Jill’s Dream House
by Tony Dawson

 

 

About five years ago, a New Yorker I know called Jill began to have a recurring dream about a house. She kept dreaming that she was walking up a long winding drive to an enormous, old house set in a large field in the middle of nowhere. In her dream, she would cross the threshold of the front door and wander through each of the rooms, running her fingers along the vintage furniture, humming to herself. The windows were very tall and narrow with long white curtains that swirled in the breeze blowing in from the surrounding countryside. As she gazed at the ornamental ceilings, she would feel very much at home.

 

This dream occurred maybe a couple of times a week for about a year and a half. She came to know every detail of her ‘dream house’ and she began to wonder if she had ever lived in such a place in her early childhood, whether her dream was a type of psychological regression. So intrigued was she by it that she decided to ring her mother who lived upstate to ask her if that were, in fact, the case. After Jill’s mother had listened to her daughter’s detailed description of the house, she said that although they had moved around quite a lot when Jill was a baby because her father had changed jobs so often, they had never actually lived in a house that was remotely like the one she had just described and that was the end of the matter as far as Jill was concerned.

 

In the summer of 1972, Jill decided that she’d like to go on holiday to some place she’d never been to before and so she jumped in her car, pointed it westwards and kept on driving. She stopped off at various places over the next few days, but eventually she found herself driving across Kansas, miles from any habitation. While Jill was enjoying the sense of remoteness and the feel of the wind in her hair, she caught sight of a large house that looked from a distance very similar to her “dream house” standing in the middle of an extensive, unkempt garden. As she drew nearer, she noticed a post by the gate with a sign on it. For Sale.

 

Jill stopped the car and stepped out. What a wonderful opportunity, she thought. It would be fascinating if the interior matched the inside of the house she kept dreaming about. Heart pounding, she walked up the long drive to the front door and rang the doorbell. She waited a couple of minutes. Because nobody came, she thought that maybe the bell didn’t work so she began hammering on the door. She could hear her banging echoing down the hallway. After an unconscionable length of time, the door opened a sliver. A frail old man peered warily at her through the crack.

 

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“Well,” Jill replied, “as your house is for sale, I wondered whether you would mind if I came in to have a look around. Or do I have to make an appointment?”

“Go away,” he retorted. “You can’t come in and that’s that.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because it’s haunted!”

“What nonsense! Who haunts it?”

“You do,” he screamed and slammed the door.

 

Such was the story told to me by Richard Harris in the early 1980s. Since October 2002, I am sure he accompanies Jill on her frequent visits to the house, and they will no doubt haunt it together forever.

 

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