Ann Friedman - Spooky Cherokee Hell Dream

I'm on leave and sending you guest essays by some of my favorite writers while I'm away. Here's Autumn Fourkiller, who was a 2022 writing fellow, with a short reflection on a common feeling: when you kind of hate something, but can't imagine yourself without it. Autumn has correctly identified me as an "earth girl," and as such I have yet to experience a haunting, but I relate to everything they write about here. 

By Autumn Fourkiller

As far as mystics go, I have not yet reached that sense of calm, floating peace that all those monks of old seem to have had no trouble cultivating. Most days, I feel spiritually bereft and useless, and I often wake from nightmares that would make scenes from The Exorcist seem like child’s play (please don’t get me started on dolls). These nightmares range from the familiar to the, ahem, esoteric, but lots of them follow a simple theme: being trapped inside the haunted house. 

Perhaps you don’t believe in haunted houses. Or ghosts. Or spirits. Or prophetic dreams. Or anything you cannot see or touch or hear. That’s fine. You are entitled to your proclivities. I don’t really believe in them, either, but my belief has no effect on them, you see. They are as real as “real life,” so to say. I do not believe in my face in the mirror in front of me, either. My belief having no effect might be the worst part of it all. Well, that and the -- well, nevermind. 

I lived for nine months in my estranged, dead father’s house, on the reservation where I grew up. It was wildly, ridiculously haunted. I withered away there, I grew nerves I didn’t know were possible. I have written about this before, and I’m sure I will again, but I am not yet satisfied with anything that I’ve said about it. It is one of those many things I will eventually have to make my peace with, or ignore, or allow to be a thorn in my side until this mortal coil releases. I am a Southern Baptist, or just Baptist, I suppose, apostate, though a part of me will always be there—hands shaking as I partake of the Lord’s Supper, sure that I am blaspheming the Holy Spirit somehow, someway, though I live my little life so carefully. The funny thing is, we never called Them the Holy Spirit. We always called Them, yes, the Holy Ghost. Ha, ha. Ha, ha. 

I am nearly a year released from the haunted house. There may be others, but it is the only one for me, the only one I have occupied, allowing it to reduce me to a state of not-living, but not-dying either. 

This state of deep ambivalence is familiar; it’s one I have found myself in many times over these 27 years of existence. I told/asked Celia earlier this year: Why did I do this to myself? Why dreams? Why? I need to pivot. I need to learn a new skill. I need to shift paths. I need to do something. 

What would you do instead? she asked. 

I didn’t have an answer then, nor do I now. The truth is: I will never escape dreams. Or interpreting them. I don’t want to, either. I’m just stuck -- a liminal space, a liminal being. In a lot of ways, this is more comfortable than me than other forms of being. I know it well. I need a reset. I need to get back to my roots. I need to return to my spiritual routines, to communicating with people (and ghosts, and yes, Holy Ghosts) who believe in what I’m saying, who want to believe in it. Fellow seekers and the like. 

Then again, maybe it’s time to get really into macrame… 

Autumn Fourkiller was a 2022 writing fellow who's from "the early death capital of the world". Sign up for their newsletter, "Dream Interpretation for Dummies,” which is where Dear Abby meets Native Americana. 
 

Thank you, Autumn! Next week: 2023 fellow Paige Curtis writes about a shocking familial revelation and what it meant for her sense of self. You are gonna want to read it.