Night of September 29, 1976. Wednesday.
In the dream, I am fishing at El Jobean in the afternoon. The weather is very nice. There are a lot of other people of various ages, some fishing, but not that close to where I am. I decide to fish for awhile.
Over time, I notice that I get a bite now and then, but every time I reel in, it looks like a tiny piece of tin foil moving just under the water and is not there later on when all the line and hook comes fully out of the water, as if something is following my bait, which may be a minnow or tiny shiny fish. This annoys me somewhat. It seems to be a strange and growing mystery. Other people are not noticing what is happening and a few people are leaving now and then, as it is getting later in the afternoon. The scene is very vivid, yet I cannot work out the reason for the small tinfoil-like “creature” under the water or what sometimes seems like an actual gum wrapper section somehow moving in consistent patterns (or maybe someone is playing a practical joke).
Oddly, there is a utility pole to my left, with a three-digit number painted at an odd diagonal angle about chest-high and an additional mark of some kind. It seems sort of out-of-place near the beach.
It is getting darker and darker and time seems to be compressed a bit. Everyone has left the beach but me and it has grown slightly cooler.
Once again, the silvery, reflective form is under the water, but as the sun has just gone down, things change a bit. A very large and strangely silvery manta ray, which is somehow walking like a person, “slimmer” than a real manta ray, and about as tall as a person (or a bit taller) is coming up from the shoreline with its “wings” out. I see it as potentially dangerous. It is very vivid (not quite lucid - but almost). I manage to back up and grab some sort of gig or harpoon with my left hand and am able to send it into the creature and kill it. I feel “heroic” somehow, as if I am part of a legend of some sort. There is a subtle sense of rain and motion of waves as if the scene is being “painted” by those aspects. It is an eerie scene, yet somehow not nightmarish to me.
What was interesting about this is that the next afternoon, the utility pole near the highway (but still a part of our front yard area) had the exact same white paint markings as from the dream and at the same height. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo on hand and did not sketch out the somewhat oddly painted number (could not fully tell what it was - only that it looked the same as the dream image and had at least one six - or what looked like one). It had definitely not been there earlier (even my father mentioned it and confirmed it was brand new). This is one of those times where I just reflected on how curious that was (especially since there was no seeming connection with any “silver manta” in any way - and that part of the dream was quite “mundane” compared to the “epic battle”); nothing new, but still a cause for thought. It mostly seemed to me as if they had worked at “marking” the poles for when they were to put in the small green utility boxes relating to underground cables (which I did not hear about until later). It did look a little like a (Graffiti) tag, but we were “in the middle of nowhere” and it had never happened elsewhere at the time.
Of course, such events as this caused me to be more and more focused and observant and this is a positive effect, I think, especially in these times. I do find it amusing how dreams often slip in little “surprises” like this, almost like some sort of “test”.
