Weird Stuff that Doesn’t Fit Anywhere Else

When I’m not passive-aggressively, jokingly, calling her crazy, I like to refer to my mom as “spooky.”  She’s been telling me ghost stories for as long as I can remember – disturbing stories, frankly, that were pretty heavy for a little girl to carry.  She’s always had premonitions, and has allowed her “bad feelings” to influence the permission she would give us regarding certain things we wanted to do.

Growing up around that kind of thinking, I began to believe I was having premonitions, too.  I’ve had at least two dreams that can’t easily be explained away, as well as other very powerful dreams that have helped me to find my way through difficult times.

These are two examples of the spookiness.  There will be more, but this is what I have the energy to write about right now.

PEACH TREE MALL: 

In winter of 1986, Northern California was experiencing heavy rainfall.  There was some talk of possible flooding, but I was only 14, and still expected my parents to be able to fix everything.  One night, I dreamed I saw a gigantic airplane go straight up into the sky, then come crashing down in to the local mall, The Peach Tree Mall, to be precise.  I very clearly heard the voices of people screaming and running to get away.  I woke very disturbed, but didn’t think anything of it.  This was not long after the space shuttle Challenger had exploded on take off, so it wasn’t completely out of no where.

The next evening, the levee broke across the street from the Peach Tree Mall.  It was a bustling mall, so people had run screaming out of the mall to escape.

MY FRIEND:

My best friend in high school was named Gayle.  Her parents were hyper-fundamentalist and her stepfather was an asshole.  He hated Gayle.  He seemed to live to be cruel to her.

It was a Friday night in my Junior year.  I had a dream that Gayle had called me to tell me that she had written something in her diary that she wanted me to come over and read. She was going to send her stepfather to come get me. The only images I remember from the dream were the dashboard of a pickup, and pulling up to a garage. It was night time, and the headlights were shining on the garage door.

Almost immediately, I heard people screaming in horror, “Oh, my God! She’s killed herself!”  The sound was vivid like it had been in the previous dream, as if they were outside my bedroom window.

The next morning, I woke extremely upset.  I called Gayle and told her the dream.  She laughed and told me that I was weird.  She also reminded me that they did not have a garage.  The house in my dream had been the typical suburban ranch style home.

On Sunday morning, I was in the kitchen pouring myself a bowl of cereal.  My mom was at the table, reading the local paper.  She said, “Aww, that little girl did kill herself.”

I said, “Who?!”  When my mom told me the name, I collapsed into a chair and sobbed.  The girl was a year younger than me and lived a street over.  She and I walked to school together.  She had hung herself in the garage on Friday night.  Her family was going to be moving away and she had been pretty upset about leaving her boyfriend.

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