Hunted by Robed Shadows

[Nienna]

This is only my second post here although I have been reading and studying the forum and Casschat for a while now. I have wondered about the following dream on and off all my life, for it was very vivid to me.

When I was 3 or 4 years old, I had a dream that totally terrified me. It's also the first dream I ever remember having and it was a repeating dream.

My dream would start by me running as fast as my little legs would carry me. I would be sobbing and I was, as I said above, terrified. Behing me was a long line of robed beings. The robes were dark gray and covered their whole body and had hoods pulled up, their hands were crossed in front of them and inserted into the opposite sleeves so there was nothing showing as to a body, hand, or head. All you could see were the robes. Hanging from the crossed hands were small pots on chains and a smoke or mist was coming out of these pots, which made the entire scene misty or smokey. But, at one point as I was running I turned back to see how close they were to me as I was sure, just so sure, that they were after me. I don't know why. But, as I turned back I saw inside all of the hoods that I could see and there was no face. All there was was a dark hole with swirling mist for eyes and mouth. This terrified me more and I ran screaming.

At this point I would be awake with my mother holding me telling me it was just a bad dream. Funny, I remember the dream better than the part of being awake with my mother. Then, I would go back to sleep and not dream of it again until another night.

Then, one night I had the same dream, but as I was running and sobbing, terrified "they" were going to catch me, somebody pulled me to the side and whispered in my ear if I wanted to learn how to hide from these beings. It was an adjult woman. I never saw her. She stood in back of me. I shook my head yes, too choked up to even talk. She told me to be very, very quiet. Not to make a sound. We stood to the side as if on the shoulder of a road, facing the road, but it was dark. Well, heck, the whole scene was dark and misty/smokey. Then, she put her arms around my shoulders and we stood very quietly and all of the beings just passed by us. I could hardly breathe. I just knew that one of the robes would brush me and we would be found out. However, that never happened. All of these robed figures just went on by us. The dream ended and I never had that dream again.

The really strange thing about this is that 30 some odd years later, I met a woman in Washington state that had had the same exact dream. Now I grew up in New York state and she grew up in Iowa. She was several years older that I. I don't know exactly how many years older. I started telling her about the dream one evening and she would take up and continue it. We were both flabbergasted. I never got to the part about the woman as we were called to class and then the subject was never brought up again. So I don't know how her dreams stopped.

Since our dreams were, as far as I can tell, the same, I was wondering if anyone else has had a similiar dream. Or, if anyone can give me any insight into it, as I said it was so vivid and I knew these beings were looking for me.

Any input will be appreciated.

Lynne

 

[Neil]

Well, I believe that this dream was causing you to face some type of fear or inner disturbance in your soul that was obstructing your path. What exactly this fear was is probably a complex piece of your being, and when you had the last dream, where you actually overcame these shadows, I think something had changed in you that allowed you to resolve whatever the issue was. However, this is merely my opinion based on my own dreams that I've had. I don't know what symbolic presence there might've been in your dreams. Some forum members are serious dream interpreters. All I can really do for you is post a couple of my own dreams and point out the similarites, and let you draw your own conclusions, and see if they are even relevant.

The first dream I will talk about was a recurring dream, and I'd say it actually went through three evolutions or incarnations before it finally stopped. I started having this dream when I was three, so excuse me if it sounds a little immature.

Do you know the glove that appears in the Sprint phone book? In the Yellow pages, I believe? Well, I dreamed about it. In my dreams, It would be walking around, yes just the glove walking around, nothing was in it. And it would tell me to do various tasks for it. It could not speak, instead it communicated through thought waves, where you could feel what it was thinking. Most of the tasks involved moving things or constructing various objects for it out of lego-type blocks. I do not remember exactly what I was building, except that each time it was roughly the same. The glove made sure that I understood that it was the master and I was the slave. Several times I disobeyed it, and it would shoot a bolt of electricity into the air and fill my mind with fear. I continued to obey the glove for a year because I was scared of what it would do to me. One time I remember getting extremly angry at it for some reason, and I went up and kicked it. It hit a wall, and then got up and shot one of those lightning bolts at me again. When it hit me, I realized it didn't hurt, and I was then no longer afraid of the glove. I remember picking it up and throwing it against the wall repeatedly, and I never dreamed about the glove again.

