Spending the weekend in Cheddar.
Woke up in the middle of the night (Fri night/Sat morning) to see a strange female figure to my left. Which was a surprise as my girlfriend was sleeping on my left. She was very distinctive, with brown hair, probably in her twenties, wearing a Victorian style night dress and one of those frilly night hats (which thinking about it, may actually be Victorian beach wear). Also she was floating a few inches above the bed. She was asleep.
So that would make her a ghost.
Or alternatively a dream.
I looked at her for a few seconds. It all seemed very vivid and real, and then she disappeared.
To be honest I'm not even sure if I was awake when she "disappeared", and in my mind it was definitely just one of those realistic visions you can get when suddenly coming out of a deep sleep (this happened on tour with Stew, when I fell asleep, exhausted on a dressing room floor and "awoke" with a laughing old woman sitting on my chest trying to strangle me. Though that might have been Richard Thomas having a bit of a laugh!)
It interests me because it was so real (apart from the fact she was floating) and because so many people claim to see aliens or ghosts or visions of dead loved ones, whilst in bed and refuse to even consider that they might have been asleep. We so often think we've woken up, only to find we're still dreaming and these things can often be vivid.
I am sceptical about all this kind of stuff, though there is a big part of me that would love it if it was true. In this case it seems unlikely. Our house was built in the fifties or sixties and there was previously an orchard on the site, so unless this Victorian woman was sleeping in a tree, it seems odd for her to have been thirty feet in the air in her bed clothes
If it was a ghost, it was interesting that she was asleep. I wonder if anyone has ever seen a sleeping ghost before. You rarely hear of ghosts doing very mundane stuff. Has anyone ever seen a ghost making its breakfast (with ghost toast) or reading a book or going to the toilet (things that go dump in the night)? The stereotype of them rattling chains and moaning and going on about past Christmases seems very unfair. They have to relax some time. I hope my ghost doesn't get into trouble for sleeping on the job. She still gave me a bit of a shock.
And if what I experienced was a window to a past or future reality, I wonder if a young woman woke up "this morning" to tell her family of the strange fat, hairy, naked ghost that was in her bed, and of the strange unearthly ectoplasm he left behind him. Well it was technically the three in a bed situation that I have always fantasised about. Even if both women were asleep and one had been dead for a hundred years.
