The
name for this story is a bit of a misnomer. I am not sure everything I
will chronicle here was a dream. More to the point, there is a part of
me that is convinced that these nightmarish experiences breached the barrier
between dreams and reality. It began in my room at my parent's house. The
lights were out. The door was closed. I was resting in bed. There was a
chill in the air that seemed to grow suddenly more intense. I heard something
and was suddenly gripped by a paralyzing fear. It was little more than
a whisper, but it was definitely a voice. My eyes were closed tight. I
feigned sleep. I knew that none of the family was in the room. This voice
was either imagined in my head or there was something supernatural happening.
In either case, I wanted no part of it. I was tired. The whispering voice
grew louder and more insistent. It was calling my name.
Drawing out the vowels, it cried out, "Joe-- Joe-- Joe-- Joe-- Joe-- Joe-- You're mine now. Joe-- You're mine now." The voice seemed somehow familiar. Could it be from that imaginary friend I had as a child, a friend who proved himself a foe, causing a small child to run to his mother in fright? I was a teenager now, having just received scholarships and grants for a year to college. I had yet to hear from the vocation director about whether or not I would be accepted into the seminary. That would change my plans a great deal. I felt so unworthy. I doubted they would ever take me. I fell asleep and dreamed. I dreamed of a brick building with a large rectangular tower. The landscape was covered in snow. Where was I? I had never seen this place. My vision shifted. I was suddenly seeing myself in a church. Was I a priest? I was putting on the chasuble and found it too big. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by it. It covered me, buried me under the shimmering green material. I awoke.
Telling no one about the dream, I began to pray. It was all so very disturbing. What did it all mean? Years later I would interpret that night as my own personal struggle over inadequacy. Adding to the complex inner struggle was a spiritual one. It may be somewhat presumptuous, but I think God, or at least one of his messengers, and the devil were wrestling over my soul.
As things would turn out, within two weeks of the end of my summer vacation, the call came from the archdiocese giving me the wonderful news. I had been accepted into the seminary. When I exited my uncle's car at the back door of the seminary building, I stared in utter surprise. The building was precisely the one I had seen in my dream a month earlier-- a place I had never heard about until informed by the vocation director.
I did well in my studies at the college down the hill from the seminary. Although, I must admit that I was a naive about many things, modest to an unhealthy degree, and unlearned in rituals and things religious. Even serving the Mass caused a degree of unrest. My relationships with the other men tended to be good, although there was one fellow who from day one seemed out to get me. He had much in the way of material things and poked fun at my poverty. He was a Polish boy studying for the Altoona-Johnstown diocese. One day, while we were waiting on the bus at the college for the return trip to the seminary, he maligned me and in an instant of exceptional vulgarity, insulted my mother whom he did not even know. The Franciscan brothers with whom we attended classes looked on with some degree of concern. However, they made no move to correct him. I had had enough.
"Okay, Bob," I said, "I've had enough of this, step outside the bus with me."
"Why?" he inquired, "laughing in short nervous bursts and looking around."
"Because I am going to knock the sh-t out of you." I was amazed at the calmness in my voice. I stood up, ready to go.
"Come on," I directed.
The bus was parked directly before the campus chapel. Oh well, this was still something that had to be done. He was bigger than me, but I would give it my best shot.
He stood up. However, instead of heading for the door he raced to the back of the bus with his hands over his face sobbing like a baby. "I'm going to tell on you!" He disappeared to the back. I could not believe this. He was a twenty year old man. Goodness! A Franciscan brother was suddenly patting me on the back, "Good work Joe, it was past time somebody did that." I sat back down. It was no victory. A bloody fight would have been better. I shamed him in front of everyone. The guilt rained down upon me, despite the accolades of others. I was deeply troubled. As it would turn out, this young man would not return to the seminary after Christmas. He moved into one of the dorms on campus and later denied to girls that he had ever been in the seminary.
I had a fitful time trying to sleep. My journal entry for that night, October 18, 1978, details a frightful continuation of the earlier spiritual and emotional battle of several months previous. It reads:
It is about 1:00 AM in the morning. This night has been made difficult by a series of bad dreams; and yet, they seemed more real than the usual nightmare. There are some many features about them, I hardly know where to begin in chronicling them.
I heard voices outside my second-floor window as well as a constant whispering outside my door. There seemed to be no escape from them. They were conniving about something. I think they were after me. Next, I noticed an extremely heavy pounding of water outside my window. The sound seemed to ease me at first. Later, I was unsettled to discover that there had been no rain.
