I've written elsewhere on the weirdness of dreams but this blogpost will take the discussion to a new level of weirdness.
When I was a kid and I had nightmares and I started training myself to wake before it got too scary. I still seem to do it. So on Saturday morning when I awoke from a dream where I was confronted by a burglar, I woke up feeling a bit agitated.
The dream involved spotting through a window a burglar going through my stuff. I have these internal windows in my house, so I'd assumed it was my current home. I went to the phone and dialed for the police and received an answering machine message with a woman's voice. The burglar discovered me and came rushing over, as if to grab or attack me. He sat on the couch next to me as he did this, seemed to to hear the woman's voice and then turned to leave. I awoke at this point but not before he turned his head, revealing a second face. The face was familiar and male and on the back of his head.
This two-faced figure has resonance with me because as I child I went to London, where I saw an advertisement on the wall in an underground train station of a male with eyes in the back of his head. I remember hiding behind my mother to avoid looking at it. Interestingly, the ad was for insurance -- promoting the idea you could watch out for threats where you wouldn't normally be able to see.
Now the really weird part is that on the Saturday morning I awoke from this dream, my partner's brother Ben was staying the night. In hindsight I think the second face on the burglar may have been his face but I'm not sure.
On Saturday night we got a call from Ben, saying he'd returned home to find he'd been burgled. Ben lives with his parents at present, in a part of the house I've often lived in too and had dreams about in the past. It has a lot of windows. A guitar amp I'd lent Ben was stolen. The burglar had been interrupted by a friend who lives next door, who even spoke to him.
I've had dreams that felt like premonitions before but this one seemed to anticipate news of events that had happened but hadn't yet been discovered. Maybe it's a coincidence but it's an eerie one for me.
My great great grandmother (my mother's mother's mother's mother) was a medium and I've often thought it would be an interesting idea to research. I've also thought I should stop some of my behaviours that reduce the likelihood of dreaming but, frankly, it kinda freaks me out to think about having dreams if they're like this one.
This dream features in my Disquiet Junto piece this week. Have a listen and read more on the Bassling blog.
