Haunt Haunted

Memories, feelings, guilt, which haunt us, or parts of the wider awareness of the unconscious which attempt to communicate. What communicates can sometimes be the husks or influences from past traumas or events, which have been emptied of hurt and real influence, but still affect us as habit patterns. They can also be fantasies, hopes, longings we have given time to, and so filled with our life and sexual energy, and which now influence us. See ghoul; ghost

Also we are so programmed by what our parents fear or believe that we carry these into us and are haunted by them in our dreams. Our emotions can cause much suffering, and unless one can uncover the roots of such despair, it may feel as if one were bewitched, haunted or cursed by such feelings. Or it may be that rather than darkness, one is haunted by the dreams of ideal and wonderful love that only lead one on to misery – a sort of chimera or mirage that tempts but provides no reality. Unless we can come to terms with what is behind the haunting images of death we meet in waking and in our dreams, we fail to live fully and daringly. This is because we are too troubled by death lurking in the shadows of injury and the unknown.

Example: I dreamt I was aiming to get out of a house. I had a feeling it was deserted, and I was pulling my dad with me. My father looked tall and thin and rather worse for wear, so I had to support him – and at the same time I knew it was me I was pulling along. We had to pass through a room to get to the front door. As we entered the room I had a feeling it was haunted in some way – there was a sort of heavy threatening feeling about it. I got the door open to the front door but my father was gone – disappeared. In his place was a young woman about late twenties; so I caught her arm and pulled her out of the building.

When he explored his dream the result he got was – It was that the old deserted building was representation of an old way of life and attitudes I had lived in years passed – that was why it was deserted. The heavy atmosphere and haunting of the room was a hangover of depression and negative thinking I used to have that could still be felt at times. And my father/me was an attitude or view of myself I have at times, one of a worn out old man. I was in a hurry to get out of the building into the sunlit street. My father/me disappearing was that I had let go of that attitude, and the woman depicted opportunity to love.

Useful questions and hints:

Does this represent a particular old memory, fear, or piece of the past that ‘haunts’, or keeps coming back to me?

Does it indicate dread of the unknown? If so what is it you dread?

Do I have things from the past that I have tried to bury or forget about?

See: Spirits – Hallucination – Life’s Little Secrets – Dreaming of Death – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams