Dire story ...

Recently, I had particularly vivid dream. I usually forget my dreams within a few minutes of waking up. This dream, however, made an impression and I've continued to fixate on it, mostly because of the phrase "dire story."

I was being haunted by an onryo, or vengeful spirit. It was a girl's spirit, and she had initially been a friendly ghost, but had quickly turned malevolent for no apparent reason. She appeared everywhere I went, threatening, harassing, and generally scaring the crap out of me, even when I was with other people. In the last bit of the dream, I had learned her "dire story," or the story of her death, and knowing that, I would be able to force her to cross over into hell. I opened a door, and there she was, crouched on the ground and ready to come at me, dark fury in her sunken black eyes. That last sinister image is still seared into my mind. 

When I woke up, I was scared. I don't have many bad dreams, but when I do, they typically involve someone I love getting hurt, not a supernatural event happening to me. Then I was intrigued. I wondered if a dire story was a real thing or not. I got all the way to work that morning and then forgot the word "dire" and couldn't remember it for several days. Finally it came back to me when I wasn't thinking about it and I was able to search it up. I found an interesting game called "Dire Grove" about an abandoned town with a banshee problem, and some kind of series on YouTube called "mai dire story" which translates in Italian to "never tell story." I also found information about the dire wolf, which went extinct about 10,000 years ago, and wasn't really that interesting. It was the same size as a gray wolf is today, but about 25% heavier in mass. 

I'm a little disappointed. I thought it might mean something mystical if it was a real phrase. Like that the collective human consciousness had sent me a message. Or that I seen the sign of Koth during my dreaming and learned something about the afterlife. I guess technically either one of those could be true, and I'll have no way of ever knowing. 

In truth, I figured I had heard of a dire story somewhere else and it had shown up in my dream. But it's actually something original that my brain threw at me, and I think I will continue to develop the idea. How does knowing the circumstances of an onryo's death give you power over it? And how do you invoke that power? TBD ...

Jess

"It was the sign of Koth, that dreamers see fixed above the archway of a certain black tower standing alone in twilight—and Willett did not like what his friend Randolph Carter had said of its powers." ~H.P. Lovecraft; The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.