Dreams, Ruins, Synchronicity & A Serial Killer

Photo 137981677 © Littleny | Dreamstime.com

Originally published March 2021

This photo really doesn't do the whole structure due credit. I don't know who took this picture.

Last Saturday, (March 13, 2021) I traveled a bit to get my second vaccine.

My journey took me to Dover township, which is across the Hudson and on the far end of Dutchess Co from my location—almost to Connecticut.

It’s a pleasant section of Dutchess, albeit extremely wealthy at least from my perspective; lots of established estates with large homes, private boarding schools—still some old money (old being over a century in the making—nothing truly ancient here).

Got there, and after some confusion at the CVS (their confusion not mine—which was weird because they’ve been doing vaccines there for about a month) I received the second C19 vaccine, sat my 20 minutes and went home.

I simply returned the way I’d come—so it was surprising to me that I hadn’t seen the first time what now loomed off to my right when I drove back through Millbrook.

All at once, to my right, I caught sight of the huge, lumbering hulk of ruin that has become of the old Bennett School for Girls, a private institution that moved to this location when the previous venture there, the Halcyon Hotel, failed in 1907.

The college operated until 1978 when the growing popularity of coed facilities and more professional studies for young women proved just how anachronistic the institution was (it specialized in “domestic services” i.e. housekeeping).

Attempts to restore the site by making it a historical landmark have failed—it’s just too expensive to bother with. It’s apparently almost too expensive to even demolish because of its size. So it just sits and moulders.

I knew the school existed because I’d heard about it—but what interested me was my reaction to seeing it.

As I drove past the ruin my eyes just popped, not only because the structure really is massive against the landscape (something that photos don’t capture), but there was something about it that seemed ominous and intrusive—almost terrifying. I actually gasped.

In the moment I caught sight of the structure—the basic view which is in the photo above—I suddenly remembered whole a dream I’d had 10-11 years ago, which I hadn’t recalled at the time I had it (my dreams, memories of dreams and déjà vus often “time-stamp” themselves in this way), but now I saw with searing clarity.

In the dream, a good friend of mine had persuaded me to accompany her on an excursion to see a large old ruined building to meet someone (who was perhaps its keeper?). The dream building was not identical to the Bennett School ruin, but was similar in size, layout and effect—although the dream building was more reddish. In fact, the whole dream was more reddish--with annoying red soil and a ochre tint to the sky. I have read entirely too much Lovecraft.

My friend was explaining to the “keeper” who I was and that it was necessary for me to “get to know” this building because I was to have “something to do with it.” Whether I was simply to explore it or eventually take over its “keeping” isn’t/wasn’t made plain.

In the dream, my apprehension about the building, was, however, clear enough. It seemed entirely too large, too ornate, too complicated to even comprehend---too haunted as it were, for any sort of beginning to be made. And that’s how the Bennett School seemed to me when I saw it—too much, it is/was too much. How could anything be this much?

To top this ALL OFF, when I got home I told Allan about my reaction upon seeing the Bennett School and he said, “Well, that’s really strange, because a photo of it popped up in one of my FB groups today.”

He belongs to a group that features images of old buildings and historic sites in the Hudson Valley and someone had decided to share a photo of Bennett School, largely from the same position from which I saw it. How weird is that?

Too filled with meaning to ignore—this one, even though the Bennett School itself really isn't known for much paranormal activity. It's like it looks so weird that people think there MUST be some kind of scary report coming out of it, but there really isn't.

It's just a sad memory of two either failed or outworn enterprises.

But even in my dream I knew what the ruin was really about. If you’ve listened to the album Haunted by the singer/composer Poe or have read Danielewski’s House of Leaves, you’ll understand.

The dream ruins are my House of Leaves, where the piles of untouched and avoided crap are kept.

A month ago I listened to the hosts of Conspiranormal Podcast talk with a guest about the Chapel Perilous and was immediately triggered into memories of Bob, the serial killer I once knew and worked for, and even then I knew I had to talk about the very strange and even paranormal events from that time which have perturbed me ever since.

I tried to write about the emotional trauma of the experience in my short story 'Head Dreams' published in Final Seasons (2017), but that was only a surface exorcism.

Adam and Serfiel have been good enough to schedule me again, so soon, to talk about those experiences, what I have uncovered, learned and often sought to reinter.

In the meantime—I guess I have to get out the figurative spirit box and flashlight and begin to explore my mountain of ruins, risking murderers, squatters, ghosts and djinn alike.

Somehow, I have to turn this "House" into a treasure.

For those who like to poke around:

Conspiranormal

Poe - Haunted

House of Leaves

Final Season

If you dare: Robert Berdella

What is the Chapel Perilous?