewhat furtively. The dead politician was there. I was seeing something that had happened earlier. He had been tainted some by association with people who had some underworld connections. I realized, though, that the situation was not as it had appeared and was not as it had been portrayed. The politician was not aware, or at least not aware much, of the underworld connections, and was just trying to do his best for the people. The dream then seemed to blend into the next part.

It was cold. I was going back toward something. A cold rain was falling, perhaps snow even. Everything was gray. I went across the road to an area where nothing was built. In the middle distance across another road was a low building with a large yard around it, a yard that extended a very large distance toward the back, blending in with the land, the land going finally toward a low rise and then back down again. Then a much smaller yard and then a row of small darkish buildings, perhaps houses or businesses, leading away from me.

Everything was shades of gray. I walked on gray grass, flattened down, wet with rain and slushy ice, and headed toward more of the same. Two figures were going from the direction of the large low building across the land behind it, heading toward the low ridge. There seemed to be a fight or struggle going on between them, as every now and then one would turn, the one slightly in the lead, and attack the other somehow. I don't think it was usually hitting with fists. I don't remember now exactly what was happening, but one was hitting the other with something, maybe a coat sometimes, though I think something else was used too, maybe the slushy ice, picked up and loosely packed together. I think the one attacking kept trying to take something the other had and was wearing, a coat or shirt, perhaps a T-shirt.

I was dragging a thick hose along with me and turned it on them when I was still quite a distance away, several hundred feet. It didn't do much to stop the fight. It rained a large quantity of cold, large, heavy drops on them with some force. I hoped to break the fight up, but it only slowed it a little. I thought it might melt the slushy ice used as ammunition, but it didn't seem to be having enough of an effect. I think the person attacking got the article of clothing he was after and the one attacked was not able to get it back and finally went down.

I reached the area past the rise in the ground. There was a bit of a dip behind the rise and then the ground rose back up to a normal level. It had stopped raining now, but everything was still wet. It was a little warmer and the slush had melted.

A man came from the small building or around there, and was talking about the fight. I told him I had the hose and could spray them with force. A person came over the ridge then and down the other side, wearing a T-shirt that was not in good shape. He was grinning and denied knowing about the fight, though he seemed to be the person from the fight.

I went back to the road or near it and went toward the big building, going by the side at a distance and around to the front. It turned out to be the radiator shop on Scottsdale Road. I think the man from the small building might have gone with me, but I'm not sure. There were a few cars out front. I went into something like a large van or maybe a trailer and was talking with someone, perhaps the man from the small building, and then someone showed up at the back grinning, evidently the man in the T-shirt. It had big holes in it and strange markings in different colors, like they had been put on with markers.

He gave various stories when pressed on where he had been. He had been somewhere else, he had been to WalMart, he had been to some other place, the story kept changing. He kept changing, too, sometimes seeming slimmer and sometimes more muscular. He pulled his shirt up, apparently trying to show us evidence of some sort. He had more markings across his stomach and chest, across his head and face even, at least one of them changing from a marking to a scar, going in a shallow zigzag across him, a scar that got bigger and raised up, a 3-D pinkish line.

I finally got out and went toward the front door, going in I think and looking around briefly and then going back out, and continuing on past the front and around to the side. Other people were around and I could hear them talking [the radio was on in real life]. My father was somewhere, perhaps inside or perhaps not. I got down by the window by the repair tanks and got inside somehow, I think maybe by peeling back a section of wall. The main worker, an Hispanic man, was somewhere nearby, but I don't think I actually saw him, or if I did it was dimly and not directly on.

I needed to make my way back and find the other guy, the one who had fallen, to see if he was alright. I needed to take someone with me, I wasn't sure what situation I would run into. I think someone was actually urging me to do that.

