Review: Psychic Dreamwalking; By Michelle Balanger

Psychic Dreamwalking: Explorations at the Edge of Self (Weiser, 2006) is one of the strangest books you'll ever read about dreams. Although it is sold as a non-fiction book, don't be fooled -- it really should be labeled as fiction. Author Michelle Balanger has written books and appeared in dodgy documentaries about her life as a psychic vampire.

A WHAT?

This is a vampire that doesn't get involved with all that messy blood stuff. These vampires merely drain your "psychic energy." Victims feel really tired afterwards but do not turn into bats, corpses or psychic vampires.

I bought this book without realizing who Michelle Balanger was. I was hoping for information about people being able to influence someone else's dreams. Now, years and years ago, I was an eclectic witch. It was a fun time but I seriously didn't believe in all of that magick, Deities and supernatural stuff.  I just hoped the stuff existed.  Now I don't even bother to mess around with it (because I know that it doesn't exist). 

However, I did wonder if people could "dreamwalk" or appear in other people's dreams.  This is also sometimes referred to as out of body experiences or astral travel.  After comparing some of my dreams about Peter Gabriel with other PG fans, I was struck by some of the similarities in our dreams.

You will not learn how to appear in someone else's dreams when you read this book. You mainly read about Balanger's bizarre and yet somehow tawdry life as a psychic vampire. Apparently, there's not a lot of money in psychic vampirism, so for a while she worked in more conventional jobs.  There are some history bits about any info Balanger could uncover about dreams and dreamwalking, but the majority of the book is based on her personal history (or, well, the personal history she would like us to believe that she had.)

It is a good read -- if you don't take it too seriously. The pages keep turning. She can write and she seems to have found her niche.  However, it's not a good self-help book, history book or book about dreams. Some of the experiences described may help trigger some interesting dreams for you. They did for me, so I still have this book on my shelves, even though now I am an atheist.

If you do want to know more about dreamwalking or whatever you call it, you could do no worse than check out The Dream Walking Society. It seems to be a Tumblr page about photography which makes just as much sense as Psychic Dreamwalking. Whatever it is, it seems to be different depending on who you ask. Make it your own and have fun with it.