A New Way Of Looking At The Wall

This happened quite a few years ago but it still stands out fresh in my mind.

At the time, I was in the Air Force and lived in the dorm. I didn’t have a roommate and I didn’t have any curtains. My window faced north and the light from the parking lot lit the inside of my room fairly well every night.

On this particular night, I’d gone to bed early. The channels we got on the television were sad and few. The Jerry Lewis telethon was supposed to be on later, but I wasn’t particularly interested in that, so I went to bed.

The bed wasn’t particularly comfortable. It was a little bigger than cot size. It was against the wall in the northeast corner of the room. The walls were made of big rough textured bricks.

For some reason I woke up and opened my eyes. I got the feeling someone was in the room with me. Generally, I’m not frightened and I looked around. Light was coming in through the window from the parking lot lamps, I could see about half of the room clearly. I didn’t see anything.

I sat up in bed and looked around. Nothing seemed amiss. I was about to lie down and go back to sleep when I looked at the wall behind me (to the east).

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. The wall was smooth and had flowered wallpaper on it. I could see it clearly in the half-light. I don’t see colors well in the dark, but the background was turquoise and the flowers were purple. The flowers had small leaves arranged in an intricate swirled pattern. I was shocked.

I knew the wall was really like the rest of the walls, big textured bricks about one foot in diameter. They were tan with white grout deeply set between the bricks. This wall had wallpaper! I stared at the pattern.

I stood up, walked around the room and could see nothing else different. The wallpaper remained on the east wall. I could still feel the strong presence of someone else in the room, but no one was there. Nothing changed on the wall as I moved about the room.

I should mention that I do not do drugs and rarely drink alcohol. I did drink an occasional beer at the time but had had nothing for more than a week.

I was pretty freaked by then, so I decided to turn on the light. I figured as soon as the light came on everything would return to normal. I walked over and turned the switch on. To my surprise, nothing changed. The east wall still had wallpaper. I could see it clearly with the light on. I walked over and looked closer. I could not see the texture of the wall or the bricks, just smooth wallpaper.

I had seen this wallpaper somewhere before. (Later I realized it was like the wallpaper in my Grandmother’s kitchen, painted over years before. That’s why I’d forgotten it. My grandmother had passed away three or four years ago.)

Generally, if you face your fears they disappear. I decided the best way to get rid of this hallucination was to touch the wallpaper. (When my hand touched brick, everything would return to normal.) I ran my hand over the wallpaper. I could feel no brick everything was perfectly smooth. I tried desperately to feel brick.

I walked to another part of the room and felt the wall, bricks. When I retuned and felt the wallpaper, it was smooth.

This was too much for me. I had to leave the room. I shut off the light and left. I went downstairs and watched the Jerry Lewis telethon for about an hour. The dorm guard was asleep in a chair. Later I went back to my room and everything was normal.

Just to make sure I wouldn’t think this was a dream in the morning; I wrote everything down on paper and laid it by my alarm clock. It was not a dream because I found the paper the next day. (I still remembered anyway and I usually don’t remember dreams.)