I Share a Dream

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “I Share a Dream.” Listen to this episode.

A scary shared dream with a mysterious message and a paranormal push. What could our neighbor be trying to tell us from the other side? Welcome to Episode 33 of My True Ghost Stories. Last week's episode was about my oldest daughter and our experience with a trapped spirit at a local church. And I have three daughters and they are all like me connected to the other side.

One of the reasons we all share these intuitive gifts, my daughters and me, is that I believe this sort of thing runs in families. And also I believe that my daughters were raised in a house, my house, where this sort of thing is discussed openly. And they were taught by me, maybe not everyone, but they were taught by me, that the other side exists and my daughters were raised to trust their intuition. Today's story is about a shared visitation dream that my second daughter and I had. And a visitation dream is defined as a vivid realistic dream where a deceased person appears and interacts with the dreamer.

We live in a house on a residential block in a small neighborhood in New York City, and despite being in the big city, this little neighborhood has a very small town feel. We know most people who live on our block, we recognize each other's cars, put each other's garbage cans back after trash pickup day, people sit out on the stoop and say, how do each other as they walk by? Plus there's the gossip, which is a downside to this type of community, and there is the lack of anonymity. I know many people move from a small town to the big city to enjoy anonymity, but nobody is going to get anonymity on my block. But the upsides of living in this kind of community, to me, definitely outweigh the downsides.

There is the sense of community, the welcoming of new neighbors, the support of elderly neighbors. And one of my favorite aspects to this tiny town vibe is the safety. There is safety in community where there is a general sense of people watching out for each other. And my block has the extreme version of that safety. My block has that old-fashioned best of all super effective security system of people sitting on their stoop or looking out their window all day watching, watching all the comings and goings of their neighbors who they know personally, their neighbors' guests, their deliveries, outfits, pets, cars.

And I know that for many of you out there, this sounds absolutely horrible. A street where everyone is in your business. Some of you I know ran screaming from your small towns and moved to a city block somewhere far away with thousands of apartments specifically to get away from this very thing, these nosy neighbors. But for me, the pros outweigh the cons. To me, this is heavenly, this not being alone.

I've lived in both types of situations and this type of neighborhood, with the people watching is what I prefer. I love the support that one gets from these type of neighbors. I've put a link to a cute video about this type of surveillance and the show notes. Before I moved to this block that I live on now, I lived in an apartment nearby on the exact same type of block. And there was a group of grandmas who used to sit out on the porch or stoop, as we call it, in New York City, across from my apartment and observe everything that was going on on the block all day long.

And I would always stop by to chat when I passed. I appreciated their welcoming conversations and their support, although I was never invited to sit with them. My year, I was nine months pregnant with my first child, and it was the summer, and I had been forcing myself to go out for a walk every day. And as I slowly waddled across the street, I heard the grandmas behind me shouting, Oh, honey, the ninth month is the worst. You see, support.

And also not always support, sometimes just observation. On that same block after I'd had that baby, and had also just recently learned how to drive, I was on the block trying to parallel park my car. Which is a hard thing to do when you're new to driving. Nobody is a better parker than me now, but back then, not so much. So I was trying to maneuver my way into the spot when I tapped the car behind me while reversing.

And I rolled around in my seat to see if the grandmas were watching. And I breathed a sigh of relief to see that the grandma porch was empty. I turned off the car, took a glance at that car behind me, no marks, thank God, and I went inside. The next day, I was out walking with the baby and the stroller, and I stopped by to say hi to the grandmas on the porch. We exchanged some pleasant conversation about the baby, and then the main grandma, the one whose porch it was, said.

In a somewhat more serious tone, she said, you know, when you were parking yesterday afternoon, and she motioned toward my car, which was still in that same spot, she said, you didn't need to reverse so far. You are in. Well, I was so embarrassed. I guess she had been watching me park yesterday from her window and had seen me tap that car behind me. Although she didn't say as much, she was letting me know she saw it.

Oh, okay, thanks, I said, and walked away. Lesson learned. Even if you can't see the watchdogs, they are still watching. But I felt a little afraid of the grandmas now. Right after baby number two, we bought a house about five blocks away in the same neighborhood, the house I live in now.

A week or two before we moved, I walked over to the grandmar porch with my double stroller, and I told the grandmas that I was moving, but I would still see them on my walks to the park, which was about a half a block away from them. They wished me good luck on the move, and I thought I would miss the watchdogs. Sort of. Two weeks later, we had a big troublesome move from the apartment to the new house with a seriously inefficient moving company, a toddler, a colloquy three-month-old, and the work on the house that the contractor had promised would be done by today was not done. We were sort of able to set up camp in the finished basement, which was going to be a drag, but at least we were in.

The next day, I unearthed the double stroller from under some boxes and headed out to explore our new block, and maybe meet some neighbors. Standing at the bottom of the steps on the sidewalk in front of my new house with two kids in the stroller, I decided to walk to the right, and we passed about three houses, and there, standing in his airy way, leaning against his front fence, looking around, was a big tall man. He greeted us and said, boy, those movers of yours yesterday were terrible, and your contractor isn't finished yet. I didn't need to ask how he knew. From this simple statement to me, I knew that his was the grandma porch of this block.

