Have you ever wondered why the inventive and creative children's book series Lemony Snicket is so dark and depressing?
Well, getting to know the mind of the man behind the series, Daniel Handler, reveals exactly why he writes brooding characters in hopeless scenarios. That's what he lives with.
This piece is written by Daniel Handler for the Wall Street Journal. Tell me this isn't demonic! 👇
There's nothing more boring than someone else's dreams. "I had a dream last night," someone will say, and no matter how much you like them, you want them to shut up.
That's why I didn't tell anybody when it first happened. It was my first year in college, and terrifying figures began to appear in my sleep. Naked, hairless and powdery white, they beckoned me to witness scenes of violence and torture. I'd wake up, drink water, take some calming breaths and go back to sleep, then have the dream again. Before long I was having it every night.
By morning I would be exhausted and lost. I wasn't too worried — it was just a dream, after all, and everyone at my liberal-arts college seemed a bit exhausted and lost — but at dusk, my fingers tingled with the sense that something dreadful was about to happen.
Finally I began to tell people. When a friend asked what the dreams felt like, I explained that it was like my whole life was on cheap paper, which these figures ripped away to show what's underneath. My friend gently suggested that I walk with her to the mental health center ...
Handler goes on to describe how the dreams turned into a waking nightmare of sorts. He couldn't function properly. He became completely unreliable. He even became so troubled that he began to experience physical symptoms.
His brain would freeze, like a seizure, and he'd fall to the ground twitching.
He went to doctors, had MRIs done, brain scans, there was nothing physically causing his problems.
He went to mental health doctors, he went to hypnotists, this man tried (almost) everything under the sun to find a rational answer.
There is, of course, nothing that makes you feel crazier than being tested to see how crazy you are. I kept thinking the same thing everyone thinks: that there must be some mistake. These were only dreams.
Then it got worse.
The mysterious figures left the dreams.
He began seeing these creatures, what he believed were figments of his imagination, out in broad daylight. No one else saw them, but he could see them plain as day.
Various experts with various plans, various drugs and various referrals, kept on failing, and the visions got worse. Sometimes the figures were so close that I had to walk through them. Shortly before graduation, while writing a final paper on H.G. Wells, I had a seizure, the biggest yet. When I woke, I couldn't read, write or speak. I remember the worried faces of my friends as I was sirened away in an ambulance.
Nobody wants to be a medical mystery. Doctors get excited, but when a pet theory doesn't pan out, they get tired of making guesses. My brain was rescanned, awake and asleep. I was hypnotized again. In the hospital, I was afraid to sleep, and they were afraid to make me. Finally, a doctor sat on my bed and said, "I don't know, what do you think it is?" Heaving with sobs, I told him that maybe the reason they couldn't find the causes of my hallucinations was because they weren't hallucinations at all. Maybe the figures were real, an actual thing, actually happening.
This, of course, sent Handler to a mental hospital. The idea that these monsters could be real is the one impossibility for the medical and scientific community. The problem has to be in his head, right?
Basically, if you read the whole story, that's the conclusion Handler comes to. He still sees these creatures, but he KNOWS they aren't real. He's convinced himself they aren't real. So he lives with them.
My seizures are now rare. I've more or less pinpointed their cause, never suggested to me by any medical professional: I get them when I don't get enough sleep. I've learned to anticipate them. I've also learned to look away, to keep walking, to move through the figures I see, as if they are merely inappropriate, staring strangers. To the bafflement of people who've known me for years, I hardly mention them.
I'm not a crazy person. If I were a crazy person, babbling about visitations from ghostly figures, I would not be allowed to run around loose, writing books for your children. Everyone has bad dreams, and talking about dreams is boring, so I stay quiet and I stay in the world.
Well ... I'm glad he's all better? I mean, his life is haunted by these demonic figures, but he can ignore them now.
So, that's progress?
Or maybe he's just learning to live in his own worldview. He denies the existence of God in the story, so it's highly unlikely he considers the possibility of the supernatural.
Sorry but not sorry, THIS is the correct reaction 👇
C.R. Wiley, a Christian theologian and one of my favorite boomers (I mean, who takes a photo of their newspaper to upload to Twitter?), points out that Daniel Handler is almost certainly being hounded by demonic spirits and just can't admit it.
Spiritual realities exist. Whether you admit it or not.
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