I had a dream last night that I was in the middle of a land dispute between a town – who had a legal claim to the land – and group of nomads/gypsies that had been using the land as a base camp for generations. As the grandson one of the leaders of the town and a descendant of one of the town founders, I was chosen to speak for the town. After the nomads made their case, I got up and made an impassioned speech about history and the lives of the people that had been involved. I then suddenly made an about face and told everyone assembled that the real problem was all the ghosts that had been stirred up by the conflict. There were hundreds of them and they were each tied to a specific object. Those objects – paintings, vases, books – had been gathered in the meeting hall where I was speaking and I talked about how we needed to settle all of this once and for all.
I proposed that the town give up their claim to the land entirely. In exchange, the nomads would take the objects and commune with the ghosts by holding their objects. The nomads – being generally better story tellers – would write down the story of the ghosts. Once the story had been told, the ghosts would be at peace. And once they were at peace, the object could be destroyed and the ghost would move on. If the object was destroyed before they were at peace, the ghost would go on a rampage until they were bound to a new object.
The nomads agreed to the terms and the town agreed as well – happy to be relieved of the burden of the objects and the ghosts.
The meeting concluded, I went into a back room and picked up a vase. With a few of the townsfolk with me, I explained that as I was dying I had deliberately dropped some of my blood into the vase so that I would be bound to it when I came back as a ghost. My story told, I dropped the vase. As the vase shattered, I faded out.
And woke up.