This is the recurring dream
that began around August of 1996. At the time, we were renting a
beautiful cottage called Windy Ridge, by the sea at Loughshinny in
County Dublin.
The dream always began in the same way:
I am walking with my four children along a pathway which is a little overgrown and covered with weeds. The pathway is overshadowed to both sides by old stone buildings particularly to the left of the pathway, which runs alongside an old grey stone mansion. We reach the end of the path and looking around, see, in front of us, a huge courtyard of sorts, which encloses a very large garden in various states of disrepair.
The place is deserted and has an air of gloom and foreboding about it. Although I appreciate the beauty of it, I am filled with anxiety and unease, but the children are very excited, wanting to run off and explore. I, on the other hand look around, and feel an increasing sense of dread. I call to the children and tell them to stay together. They run and play in the garden in high spirits while I stand and gaze around by myself.
The garden, the mansion and the surrounding outbuildings always appear the same in my dream. First of all, the whole place has an abandoned and desolate feel to it. It also feels very eerie and the sense of dread begins as I enter the garden/courtyard, and continues to rise as the dream progresses.
I look around me and notice, in vivid detail, certain aspects of the garden and the exterior of the decaying house. First of all the mansion has protruding gables at each end of the house. The roof is dilapidated and a small flock of pigeons fly out in a rush from the gaps where there are tiles missing. There is a round window above the front door. Many of the windows are cracked, broken or missing altogether. There are stone steps opposite the front door leading down to a lower level of garden, where there is a broken stone fountain to the right and an old stone bench to the left. On the far left of the garden/courtyard is a building with stone turrets which remind me of a medieval castle by their appearance.
Still feeling very uneasy, I start to contemplate leaving but the children always want to explore the house and are very excited by the prospect. I on the other hand, always feel unsafe and extremely apprehensive. Terror begins to course through my veins as we enter the building.
The interior is quite dark, hallways extending to the left and to the right with many rooms off and staircases leading to upper levels. The smell in the mansion is musty and damp and the atmosphere is thick and heavy. The children urge me on. They are still in high spirits and apparently do not feel what I am feeling, they rush from one room to the next calling to each other and to me to hurry up and come and look. They laugh and romp around, oblivious to the heavy atmosphere the pervades this dark creepy place.
Some of the rooms have floorboards missing, some have a single bed with a lamp lit beside it. Other rooms are bare with cobwebs and dust and windows cracked and filthy, no sunlight can get it.
My children run around exploring the ground floor level; then all together they urge me to go up to the next floor. I refuse but they rush ahead of me anyway, clambering up the stairs as fast as they can go and so I follow, shouting at them to take care as the floor boards may be rotten. The next floor up is even more claustrophobic and the heavy atmosphere bears down upon me. There are many, many rooms. Some have great gaping holes in the rotten floorboards and doors hanging off their hinges. The passageways are dark, dingy and quite narrow. Once again, some rooms have a bed with a bedside light but most of the rooms are just decaying and abandoned.
We go through the rooms, passageways and corridors. I hate the feel of the place, and although the kids have calmed down quite a bit, they still want to explore the entire house, so we go up another floor and find more of the same abandoned and decaying rooms and passageways. My feelings of dread and terror intensify almost to fever pitch.
Finally, we reach the attic space. As we get to the top of the stairs and walk in, a small flock of pigeons that we have disturbed and startled by our presence, fly up and out of the broken roof through the gaps where the tiles are missing.
I tell the children to stay close behind and we look around in the dark attic space trying to clear our vision in the semi light. By now, my heart is pounding and I have an overwhelming sense that evil is lurking nearby. I can hardly breathe. When my eyes have adjusted to the dim light, I look around me and to my horror I see demonic and malevolent faces leering at me from the wooden rafters above. For a second I think that these are carvings in the wood, but as I look again I realise that these faces are alive. They are concealed within the wood and not carvings at all. I scream hysterically and begin to run in a panic for the stairs and the children scream in terror and run too. I’m not sure if they see the faces in the rafters or if they are screaming because I am; but nevertheless, we are all absolutely panic stricken and running for our lives. At this point I would always awaken from the dream in a very disturbed state and feel so relieved to find myself back in my own bed.
