Issue 59, July 2003
Bumps in the Night
©Jane Teresa Anderson, July 2003
"Shhh! Don't get up!", Michael whispered in the middle of the night, pulling me back into bed. The urgency in his voice overcame my urgency to visit the bathroom. "There's someone in the house. I heard them open the door and they're moving around downstairs."
I waited in the bedroom while Michael searched the house. No-one. Nothing.
The mystery was solved over the next few nights. Possums were jumping from the surrounding trees onto our gutters, playing chase and scratching their sharp claws on our cool tin roof. This was two years ago and we had just moved into this house. On the verge of moving house again, the bumps have returned. Only this time there are no possums.
One morning last week Michael had an early appointment. I decided to sleep in. I was home alone. I dreamed I was on holiday by the sea, travelling by taxi. One moment I was in the taxi, the next moment I was enjoying walking along the same road. Suddenly I was confused. I could clearly remember riding in the taxi and now I was walking, but I couldn't remember getting out of the taxi.
This really began to bug me in the dream. It just didn't make sense. (The point where you start to get logical in a dream is the point where you can springboard into lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is where you realise you are dreaming but you choose to stay in the dream and control the dream drama. I missed the point though. Instead of making the link between the impossibility of my experience and dreaming, I struggled on with the impossible dream task of seeking a logical explanation for the magical disappearance of my taxi.)
In the end I decided my walk was an illusion and that I must still be in the taxi. It seemed important to get back to reality, so I focussed my mind on being back in the taxi. With success! I landed in the seat with a jolting bump - and woke up in the same instance because I was certain that Michael had just got back into bed. The mattress had resonated to the bump as he climbed back into bed and I wondered why he had returned from his appointment early.
I opened my eyes. I was alone.
But I was so sure that the bump in the bed had been real. Or had it?
In my effort to get back into my dream taxi, had I flexed my body and somehow squeezed enough movement to thump myself down on the mattress? Or had I projected the dream feeling, as I was waking up, onto my waking life environment? Had I externalised the bump from my dream onto the bed and then concluded the most rational explanation for the bump - that Michael had returned to bed?
And what about those more notorious bumps in the night - ghosts and apparitions - who populate the twilight zone between waking and dreaming? Are they real or are they the spirits of your dreams projected onto your bedroom scene by your sleepy brain in the same way that my dream landing in my dream taxi was translated by my waking brain as Michael getting into bed beside me?
This phenomenon is known as hypnopompic hallucination. When you open your eyes while you are dreaming, your eyes transmit a picture of your bedroom to your brain and this is then superimposed onto your dream images. Because your eyes are open, your brain decides the mix of images is situated in the bedroom. So you see the ghost in your room. Or, half awake, you feel the bump in your bed.
In the light of such bumps in the night just how certain can we be about the reality of our waking life?
We translate our waking life according to our experience, and if we have no relevant experience, we translate according to mystery.
Never heard possums playing on the roof? Well, that's the sound of intruders (your experience) or witches' trailing their broomsticks (mystery).
Never jumped yourself out of sleep? Well, that's the bump of your partner getting into bed (your experience) or your body landing on the bed after astral travelling (mystery).
Never met Jack Smith before? Well, you can see in his eyes and his body language that he's just like your ex (your experience) or your perfect dream lover (mystery).
What we encounter in our waking world tells us more about ourselves than it does about reality - unless, of course, that reality is you.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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