I went out back and got someone, a young employee who worked on cars I think, and we continued on going back and in a short while reached a building that stretched across the way. It seemed to be some kind of garage run by some rural types, a large number of people, apparently all or most related to each other, suspicious of outsiders. I had somehow acquired a third person and I think a local deputy or sheriff had somehow come and was directing the search. A somewhat paunchy middle-aged man ran the place and was showing us around, at the sheriff's continued insistence. The employees/relatives kept trying things, like going for baseball bats or crowbars and tools of some kind that were laying around, to try to attack us with them, and had to be dissuaded.

It was a big building and had divisions running across it as we went further through it, dividing it into different sections. We got finally to the last section and were looking through it.

The sheriff was still questioning the owner, the employees/relatives were still trying things. At least one time one of them slowly sneaked out from under a bed toward something on the floor. Someone stepped on his wrist, I think, and kicked him back under the bed, it might have been me. They were continually trying things and there was someone every few feet.

The sheriff was talking to the owner and there were people continually sneaking up on both sides that had to be continuously taken care of in various ways, sometimes by knocking the weapon out of their hands or their hands or arms away from the weapon, sometimes attacking them, sometimes just moving threateningly toward them.

The owner seemed unwilling to control them in any way. The owner himself picked up something from somewhere, some kind of shiny tool and was talking, looking slightly past the sheriff in a distracted way, seemingly ignoring what the sheriff was saying.

The sheriff bent down and picked up a heavy dark pencil that the employees had been trying to use and stabbed the owner in the stomach, toward his right side, pushing it all the way in, then pulling it out and stabbing him again and little way from the first, slightly more toward the center but still toward the side, and then pulled it out and stabbed him again, either this one or the one before being a little higher. It was like pushing the pencil into clay. Sometimes it seems I was the sheriff now and sometimes I was watching.

The owner fell down backwards and then got back up, still holding the tool and talking some more but glancing now toward the sheriff and then away and then back again, some concern showing on his face. The sheriff stabbed him again, this time in the center and higher, just under the breast bone.

I started to protest, thinking it was too high, that he had actually stabbed him in the heart. The owner frowned and had a "Hey!" type of expression, and his head turned down then and he folded, falling backward. He didn't get back up.

The scene jumped to a little in the future, then, and the place was full of law enforcers, federal agents I think. The various employees were under control, but they seemed to lose interest in fighting after the owner was killed. The place was being thoroughly searched. The fear was that the missing person might be hidden somewhere, perhaps still alive.

I went toward the north side. A lot of small, low, upholstered chairs were there, with burlap type cloth, set up along the walls and in rows across the narrow space of the long room. Others came with me. I was looking through the chairs, picking up the cushions and looking and feeling under them, pulling the chairs back and looking behind them, etc. Others were doing the same. A time or two some odd things were found, like a pair of children's shoes set neatly under a seat cushion, along with a belt. It might be ominous or it might not be. Finally we had them all pretty much searched. I was by a door that led back toward the front. We had to look somewhere else now, working our way toward the front.

I looked along the wall behind the chairs. It was bulging out with, I think, a thin sheet of paper-like stuff pulled across it. I pulled the furniture, low couch-like stuff, away from it and we started looking, other people doing most of the work. The paper covering was pulled away and behind it were rows and rows of record albums, staggered rows, getting thicker toward the floor and blending in with the wall about mid level, then going back inside the wall, sticking out more toward the corner. A few were found toward the corner that seemed to be homemade ones, showing pictures of a couple of the employees/relatives kissing each other with love and affection.

The sheriff looked sad and uncertain and said there was no way to know what was on them. I was beginning to worry that the owner had died for nothing, that the people here might have had nothing to do with the disappearance of the person, that they might just be strange people, it was hard to know yet and it might be that we would never know.

Dream - Ghostly projections

On Friday, May 9, 2008, in the early evening or night, I had a dream about people making ghostly projections.