I tried to understand what the dream meant to me. Being extremely insecure at the time, I explained the dream away to myself, stating internally that I was dreaming it due to anxiety about not being able to find a more long term residence in the area. It was on my mind that this home would be very temporary and so I put this recurring dream down to the fact that I was feeling panicky about our security and didn't know when, where or how our next home would materialise. I also took the various states of disrepair of the mansion and garden to represent the many aspects of myself and my family that needed nurturing and healing. However, the dream surfaced regularly over the next few years and proved to mean so much more than I could have ever known at the time.
I will now recount another part of my story. (Only a part, because the full account of this will be found in my forthcoming new book, and, I do not yet feel this episode has ended.) It is inextricably linked to my recurring dream, and the foundation stone of my fascination with dreams and my devotion to healing and self exploration in all its many forms and expressions.
This happened several years later. By then I had met Dermot O'Hara (Shaman, and Founder of The Celtic Shamanic Institute) for a spiritual pathway reading, and subsequent healing. He invited me to participate in a weekend healing retreat at Glencree. I agreed without hesitation, but afterwards a sense of foreboding took over, and I could not decide whether to go or not. As the day drew nearer, Friday 13th November, 1998, my feelings were swinging wildly from optimism to panic and back again. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
The entry in my journal from that day says it all:
‘Very nervous. Shall I go or not - keeps up all day. In the end I decide to go but nagging doubts still invading. Go through the motions of getting ready in my head but can’t put it into practice. Get going somehow after 100s of cups of tea and fag after fag.’
I remember getting myself over to the Clondalkin Healing Centre on that Friday evening, still full of apprehension, but determined to go through with whatever the weekend presented to me.
I parked my car and went up to the centre, where many women were gathered, waiting for the private minibus that was to take us to our destination way into the mountains. I was nervous on several counts. The first was my extreme shyness around strangers, and secondly, the drive
up the mountains which I had been imagining as a terrifying journey at top speed around hairpin bends and sheer cliffs with the danger of the bus skidding out of control and killing us all. The reality of the journey couldn’t have been further removed from my wild imaginings.
An elderly man drove us up, at a top speed of 20mph. The journey took a long time, but the worst that happened was that, my ears kept popping due to the change in altitude! Eventually, we arrived at Glencree about 9pm, and made our way to the reception area where we signed in. I remember that I was number thirteen on the list of participants and it was Friday the 13th (lucky for some - especially for me it seems), and although I felt a little more relaxed, I was still full of fear and felt very unsure of myself. The other participants seemed to know each other quite well, but made sure of including me in their conversation and jokes. There was one woman, Eileen, from the Port Laois area who seemed very familiar, although I had never met her before in this life. We immediately felt drawn to each other and spent a great deal of time talking about our lives and our experiences. We found we had much in common. I felt that we may have known each other from a past life, but no memories or images surfaced, so it remained a feeling rather than a vision of any kind.
The dream always began in the same way:
I am walking with my four children along a pathway which is a little overgrown and covered with weeds. The pathway is overshadowed to both sides by old stone buildings particularly to the left of the pathway, which runs alongside an old grey stone mansion. We reach the end of the path and looking around, see, in front of us, a huge courtyard of sorts, which encloses a very large garden in various states of disrepair.
The place is deserted and has an air of gloom and foreboding about it. Although I appreciate the beauty of it, I am filled with anxiety and unease, but the children are very excited, wanting to run off and explore. I, on the other hand look around, and feel an increasing sense of dread. I call to the children and tell them to stay together. They run and play in the garden in high spirits while I stand and gaze around by myself.
The garden, the mansion and the surrounding outbuildings always appear the same in my dream. First of all, the whole place has an abandoned and desolate feel to it. It also feels very eerie and the sense of dread begins as I enter the garden/courtyard, and continues to rise as the dream progresses.
I look around me and notice, in vivid detail, certain aspects of the garden and the exterior of the decaying house. First of all the mansion has protruding gables at each end of the house. The roof is dilapidated and a small flock of pigeons fly out in a rush from the gaps where there are tiles missing. There is a round window above the front door. Many of the windows are cracked, broken or missing altogether. There are stone steps opposite the front door leading down to a lower level of garden, where there is a broken stone fountain to the right and an old stone bench to the left. On the far left of the garden/courtyard is a building with stone turrets which remind me of a medieval castle by their appearance.