In the second incarnation, lasting from about 4-7, the thing I was afraid of was a giant speghetti pot. I called it the bit-bit. Yes, I know it is very weird, but bear with me, I think it has some relevance. The bit-bit was about 30 feet tall and made a metallic "bing-bing" noise when it moved. It could be heard from miles away. Though I consider this dream recurring, it happened in many different episodes. However, the episodes all had the same theme, hide from the bit-bit before it sees you and eats you. Each time I escaped from the bit-bit, it got progressively more difficult to escape from it again. At first, all I had to do was take cover in the house for awhile before it would leave. Then it would stay longer, look harder, and occassionally gain new abilities. When I feared that it had a certain ability, it would gain that ability. Such abilities it gained were hypersensitive hearing, X-Ray vision, and thermal vision. Eventually the bit-bit gained so many abilities that it was impossible for me to hide from it. So the bit-bit ate me by opening its lid and somehow sucking me in. Well, the inside of the bit-bit looked exactly as you would expect a normal speghetti pot to look, and I lost my fear of it. When I was determined to get out of the bit-bit and fight it, it disintegrated and I never saw it again.

The final incarnation of this was the fear of Vampires. Like in the bit-bit dreams, this incarnation occured in episodes with progressively stronger foes. This incarnation lasted from about 8-10. My mission was to defend this tiny castle armed with a silver sword, and avoiding becoming a vampire myself. The castle was in the middle of a forest and apparently unknown to the rest of the kingdom. At first all I had to do was stick the vampires with my sword and they would be vaporized. Then they became more resilient, and I would have to do quite a bit of dismembering to kill them. Then they got their own swords, and I had to swordfight them in order to beat them. Then they became immune to my sword altogether, and the only way to beat them was by keeping them distracted until the sun came up. Eventually, they were too much for me, and I was bitten. I turned into a vampire, but was repulsed by the idea of killing my own people, and I somehow resisted the metamorphisis and returned to being a human. And the vampires never came back.

I selected these rather weird dreams to tell you about because they all had to do with running from something over and over again until I finally stood up and faced it. I will also post the next dream that I had when I was 12, which you may find more mature and interesting. I will post the whole thing, but the part about running from shadows doesn't occur until the end, so if you want to go ahead and skip down there.

I found myself in a dark field. In fact, it was a field that was not too far from our house. I found my way back to the house. Inside, my grandparents were watching the news. It was talking about some kind of global catastrophe. I didn't pay too much attention to it. Some time later I found out that we needed to go to the store for something. At this remark, I wanted to go check on my dog. Grandma told me to go to my room; she wasn't in very good shape. When I got there, I found my dog lying hairless and miserable on the floor. This shocked me, but somehow I had expected it. Later that night, on our trip to the store, I found out what the catastrophe was. The world was in a state of temporal flux. Various sections of land were in temporal zones. They were sliding very fluidly through the space time continuum. Medieval Germany was the adjacent temporal zone to mine. There were several others, but I was never concerned with them. My grandpa was startled when he realized that the road disappeared into a manor. The military had blockaded the highway to keep anyone from driving into that zone. We pulled into a gas station convenience store in the hopes of obtaining some groceries. While there, I met Albert Einstein, who told me about what was going on. He said he had driven through several temporal zones before getting to mine. He not only explained a bit about the distortion of space time, he also told me that the temporal zones were shifting. The zones fused into our reality in a chaotic fashion. He said there was little chance he would ever get home, not that the world could continue on for very long like this anyway. I knew it was only a matter of time before society collapsed. Multitudes of temporal zones from different times, different places, and alternate realities phasing in and out would destroy life as we knew. He left me with some unusual advice, "Nothing is ever as it seems, when something defies the mind, perhaps it is time to adjust the mind itself." After that, my grandpa came rushing out of the store with a bag of supplies and we returned to the house. Upon returning to the house, we noticed that grandma was not inside. We were concerned and started searching around the yard. Suddenly, she jumped out of the bushes and started clawing at me and trying to strangle me. I threw her off of me, and ran. Grandpa and I got back in the car and decided to go to my father's house for refuge and to think things over. When we arrived at my father's house we found another disturbance. I walked in and began to explain what's going on. I found my father frozen in suspended animation just staring blankly into space. In a rage, I ran back to my grandparents' house. There, the summation of all things seemed to appear before me. I saw my dog sick and dying, I saw my grandma kill my grandpa, I saw the news tell me the world was eternally drenched in darkness, my dad was gone for all intents and purposes, and I felt like my life was going to be forever sucked into destruction and despair. Then something struck me. I wanted to rise up out of this chaos and overcome it. All of these things struck a change into me. I also had a darker ambition. I wanted to kill whoever was responsible. Then I began to hear a disturbing chant outside. They were saying Alleluiahaha. I have no idea what it means. However, this struck great fear into me. I started running. Running where I do not know. I was in a blind sprint torn between anger, confusion, and fear. All I could see was a bunch of dark shadowy figures chasing me saying this Alleluiahaha over and over again. I ran through one of the temporal barriers, I did not care where or when I ended up. What appeared before me was a black archway that appeared to be made out of onyx with a bunch of symbols inscribed on it. I examined the structure quickly, because the figures were passing through the barrier and gaining on me. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of them. They moved as one huge amorphous black mass. The only way I could tell them apart was by the army of dark red eyes I saw approaching. I touched the archway, perhaps by accident, perhaps by instinct. The inscriptions lit up in sequence with a dark red glow. Then a black vortex of energy appeared in the archway and consumed me. Then I woke up.

