Summoning Angels

While I was at Caltech, I lived in a dorm called Page House. In Page (and in fact in most of the housing at Caltech at the time) most of the beds were elevated to within a couple of feet of the ceiling. This was done to allow more space within rooms, since they were quite small to start with. One night, during my freshman year in 1981, I fell asleep in my bed while my room-mate, Steve Chin, worked at his desk, tucked below his bed on the opposite side of the room.

I remember dreaming that I had found a very old piece of vellum with what appeared to be an Enochian Chant written on it. These chants were used in the Middle Ages to summon angels, and are beautiful pieces of vocal composition. I began to sing the chant (confirming that this was a dream, because I cannot read music, much less hold a tune).

Sometime later I was lying on my stomach in the dark, and I felt something approaching. When I picked up my head and looked, a great big bat landed on my face! With a start, I woke from that dream, to find myself back at Caltech, with Steve's desk light still on, but with Steve nowhere to be found. Instead, sitting on the end of my bunk bed was a very old, wrinkled man, who held out a bony, freckled hand. He said, quite pleasantly, "Shake the hand of Satan."

I watched with amazement as my hand moved out to grasp his -- without my being able to stop it. And then it was all gone, and I woke up the next morning. I asked Steve whether he had noticed anything strange the night before, and when he replied that nothing had happened, I explained my dreams. He told me he had not left the room at all, and had gone to bed quite soon after I had last spoken to him, turning out his light.

I tried to convince myself that this had all meant nothing, but I did spend the next days wondering about that handshake. I had a very creepy feeling that I had just done something that would not do me very well in the near future. Luckily, nothing did happen, and I was able to file this event away under "strange (nested) dreams," but I often wonder what would have happened to me mentally had some other strange chance occurrence come to pass while I was affected.

Should I ever find out that such an Enochian Chant exists, I will be sure never to read it.