Something about movies I watched when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. They left an impression on me that no other films seem to have done since.
There was Jaws. I remember sitting in the dark theater, my feet up on the back of the seat in front of me. When the great white shark emerged from the ocean as the police chief leaned over the side of the boat, I jerked so hard my wafflestomper hit the back of the person’s head in front me.
But the movie I really want to talk about is The Omen. In the original 1976 film there was a black dog, maybe two, that appeared whenever something bad was going to happen. I don’t remember everything about the movie, but I remember the black dog.
When I was in my early 20s, I wanted to move into an apartment by myself. I’d lived with my parents, my older sister, and my friend Ellen — but never alone. I found a studio converted from a detached garage. It was one room with a tiny kitchen, sitting area, and space for my bed.
Shortly after I moved in I started getting phone calls in the middle of the night. I’d answer the phone; the person on the other end sounded like a child. He (or she — I couldn’t tell) would ask for his mother. It sounded like a party was going on in the background. The calls came at 1, 2, 3 in the morning, and each time I asked, “Where are you? Are you alone?” The caller always hung up before I got any answers.
One night my pillow flipped off my bed and landed on the floor heater. I woke up choking on smoke that filled the room. I pulled the pillow, which was at that moment bursting into flames, off the heater and threw it out the front door into the cold night. I was sick for days from smoke inhalation.
Soon after that I opened the front door late one afternoon on my way to meet up with my boyfriend and there stood two big black dogs. I gasped when I saw them. I didn’t even try to call out to them, whistle or say, “Good dogs.” They stood side by side, showing no signs of friendliness nor fear. I shut the door, phoned my boyfriend. By the time he arrived the dogs were gone.
A friend from high school, Patrick, came to my studio to give me a prognosis. He had powerful perception, a sixth sense, and his ability to tell whether a house was haunted was legend among our circle of friends. He walked into my place and immediately turned to me and said, “You have to move.”
I didn’t spend another night there. My friends and I moved me out during daylight hours the following weekend.
Nowadays one of the first things I notice when I walk into certain places is how they feel. Were the people who occupied them happy? Sad? Angry? What lingers in the walls?
Perhaps the black dogs were nothing to be afraid of. Loneliness, my own or someone else’s. (Does melancholy have its own spirit?)
I’m not afraid of black dogs now. I’m more superstitous of black cats, to tell the truth. But I still can’t swim in the ocean.
Funny you should mention the Rainbow room. It’s such a quiet little room and so inviting, with the flat-bottomed teardrop-shaped door leading into it. Yet I never went there to write. I tried a few times, but I couldn’t stay. I hadn’t thought about it but you’re right. It’s too still.
I loved The Shining. Jim and I walked around for weeks afterwards bending our pointer fingers up and down and saying in that croaky voice, Red-rum, Red-rum. HA! Thanks for reminding me of that memory :).
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I think melancholy does have a Spirit. It’s large and looming.
I remember, The Omen. And I remember those black dogs, guardians at the gate of the cemetery. Both The Omen and Stanley Kubrick’s, The Shining, in 1980 with Jack Nicholson, nearly drove me off the edge. I saw The Shining on a first date with a woman in Missoula, Montana. I was so scared afterwards, I asked her to stay overnight at my house. It wasn’t a ploy!
I think I heard, “redrum, redrum, redrum” and “Heeeere’s Johnny!” all night long in my sleep.
That’s a haunting story about the place you lived. The black dogs on the porch. And the fire. Scary. The black dogs are archetypes. They operate at the Collective Unconscious level. We see them because we are willing to go to those in-between places where angels fear to tread.
I am keen on the energy in the places where I live. I pay close attention, too, to the places I visit. Liz said she’s been to the Timberline Lodge in Oregon where The Shining was filmed. I often wonder if it carries the dark energy of the film. Of course, there is the fact that the main character, Jack Torrance, was a writer and an alcoholic. It’s also a film about the dark side of writing – the Black Dog.
Wordraw and I stayed in Mabel’s room in the writing retreat last October. I could feel her presence there. I slept in her huge 4 poster bed, carved by, who was it? Manuel? She mentions him in one of her books.
One night I woke up in pitch black in complete silence and heard her over in the corner. I almost woke up Wordraw. But then would he think I was crazy? I know she was there. And there are times I feel her brushing by in the sitting room near the kiva fireplace. The Rainbow room has strange energy. It’s almost too still. It’s never felt right to me in there. I don’t know why.
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I think the Rainbow Room is haunting, not haunted. The windows are too low. The volume is confined, what with only that one narrow, confined doorway. It is a dead end room.
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Hmmm. Maybe you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it from the architectural point of view. Yes, haunting…a dead end room.
Funny, because I do like the arrowhead doorway. But then once you walk in, you feel trapped. I find myself bending down to look out the low windows. I have to think about it more.
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People used to be a lot shorter. Our diets have made us grow taller. Remember Aunt Cassie’s kitchen chairs, I have them in the loft, they are a couple inches shorter than chairs today. When you sit in them you feel like you are in a childs desk at school, they are so short.
I feel spirits around in a lot of places and wonder what and who they belong to. I’ve never encounted an evil one but I have felt uneasy at times. I think sometimes we just close ourselves to our senses instead of letting them through.
AS
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Amelia,
I hadn’t thought of this angle before. It’s true. People did used to be a lot shorter, making for shorter doors.
I agree. We close ourselves off to what we sense in the otherworlds. For some reasons, we are taught it’s not okay to trust what is not within our reasoning as being real.
I think that’s part of the popularity of angels. People are okay letting themselves believe in angels (unworldly) because they fit into religious beliefs. There is so much more out there. I bet we don’t know the half of it.
Thanks for writing and for your great comments!
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