I am in a beautiful,large, old countryhouse - alone. I never remember entering. I wander through it. The
dream is vivid- in full colour and sensation. I can hear, smell,
touch and taste. I pick up, use and examine things that feel old but
familiar as I search the house up to the attic and then down. I
search a woman's bedroom on the 2nd floor. There is awinged pin done in bright tiny jewels, that I always seem reluctant
to put down, on a dressing table there. As I approach the cellar door
in the kitchen, foreboding and urgency to keep searching
intensifies. I light a lamp and go down the stairs to the beyond
dark cellar,moving the light to identify the coal shed door, an old
cast iron heater of some kind and another door amid the clutter of
canning and storage. I look through the cellar, open coal shed and
approach the other door. It is out of place but I can't pin down
exactly how. Its imperative I open it- but I'm too terrified to touch
the knob, much less turn it. Suddenly I'm cold to the bone. Dread
and foreboding when I reach for that doorknob wakes me - often
screaming. I can't remember the first time I had the dream; I've
had it throughout my life, leaving me very nervous and unsettled for
days. I smell a specific smell after, in my waking life, that sets
off my warning bells- the smell of mudflats at low tide. I'd never
smelled it while awake until a business trip 6 years ago.