The Phantom Yucca.

There’s something slightly odd going on either in my bedroom, my mind, or my ocular faculty. When I go to bed at night I switch the light off, turn onto my right side, close my eyes, and go to sleep. Sleep usually comes very quickly, but not always. Occasionally I lie awake for a few minutes and feel constrained to open my eyes again, and that’s when I see it: the large yucca plant standing to the right of my bed, clearly, though dimly, visible in silhouette against the wall beyond. It stands exactly where my bedside table – on which there is an alarm clock, a lamp, and a few things I’ve taken out of my pockets – stands at all other times. The last time it happened I didn’t see a yucca, though. Instead I saw a large quantity of little black insects rising and falling like a swarm of midges backlit by the sun on a summers evening. 

Needless to say I find these sightings intriguing, and I put some thought into what the phenomena might be. I’ve come up with lots of possibilities ranging from the deeply mystical to the boringly mundane, and maybe there are other possibilities which I haven’t identified or are beyond the scope of my knowledge in such matters. And since there are so many of them I always decide on the simple solution: ignore them and go to sleep. So that’s what I do.