The Bad Dream That Came True

Irecently submitted a detailed account of my experience at Hotel del Coronado. However, that actually was the second time something inexplicable happened to me. Here's a little background about the first. Sorry about the length.

When I was young -- perhaps 6 or 7 -- my family moved into a brand new home. Almost from the day we moved in I didn't like the house. (It was lot 13 -- bad omen right there.) Anyway, we lived there for about 13 years (again a bad omen) and a lot of bad things happened to my family during that time (financial problems, infighting, etc.). My mom once confessed to me that she thought the house was haunted.

I don't know about that. It's not like we heard footsteps or had things move around by themselves. (Well except the one incident described below.) But, I do know that I never felt comfortable in the house, and I absolutely hated go into the master bedroom. It made my skin crawl just to look in there. In fact my parents rarely slept in the master bedroom. Instead, they enclosed the patio at the other end of the house and made that into their bedroom. I never asked them why. I just assumed they didn't like the room either.

Anyway, on to the story:

In the late 1980s, I was living at home attending summer school at a nearby community college. One night I was sleeping in my room when I awoke from a dream. Actually, I sort of awoke. I remember opening my eyes and looking around the room while the "dream voice" was still talking in my head for a few seconds. And, I remember repeating the 23rd Psalm to myself over and over in my dream to make the voice go away. I don't remember much about the dream other than the fact that someone was talking to me and whatever they were saying scared the s**t out of me. When I finally fully awoke, I decided to go get a glass of water. When I walked into the kitchen I was surprised to see my mother sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. I asked what she was doing up so early. She said that she had had a bad dream and couldn't go back to sleep. Well, we talked for a few minutes and I went back to bed. No big deal, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.

The next morning everyone was gone except my mother and I. I was getting ready to go to school and she was going shopping with my grandmother. Suddenly, we heard the cats start screaming in the garage and things were banging hard against the wall between the garage and the family room. (We had a mother cat with five or six kittens that we're sleeping in the garage.) My mother and I ran to the garage door and opened to see what was the matter. As soon as I opened the door, all of the cats bolted into the house and raced down the hallway. At almost the same time -- I'm not kidding you -- something started howling in the garage. It was a loud hollow sound that I'll never forget. It sounded like an angry wounded animal. My jaw dropped and my mother and I just looked at each other while the howl faded away. As I stood there with the door open peering into the garage to see what it was, my mother went to the closet and handed me a baseball bat. Since we lived next to several large cotton fields, she and I thought a gopher or something must have gotten into the garage and that the cats had hurt it. Anyway, my mother stood at the door while I poked around with the bat for a few minutes. Then she called to me, and said that I should come see what the cats were doing in the hallway. When I walked back inside, I saw the cats huddled around the mother in the middle of the hallway. The mother cat was following something in the air above them with her eyes and pawing at it. The next thing I know, a baby cat starts spinning around on the floor like it was chasing its tail and crying. The mother cat jumped on it and started biting it. I ran over and pulled the mother cat off the baby and shoved the baby cat into the hall bathroom and slammed the door. The rest of the cats ran into my bedroom and then immediately turned and ran out, hiding in different spots all over the house. I should mention here that when the cats ran out of the room my ceiling fan was on. I don't think it was on when they ran in. Anyway my mom said she had had enough and wanted my to drive her to my grandmothers. We walked into the kitchen. I was at one end looking for my keys and she was at the other calling my grandmother on the phone to tell her she was coming over early. Suddenly, my mother turned around and said "That's not funny!" I asked her what she was talking about. She said "You just breathed down my neck." I asked her how that was possible considering the fact that I was facing the opposite direction 10 feet away from her. The next thing I know someone sighed heavily right behind my right ear and then chuckled quietly to themself. Both my mother and I heard it. And, I'm not ashamed to say that we practically broke down the front door trying to run out of the house. On the way to my grandmother's I began feeling silly for running away. So I dropped my mom off and drove back home (Forget school.) When I got there, everything was normal. I walked into the bathroom where I had locked the first baby kitten. It was soaking wet and the room stunk like excrement. I looked around and couldn't find anything; so I wrapped the kitten in a small hand towel and carried back into the living room and turned on the television. The next thing I knew, all of the cats began crawling out of their various hiding places and huddling around my lap. For the rest of the day, they wouldn't leave my side. If I got up to get a drink or go to the bathroom, all of the cats followed as close to me as they could.

Well, that's my story. We eventually lost the house after my dad's business went belly up a couple years later. And, almost from the day my parents moved out, things in their lives became better.

Look, I'm no paranormal junkie. I'm actually a very level-headed guy with just a mild curiosity about stuff like this, particularly around Halloween. It's fun, you know. But I do know that the above events actually happened just like I've related them. Maybe it was just a gopher that scared the cats. And, maybe it was adrenaline or an over excited nervous system that made us hear the howling and the laughter. However, that seems pretty severe.