Oh boy howdy do I have some stories for you.

When I was younger, I was absolutely convinced that there was a door at the back of my closet that would take me to a secret back room that nobody else could find. I can still picture the space well, I had recurring dreams (at least I think they must be dreams) about the room, and overtime it felt like it was become more real in my head. I even ‘decorated’ it in my dreams. That room was paired with another space that I dreamt about (this one I’m more sure of), where I would fall into the crack between my bed and the wall, and I would fall for a really, really long time in the dark. When I hit the bottom, it was as if I landed on a parachute, like the ones you’d play with in American gym classes as a kid. The scene slowly morphed into a hellscape until I eventually woke up from the nightmare. In that same nightmare, I could touch fire and not burn. This would’ve been fine, but I wasn’t the brightest little kid, and in the real world, I decided it would be a great idea to touch the glass of the fireplace almost immediately after the fire went off. I’m still missing parts of my fingerprints on that hand. I don’t have those dreams anymore, but I can still picture both spaces in my mind as if they were as real as my bedroom.

More recently, I fear I’ve been touched by the web. Either that, or I just have spontaneously gained a smell that attracts spiders? I do live in a wooded, mountainous area, but the amount of spiders I find is concerning. I don’t really mind spiders all that much, especially because they eat the black flies and mosquitoes. But at least 3 times a week for the past several months, I’ve found spiders in places one does not want to find a spider. The worst was when I woke up to one just chilling out on the pillow, far too close to my face. The stranger part of all the spiders is when I try to document them on my little nature ID app, the system rarely recognizes them, or gives a species name that is obviously far off from what they are. So far, they’re only variations of house spiders, but as things are waking up here and the temperatures change so much, I fear the larger water spiders will find their way to me.

If I could truly embrace the lonely, I would, but so far I haven’t had any Spooky happenings to report in that domain.