Nightmares and Magic
Mar. 5th, 2007 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariMy bedroom in my childhood home has three doors. One is, of course, the door to the hallway. One is the door to the clothes closet. The third is to a storage closet. This closet is "unfinished": no plaster on the walls just beams and paper-covered fiberglass insulation, a naked lightbulb with a pull chain, wooden boards for the floor, and a ceiling that slants kind of shaprly down to the back of the room. It contains the usual sorts of things that any suburban family might have in such a storage space: old clothes, past halloween costumes, empty suitcases, furniture (some of it disassembled).
When I was little, the storage closet was an eerie place to me, and its presence in relationship to my room often played into my typical night-time fears. It didn't help that on windy nights, the door rattled in the drafts. And sometimes I would wake at night and turn on the lamp so that I could get up and go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water, and the door would be hanging ajar even though I was 100% certain that it was closed when I went to sleep. Maybe the same draft that rattled the door also caused it to open, but I've never really figured out how that could happen.
The closet occasionally featured in my nightmares. Although I have to admit that the most terrifying of these storage-closet-door nightmares occured only a year or so ago. In the dream, I wavered between being an adult and being around 8 or 10. I was asleep in my room and woke up to see light seeping out from the space around the storage closet door. And I heard a sinister male voice whispering "open the door, [kenjari]". Through the gap in the door jamb, I could just make out a creepy looking guy behind the door (he was alittle reminiscent of Bob from Twin Peaks). I left the room and went downstairs only to have a similar experience with the cellar door off of the kitchen. The dream had a strong atmosphere of creepiness and menace.
The storage closet has started showing up again in my dreams, but this time it's not a source of horror. Instead, it's become a gateway. Sometimes the closet simply leads to an undiscovered space in the house. In one memorable dream, it opened up into a light and airy garrett or attic space with high ceilings and large windows that my sister and started using as a large studio/creative space. More recently, it's been the opening to a sort of underworld, something like in Mirrormask or Pan's Labyrinth. That was a neat dream, but I unfortunately woke up before I got to the real adventure.
I don't really know quite what the symbolism or deeper meaning is here. However, I am quite amused and fascinated by the progression from horror to magic. Especially since the horror seems to have been attached to my childhood, while the magic is firmly connected to my adulthood.
When I was little, the storage closet was an eerie place to me, and its presence in relationship to my room often played into my typical night-time fears. It didn't help that on windy nights, the door rattled in the drafts. And sometimes I would wake at night and turn on the lamp so that I could get up and go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water, and the door would be hanging ajar even though I was 100% certain that it was closed when I went to sleep. Maybe the same draft that rattled the door also caused it to open, but I've never really figured out how that could happen.
The closet occasionally featured in my nightmares. Although I have to admit that the most terrifying of these storage-closet-door nightmares occured only a year or so ago. In the dream, I wavered between being an adult and being around 8 or 10. I was asleep in my room and woke up to see light seeping out from the space around the storage closet door. And I heard a sinister male voice whispering "open the door, [kenjari]". Through the gap in the door jamb, I could just make out a creepy looking guy behind the door (he was alittle reminiscent of Bob from Twin Peaks). I left the room and went downstairs only to have a similar experience with the cellar door off of the kitchen. The dream had a strong atmosphere of creepiness and menace.
The storage closet has started showing up again in my dreams, but this time it's not a source of horror. Instead, it's become a gateway. Sometimes the closet simply leads to an undiscovered space in the house. In one memorable dream, it opened up into a light and airy garrett or attic space with high ceilings and large windows that my sister and started using as a large studio/creative space. More recently, it's been the opening to a sort of underworld, something like in Mirrormask or Pan's Labyrinth. That was a neat dream, but I unfortunately woke up before I got to the real adventure.
I don't really know quite what the symbolism or deeper meaning is here. However, I am quite amused and fascinated by the progression from horror to magic. Especially since the horror seems to have been attached to my childhood, while the magic is firmly connected to my adulthood.
