10-25-02 - 7:32 p.m.

So. I meant to write this yesterday and the day before, but I've been tired this week for some reason. It certainly cuts into my productivity.

I had a dream Tuesday night about a ghost. I was with either the youth group from my church at home or a group from Wheaton, probably undergraduates, and we were on some kind of retreat. It was at one of those camp places where churches have retreats, but apparently we weren't using much of it. We seemed to be having the retreat mostly on our bus. It was wider than a normal bus, I think. It seems like there was more aisle space. At the time of the dream, it was night.

There were stories that there was a ghost of a woman who haunted that part of the campground. This did not make me comfortable. It made me even less comfortable to be told by one of the sponsors that they had measured a big temperature difference in this one area outside the bus (apparently we came equipped for ghost hunting). The temperature was fairly comfortable outside, but this one spot was 4 below. That was some ghost! Happy me. Also some things on the bus had mysteriously been moved around, apparently.

Then I sat down at this table in the bus. Yes, our bus had tables. So I was sitting there, and I happened to glance at the window, and to my chagrin I saw a faint reflection of an oldish woman looking in. She wasn't looking at me, and it was a foot or two above my head, but still. I couldn't take this, so I put my head down on the table so I wouldn't have to see any more. But of course I looked back a few seconds later, and the reflection was stronger. But then gradually it morphed into a poster of this woman's face, a two-color, black and white picture on old, yellowed paper. It was attached to the window on the inside of the bus, so I took it down to show everybody. Evidently I wasn't too spooked by this point.

Then the sponsors of the retreat decided they'd had enough, so the bus driver moved us to a nonhaunted part of the campground. And that's where the dream stopped.

I love dreams like that. They're coherent enough to be a story, or a segment of one, and they carry lots of emotional atmosphere. I can never convey that part, though. This one ended up being kind of bland the way I told it. But oh well. The dream was impressive to me at the time.

I'm sure the reason I had it was that I'd read this ghost hunting site the day before. I hate ghosts. I never want to see one. Yes, I'm prejudiced. I just read about them because the paranormal is interesting to me if it's kept at a safe distance.