Ever Dream of This Man?

In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life.

That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist’s desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life.

The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.

From January 2006 until today, at least 2000 people have claimed they have seen this man in their dreams, in many cities all over the world: Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Dehli, Moscow etc.

At the moment there is no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of seeing this man. Moreover, no living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams.


THEORIES

Several theories have been developed to explain the mysteriously recurring presence of this man in the dreams of different people who are not related in any way. The following theories are the ones that elicit the greatest interest among the dreamers themselves.

ARCHETYPE THEORY
According to Jung's psychoanalytic theory, this man is an archetypal image belonging to the collective unconscious that can surface in times of hardship (emotional development, dramatic changes in our lives, stressful circumstances etc.) in particularly sensitive subjects.

RELIGIOUS THEORY
According to this theory this man is the image of the Creator, that is to say one of the forms in which God manifests himself today. This is the reason why his indications and the words he utters during the dreams should be decidedly followed by the dreamers.

DREAM SURFER THEORY
It is the most interesting theory and the one that has the greatest implications, but it has also the lowest scientific credibility. According to this theory this man is a real person, who can enter people's dreams by means of specific psychological skills. Some believe that in real life this man looks like the man in the dreams. Others think that the man in the dreams looks completely different from his real life counterpart. Some people seem to believe that behind this man there is a mental conditioning plan developed by a major corporation.

DREAM IMITATION THEORY
This is a scientific psycho-sociological theory which claims that this phenomenon has arisen casually and has progressively developed by imitation. Basically when people are exposed to this phenomenon they become so deeply impressed that they start seeing this man in their dreams.

DAYTIME RECOGNITION THEORY
This theory states that the apparitions of this man are purely casual. Normally we do not remember precisely the faces we see in our dreams. The image of this man would thus be an instrument which, in the subject's waking life, facilitates recognition of an undefined oneirical image.

The Shaman

Many many years ago, there lived a very powerful shaman. Many people went to see him for he was able to summon the spirits of their dead relations from beyond the grave. These spirits would then possess him and converse with their living relations through him.

At the same time, there was a very eminent doctor in the region who had great ambitions not only in the medical field but also in politics. He sought to be a community leader and he wanted to lead the people through the knowledge and wisdom he had obtained from his overseas Western education.

The doctor was appalled when he discovered his own wife was visiting this shaman in order to talk to the spirit of her dead grandmother. When he scolded his wife and forbade her to visit the shaman again, he found that friends and relations of her inner circle would take her side and warn him against doubling the power of the shaman.

Furious, he vowed to prove them all wrong. That night, he drove over the shaman's house together with his wife and some friends and relatives He instructed his wife and the others to remain in the car while he and his brother went to "test" the shaman's power. In order to prove the hoax, he lied that his wife was dead and he wanted to speak with her spirit.

The shaman, not knowing that this was the husband of one of his regular customers, went into the ritual of the trance.

It was an elaborate ceremony for this invoked the very guardian of the gate between the world of shadows and the land of the living. After half an hour or so, the shaman collapsed in exhaustion having tried without success to summon the spirit. There were many others present in the house of the shaman beside the doctor and his brother. The doctor gloated over the shaman's failure and denounced him as a charlatan to the others. He said people must never believe such superstitious nonsense again.

At this point, the whole room was stunned by the sudden movements of the shaman. he sat bolt upright in a rigid lotus position and began to weep in a woman's voice. The cry was so eerie, even the doctor was afraid.

"What... what kind of trickery is this?" the doctor stammered.

"What have you done?" said the wailing voice.

"O, what have you done? Because of the summoning, they have brought me into the shadow lands just for you!"

The doctor couldn't believe what he was hearing. It was his wife's voice! Coming from the shaman's lips.

Reeling in horror, the doctor rushed out to the car, fearing the worst. He found his wife slumped in the car, dead.

Those who were with her said she shrieked suddenly and died in an instant, just about the same time as he had heard the weeping voice.

Do Ghosts Roam NSW's Haunted Parliament House?

Anyone who claims there is no spirit left in the New South Wales Parliament should try spending a night there alone.

There is the ghostly man who walks through the floor, a silent horse drawn carriage out the front and, down the road, a phantom baby cries at night.

Once a hospital complete with a morgue, NSW Parliament House is giving up its ghostly secrets for a new history project. Most staff have a tale of a shadowy figure in the corridor, lights flickering or a strange tap on the shoulder out of thin air. And down the road at Government House the stories are even more terrifying.

The most common include a baby that cries in the night from under the building, shadowy soldiers out the front on misty mornings and an old woman in a rocking chair in one room. The old morgue under the theatrette at Parliament, which is preserved but bricked up, is considered by some to be the source of the ghosts. Education staff will compile the tales in a new bulletin named The Ghosts And Ghost Stories of Parliament House.

One parliamentary staffer said: "A guy was here late one night and there was a hand on his shoulder, he turned around and there was no one there. "The ghost stories are worse at Government House, the most common one is that a baby cries and no one can find the baby."

Another said: "You hear about people in old fashioned garb mysteriously appearing, walking down stairs or even walking through the floor." Parliament education officer Daniela Giorgi wrote in the latest Legislative Assembly newsletter that the bulletin would "explore the strange phenomena that have been reported throughout Parliament for many years".

"The building has housed the legislature for over 150 years but disembodied spirits nursing unrequited civil passion are not the only ghosts that wander these corridors of power," Ms Giorgi said.

"Once the building housed the Rum Hospital and morgue." Long-serving MP Chris Hartcher said ghosts included a man who died in his office. Mr Hartcher and fellow MP Paul Gibson said they had never seen a ghost.