I had many dreams about the Shadows. They lived in a place I called the Shadow Realm. I was in a pretty dark time spiritually during that part of my life, and my experiences with the Shadow Realm almost destroyed me. Later I learned to fight them, but I ended up losing the war. Well, I'm not sure if that helps you or not. I hope I didn't confuse you with unneccessary weirdness. These dreams were important in helping me find out about myself and learn my lessons, but I really haven't a clue what they mean.

 

[Guest]

Since our dreams were, as far as I can tell, the same, I was wondering if anyone else has had a similiar dream. Or, if anyone can give me any insight into it, as I said it was so vivid and I knew these beings were looking for me.

I new someone in college who used to draw scetches of these beings. Others who used to do role playing games would conjure similar images, the grey robes, the swirling mist, the processions, usually representing some kind of "evil" disembodied priesthood in the games.

These manifestations are obviously not unique, and I have heard of shadow-people before. In fact there is a thread here that provides some links at the end:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=2197

I also notice that such encounters are not uncommon in the dreams of children. They may be dream interpretations of children sensing psychopathy in their environment or they may be contact with a reality that is not physical (a dreamplane), and it is likely both influences play a part in the experience.

I've experienced similar things in childhood dreams, and later saw movies and read books with similar images protrayed. In some meditations years ago I would sense things moving in the room, and see shadows out of the corner of my eye, while in my mind's eye I would see robed figures moving around such as you described. This would usually coincide with encounters with vampiric psychopaths (manipulators who drain energy).

All these factors may be linked. There seems to be evidence that this is not just someone's imagination, but at the same time the form of the presentation may be symbolic of something else that cannot easily be conceptualized.

My take is that they represent the psyche sensing its integrity is threatened by something, either of a physical (but not consciously apparent) or hyperimensional nature, or both. The representation seems to be of a type of threat akin to some sort of hierarchy or a grander structure than just a lone predator. Unfortunately, it seems to be an experience that touches many vulnerable people.

 

[Laura]

It could also be just simply a dream of a "past life" event. Even though a complete materialist would say that this is not the "simplest" solution because it is absurd, if you consider reincarnation to have a high probability of being something that does happen, then it could very well be the best solution after Ockham's razor has been applied. Especially when you consider the dream of the second woman which was identical. Maybe that was an encounter with someone who you knew in that other life? Both of you were chased by the same gang of mad monks? The "essence" of the individuals chasing you would be represented by the subconscious mind in the symbols you have described.

Okay, that's one idea.

