A Dream of the Past

The house was haunted. Every once in a while, I would see the previous inhabitants. The people, who seemed to be a family, wore clothes I would estimate to belong to the 1880s or 90s. They would appear and disappear like a hallucination, creeping in at the edge of my field of vision. Sometimes I would only catch a glimpse of them out of the corner of my eye. Over time, they lingered and became more visible, more real. They were doing ordinary things: moving about, opening drawers, discussing mundane, everyday matters.

Not everyone who entered the house experienced the haunting, but if they did, it could be dangerous. Apparently, I’m very susceptible to these things. There was danger in paying too much attention to the ghosts. If you interacted with them, they could take over your mind. If you connected with them too much, for too long, you could get sucked into their world and lose yourself. You could become one of them. The danger increased each time I made contact. The rule of the house was that if you see the ghosts, you have to be careful not to engage them. Easier said than done. They had a way of creeping up on you. Before I knew it, I was living in their world, conversing with them on a regular basis. However, I never fully merged with their world: there was still a layer of time between us, and so, I was not lost forever. I was still safe.

This supernatural horror scenario could easily span multiple seasons on Netflix, although it likely only lasted a few minutes at most, because it was only a dream.

I do spend a lot of time with the late 19th century, and I had lately been researching in it, but I don’t doubt that the inspiration for this dream was having recently visited relatives– and, by extension, the ghosts of people I’d never met but who live in the intergenerational trauma we carry.



History is often taught as slices distinct from one another and punctuated by revolutionary change. We are taught that there were period mindsets, and that when “we” discovered something, “we” all knew it. Such is not the case. Raymond Williams proposed reading the movement of history as less a series of revolutions than as slow, uneven growth. He described these co-existing aspects as the residual, the dominant, and the emergent (see Williams or a clear summary). This description of gradual change and internal conflicts helps to account for the persistence of ideas. How else can we explain that centuries after “we” (medical doctors, actually) “discovered” (officially reported) the existence of miscarriage, large portions of the American population have a view of conception and abortion consistent with popular knowledge of the 1600s? How else can I explain the persistence of (dominant) Victorian ideals (and dysfunctions) in my extended family in the 21st century?

Unequal distribution of knowledge and differing mental attitudes and ideologies are present in every era, and every attitude has a history (rather than attitudes remaining stuck in history). Being aware of these differences is so important to a complete understanding of the world. There is nothing that irks me more than statements about what “we” knew at any given time, about “Victorian” or “90s” attitudes, or claims about what “everyone” was doing at any given time. History is full of tensions, controversies, and ideological battles.

Too, we might advance in one field – personally or as a society – but still hold ideas out of date in another – just as we can sometimes keep magical childhood beliefs surprisingly late. We absorb so much information by osmosis, and so much of it remains unexamined. Ideas can feel true, but we may not be able to trace their origin (that is, how we know them). The more we revere tradition, and the less informed and reflective we are, the more likely old ideas will haunt us. Worse, they may possess us. Those without conscious awareness and a commitment to grow and change are vulnerable to possession by the spirits of the past.

If “History Lives in Us, Whether WeLearn it or Not,” then it’s so important to learn it – only then can we even know what is acting through us –which apps are operating in the background, which thoughts are running automatically in our minds. Learning our history, especially the ugly parts, is the only way we can make significant change. To constantly move away from toxic behaviours and thought patterns, we have to examine what came before and what we want to do differently. History is relational. The past is always with us, but how we engage with it makes all the difference. The spirits of our ancestors may haunt us, but we must not let them return to posses the living.
















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