The narrator finds himself standing in a long queue in a dreary, colorless grey town with no memory of how he arrived.

A gleamingly bright bus arrives and the narrator boards it, enduring the selfish pushing and shoving of his fellow riders.

The passengers disembark and discover the surrounding landscape is extraordinarily heavy and solid, making even walking on the grass painful.

A group of bright, ageless, solid Spirits approaches the bus passengers, who have realized they themselves appear translucent and ghostly.

A Ghost confronts a Spirit who was once his employee, furious that this man reached Heaven while he himself did not.

The bully Ghost refuses to accept God's mercy as the only path to Heaven and turns back toward the bus.

The apostate Ghost meets his former friend and fellow scholar Dick, now a Spirit, who tries to persuade him to choose Heaven.

The apostate refuses to enter Heaven, preferring the theological debates of his Grey Town society to definitive spiritual truth.

The narrator hears a low Scottish voice and meets George MacDonald, who offers to serve as his guide.

MacDonald explains that Heaven and Hell are retroactive perceptions—what a person ultimately chooses determines how their entire history appears to them.

A Ghost who was a famous artist on Earth rejects Heaven when he learns that earthly fame and artistic talent mean nothing there.

A Ghost with a lizard on his shoulder finally gives an Angel permission to kill the creature whispering sinful suggestions into his ear.

The Angel kills the lizard; the man rises with a glorious solid body and the lizard transforms into a magnificent stallion.

A stunning procession announces the arrival of Sarah Smith, and her ghostly husband Frank refuses to join her in Heaven despite her encouragement.

The narrator wakes in his home as a clock strikes three in the morning and sirens wail in the distance.

The narrator finds himself in a grey, joyless town and boards a bright bus that carries him to a land of impossible solidity and beauty at the threshold of Heaven. A group of radiant Spirits tries to persuade their former acquaintances to abandon their sinful natures and venture onward into the Mountains, but most Ghosts refuse. A prideful man insists his good works should earn him entry, and an apostate scholar prefers theological debate to eternal truth. The narrator is guided through these encounters by George MacDonald, who reveals that Heaven and Hell are ultimately states of perception tied to each person's final choice. The only Ghost who accepts Heaven does so by consenting to the destruction of his sinful nature, and he rises transformed—solid and glorious. The novel closes with the narrator waking in wartime Britain, carrying the dream's lesson about the permanent separation between those who choose God and those who do not.

The headline events of a soul's dream journey from Hell to Heaven's threshold.

A tousle-headed youth sits beside the narrator on the bus and produces a manuscript, eager for the narrator to read and critique it.

The youth explains that he died by suicide after suffering a romantic heartbreak that was the final straw in a string of disappointments.

Ikey explains that Grey Town residents move progressively farther from one another by imagining new housing whenever they quarrel with their neighbors.

Ikey proposes a plan to introduce material commodities to Grey Town, hoping to draw all its scattered residents back to the city center.

A passenger warns that Grey Town's long evening will one day turn into complete darkness—a fate the other passengers quickly dismiss.

The narrator tries with all his might to pluck a single flower from the ground but cannot—the landscape is too heavy and real.

After leaving the apostate Ghost, the narrator attempts to walk on the river's solid surface but makes little progress despite great effort.

The narrator discovers Ikey furtively attempting to collect fallen golden apples near a tree surrounded by lilies too painful to cross.

An angel in the waterfall tells Ikey he cannot take the apples to Hell and urges him to stay and learn to eat them.

A hard-bitten Ghost argues that the promise of Heaven is a trick just like every other broken promise he has encountered in life.

A Ghost refuses a Spirit's invitation to enter Heaven out of shame over her ghostly, insubstantial appearance among the solid Spirits.

MacDonald tells the narrator about Sir Archibald, a man who rejected eternal life because his lifelong study of survival would be pointless there.

A Ghost who spent her life controlling her husband Robert demands entry to Heaven so she can resume ordering him around.

A grieving mother Ghost refuses Heaven when her brother Spirit explains she cannot enter it merely to be reunited with her dead son.

MacDonald shows the narrator a vision of a grand chessboard representing human souls and the coexistence of free will with divine control.

Before the bus departs the Grey Town, the narrator encounters a young man who explains the bleak logic of a wasted life, and a schemer named Ikey whose plan to save the Grey Town through material economics reveals the limits of human ingenuity. Once in the Valley, the narrator watches more Ghosts reject Heaven: a woman too ashamed of her appearance, a domineering wife who wants only to resume controlling her husband, and a grieving mother who cannot accept that Heaven is not a means to any personal end. A hard-bitten cynic nearly persuades the narrator that the Spirits are lying about everything. George MacDonald anchors these encounters with the cautionary tale of Sir Archibald, a man who loved the study of survival so much he rejected eternal life itself. The pool concludes with MacDonald presenting a chessboard vision that gestures toward the mysterious coexistence of human free will and divine sovereignty.

The secondary characters and smaller revelations that fill out the dream's full picture.

A passenger dismisses a fellow rider's warning that Grey Town's evening will turn to night, calling such fears primitive superstitions.

A bright light floods through the bus, exposing all the passengers' faces as extraordinarily distorted and faded.

A Spirit tells the bully Ghost that no human being is good enough to enter Heaven on their own merits—only God's mercy can.

Dick tells the apostate Ghost directly and clearly that the grey place where they have lived since dying is called Hell.

Ikey is forced to drop his stolen apples one by one as their impossible weight defeats him on the walk back to the bus.

The hard-bitten Ghost's conspiracy-minded argument punctures the narrator with doubt, making him fear the Spirits have been deceiving the Ghosts all along.

The narrator sits by the water hoping to see just one Ghost accept Heaven and prove that the Spirits are telling the truth.

MacDonald reveals that each Spirit has selflessly delayed their own journey further into the Mountains to help a person they knew during life.

A flirtatious Ghost attempts to charm her way into Heaven before recognizing the attempt is futile and walking despondently back to the bus.

The narrator observes that all the Ghosts talk endlessly about the Grey Town and show almost no curiosity about their new surroundings.

An Angel appears to the Ghost with the shoulder lizard and offers to kill the creature, but warns the Ghost must decide immediately.

The Angel kills the lizard and both the Ghost and the creature appear to lie dead on the ground for a terrifying moment.

As Sarah Smith encourages her husband Frank, he visibly struggles against the joy she offers and even begins growing slightly taller.

MacDonald argues that joy cannot be held forever hostage by those who reject it, or it would be destroyed in others by their misery.

MacDonald tells the narrator that everything he has witnessed has been a dream and encourages him to write it down for others to read.

The journey is punctuated by small but decisive moments of revelation—a light that exposes the passengers' true nature, a Spirit's stark declaration that no one earns their way into Heaven, and a former friend's blunt confirmation that the Grey Town is Hell. The narrator's faith is tested most severely by the hard-bitten Ghost's cynical logic, and he desperately needs to witness a single soul choose Heaven before he can believe. MacDonald helps orient him, explaining the sacrifices the Spirits have made and why the Ghosts so consistently deceive themselves about their own motives. The pivotal moment arrives when one Ghost defeats his own sinful nature—not through merit but through the willingness to surrender it entirely, dying and rising transformed. The pool ends with two final revelations: that those in Heaven cannot be made miserable by the choices of those in Hell, and that the entire journey has been a dream the narrator must commit to writing.

The key revelations, decisions, and emotional turning points of the dream journey.