He was this block's watchdog. I'm going to call him Joe, for this episode. Joe was almost always out in front of his house, leaning forward on his fence, chatting with neighbors and watching, watching, watching. He knew a lot about us, just through conversation and the constant observing, but we didn't know much about him. I didn't know that sometimes we wouldn't see him outside of his house for a few days, or even a week, but he would then reappear and tell us that he had been in the hospital.

He wouldn't give many details, but we knew that he had some health problems. He became a regular part of my day, walking down the block with the kids, stopping for a minute to chat with Joe, and then going on our way. And he would still be there when we got back, and he was not a gossip. He would, like the grandma's, only mention things that involved me. My daughters got to know him also, stopping to say hi as they walked to school or to a friend's house as they got older.

In one year, we went away for the whole month of August for a vacation. And when we got back, we did not see Joe. And after a few days, another neighbor of ours told us that Joe had passed away in early August. We were very sad to hear this. We had missed the funeral and we had not gotten to say goodbye.

In our house, we occupy two floors of a three-story house, and we have bedrooms on both floors. My bedroom is right over my daughters, who I'm calling Amanda. One night, about a year after Joe had passed away, I had a dream. And it was a visitation dream, not a regular dream. As I said, in the beginning of this episode, visitation dreams are realistic and vivid dreams where you communicate or interact with a deceased person.

And I, after this dream, also had what some would call a paranormal experience. In this visitation dream, a tall, blonde woman was coming toward me. But I knew it was Joe. She was tall like Joe, and I just knew it was him. And she walked angrily toward me and started yelling, get out.

You don't belong here. Get out! Which was not what I would have ever expected from my friendly polite neighbor, Joe. And then the paranormal experience I told you about, I was awoken from this dream with the very real sensation of someone pushing my arm repeatedly. Which continued after I was fully awake, the feeling of someone pushing me.

I was so scared. I was scared of being yelled at by Joe. And I was scared of being pushed by an unseen presence that I also knew was Joe. Despite the spooky nature of this experience, I was also shaken that the spirit of Joe, in whatever this incarnation, this woman was, would be so angry at me. To the point where he was yelling, get out.

You don't belong here. He had always been a friendly, comforting presence, so this did not make sense to me. I turned on a light for comfort and thank all the pushing had stopped, and I was eventually able to get back to sleep. As I said, my bedroom is directly over my daughter Amanda's. That next morning, the morning after I had my dream about Joe, Amanda, who was about 10 at that time, came upstairs.

She was upset. Mom, I had the scariest dream last night, she said. And I did not tell her right away that I had had a scary dream as well. I asked her to tell me about her dream. She told me there was this big tall blonde woman, but I think it was actually Joe from down the block.

And it wasn't like a regular dream. It seemed real. Amanda went on. This tall blonde woman, who was really Joe, was on top of an old splintering picnic table, and she was really distressed. And there were crumbs on the table, and she was so hungry that she was licking the table to get the crumbs.

Even though she might get splinters in her tongue. I listened and told her about my dream. About a big tall blonde woman, who I knew was Joe, who was yelling at me to get out and physically pushed me. We were amazed, but not surprised. We are open to this kind of thing.

So Joe appeared to us both on the same night in a different form. This tall blonde woman, and Joe was tall, but not blonde. In Amanda's dream he was distressed, and in mine he was angry, and had gone so far as to come through to this side as a spirit to push me. I'm not a dream expert, so I looked all these dream symbols up and found some stuff. In Amanda's dream Joe was licking the picnic table.

And some supernatural interpretations of this say that licking a table can represent a spirit stuck in a repetitive loop, lingering in the physical realm, but unable to fully move on. And the detail that the table was splintery can, supernaturally, indicate trapped energy. And the crumbs, the crumbs that Joe was desperately licking up, this might be the sign of a lost soul seeking completion of something before moving on. So that's what the internet said about the supernatural symbols in Amanda's dream. And Amanda says that to her, her dream about Joe showed her someone who really desperately needed help.

As far as my dream, Joe yelling at me, telling me I don't belong here, and then literally pushing me repeatedly, I don't want to think that he didn't like me. But that is sort of the obvious interpretation of that visitation dream. I know that when we first moved in, the block was changing, and our move there definitely represented a turnover of residents. The Grammys and Grampas were moving out, and the young families were moving in. Maybe he didn't like that.

Maybe that's why he was shouting that I don't belong here and to get out. Or maybe it was something else. I'm going to go with that it was something else. Because I want to think that Joe, that local watchdog, so cordial and conversational for all those years, I want to think that he liked me and my kids. Rather than that his soul's last order of business before moving on was to tell me to get out because I don't belong.

I don't want to think that. He had no contact with him since no dreams, signs, lingering energy, nothing. Just that shared visitation dream in which Joe came to us both as a tall blonde woman, and he was very unhappy in both dreams. And as Amanda said, he seemed to be someone who was in desperate need of help. Or shared visitation dreams from Joe, Amanda's in mind, may have just been a snapshot of what his soul was going through.

Which is sad because it wasn't unhappy snapshot. And I hope that the unhappy existence has passed. Maybe he has crossed over. But if not, I am remaining open to Joe's spirit in any form he wants to show me. And if he visits me, I will do everything I can to help him find peace.

And if you have enjoyed this episode of My True Go Stories, please take a second to review, subscribe, and share to help this show grow. And that's all for today. Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space, or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Visit jpclearing.com or email me at jpclearing60 at gmail.com.

Don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.