In the dream, we were in a house with large rooms. My younger sister made a ghostly projection of herself that was paler and less distinct (I had just been watching a Ghost Whisperer show that featured people making ghostly projections). I touched both of them to confirm that I could tell them apart, thinking that I would not be able to touch the ghostly one. I found, though, that I could touch both of them and they both felt physical, which was puzzling.

Then my father did the same thing and made a ghostly projection, including a ghostly pile of 8-track tapes, and I also made a ghostly projection. I joked that I could identify my father's by the 8-track tapes (though we both used to play them in real life). Our ghostly projections then went to the opposite real persons, mine to my father and his to me, and stood in front of them and held hands with them. It's possible, though, that I might be confusing another person making a projection with myself making one.

Afterward, I went outside and it was daytime, but the light wasn't very bright. There was a very old (1950s) red pickup truck, that appeared to have been roughly painted with a brush using the matte red paint used to paint some tools my father sold (though I didn't associate the paint with that paint at the time of the dream). The truck reminded me of the 1955 Cadillac for some reason, though it didn't resemble it at all. It was also very high off the ground, with lots of ground clearance. The interior was not in good shape. I was to use the truck to deliver some things somewhere, just a little bunch of small things, more in the cab than in the bed of the truck.

There was also something in the dream about my grandmother's house in Arizona, about going there.

Dream - An angel beside me?

Late Tuesday afternoon, December 16, 2008, I fell asleep while sitting in a chair, and had a nightmare about driving while sleeping, unable to stay awake, with a presence in the passenger seat driving for me.

In the dream it was night and I was in Nevada, driving back toward Arizona. It was late, perhaps the middle of the night. Earlier in the dream I had been driving more normally I think, and I think some other things had happened, maybe something in small rooms. Now, though, I was very tired and kept falling asleep. I was driving while sleeping, trying hard to wake up, but my eyes would close almost immediately and my head would fall forward and to the side, and I would droop over to the side.

In a bend of the road where it curved sharply to the left and then back out again, I came across, on the left side, at the innermost part of the bend, two women in a very small open room sitting at a table. The room was an opening in a very large dark wall that went by that section of the road. The wall partly followed the contours of the road, but in straight, slightly angled sections. The road curved in close to the wall here, so I was right by the room where the women were.

As I came up to them, they turned to each other and giggled. They seemed to be giggling at me and my situation. As I drove by, I leaned my head out of the window, my eyes pleading, and spoke to them. Even though I said only a few words to them, asking for help I think, I got the impression that they were already aware of me and had been following my situation, monitoring me in a way, though I'm not sure for what purpose.

I was quickly past them, then, and turned my attention back to driving, trying desperately to wake up. For a while, a thick ridge a couple of feet high ran by the side of the road. I sometimes reached out my hand and hung onto it, my hand rapidly sliding along its rough, lumpy surface in the darkness. I was able to see the wall-like ridge but not much else, and was driving almost totally blind.

At some point, I became aware that someone was in the car with me, on the right, driving. The person shouldn't be there and was not always visible. I thought it must be an angel or a ghost. I guess I was glad it was there but I didn't feel that I could or should trust it to continue driving for me. I didn't know who or what it was or what it was capable of doing and under what conditions, and how long and reliably it would continue to do it. Perhaps it only operated temporarily or in emergencies, and couldn't continue doing it for long periods, especially if I simply gave up control and let it go on unattended.

I thought of how I must have gone around the terrible curves of this section of road in the darkness, not even realizing it, just following one curve after another without realizing where I was, picturing in my mind now a point in the trip in mid Nevada where the curves were. I was afraid I was headed for them again and tried to open my eyes but they kept shutting again. I was going very fast and just getting glimpses of things. It was light outside now, but it was very hard to keep my eyes open for more than a second or two at a time.

