How could I possibly get any sleep when there are nameless horrors in my basement and faces of people who aren’t there?  (Apart from that, however, I’m fine.)

Well, at least I had one night of long restful sleep. Then last night the creepy returned, although different and less dangerous.

I had been in bed for about half an hour, but slept only a few minutes (unlike usual, it took me some time to fall asleep, I felt restless, perhaps because I had not exercised). I had a vivid dream, but this time in my dream at least I was not in my bed. Instead, I was in the hallway, a few steps away. I had opened the door down to the basement, which is currently not in use. The light was on down there, and there was some kind of activity. I called out, but there was no answer. I was filled with dread and slammed the door shut and locked it. Then I woke up in my bed.

The sheer ordinariness actually makes it worse, that it happens at the same place and time where I really am. It was as if I had just actually experienced it. I could not sleep again, also because my body was even more restless. I got up and turned on lights in each room – but the door to the basement I did not open. Even thinking the word “basement” made the hair on my body stand on end.

Having checked the rooms, I started exercising. And gradually the realization came to me. Let’s look at some amazing foreshadowing, here:
“But perhaps you should wait a little longer before you set off to reclaim the parts of yourself that you have thrown down the stairs to the basement and locked the door after. Because there may just be a reason why one would go to such an extreme step with a part of oneself.
Shadow work is not a hobby, to be undertaken for the excitement of it. At the very least pick your shadows carefully, because you really don’t want them to take over your house and throw you down the stairs to the basement, then lock the door.”
-Me, in the entry “Shadow work“, twelve days ago.

For most of my adult life, until a couple years ago, I did not have a basement. In fact, I used to live in a basement of sorts. So the phrase was purely metaphorical to me. Here in this house there actually is a basement – and for good measure, one that is mostly off-limits to me. (The landlord stores stuff there and even used to stay there for some days now and then.) It is the perfect embodiment of the subconscious, and it is right here a few steps from my bed!

For good measure, notice the irony of the phrase “a hobby, to be undertaken for the excitement of it”. What is this brainwave hacking, which I was already embroiled in when I wrote that earlier entry? A hobby, undertaken for the excitement of it. While a lot of people come to Holosync out of a desperate need to change their lives (or at least that is Harris’ impression), I am not one of them. Like my knowledge sims who roll the want to be hit by lightning, I am playing with things that are a few sizes too big for me, because of my curiosity.

And who is the part of me that was thrown down in the cellar? Well, I have a suspicion about that too, based on something else that happened while exercising. When I sit on the bike, my face is high enough to reflect in the glass mosaic window. Not as advanced as a church window, it consists of squares of different hues or different refraction, making it hard to see clearly through. The distorted face in the window took me back to the many years when I was scared of windows and mirrors in the dark, because seeing my face there reminded me of a childhood memory: Seeing the face of my autistic uncle in a windows when I was little.

My uncle was considered severely retarded (autism was not a diagnoses at the time) and was locked in a room upstairs. Not the basement, but the parallel is still kind of obvious. As a child, I was manically eager to show off how smart I was, and I have later thought this may have been because I feared being locked away and not counted as part of the family if I was too stupid. Like my uncle. We did not visit him, did not even talk about him (although my brothers scared me with him when I was too small to think, and I was scarred for life.) I at least did not even think about him, except when I happened to see his face in the window, the face of someone who wasn’t there, like a ghost only more physical. When that happened, I was filled with a nameless dread – the same dread that I felt this night.
Did Holosync indeed stir up this nest of hornets? I don’t know. It could be the ILP itself, or the time might just be right for it to surface. But messing with your deep brainwaves does seem like a prime suspect.

In any case, it took me a long time to quiet down. I did not get to sleep before the daylight was shining brightly through the window, so I only got like one hour or so of sleep. That can’t possibly be good, although I managed to function through the workday with only a minimal nap, a minute or two I’d say. Perhaps the stomach pain (in the ulcer spot) is also a price for the sleepless night.

I hope this does not become a hobby. But that said, perhaps it is about time the light of awareness starts shining into my basement. Carefully, very carefully.