The tormenting dream sequences seemed to last as long as several days. Nevertheless, I had gone to bed at 11:30 PM, only an hour-and-a-half earlier. During parts of my nocturnal experiences, I heard the rhythm of a drum and a hellish chanting, something like, "Beedulah, Beedulah, ahoo, Beedulah". For a while I imagined I was dying. Then I could feel a long dark hand grab me, trying to pull me from the bed, to the floor, to something below the floor (the dark fires below?). I was not sure I could move. I felt the presence of several others in my room-- they were not human, at least not mortal. Looking around, I spotted one of the non-human figures. He had short hair, was white in complexion, and wore a regular shirt and pants. He was rampaging through my room, stealing things. My eyes were heavy, but I forced them fully open. Another presence which seemed friendly was also in the room. However, I did not know him. When I looked at him directly, he vanished and the other character was somehow freed to come at me. He tried to strangle me and I blacked out.
I experienced false awakenings as many as twenty times. I reached out but could not get the lights to work! Men dark as coal seemed to be trying to break through my window. They saw me and joked. They shouted something about the statue of the Virgin Mary in the window, as if it disturbed them. Their language was guttural and broken. It was hard to understand them. Once I remembered awakening and finding the room cast in a very faint light. My desk and walls were blank-- empty-- even the statue of Virgin Mary was missing from the window; this caused me particular concern. I opened the door once and something ran into me, pushing me back into the darkness of my room. There was an intense feeling of being misplaced. Something seemed to be attacking the seminary, looking for me. Gangster-like figures appeared in my room who seemed to move like lightening in their swiftness. I found myself transported to a hall somewhere, perhaps on the abandoned floor? I was talking again to that unfamiliar friend. The gangster men appeared and shot me. I fell unconscious. I found myself in the hallway again. The men reappeared and I ran down the hall. They shot me again-- oh, the pain. I felt every pellet. Oddly, the shots seemed to come from the direction ahead of me, not behind me where it should have come. In the darkness someone tried to fit me into a wooden box, a casket? I begin to pray and they had to cease their efforts. A third time they came. Yes, it all happened again. I "wished" the figure I counted a friend would do something, even if he had to block the bullet. Suddenly he did so.
The worst of the nightmare was a sense of falling. All was darkness. A voice, like a whisper emerged from the abyss below me. It was the same voice I had heard months earlier, "Joe-- Joe-- You're mine now! Joe-- Joe-- You're mine now!" Over and over, the voice spoke these words of doom. I had no doubt that the voice was demonic. My guilt over the incident with Bob earlier in the day rushed upon me. The voice harkened, "Joe-- You're mine now." I felt I would hit bottom at any moment and that it would spell my end. I started to say the Hail Mary. Immediately something reached into my mind and blocked the words. I resorted to repeating the salutation of the prayer, beckoning Mary's assistance. "Hail, Mary! Hail, Mary! Hail, Mary," I must have called out these words fifty times. I felt the evil one's grip loosening. Suddenly, just as I knew I was going to hit bottom, the words of the prayer were returned to me, "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee." Along with these words my descent ended and I awakened in my bed.
Was it all just a dream? I awoke drenched in sweat. I reached for the light switch. It was not there. Oh no, was I still dreaming? I fumbled around and turned on my desk lamp. Looking around I notice that my bed had moved across the room. The curtains which I had left opened were now closed. Opening the curtains, I was startled by the statue of the Virgin Mary. I had always kept her looking inward, toward the room. Somehow, the statue had totally turned around and was now staring away from me, toward the window. Dear Virgin Mary, I love you and your Son, please do not forsake me. Please protect me.
Several times I awoke to find myself in bed. I would count it all as a dream and return to sleep. But, it was still going on, the nightmare continued. These interim periods themselves were filled with foreboding. Even now, I am just recovering from all that has happened. There is pain in my upper body, as if I had been engaged in vigorous exercise. The torment of it all is just now fading. I am afraid. Am I all right now? Is this all finally over? God, I am so tired! I am afraid to turn off the lights-- I could never take more of this, but will the lights on help?
Postscript: When I returned home for the Christmas break I was surprised that my baby sister had not taken over my room as I had expected. She confided with me that she had spent time in the room, but no longer would she enter it at night. My mother collaborated the fact that Helen, in utter panic, had come running out of the room late one evening. Asked why, she answered, "As I was trying to sleep I heard a voice crying out, 'Joe-- Joe-- Joe." Remember, as of that time, I had told no one of my similar experience.
A shrink would have a field day with this stuff. However, no matter whether it had supernatural implications or was merely the imaginative expressions of a boy's insecurities, there is a lesson to be learned. An abiding and true trust in Mary and Jesus will always be a defense against the demons we create for ourselves and those sent to torment us.