by Diane Quinn

Created on: September 29, 2010

I awoke to the sound of my own scream as it exploded out of my mouth.  Heart racing, I blinked my eyes searching for sanity and realized that I was no longer in my bed.  How was it possible that I was standing at the bottom of my second floor apartment landing?   I could not remember leaving my bed nor running down a long flight of stairs.  The only thing that seemed real was the rapid beating of my heart.

Slowly I stepped back up the stairs and returned, cautiously, to my bedroom.  I made a careful check of my apartment before attempting to go back to bed, but my mind could not stop filtering what had happened.   What was it that had made me scream?  I had no previous history of sleep walking.  I had no previous history of anything like this experience happening before.  If it had been a bad dream, then why was I unable to remember any of it? 

I looked at the clock and was surprised that it was only half past midnight. My memory was clear about falling to sleep around 10:00 p.m.  Strange, I mused, because I felt like I had been asleep for a very long time.

Recently divorced, I had been living by myself in an apartment in a large turn of the 20th century building.  Built originally in the late 1800’s as Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s first golf country club, the only characteristic that remained of its previous elegant past was a long, poplar tree lined driveway that ended beside a wide, circular front porch that wrapped itself around the building. 

When I rented my one-bedroom apartment in 1972, the old woman who owned the building was the only other occupant living on the first floor.  A friendly woman, I enjoyed hearing her explain the history of the wood structured house with unique and charming design features that hinted it had not been built originally as a family dwelling.

While getting ready for work in the morning, I knew that I had to put the incident out of my mind.  As a single woman in her mid-twenties living alone, it was foolish to allow myself to become afraid.   If I freaked-out after just one bad dream, although definitely more intense than any other in memory, I would never be able to handle living by myself.  My logical nature refused to accept any other course of action.  This logical nature of mine soon received another jolt when, a few nights later, it happened again. 

Everything was the same as before except that this

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