Diary & poem of record · Cities & buildings
The blank canvas in the haunted house
Continental European town, unspecified · c. 1885–1886 (diary sequence)
I dreamt that during a tour on the Continent with my friend C. we stayed in a town wherein there was an ancient house of horrible reputation, concerning which we received the following account. At the top of the house was a suite of rooms, from which no one who entered at night ever again emerged. No corpse was ever found; but it was said by some that the victims were absorbed bodily by the walls; by others that there were in the rooms a number of pictures in frames, one frame, however, containing a blank canvas, which had the dreadful power, first, of fascinating the beholder, and next of drawing him towards it, so that he was compelled to approach and gaze at it.
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- Source
- Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams — Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland, posthumous edition; dreams recorded c. 1876–1887. Part I, XXIII. A Haunted House Indeed!
- Record type
- Diary & poem of record
- Place
- Continental European town, unspecified · British
- Date
- c. 1885–1886 (diary sequence)
- Uncertainty
- Low — First-person diary dream. The approximate date follows its place between dated 1885 and 1886 entries; no exact dream date is claimed.
- Imagery
- House · Faces · The dead · Darkness
- Feelings
- Horror · Unease
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
House
Whose house was it — one you know, or one you only know in the dream? Which room did you spend the most time in?
Jung · The house as psyche
In 1909 Jung dreamed of a house whose cellar led down into older and older layers — Roman, then prehistoric. He later took it as an image of the psyche, with the oldest layers at the bottom.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
Phenomenology Philosophy
Gaston Bachelard argued that the house “shelters daydreaming”: the attic and cellar of a childhood home stay with us as places to imagine from.
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958)
Chinese fiction Literature
In chapter 5 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Baoyu dreams his way into the Land of Illusion, a palace of cabinets holding registers of the household’s fates.
Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber, ch. 5
A stranger
Did the stranger remind you of anyone, even slightly? What did they want from you?
Jung · Shadow, anima and animus
Jung read unknown figures as possible parts of the dreamer: a same-sex stranger may carry the shadow; an other-sex figure what he called the anima or animus. These are offered as lenses, not labels — and his gender framing reflects his time.
C. G. Jung, “Aion, ch. 2–3”, Collected Works 9ii
Homeric epic Classical text
In Homer, gods and dreams arrive in borrowed shapes: Athena visits Nausicaa disguised as her friend; Zeus sends a Dream to Agamemnon looking like Nestor.
Odyssey VI; Iliad II
The dead
Who was it, and did they seem to know they had died? Was there something you were able to say, or not able to?
Jung · Objective level first
Jung’s memoir records his own dreams of his late father and treats them with seriousness rather than symbol-hunting: a dream of someone who has died is first about that person and that bond.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis devoted a chapter to dreams of the dead, noting how often the dead appear as if alive and how such dreams can bring comfort.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VIII
Homeric epic Classical text
Achilles dreams of the dead Patroclus, who asks to be buried; Achilles reaches out to embrace him and grasps nothing.
Homer, Iliad XXIII
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- The pencil writing by itself Inn, location unstated · 5 November 1885
- The dark woman who led the sleepers away Kurukshetra (setting) · c. 4th c. BCE–4th c. CE (epic)
- A statue running with blood Rome (setting) · 1599 (play); set 44 BCE
- Who is dead in the White House? Washington, D.C., USA · early April 1865 (as reported)
- The pale student of unhallowed arts Near Geneva, Switzerland · June 1816
- Irma’s injection Bellevue, near Vienna · 23–24 July 1895