By Crusty Blanche-Froid

Mrs Hausmann after her "terrible night" is comforted by Dr. Waldheim, Dalhousie Chief of Psychiatry. Photo courtesy Dalhousie Psychiatric Clinic

Notional Pest has learned that a mature lady of uncertain age, who had not previously been known to receive nocturnal visits from demons, is reported to have had a 'visitation' so bizarre that it has doctors at the Dalhousie Interpretation of Dreams Institute pouring through basic texts by Freud and Jung.

Mrs. Fredericka Isabella Yvonne Marguretta Hausmann (her name has been altered to protect her privacy) lives in upstairs apartment 2A at 24 Lord Dalhousie Drive in Halifax. Mrs Hausmann said she had a strange and "terribly disturbing" dream that was "the weirdest thing that ever happened to me."

Mrs. Hausmann said she went to bed as she always does at 11 o'clock after turning off the CBC news with Peter Mansbridge. She then turns on the bedside radio to listen to Art Bell. Mr. Bell hosts a late night radio talk show that deals with extra-terrestrials and their schemes to infiltrate humankind with space aliens that will soon take over the world. "His end-of-the-world predictions help me go to sleep," said Mrs Hausmann. 

Before climbing under the covers Mrs Hausmann normally gives her Maine coon cat "Salmonella" a saucer of milk and a warm fondling behind the ears. 

On this night, however, Sammy (her pet name for the cat), could not be found. A thorough search of her apartment yielded no clue whatsoever as to what had happened to Sammy. Normally the cat watches the news with her, but on this night, she recalls that Sammy had hissed loudly in the middle of a long boring news analysis of 'Shawinigate' and had bounded out of the room. Mrs. Hausmann thought no more about it until she laid out the saucer of milk.

'Who the heck are you?'

During the night, "around 3:15 AM as best I can recall," Mrs. Hausmann dreamt that a strange man crawled into bed with her. "I remember asking him, 'who the heck are you?' I don't normally swear but, frankly, he scared the living wits out of me." 

The dream stranger in her bed, however, provoked her into reaching for what she referred to as, 'his private parts'. To her astonishment, her roaming hand suddenly encountered something hard. At that, the dream stranger disappeared, she woke up, and found clutched in her hand the TV remote.

The TV remote is a plastic, fifty-five button, contoured, shiny black battery-driven device that in only a few particulars resembles the object Mrs Hausmann groped for in her dream.

Although it was still hours before the normal work day, Mrs. Hausmann immediately called 911. Within minutes a squad of para-psychiatrists from the Dalhousie Psychiatric Clinic was at her door. After briefly examining Mrs. Hausmann, who had to be sedated with several glasses of warm milk, the five-person team conducted a thorough search of the premises. 

The cat Sammy was soon located by Mrs. Hausmann hiding in her linen closet. But it is not immediately known what the para-psychiatrists were searching for. 

Dr. Curtis Waldheim, Chief of Psychiatry at Dalhousie, did not wish to be 'on record' after the incident, but he did admit 'off the record' that "in deeply disturbing cases such as this, the 'dream' man sometimes turns out to be an actual, live, person and in every such case we have to be 100 percent certain that the intruder, usually male, is not under the bed or hiding in unusual places."

CBC Newsworld will be featuring a complete story of the bizarre incident with Hanna Gartner interviewing Mrs. Hausmann and various psychiatrists from Halifax and surrounding areas, on Thursday, 18 August. See your newspaper for local listings.

Notional Pest

MORE STRANGE STORIES OF MRS. HAUSMANN CAN BE FOUND ON NEWSWORLD WITH HANNA GARTNER

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