Still feeling very uneasy, I start to contemplate leaving but the children always want to explore the house and are very excited by the prospect. I on the other hand, always feel unsafe and extremely apprehensive. Terror begins to course through my veins as we enter the building.
The interior is quite dark, hallways extending to the left and to the right with many rooms off and staircases leading to upper levels. The smell in the mansion is musty and damp and the atmosphere is thick and heavy. The children urge me on. They are still in high spirits and apparently do not feel what I am feeling, they rush from one room to the next calling to each other and to me to hurry up and come and look. They laugh and romp around, oblivious to the heavy atmosphere the pervades this dark creepy place.
Some of the rooms have floorboards missing, some have a single bed with a lamp lit beside it. Other rooms are bare with cobwebs and dust and windows cracked and filthy, no sunlight can get it.
My children run around exploring the ground floor level; then all together they urge me to go up to the next floor. I refuse but they rush ahead of me anyway, clambering up the stairs as fast as they can go and so I follow, shouting at them to take care as the floor boards may be rotten. The next floor up is even more claustrophobic and the heavy atmosphere bears down upon me. There are many, many rooms. Some have great gaping holes in the rotten floorboards and doors hanging off their hinges. The passageways are dark, dingy and quite narrow. Once again, some rooms have a bed with a bedside light but most of the rooms are just decaying and abandoned.
We go through the rooms, passageways and corridors. I hate the feel of the place, and although the kids have calmed down quite a bit, they still want to explore the entire house, so we go up another floor and find more of the same abandoned and decaying rooms and passageways. My feelings of dread and terror intensify almost to fever pitch.
Finally, we reach the attic space. As we get to the top of the stairs and walk in, a small flock of pigeons that we have disturbed and startled by our presence, fly up and out of the broken roof through the gaps where the tiles are missing.
I tell the children to stay close behind and we look around in the dark attic space trying to clear our vision in the semi light. By now, my heart is pounding and I have an overwhelming sense that evil is lurking nearby. I can hardly breathe. When my eyes have adjusted to the dim light, I look around me and to my horror I see demonic and malevolent faces leering at me from the wooden rafters above. For a second I think that these are carvings in the wood, but as I look again I realise that these faces are alive. They are concealed within the wood and not carvings at all. I scream hysterically and begin to run in a panic for the stairs and the children scream in terror and run too. I’m not sure if they see the faces in the rafters or if they are screaming because I am; but nevertheless, we are all absolutely panic stricken and running for our lives. At this point I would always awaken from the dream in a very disturbed state and feel so relieved to find myself back in my own bed.
I tried to understand what the dream meant to me. Being extremely insecure at the time, I explained the dream away to myself, stating internally that I was dreaming it due to anxiety about not being able to find a more long term residence in the area. It was on my mind that this home would be very temporary and so I put this recurring dream down to the fact that I was feeling panicky about our security and didn't know when, where or how our next home would materialise. I also took the various states of disrepair of the mansion and garden to represent the many aspects of myself and my family that needed nurturing and healing. However, the dream surfaced regularly over the next few years and proved to mean so much more than I could have ever known at the time.
I will now recount another part of my story. (Only a part, because the full account of this will be found in my forthcoming new book, and, I do not yet feel this episode has ended.) It is inextricably linked to my recurring dream, and the foundation stone of my fascination with dreams and my devotion to healing and self exploration in all its many forms and expressions.
This happened several years later. By then I had met Dermot O'Hara (Shaman, and Founder of The Celtic Shamanic Institute) for a spiritual pathway reading, and subsequent healing. He invited me to participate in a weekend healing retreat at Glencree. I agreed without hesitation, but afterwards a sense of foreboding took over, and I could not decide whether to go or not. As the day drew nearer, Friday 13th November, 1998, my feelings were swinging wildly from optimism to panic and back again. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
The entry in my journal from that day says it all:
‘Very nervous. Shall I go or not - keeps up all day. In the end I decide to go but nagging doubts still invading. Go through the motions of getting ready in my head but can’t put it into practice. Get going somehow after 100s of cups of tea and fag after fag.’
I remember getting myself over to the Clondalkin Healing Centre on that Friday evening, still full of apprehension, but determined to go through with whatever the weekend presented to me.
