One of my earliest childhood memories is waking up in my bunkbed one morning (I slept in the upper bunk since I was older than my sister). The head of our bunkbed was against the southern wall of our bedroom, and the right side was against the east wall. The walls were painted pale blue. We were living in a small white house that my parents rented around the corner from my maternal grandparents.

When my grandparents moved to the next town over, my parents bought their house, and we moved into that house when I was 6. When I had this experience, I was probably either 4 or 5 years old; I lean more towards 5 because I’m approximately 2 years older than my sister, and if I were 4, she probably would have still been in a crib and not in a bunkbed.

When I woke up one particular morning, on the wall beside my bed, I saw three figures in all I can describe now as bas relief. The first figure was a sun, the second a moon, and the third a deer (at least that’s what my child-brain interpreted it as; it had elaborate antlers, so it was a stag). I’ve tried to find images that most closely resemble what I saw. I am pretty sure the sun and moon both had faces.

Was it a dream? A hallucination? I can only say that it felt very real to me, and when I got up that day and was sent outside to play, the very first thing I did was run around to the east side of the house to see if the stag’s body was sticking out of the side of the house. I recall a feeling of confusion when there was nothing there, as well as disappointment.

I can still see these figures in my mind when I think on this memory. They were not “colored” in that the sun wasn’t yellow, the moon wasn’t white, and the stag wasn’t brown. They were all the same color as the wall, that pale blue, with shadows that made them appear 3-dimensional, or bas relief.

The sun was on the left, the moon in the center, and the stag was on the right (and closest to my face). The stag also protruded out from the wall, almost like a hunting trophy mounted deer head that people hang on their walls. If I had to guess at their size, they were all probably 16″-20″ across and the same top-to-bottom, not overly large, but not very small either. I’m trying to judge the size as an adult comparing their size to the size a twin bunkbed would be.

I’ve kept this memory for my entire life and often find myself wondering if it has any significance. I can easily say, “Oh, maybe that’s why I love symbolism and the occult,” but who knows. It could have just as easily been a dream.