~A Past-Life Memory~

For most of my life I have had a recurrent nightmare.  

In this dream I am standing on a beach.  

The sky is getting very dark and I am very scared.  

I am scrambling amongst a crowd of people who are also scared, and are in chaos.  

Everyone is running around and panicking.  People are screaming, they are truly panicked.

I am very upset because I can not find someone that I have been separated from.  I realize that it is my child I am looking for.  I am calling out her name and terrified because I can't find her.

There is a break in the crowd of people and I see my child simply standing amongst the crowd of people that are running all around her, and she is crying.  I immediately run to her.  I pick her up in my arms and attempt to calm her down.  She is so upset, she had been looking for me as well.

Off to our left in the distance, I see what I can only describe as these oddly shaped, ornately designed doorways.  They remind me of an opening to a parking garage.  I am unsure as to whether to run and stay in there or to venture into the water.  I'm trying to figure out where we might be safest.

I decide to head into the water.  Many others have decided to go into the water as well.  This water is a vast body of water, a lake or an ocean.

The sky continues to darken and it is becoming hard to breathe.  I am overcome with exhaustion, and begin sinking down into the water.  My child is as well.  I am calm and tell my child it is okay that we will be together in a beautiful place.  I am still holding my child very tightly.  I then begin to see an incredibly bright light.  It is here that I have always woke up.

I have always woke up from this dream completely drenched in sweat and panicked.  My heart is usually pounding so hard it feels like it is going to break through my chest wall.

As a child when I would wake up from this horrible dream, I would feel really sad.  I very much missed my child from the dream.  Strange I know, but it is truly how I felt.   

My mom knew all about this dream, since I had always talked to her about it whenever I had the dream.


When my eldest daughter was all of 4 or 5 years of age, I was attending college full-time.  My mom babysat both my eldest daughter and my youngest daughter who was 2 or 3 years of age.

Every single day I would call my mom to see how my daughter's were, and how their day was going.

One day when I called home, my mom sounded really eager to talk to me.  She began to tell me that when my oldest daughter woke up that morning, she told my mom that she had a really bad dream.  

My mom reassured her that everything was okay now, that it was only a dream.

My daughter told her that it felt real.  She then told my mom, "I was lost and couldn't find mommy.  The sky was going black, and people were running around.  I was really scared."

She then told my mom, "I finally found mommy and we went in the water.  We started to die.  Mommy told me not to be scared."

She then told my mom, "everything went black and then there was a really bright light. Mommy told me that we were dead but everything was okay, and not to be scared."

My mom was obviously freaked out about what my daughter had told her.  It was exactly like the dreams I had been having for years.  I couldn't believe it either.

My daughter had no knowledge whatsoever of the dreams I had.  I had never discussed them with her, and she had never heard me discuss this dream with my mom.  In fact, it had been many years since I had the dream.  She was probably only a baby the last time I had the dream.

After my daughter shared this dream with my mom, I decided to look up past events in history and see if I could find anything even vaguely similar to what we experienced.  I couldn't help but wonder if we were re-calling some type past life experience or something.

I eventually came across a web-site about the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Herculaneum on August 24th, 79 A.D.  

From what I read, I discovered that the pyroclastic surge that occurred when Mount Vesuvius erupted, formed a mixture of ash and hot gases, and it billowed through Herculaneum at 100 mph (160 km/h).  It turned the sky black.  

The volcanic ash that fell reached the beach and the boat houses where many were waiting for rescue. It also reached the many people that had waded into the ocean believing they would be safe.  All of them were killed instantly by the intense heat.

While looking through the site, I saw a picture of the boat houses of Herculaneum.  I could not believe it!  These "boathouses" were the things I had always remembered and recalled from my dream, but did not have a clue what they could have been.  To me, they had resembled parking garages.  

I also saw buildings and artifacts from that time that were very familiar to me, yet I had no idea why.

While viewing the web-site, and reading all about Herculaneum and this volcanic eruption that occurred, my daughter came into the room where I was, and approached the computer.

While staring at the computer monitor she said, "Mommy, I've seen those before."  She then pointed to the picture of the boathouses from Herculaneum.  

She then said, "Did we visit there on vacation?"  I told her no.  She then began pointing to some other pictures of various sites and artifacts around Herculaneum and said, "I remember that too.  We have been there."  

I told her we had not.  She said, "Well then why does it look like I remember?  Did we used to live there?"

I didn't know what to say to her. I was speechless. I simply told her no, we never lived there and I did not know why it was so familiar to her.

In my quest to learn more about ancient Herculaneum and the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, I found out that in 1980 archaeologists discovered over 300 skeletons along the shoreline in Herculaneum. They were the remains of a crowd of people that had fled to the beach in hopes of escaping.  Unfortunately they were overcome by the heat clouds surging down from Mt. Vesuvius and were killed instantly.


The boat houses from Herculaneum

So, did my daughter and I actually recall a past life memory in our dreams?  

How could we have both had the same nightmare?  

Since discovering the information about Herculaneum and seeing the many photos, I have not had the dream since.  Which I am rather happy about.

Now that my daughter is 18, we have discussed this dream that her and I shared.  My daughter wonders as I do, if perhaps we really were re-calling a past-life together.  I guess we'll never know for sure.  But it is rather interesting to her and I, to say the very least.



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