I parked my car and went up to the centre, where many women were gathered, waiting for the private minibus that was to take us to our destination way into the mountains. I was nervous on several counts. The first was my extreme shyness around strangers, and secondly, the drive
up the mountains which I had been imagining as a terrifying journey at top speed around hairpin bends and sheer cliffs with the danger of the bus skidding out of control and killing us all. The reality of the journey couldn’t have been further removed from my wild imaginings.
An elderly man drove us up, at a top speed of 20mph. The journey took a long time, but the worst that happened was that, my ears kept popping due to the change in altitude! Eventually, we arrived at Glencree about 9pm, and made our way to the reception area where we signed in. I remember that I was number thirteen on the list of participants and it was Friday the 13th (lucky for some - especially for me it seems), and although I felt a little more relaxed, I was still full of fear and felt very unsure of myself. The other participants seemed to know each other quite well, but made sure of including me in their conversation and jokes. There was one woman, Eileen, from the Port Laois area who seemed very familiar, although I had never met her before in this life. We immediately felt drawn to each other and spent a great deal of time talking about our lives and our experiences. We found we had much in common. I felt that we may have known each other from a past life, but no memories or images surfaced, so it remained a feeling rather than a vision of any kind.
 | I loved Glencree from the
moment I set foot there. The energy of the place touched me immediately
and I remember a feeling of excitement and hope swept through me. I
felt something wonderful was going to happen, but I didn’t know what. I
would like to point out at this stage that when we arrived, it was 9pm
on a winters’ night. It was dark and very cold, so we spent that first
evening in the beautiful meditation room in the annexe, where Dermot
had facilitated many healing weekends previously. |
The
healing/meditation room was very special. The atmosphere was so warm and inviting, and I could see bright rainbow sparks of energy flying all around the room. There were many armchairs and sofas with colourful patchwork throws, and a huge mural covering an entire wall of the room - again - colourful and beautiful. Just being in that room was a magical and healing experience.
The accommodation was dormitory style. This I wasn’t too sure of as I had never slept in a dormitory before, and I didn’t relish the idea of spending the night with a group of strangers, but again, I relaxed and began to enjoy myself and the company of the other women, although I didn’t join in much in the conversation. I still felt too vulnerable. I preferred to stick with one to one conversations, with Eileen, or whoever else approached me for a chat. I didn’t feel safe in group situations and kept myself to myself for the most part.
Despite stories from the regular workshop participants of ghostly figures, and a cat spirit that used to stalk the dormitory in the middle of the night, I slept very well on that first night, and awoke early on the Saturday morning, feeling very hungry and longing for a cup of tea. I showered and dressed and left the annexe to make my way over to the dining room area in the main building that had been described to me by one of the women.
I can remember leaving the annexe in bright sunshine, feeling so good, and with a feeling of magic and anticipation coursing through my veins. I turned the corner of the building, paused to light a cigarette and noticed in front of me a large courtyard/garden area. Over to my left was an enormous mansion of old granite stone - semi derelict - and as I stopped to look around me more closely, a small flock of pigeons flew up out of the gaps in the roof where tiles were missing, just as in my dream. I must have looked quite strange, standing there with my mouth open, my eyes like saucers and my hands clutching the sides of my face in disbelief, for there was the round window above the front door of this building, the two prominent gable ends, the stone steps leading down to the lower garden area, the broken fountain, the old stone bench and the strange turret effect stonework on one of the outbuildings opposite. Here was the place in my recurring dreams. Here was the place that I had been to many times before in my dream-time. I could not comprehend this. It was too strange, too miraculous, too mind blowing. I looked around me, and then rushed off to find Dermot or Eileen. I just had to tell someone.
I was bursting with excitement; my mind full of questions. Had I been here before in a past life, or had I astral travelled here over and over again? Had the Universe sent me these images, so that I would know that I was in the right place at the right time and if so, why did the dreams have such a nightmarish quality about them? Why were my children always in the dreams and why did I always encounter evil, demonic energies and faces in the attic of the main house? Some of these questions have remained unanswered for many years. but are now becoming clear in a very positive way.