Here's another: Now, you didn't say how old you are, but the gov has been doing some really creepy things with sending out different mind programming signals across the US. So, perhaps the images were broadcast to a certain location and a number of people picked them up? To follow that idea you would have to know the dates and locations of the second woman's dreams.

And another: You and the other woman were/are part of some secret government mind programming project... (See Greenbaum).

Another: The dream is an actual event, either astral (related to spiritual elements) or in some other dimension (related to hyperdimensional realities and thus "demi-physical") and it happens to others.

What strikes me as odd about it is the fact that the same dream EXACTLY is being reported by two people. That makes me tend toward some human agency being behind it, sending out some kind of projected imagery. If it were an individual experience, there would be variances, or so I think.

 

[Laura]

If that dream is a programming then it would have been interesting to know if the other woman who had the same dream also encountered a woman who helped her to hide from these beings. If it's the case, then she would also be part of the programme. If not, then it might mean that she was a kind of "anomaly" coming in Lynne's dream to help her.

Yes, the subconscious mind can do all kinds of interesting things like that. I've had "experiences" with the robed guys with no heads, but somewhat different. They appear and try to trick me and I'm always sneaking up on them and jerking their hoods off and they run screaming.

 

[Nienna]

Thanks all for your input. Neil, that last dream you shared was truly bizarre. I can no longer remember hardly any of my dreams. I attribute that to the fact that I am now on some heavy duty medications for an illness I have. But, I'm not sure that is the reason. Laura, thanks for bringing up programming. Now I'm am truly worried. I was 3 or 4 at the time of these dreams. The other woman who had them is no longer alive. And I, too, wish I had gone back later to ask her how she quit having her dreams.

Speaking of programming. I can remember my very first memory, at least that's what I recall it as. Ever since coming upon the Cassiopaea site I have been wondering if it is a memory or a program. I hope this is not too long or boring.

I open my eyes and in an adult female voice I think (yes I could here myself think in an adult femate voice), "Am I in jail? No, no, these are the bars of a crib.....OH NO, I am back here. NO, NO THEY SAID THEY WOULDN'T SEND ME BACK HERE!!!!" The voice in my head was wailing this last part. Then, I heard here mumble to herself, "No, he said they would consider it." Then my mind went back to the time when all of this supposedly happened to.....me/her? She/I was stading in a huge room. It was so large that the ceiling was not even noticeable. Everything was in twilight. I was an adult female dress in a long dress. Behind me and to my right was a female presence. I could not see her, but I knew she was there. All around the room were a huge number of people standing and talking to each other. Some were watching what was going on between me and the group in front of me. In front of me was set up a long table in a curve. There were several people sitting there all in robes. I thing the robes were all white. They seemed to be older people. There was one main person. He seemed to be the spokesman for the group. He was asking me about my previous life. Why i did this and why I did that. I remember only a little of these questions. I supposedly did something to my husband, and my reply was that he wanted me to do it. And that seemed to be okay. But, the next part I can't remember hardly at all. I did something, or I had somebody do something and I was told by the spokesman that even though I had somebody else do it, it was as if I had done it myself. I don't know what it was, but for some reason suicide keeps coming to mine. (Because of the fuZziness of my recall I am not sure what I did.) However, it was not good. The spokesman told me that I would have to go back. All I remember then is that I was on the floor sobbing uncontrollably, begging between sobs to pleas not send me back. I had learned my lesson, I would never do it agoin. I had learned my lesson. (I repeated that several times.) All of the time I was on the floor, the female that had been standing behing me was suddenly bending down over me trying to soothe me and at the same time talking to the spokesman asking them to not send me back. Finally, I heard him say they would take it under consideration. The woman bending over me told me that it would all be okay. And then everthing went black. And I woke up in the crib. After all of these images went through my mind I realized I was again in the crib. I saw my cousin in the bedroom sweeping or mopping the floor. I recongnized here as someone I knew before, and then I started crying and the adult female presence was gone.

I have had this memory since I can remember. I don't know for sure what happened. If it was a program, what was it to accomplish? Anyway, just something else I've always wanted to share with somebody to get some feedback on it.