Well then, that was bizarre :/

Oh- another recurring dream I've had is what I call the "Empty House" dream. (Though the house isn't empty at all.)

There's often a coin or three discovered in this one, but usually the treasure takes the form of other things.

The setting is a large, abandoned Victorian house or inn. It is usually four stories tall - at least three - with a dormered mansard roof. It is always foggy outside. Always.

There is always a small but very old cemetery on the grounds outside. Often but not always the house is beside a lake. It is a beautiful old building- or rather I can tell it once was, for it has fallen into disrepair.

Inside, it is still full of all the old furniture, which is covered with sheets. The mirrors and paintings on the walls are draped as well. Cobwebs abound. There are many, many rooms down long corridors, and it is apparent that most or all of them have not been occupied or even entered in decades, if not a century or more.

Think of almost every haunted house movie trope you've seen, short of actually seeing any apparition. Especially the attic scenes. Dark. Gloomy. Eerie. You get the picture.

So as you can imagine, the whole place is rather spooky and gives me a sense of foreboding.

But at the same time, I find it utterly fascinating and cannot resist the urge to explore all of its dark, hidden rooms and passages.

I walk through the gloomy corridors and enter the long-abandoned rooms, opening drawers and lifting sheets and dusty cushions, looking for nothing in particular, but whatever I can find.

I carry no flashlight or lantern with me, but there is always just enough dim ambient light to see what I am doing. Sometimes there are skittering or scurrying sounds from under the furniture or in the walls, from unseen creatures I'd rather not see. But usually it is very, very quiet.

I find things. Old newspapers and books. Documents. Ornate skeleton keys. Coins. Old clay marbles. Antique silver. Large uncut gemstones. In one drawer there is a pristine flintlock pistol like something out of a pirate movie. There is not a fleck of rust on it and its brass parts are still bright, though it is plainly over two hundred years old.

There's never any dramatic conclusion to these dreams, or if there is, I never remember it when I wake up. I never see a ghost or apparition or any other creature inside the house (though I sometimes hear things), and seldom are there any birds or animals outside.

It just progresses gradually from a feeling of dread to fascination, and ends up as a treasure hunt. In the end it turns out to have been an exciting adventure, though the melancholy sense of foreboding remains throughout.

Back when I was a teenager, I described this dream to my mother, who suggested the building in the dream was me, and that the treasures I was seeking inside were my own personal potential - wonders which were forgotten or ignored or as yet undiscovered. I like that interpretation. Wise woman, my mother.

I continued to have this same dream into adulthood, with minor variations of scene and building, but always the same basic elements. I don't have it very often now, but it does come at least once a year.

In more recent variants the emphasis is less on the old building and its interior than it is the old cemetery outside. In the most recent versions, someone has bulldozed the old cemetery and begun construction of a new building on top of it, and I'm sad and upset about that.

So that's the "Empty House" dream.

Mom used to have one where's she's fishing, and catching lots of fish. But eventually, to her horror, she catches "The Unlucky Fish". She's like, "Oh no!!! It's the Unlucky Fish!!!" She said she once awoke after having the Unlucky Fish dream and found she had tears on her face. When she told Dad about it, he asked, "Well, why did you keep fishing?" I get the feeling there's a metaphor there, too.

 

You don't even have to live in the Midwest, or a particularly tornado-prone area. I think there is something visceral about tornados. And sea-monstery things, as @chrsmat71's post also indicated. At least for me.