I’m driving along a two-lane road, with dense forest on both sides. Snorsha (not her real name) and Tossed In (not his real name, either, but it sounds like that) are with me in the car. We are returning from an exploration trip of some sort.

On the left side of the road is an opulent Spanish-style mansion, which has since fallen into disrepair, and been overgrown by the forest. It appears to have been built before the turn of the last century, around 1880 or so. Moss covers everything, and ferns are growing out of every open ground space, but the place is still mostly intact, including all of the glass windows.

There is a long, low stucco and brick wall along the edge of the mile-long property, and the building complex itself is probably a half mile long. I say to my companions, “Look at this amazing place! Can you imagine what it must have looked like in its heyday? And didn’t it used to be a mausoleum or cemetery or something, after that?” Neither of them knows the answer, but we are all entranced by the place as we drive by.

Eventually, we come to the end of the property, where there is an enormous, open courtyard paved entirely with red bricks. It’s about four o’clock on an overcast day, so the orange fluorescent floodlights are beginning to light up. There is a dip in the curb, so I drive into the courtyard and park the car in the middle of it. The three of us get out and walk back toward the building complex. On the side of the courtyard, away from the building, we can see that there is, in fact, an old cemetery that recedes down the hill and away from the courtyard and main complex.

We’re not the only ones who are investigating. There are a few people milling around in groups of two or three, all there for the purpose of investigating this tremendous, unusual and remote place. The three of us decide to separate. I walk toward what seems to be the main entrance. A man has set up a tiny food cart near the door, where he sells roasted chicken and chocolate-covered ice cream bars.

I walk through the entrance and into a large room–probably five hundred feet across and one hundred feet deep–that is also floored with red brick. Despite the patina left by years of this type of foot traffic, the floor in this room still retains a slight polish that reveals its exquisite quality. The room is softly illuminated by natural light, which shines through the ceiling that is made almost entirely of frosted glass. I wander through this room for a while, and then I notice a double door along one wall. I walk to it, open it and step through.

The room I enter is much smaller, perhaps a hundred feet across. The room is dark, except for torches that have been lit and placed in holders on the walls. The floor is made up of large, gray marble tiles. The ceilings are so high that they disappear into the darkness, high above the faint light from the torches.

There are a few other people like myself in the room. There is also a group of around ten actors in beautiful, multi-colored costumes. They are holding out scripts and reading from them, but still acting the parts at the same time. The performance is excellent and riveting, and the audience is spellbound. The actors are not confined to a corner of the room, but instead are walking around everywhere. If not for the bright costumes, the actors and the audience would be indistinguishable. I spend quite a bit of time watching and listening.

This is the point at which I woke up.