The Ancestors Speak in My Sleep

I never believed in ghosts until they started whispering to me in my sleep.

Not the moaning, chain-dragging kind that haunts horror films. No. These ghosts were patient. Ancient. Familiar. They came softly, like the scent of my grandmother’s cornbread rising from a stove I hadn’t seen since I was eight.

The first night it happened, I had just moved into my new apartment in Montgomery. The city breathed history. But history had never breathed back—until that night.

I had fallen asleep scrolling through the news: another protest, another injustice, another name added to the endless list of Black lives lost and forgotten. I closed my eyes with anger, tired of crying, tired of feeling helpless.

That’s when I dreamed of the field.

It stretched endlessly, wild with tall grass and whispers. The sky was burnt orange, like sunset mixed with fire. I stood barefoot. A wind passed through me—and then I heard them.

A man’s voice first. Deep and cracked like the earth.

“We crossed oceans you ain’t never seen, child.”

Then a woman, warm and stern.

“We sang freedom with no tongues.”

Then a third, faint and fluttering like leaves.

“You carry all of us in your breath.”

I woke up drenched in sweat, heart hammering. The apartment was still. But I swore I could smell red clay and smoke.

The dreams kept coming.

Every night, a different ancestor. A sharecropper named Elijah who lost everything but his faith. A midwife called Miss Ora who delivered babies by candlelight and never lost one. A teenage boy who ran from Alabama to Chicago with nothing but hope in his pocket and a song in his mouth.

They didn’t scare me.

They taught me.

They told me things my textbooks never did. Not the polished stories, but the blood-raw truth. They spoke of the auction blocks, the hunger, the coded hymns sung in cotton fields. But also the joy—Sunday fish fries, front porch laughter, the first Black church raised with bare hands and borrowed nails.

One night, I asked them, “Why now?”

The wind in the dream blew harder. The trees bent like they were bowing. Then Elijah answered:

“Because you finally got quiet enough to listen.”

That stayed with me.

In the real world, I had been screaming—on social media, in classrooms, inside my own head. But I never stopped to listen.

My ancestors weren’t asking me to fight louder. They were asking me to remember. To root myself in the strength that survived slave ships, whips, Jim Crow, redlining, and crack-era grief. They didn’t die for hashtags. They endured for legacy.

When I woke up after that, I made changes.

I started recording their stories, piecing together my family tree, connecting dots my mother said were long forgotten. I visited our old church and spoke to elders who carried entire libraries in their eyes. I stopped waiting for history to be handed to me—and started claiming it.

It turns out the past isn’t buried. It’s breathing.

And every time I close my eyes, I return to that field. Sometimes, we just sit. No words. No pain. Just presence. Just power.

People ask how I stay grounded with so much chaos in the world.

I tell them: The ancestors speak in my sleep. And when I wake up, I walk with them.

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Author’s Note:

This story is fiction inspired by the real, often-overlooked power of ancestral memory in Black culture. If you’ve ever felt strength in your spirit that didn’t come from you—listen closely. You might not be alone.Maybe you’re being guided. Maybe you’re being remembered with purpose.