For a few weeks I had waking dreams that freaked me the hell out.

The ceiling of my bedroom had strips of wood that must have been about one foot wide. Seemingly out of nowhere I had a dream where the lines got fuzzy and were sort of moving and shadowy objects were moving too. A knot of wood maybe about the size of a silver dollar could move about 3 or 4 inches and then go back to where it actually was. An bunch of connected lines on the wood became a moving spider.

I would close my eyes for a few seconds and when right after I opened them the ceiling would be normal again. But when I opened my eyes - things would move again. There was also a feeling of “compression”. I have no idea how to explain that.

I loved horror movies and sci-fi. I don’t remember the details but I watched a crappy movie or a tv show that still managed to scare me by mentioning creatures living on “the other side”. This was the 1970s so there wasn’t some kind of fantastic CGI stuff. I don’t even remember if there were any visuals at all. But I sure did create the visuals in my mind.

I wasn’t a smart kid and I was too proud and too embarrassed to talk to my mom about it. But after a few weeks I finally managed to figure it out and I talked to myself “Stop seeing that scary stuff, dummy.”