I get asked, a lot, if I believe in past lives. My answer is YES. My answer comes from different experiences that I have had since I was a child. Also, why am I terrified of certain things, and obsessed with other things. For example, I am obsessed with anything Parisian from the early 1900’s. The music, the clothing, the history. Also, I have this feeling in my gut that I lived in New England during one of my lives. I am especially in love and obsessed with Nantucket. I would move there today if I could. I have been there a handful of times, and it feels like home to me. (even though I am not a happy camper in humidity)
Now for two of my biggest fears….the deep dark ocean and drowning. That is what this post is about. A haunting, reoccurring, nightmare that led me to believe in past lives. It started when I was in junior high and took me years to figure out it was a message, and not just a nightmare.
THE NIGHTMARE:
As I approach the ticket booth at the movie theater, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach of pure anxiety. I am at a theater that I have never been to before, and I do not recognize anything or anyone around me. I get up to the window and say, “One ticket please.” The light comes on in the ticket booth and it is a skeleton passing me my ticket. He sticks his skeleton hand out of the the hole at the bottom of the glass and lays down my ticket. I am in shock, but take my ticket thinking this must be some kind of theme for a movie that is playing. As I proceed to the front doors, I look around at my environment. It’s a small theater, and on each side of the 4 doors are brick walls. As I enter I get the worst chill and it smells like death. The air is heavy and damp. I keep walking until I get to the concession stand. I am looking through the glass counter, but it does not have candy in it…it has bones stacked up inside. So I panic and look up and in front of me is a skeleton waiting for my order, but behind him is a popcorn machine and it is not popping popcorn…it is boiling blood. The blood in pouring over the bucket inside of the machine. And that is when I wake up.
The same nightmare for years, and I wake up at the same part of the dream every time. Also during these years, I had developed a severe fear of deep ocean water, and if I fell into the water I would drown. I thought it was because of the movie Jaws, but this is a different fear. I love to be on the ocean, and go in the ocean from the shore, but no way would I dive off a perfectly safe boat out on the ocean.
When I was in high school (still having the same nightmare), I went on a date to Laguna Beach. I had been dating this boy for a month or more, so we weren’t on a first date. We decided to walk around town and get an ice cream. It was a beautiful evening. I wasn’t really familiar with the streets and places in down town Laguna Beach. I had grown up mainly going to Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.
We were walking down Broadway Street (which turns into Laguna Canyon Road if you go away from the shoreline), and as we approached Pacific Coast Highway, I started to feel sick. I started shaking and I thought I was going to throw up. I told my date that I needed to go home, I did not feel good. We turned left and headed south on the corner of PCH and Broadway to head back to the car. As we passed the gas station on the corner, I thought for sure I was going to faint, then I just froze. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, and I was shaking so bad. (Just writing this is making my hands shake and I am having a hard time typing.)
Everything around me went quiet….then I looked to my left….and there it was, THE MOVIE THEATER FROM MY NIGHMARES!!! All I could do was put my hands over my face to muffle the scream that came out of me. Then I started hysterically crying. How had I not noticed this theater before???? Then I realized, my poor date was standing there with his mouth hanging open not knowing what to do. I couldn’t stop crying so I just buried my face in my hands then into my dates chest. Not sure how, but he got me across the street and sat me down on a bench by the ocean. Once I calmed down, I told him about my nightmare that I have had for years, and that the movie theater right there on PCH is where my nightmare takes place. I am pretty sure he thought I was crazy, or just being a dramatic hormonal teenage girl, but I didn’t care.
For the next two years, I avoided that movie theater. If I drove through Laguna, I would not make eye contact with it. If I walked through Laguna…I did not walk past it. Then I went to San Diego State for my freshman year of college.
I lived on campus at SDSU, but I lived in a private dorm. Which meant we had co-ed floors. Our dorm was interesting. There were kids of celebrities, a lot of kids from northern California, and a lot of athletes with scholarships.
That is where I met Liz, or The Lizard as her group of hippy friends called her. I was really drawn to how mellow she was and how laid back her group of friends were. And yes…they smoked a lot of marijuana and they would all sit in a circle just talking about life and different beliefs. (I know some of you are going to send me a message….I tried smoking pot a few times and all it did was make me paranoid and really sick. It’s not for me.) Anyways, this is where I learned about past lives. It had never been in my thought process. I had studied the understanding and interpreting of dreams in high school and was fascinated by it. I even told my parents that I wanted to be a dreamologist…..that went over well…so I studied it on the side for fun.
I decided to tell Lizard’s group of friends about my reoccurring nightmare. I thought we could analyze it and I was hoping they could tell me what I should do to stop having the same dream. This is when I learned that this group was bigger and more complexed than I thought. I would even say possibly a cult. They wanted to talk to their “Elders” about my dream and they would get back to me.
This was all too weird for me. And I did not want to get involved with a cult, but these people, I would learn, were not a cult at all. They were spiritual healers and seers. They asked me if it would be ok to research the details of my dream. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but what harm could it do.
The rest of this story would change my views and life forever. I write this knowing there will be skepticism. I myself just know that after they did their research and gave me the facts and then did a ceremony….I HAVE NOT HAD THE NIGHTMARE AGAIN. I am not sure if it was the power of suggestion or what they did really worked.
This is what this group found out and what they thought: After doing research of the area where the movie theater is, they found out that a ship sunk in the 1700’s near there on its way up the coast. They think that in one of my past lives, I went down with the ship and died(drowned in the deep dark ocean). I possibly was one of the few souls that went to the light and was at peace, but there are souls that were trapped. That is why they are reaching out to me. It made sense, but my mind did not think that way at that time. This all was so far fetched to me. This group then asked if they could do a ceremony to move the trapped souls into the light, and do a cleansing on me. What the heck did that mean….remember also that during this time in my life, I had pushed away my ability to see and communicate with the dead, so none of this was normal to me. I was freaked out.
I gave my approval for them to do their ceremony, but I wasn’t crazy about being in some cleansing ritual, so I asked if Lizard could cleanse me without the group. And that is what we did. She cleansed me with sage and other herbs, said a few things, and then we got drunk and went to a party. I will never forget that night, because I made her laugh so hard while we were taking the fire escape stairs to get out of the building, that she peed her pants. We had to go back in through the lobby to get back upstairs, and there were people in the lobby. We blamed her wet pants on a rogue sprinkler. I am cracking up laughing as I am writing this.
Time went by. I had no more nightmares about the movie theater. I left SDSU and started working for a developer in Newport Beach. I had to drive past that movie theater everyday. So finally I decided to park my car, go to the theater, and confront my fear. It is a rustic and charming, theater. I don’t think it has been open in years. I wonder if the energy inside is bad??? Is it haunted? I would love to get inside and do an investigation. Maybe some day.
What do you think? Was it all power of suggestion to get me to trick my mind to stop having nightmares? Or was it what I believe to be true and that is why I have the fear of drowning in the deep dark ocean?
I recently found someone who does hypnosis and past life regression. It is on my list of things I want to do and learn. So curious if there are answers to why I like certain things, or fear certain things, or I am obsessed about certain things, or don’t put up with certain things….the questions are endless.
I hope you all are doing well. I know this world has been challenging, but be kind, and cleanse the bad juju!!
OC Spiritualist 