It was not possible to get into the main building (the mansion in my dream) at that time, as it was sealed and fenced off, due to being unsafe, but I recognised it very well and had no desire to go looking around in all those creepy, musty rooms with their heavy energies and rotting floorboards. I was curious to see more, but thankfully, did not allow my curiosity to get the better of me on that occasion. I often wonder what would have happened had I managed to gain access to that old building. However, I had enough to do trying to contain my thoughts and feelings about this whole strange episode of my life and how events and coincidence - or should I say - synchronicities - had all colluded for the purpose of leading me to this place that I had dreamt about over and over again. I wondered, did the dream present itself as a nightmare in order to capture my attention, in such a dramatic way that I would not forget.
Sometimes, nightmares have a certain way of capturing ones’ attention far more effectively than a pleasant dream experience would. At that time I had no idea why I had to find my way to Glencree, but I did know that the first weekend I spent there was one of the most magical experiences I had ever encountered. It was a spellbinding adventure. I was on cloud nine for
the entire weekend, and for many weeks afterwards. Glencree has played a huge part in my development, psychically, emotionally, spiritually, and in every other conceivable way.
The accommodation was dormitory style. This I wasn’t too sure of as I had never slept in a dormitory before, and I didn’t relish the idea of spending the night with a group of strangers, but again, I relaxed and began to enjoy myself and the company of the other women, although I didn’t join in much in the conversation. I still felt too vulnerable. I preferred to stick with one to one conversations, with Eileen, or whoever else approached me for a chat. I didn’t feel safe in group situations and kept myself to myself for the most part.
Despite stories from the regular workshop participants of ghostly figures, and a cat spirit that used to stalk the dormitory in the middle of the night, I slept very well on that first night, and awoke early on the Saturday morning, feeling very hungry and longing for a cup of tea. I showered and dressed and left the annexe to make my way over to the dining room area in the main building that had been described to me by one of the women.
I can remember leaving the annexe in bright sunshine, feeling so good, and with a feeling of magic and anticipation coursing through my veins. I turned the corner of the building, paused to light a cigarette and noticed in front of me a large courtyard/garden area. Over to my left was an enormous mansion of old granite stone - semi derelict - and as I stopped to look around me more closely, a small flock of pigeons flew up out of the gaps in the roof where tiles were missing, just as in my dream. I must have looked quite strange, standing there with my mouth open, my eyes like saucers and my hands clutching the sides of my face in disbelief, for there was the round window above the front door of this building, the two prominent gable ends, the stone steps leading down to the lower garden area, the broken fountain, the old stone bench and the strange turret effect stonework on one of the outbuildings opposite. Here was the place in my recurring dreams. Here was the place that I had been to many times before in my dream-time. I could not comprehend this. It was too strange, too miraculous, too mind blowing. I looked around me, and then rushed off to find Dermot or Eileen. I just had to tell someone.
I was bursting with excitement; my mind full of questions. Had I been here before in a past life, or had I astral travelled here over and over again? Had the Universe sent me these images, so that I would know that I was in the right place at the right time and if so, why did the dreams have such a nightmarish quality about them? Why were my children always in the dreams and why did I always encounter evil, demonic energies and faces in the attic of the main house? Some of these questions have remained unanswered for many years. but are now becoming clear in a very positive way.
It was not possible to get into the main building (the mansion in my dream) at that time, as it was sealed and fenced off, due to being unsafe, but I recognised it very well and had no desire to go looking around in all those creepy, musty rooms with their heavy energies and rotting floorboards. I was curious to see more, but thankfully, did not allow my curiosity to get the better of me on that occasion. I often wonder what would have happened had I managed to gain access to that old building. However, I had enough to do trying to contain my thoughts and feelings about this whole strange episode of my life and how events and coincidence - or should I say - synchronicities - had all colluded for the purpose of leading me to this place that I had dreamt about over and over again. I wondered, did the dream present itself as a nightmare in order to capture my attention, in such a dramatic way that I would not forget.
Sometimes, nightmares have a certain way of capturing ones’ attention far more effectively than a pleasant dream experience would. At that time I had no idea why I had to find my way to Glencree, but I did know that the first weekend I spent there was one of the most magical experiences I had ever encountered. It was a spellbinding adventure. I was on cloud nine for
the entire weekend, and for many weeks afterwards. Glencree has played a huge part in my development, psychically, emotionally, spiritually, and in every other conceivable way.
 | You can read the full story in my forthcoming book, Earth Kin, to be published soon. |
