A Triptych Dream About Ingo Swann

A Civil War battlefield leg amputation

This past weekend, I went on a paranormal investigation in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with a group affiliated with the internet radio show The Paranormal View.  We investigated the haunted Fairfield Inn (where I had stayed roughly eight years ago and dealt with three historical ghosts in my bedroom that I later verified through research).  The inn is one of the most haunted locations I know.  However, there were roughly 20 people on this investigation. I have difficulty tuning into the spirits of the dead when I am bombarded with the psychic energies of the living.  I haven't reviewed my electronic recordings and photos yet, but my sense was that the spirits were keeping their distance from such a large crowd of living humans! 

The inn was full that night - all the other investigators were staying there - so my daughter (who accompanied me on this trip) and I stayed at a nearby farm.  It had also served as a battlefield hospital during the Civil War.  The farm was located on the road used by the Confederate soldiers on their long march out of Gettysburg toward the end of the war.  We chose to sleep in the allegedly most haunted room in the farmhouse.  It was the room where the doctors had conducted their "treatments" of wounded soldiers. 

Given the state of medicine at the time, and the fact that most of the bullet wounds suffered by the soldiers were devastating due to the enormous grape-sized bullets used in their muskets, most of these treatments consisted of amputations of legs and arms.  I have visited many such homes that were converted into temporary Civil War hospitals and most are haunted.  It was reported that many such hospitals had piles of amputated limbs that were stacked so high they reached the second floor windows!

After two days of long investigations into the night at the Fairfield Inn, I just wasn't in the mood to be dealing with more ghosts in my bedroom at the farm.  I tried to tune out all thoughts of spirits to avoid inviting them into my space.  I tried to make sure the loud clanging in the room at 4 AM was just old pipes in a hot water heating system.  I checked to make sure the little footsteps in the room at 3 AM was just one of the owner's seven cats coming to pay us a visit.  I tried to dismiss the fact that the lamp had abruptly turned off by itself while my daughter and I were talking earlier in the evening. 

Ingo Swann's "Millenium" triptych painting displayed at the American Visionary Art Museum
( photo by Nancy du Tertre)

At any rate, I didn't sleep much and woke up frequently both nights just to double check the state of the room.  The last night we were there I must have relaxed my guard a little bit.  I had the most peculiar set of three related dreams - like a triptych painting. 

In the first dream, I was strangely in charge of preparing Ingo Swann's corpse for burial.  This included cutting his toenails.  Ingo Swann, known as being the creator of Remote Viewing (psychic spy techniques) for the CIA, was one of my mentors.  I knew him for about a decade and was very sad when he passed away in 2013.  I woke up from this bizarre dream fragment wondering why I was dreaming about Ingo and why it was related to his corpse.  I reasoned it must have been because I was sleeping in a room where, in all likelihood, many corpses were probably prepared for burial. 

However, when I went back to sleep, the dream continued - as if on cue - and this was certainly not voluntary or desired on my part.  In the second dream, I was now attending Ingo's funeral service (which I did not attend in real life).  I was now more of a consciousness, and less a physical person, like a fly on the wall, observing the people who attended his funeral, including some of his family members, like his sister and niece.  I woke up again.   

I couldn't understand why I was fixating on Ingo and his death.  No obvious reason to me because I wasn't thinking about him at all.  Granted, thoughts of him may have slipped into my subconscious mind due to some recent events.

• True, I recently was asked to write a foreword to a book and to include some stories about Ingo.  As soon as I was asked  by the author (in a private text on Facebook Messenger) to see if I would be willing to write the foreword, I received a friend request from none other than the deceased Ingo Swann (!).  It was was obviously a fake profile.  I am not an idiot. But the timing of its appearance shook me to my core.  I have never mentioned Ingo to anyone on Facebook and this one time on Messenger was in a private text.  Even more weirdly, the friend request disappeared off my chronology within the next hour.  When I searched for this Ingo Swann profile in Facebook, it would not open.  All other profiles opened without a problem.   
• True, I recently learned the film documentary about Ingo (for which I was interviewed about a year ago or so) is having a screening next month in May.  While I was interviewed for this movie, the director's still camera, pointed at me, had taken a picture with a large flash by itself.  No one was near the camera at the time...
• True, I recently went to the Baltimore American Visionary Art Museum and saw the rare display of many of Ingo's paintings, including the huge triptych painting (yes, I get the significance only now) which I had seen so many years ago in his studio in New York City. 

So I went back to sleep again.  The dream continued into a third dream!  It is the only time in my life that I can recall having a dream continue three times.  Every once in a while, if awoken from a great dream, I have tried to will myself back into the same dream - without much luck.  This time I had been wide awake in between each dream and had absolutely no desire or intention to continue the same dream - but it kept happening anyway. 

In the third dream, I was now with his real estate agent and his sister and some other presumed family members (I have never met any of them).  We were now in the bedroom of his house.  It did not look at all like his real-life bedroom.  People were haggling over the distribution of his various assets.  His room was mostly empty and very stark - almost monastic.  I remember his preference, in real-life, for unusual or second-hand furniture, plates and decorative objects.  He wasn't fussy.  He didn't care much for "stuff."

I have never had a dream that continued, like a movie, in three distinct parts.  The "intermissions" were my waking moments.  It was even more odd because I did not understand why I was dreaming about Ingo or his death.  Perhaps, having attended this paranormal investigation, I had inadvertently tuned my psychic receptors in the direction of the dead.  Perhaps this was Ingo making yet another appearance in my life...