How Deep Does Your Basement Go?

I'm standing at the door to the basement. I'm eager to go down and explore what's down there. But as soon as I start descending, I already feel the fear rising up inside me. I tell myself there's nothing to be afraid of. Ghosts don't exist. Monsters aren't real. I move further down. The air is stale and damp. I don't like the feeling I'm feeling. This doesn't feel right. In fact in feels really bad, I can sense it all around. There is evil in this place, deep-rooted, pure evil.

I don't want to be here, I want to go back up. But I keep telling myself this is my house, I need to know what is down here. What could be so bad? It's just a basement. But that unnerving feeling keeps growing, something is down here. Something stonger, more powerful than me. And it does not have good intentions.

Overcome by this feeling, I make my way back up the steps, back to the light. But my curiosity has been piqued. The space down there seems much bigger than I expected. There seem deeper levels beyond the darkness.

Insistent that I can't be afraid of my own house, I go back down. The walls are dark, black and brown, dirty and earth-like with dim old dusty covered bulbs   providing bearly enough light to see, their old, frayed cabling threatening to fail at any moment. The floor is dusty like fine dried soil covering my shoes as I edge forward. I shine my torch deeper in to darkness. It beckons.

As I move towards the darkness I can see a corridor with empty rooms and more corridors leading off in different directions, all of them extending deeper and deeper into the darkness. I can tell by the echo, or rather the lack of it, that there are levels below that I can't see. This maze extends far, far below; probably deeper than I can imagine.

I have no idea what I could find down there, or whether I'd even be able to find my way back. The feeling of dread grows stronger within me as I tentatively explore deeper. A feeling as if some potent supernatural power is there waiting to ambush me in the darkness.

It's at somewhere around this point, I usually wake up from this dream. It's a dream I've had many times. Different houses usually. Usually nice houses, houses I'd want to live in (although once it was an abandoned hospital). The theme is the same: I find a dark, abandoned part of the building which extends maze-like deeper and deeper into the unknown.  As I explore, I feel this terrible presence, and I mean terrible in the most distrubing, horrific kind of way. Like there is something of pure evil down there.

I usually wake from this dream 'spooked' I would say, but I rationalise that it's just a dream and start to think about what it could mean. I guess I always rationalise that the basement complex represents my subconscious, and that perhaps I'm afraid to explore that part of myself. I'm not sure now though. Perhaps the underground maze represents my depression.

At my low points, I've always thought that it was bad enough, and however bad it is now, it can't get any worse. Somehow I'll get through this moment and it will be better.

But as I've suffered longer with my depression, I've noticed that however bad it was, there is always a deeper level of darkness, a deeper level of sorrow and pain, and a darker evil waiting for you there in the shadows and beckoning you further down.

I by no means think I have explored the real depths of that maze. And I'm sure there are people who have been, and probably are right now, trapped in deeper are darker places of that grim labyrinth. But I don't think I want to go there. I don't think you can bring the light to those places, and I'm not sure that you can always find your way back.