I could see some giant forklift-like thing ahead moving slow, evidently some kind of farm machinery. I was coming up very fast on it. I swerved around it at the last second, but it wasn't me doing it, not my current awareness. Though I seemed to be at the wheel sitting up straight with my eyes fixed on the road ahead, I wasn't actually in my body, I was just a dim, dark, foggy, reeling presence behind and to the side, with maybe my hips and legs partly overlapping my body.


I woke up and thought I heard the phone ring, but it evidently didn't. If the phone rang, it was important to answer because my mother was still in the hospital. She was going to have the operation today, Tuesday, to deaden the part of her heart that had been racing. The day before, Monday, they had put in a pacemaker.

Dream - My dead grandfather helps me look for the dogs

I had a dream, probably around the middle or end of March, 2005, in which my father's father, my grandfather, appeared.

I'm not sure what the first part of the dream was about, but eventually I became concerned about securing the screen door in the living room. In the dream, the door was on the wrong side of the room, but it seemed normal then. The screen door in the dream was ragged, and did not fit right. It was collapsible, like an accordion, and I was trying to pull it out enough to latch, but it didn't want to stay in place.

After a while I noticed that the hinges on the main door weren't attached to the wall, and I was trying to fix that. But then it changed so that the main door was actually off and was sitting against the wall on the other side of the room (the same wall the doorway was in).

I said, "That's why it's been so cold all winter." Then I moved the door back to the doorway and was trying to secure it, but the door changed from wood to some type of rubbery plastic. The plastic was formed to resemble extremely worn boards set horizontally with a couple of vertical crosspieces facing outside. It was all one piece and colored blue and white. It had big gaps around the worn "boards" and I was having trouble getting this door to reach the latch, too.

Somewhere in there, the dogs got outside into the front yard. We were worried about them getting lost. I went out to try and find them. We had two little dogs (like in real life) and two other, newer, little-but-somewhat-bigger dogs (unlike in real life). For some reason the newer dogs were considered less important, and I was more concerned with getting the original dogs back first.

Out in the front yard, there were a lot of bushes forming a hedge against the house, and other tall bushes forming rows of hedges across the yard (unlike in real life). I think there may have also been a very large cylindrical metal tank sitting on its side (like my grandmother on my mother's side used to have on her farm).

All this created almost a maze effect, making it difficult to search.

I did find one of the original dogs fairly quickly, though. It was near the house. It was laying on its side on the ground, looking at what I took to be a fox, which was laying on the ground almost touching the dog. They almost formed a circle, and they had their heads raised and their mouths open. The dog had its tongue hanging out, I'm not sure about the fox, and they were both looking at each other with peaceful expressions on their faces.

I was worried about the fox. I didn't know if it would try to bite me or maybe bite the dog, too. I saw a scrap of brown cardboard on the ground and picked it up. I used it to try and encourage the fox to leave. I nudged its shoulder a few times with the cardboard, but my hand kept bothering me. I looked at the cardboard and did a double and then triple take. I realized that it was not cardboard, but was some small animal, curled in a ball around my hand. It's claws were very long and looked like long straight gray nails, cut off straight across on the end, and they were dug into my hand. It had very expressive eyes, with dark fur around them. The dark fur was pointed up in the middle now, giving it a worried look.

I think I tried some to shake it off, but it didn't want to leave. I tried to nudge the fox with it several times, hoping that the fox would want to eat it, but the fox paid it no attention. The little animal now had the black fur around its eyes pointed downward in the middle, giving it a mad look.

I gave up on distracting the fox with it, and somehow managed to get it off my hand. The dog, in the meanwhile, had gone away somewhere.

I continued looking through the maze of the yard. I saw many strange creatures, some of which looked something like one of the "less important" dogs, but not exactly like it. Many of the creatures were quite large, and didn't quite look like dogs at all. Some of them looked almost like mountain lions, but not quite like those, either.

I had reached the sidewalk, now, and looked around and across the street, where a lot of cars were parked. All I saw were some more dogs that didn't match and various strange creatures moving about. They seemed to be aware of me, many of them looked at me, but they seemed also to be slightly wary of me.