The Stare

A girl was sitting on the subway late one night and she noticed that the woman sitting across from her was staring intently at her. The woman was sitting between two old men. The girl kept looking away, but the woman wouldn’t break eye contact with her. The stare was beginning to freak the girl out.

At the next stop, a new passanger got on. It was a tall man in a grey trenchcoat. He sat down next to the girl.

The woman paid no attention to the man in the trenchcoat. She just kept staring at the girl, who was getting more and more creeped out as time went on. The two old men didn’t even glance in her direction. She pretended not to notice, but each time she glanced at the strange woman the stare continued.

When the train was pulling into the next stop, the man in the trenchcoat got up to leave. Suddenly, he grabbed the girl’s arm tightly and as the doors opened, he dragged her off the train.

The subway doors shut and the train pulled off, leaving the girl alone on the platform with the man in the trenchcoat. She started screaming for help.

“Calm down”, said the man. “I just saved your life. I didn’t mean to scare you but I had to get you off that train. The woman sitting opposite you was dead and the two men beside her were propping her up. “

The White Death

I am currently sitting in front of my computer, scared witless. Every moment could be my last. My friend is here with me and he is the sole reason why my life is in danger. It may not make sense at first, but let me explain.

It all started earlier today, when a friend of mine burst into my house and slammed the door behind him. His eyes were wide with fear and he stood there with his back against the door, breathing heavily. I asked him what had happened and he told me this story:

He had been living with his Aunt for the past year because his parents were in Mexico. They were doing mission work at a small hospital in Southern Mexico. The previous night, a bedraggled man had stumbled through the entrance of the hospital. He was screaming in Spanish and appeared to be out of his mind with terror.

They brought him over to a chair and let him sit down. As he caught his breath, he told his story in broken English. He claimed that his sister had been killed by something he referred to as “La Muerte Blanca”. He kept saying that it was coming for him next.

Confused, they asked him who or what a Muerte Blanca was. With a look of unfathomable fear on his face, he said that La Muerte Blanca was The White Death. She is the soul of a girl who died years ago. She died by her own hand, he said, alone and unloved. She hated life so much that she wanted to remove all traces of herself from the earth. So great was her desire to completely obliterate her memory, that she returned from the dead as a vengeful spirit, bent on killing all those who knew of her existence.

She is a girl, but not a girl, he said. She’s not dead, but not really alive. She has cold, black eyes that weep blood. She walks without ever actually seeming to move an inch. She stalks her victims like a wild animal, pursuing them across rivers and valleys, trailing them back to their homes. You are never really aware that she is following you, until you hear her telltale knock upon your door.

“She knocks once for you skin, which she’ll use to patch her own decaying flesh. Twice for your hair, which she’ll gnash between her teeth. Three times for your bones, which she’ll fashion into clubs. Four times for your heart, which she’ll tear out of your chest. Five times for your teeth, which she’ll polish and keep in a box. Six times for your eyes, which she’ll pluck out one by one. Seven times for your soul, which she’ll swallow whole.”

“No matter where you go, The White Death will track you down and you will hear her terrible knocking begin on the door. You can try to outrun her, but she’s faster than any mortal man. If you flee from your home while she’s knocking on your door, she will follow you wherever you go.”

The terrified man was certain that this thing had killed his sister. He had tried to tell the police, about The White Death but they would not listen, dismissing it as an old wives’ tale. Next, he had tried to tell his priest, but the priest immediately shut the door of the church in his face and turned him away. The priest had seen The White Death following him, he said, and did not want to get involved.

With his head in his hands, the frightened man said that The White Death follows you forever until you tell someone else about it. Then it strikes. It kills you and begins following the person you told.

After finishing his tale, the man stole a car from the mission hospital parking lot, and vanished into the night.

Apparently, my friend’s mother and father had immediately called his aunt and told her about the stange man they had encountered. They asked her if she had ever heard of the White Death. She said she had not and they proceeded to tell her the story that the man had told them.

The aunt got a phonecall later that night. It was the Mexican police. They told her that the parents had been found dead outside the hospital. They had been torn apart.

My friend’s aunt had immediately called him at school to break the bad news to him. As he cried, she told him she couldn’t understand what had happened. She recounted the whole story to him, telling him about the strange man who had turned up in the hospital just hours before his parents were found dead. She told him how the man had given his parents a weird and disturbing story about something called The White Death.

When he hung up the phone, he had struggled to come to terms with what had happened. It almost didn’t seem real to him. When he got home after school, he found the front door of his Aunt’s house standing open. Inside was a trail of blood, leading into the kitchen. There on the kitchen floor, he found his Aunt’s dead body. She had been torn limb from limb.

He ran out of the house and all the way across town, never looking back, until he reached my house. As he told me this story, I could hardly believe it. Within the space of a day, his mother, his father and his aunt had been murdered. It all seemed too far-fetched.

But before I could utter a word, my friend and I both recoiled in horror as we heard a knocking begin at my front door.

We’ve been staring at the door for an hour now, neither of us wanting to open it. The knocking is still going on, growing louder and louder. She never gives up. She never quits. La Muerte Blanca is unstoppable. I think she wants to scare us, my friend and I. I think she wants us to blame each other. And I do – I blame my friend. It’s all his fault. He should never have told about her.

As I sit here in my house, beside my friend, both of us listening to that hideous knocking growing ever louder, I wish a lot of things. I wish she had killed my friend before he reached my house. If he had never been able to tell me about her, I wouldn’t be in danger now. I’m sorry I ever met him.

And I’m sorry for you too. I’m sorry I made you read this story. I’m sorry I ever told you about the White Death. Because now that you know about her, she’ll be coming for you next.