By Robert S Urbanek
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Mausoleum for Queen Louise-Marie;
Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk; Ostend, Belgium gargoyle
Georges Jansoone |
I had been
aggravated for several months by noise from a neighbor. On October 14, 2020, a
boisterous backyard gathering dispersed shortly after 10 p.m. but my anxiety
kept me awake until about 4 a.m.
At approximately
5:15 a.m. I was awakened by a light. To my left, what had been a shuttered window
was now a blank wall softly lit with a slight yellowish tinge, as if
illuminated by candlelight. Then, near the top of the wall, appeared the living
head of a monster, like a cathedral gargoyle. The beastly head was replaced by
another after a couple of seconds, then followed by another. This happened five
or six times. One head had glowing eyes. Another appeared to be a cross between
a man and a lion. Then the heads disappeared.
I turned to my
right to turn on a light and make notes. When I looked back, the shuttered
windows had returned.
While this vision
might be related to my anxiety, this seemed to be a spectacular display for
something as mundane as a noisy neighbor. Perhaps the event released demons
from my subconscious. Did I purge beasts from my mind only to release them into
the world? I looked up gargoyles on Wikipedia. One section noted
“gargoyles are said to protect what they guard, such as a church, from any evil
or harmful spirits” but another passage said, “The primary use of the gargoyle
was to illustrate evil through the form of the gargoyle.”
One could argue
that extreme stress had altered my brain chemistry so as to create an illusion,
but since I had fallen asleep before the vision, I would think my brain
would have returned to a more balanced state during the sleep period.
Two days after the
vision, after another noisy and sleepless night, I went to the ER to request
some sleep meds. I described my "hallucination." They took a blood
panel (which came up fine), prescribed some sleep meds but did not take x-rays.
The discharge nurse, after asking a few questions to determine my mental
stability, suggested that I might be a shaman.
A few days later, I
had a phone consultation with my internist, and he also did not suggest a brain
scan. Fortunately, the next several days were peaceful and I slept much better,
both with and without the pills.
After a few weeks,
the neighbor moved away, and the new neighbor was much quieter.
This was not my
first experience with a specter on the wall. On February 9, 2005. I was asleep in a
different room in my house. I was awakened at about 2:15 a.m. by a bright light
emanating from a clock on a dresser near the foot of my bed. To my right, next
to the closet door, a portion of the wall glowed like a torch-lit cave. Stick
figures on the wall bounced against each other, like men in hand-to-hand
combat.
To my left hung a
Patrick Nagel serigraph depicting a larger-than-life head of a woman wearing
sunglasses who had a stark white face and gray hair. I had purchased the print
in 1985. But at this moment, the picture was solid black and bulging from the
wall. To break this spell, I reached up and switched on the room light. The
vision disappeared. I concluded that the dark power of the Nagel “goddess” was
inciting the wall warriors to fight each other.
Robert S Urbanek
Vacaville, California
Website: www.robertsurbanek.com
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