I walked around to the side yard, which was much bigger then in real life. There was a slight dip in the ground, which was apparently to aid in runoff when it rained. I came to a tall chain link fence which, in the dream, went from my house to the house next door. There were a few strange creatures about, but not too many, and they were fairly small.

There was something in front of me and slightly to one side, that I took to be a small white dog. I wasn't paying too much attention to it, I was more looking off into the distance. I turned to it then, and gave a double and then triple take. The air almost seemed to boil. When I was finally able to focus on it, I saw that it wasn't really a dog. The front of it looked like a dog, almost puppy-like, with long floppy ears and a tongue hanging out. It had no back legs or hips, though. Its body just narrowed to a point. It lay there, propped up on its front legs, looking peaceful.

I thought, "THAT again. Things are really going to get strange now!"

I reached down and ruffled the short, white fur on its shoulder, and patted it.

I became aware, then, of someone standing nearby.

He was short, and older, and dressed in dark pants and a white shirt. He may also have had a coat, but I don't remember. He was also a little overweight.

I had trouble focusing on him. The air seemed to swim, and I was only able to get good looks at little bits of him at a time. He looked very much like my grandfather on my father's side, though, who had died over twenty years ago.

I asked him who he was, and he said, "Don't you know me?"

I thought about it, and finally acknowledged that I did.

He asked me if there was anything he could help me with. I thought again before answering. Was he really who he seemed to be? Would there be a "price" for the helping? I wondered these things, but did not actually speak. I decided that I had to go with appearances. I was afraid of hurting his feelings if I actually questioned him any more.

I told him that he could help me look for the dogs. He happily agreed, and we set off looking for them.

As we walked off, he said that he was here to be with my father when he (my father) went to a meeting next week (next week as measured from the time of the dream).

I was immediately suspicious of this, and wondered if something was going to happen to my father. I asked him a couple of times, in different ways, if something was going to happen to him. His first answer, while in the negative, was also somewhat ambiguous. When I asked him the last time, more explicitly, he finally turned to me and said, "Not as far as I know."

As we walked down the street, I looked closely at his face, trying to focus on it. My grandfather had a glass eye, and I wanted to see if he looked like one of his eyes was gone. I guess I believed that he might not currently be using a glass eye. After awhile, looking at his face in profile as he walked, I determined that his eyelids on that side of his face didn't have an eye in them, only darkness.

We came to a cross street and turned down it. We met a woman walking her small dog on a leash, and stopped and talked with her awhile. All the other animals seemed to be gone, now.

I looked across the road at a house. Some of its windows faced me, and one was very wide, and looked like a dark mirror. It appeared to also be bulging slightly.

I walked over and peered into it, trying to see my grandfather's reflection. I saw the shadowy form of my own reflection, and aways off I saw the shadowy form of the woman's reflection, but I was having trouble seeing my grandfather's. I was peering and moving my head around, but I still couldn't find anything I could identify as his reflection.

He walked up, then, and stood nearby, watching me. I kept trying, and finally saw it. His reflection was pale and washed out, and drastically stretched from side-to-side, but at least it was there.

We decided to go, then, and look in a nearby car dealership for the dogs. I believe it was because of something the woman said.

We got to the car dealership and started walking among the stalls where they worked on cars. I saw lots of strange animals, mostly large, that wandered and hid among the cars.

Finally, someone asked if they could help us (I had been wondering when someone was going to question why we were there). One of us, probably my grandfather, told him of our mission, and the person told the other mechanics about it. They tried to be helpful, and more strange animals showed up, including some that came over low walls. We also saw a dog that looked something like, but not quite like, one of the "less important" dogs.

We eventually came to, or were directed to, a pit where a mechanic worked on the underside of cars. More strange animals existed in the pit, and it had something like water in it, with strange animals coming to the surface and going back under again.

We never found the dogs, though.