Dreaming Of The Dead

Last night I dreamed of a friendly black cat. It walked around the house and along the back of the sofa, seeming to know exactly where it was going. I had the impression it was visiting for a short time and was amused to see me look so surprised when it appeared.

When I woke up I remembered the dream and realised it was about my dear late Jeffrey, our lovely black cat. She was highly affectionate and patient, especially with the kids, and would happily pose for photos with them.

I still miss her and it's nice to think she popped back in my dream. :loveu:
 
I'm always dreaming of the dead but they're not nice dreams. More like night terrors and really distressing and messed up :(
 
A friend just send me this on Facebook.

"Slightly macabre dream last night. A friend whom I haven't seen in years died just before the August bank holiday of Covid. Her sister told me on here. In the dream she called me on my mobile. Can't remember much of the conversation but seemed a bit 'why hadn't I seen you/me'. Probably fuelled with some blame, guilt, regret. I might have asked her (in the dream) why didn't she get the vaccine. But, it got spooky when I sort of rationalised things & said "how can you be calling me when you're dead?". Her voice went silent & then after a moment there was some mocking, creepy laughing. Then I woke up. It was the middle of the night."

This is is an intriguing one as it has elements of several phenomena at once.

There's the phone call from the dead.

There's the vivid dream communication from a person recognised to be dead.

But the ending is of course the creepy and unsettling twist in the tale...as it brings to mind the frequent enough claim that the entity which speaks through the ouija or via a medium isn't late Aunt Gladys but some dark entity seeking to deceive.

I put these observations to him. "Exactly, and lovely [deceased's name] wouldn't have been like that. I'm amazed though at being able to get a bit of a thought process/cognition in the dream to have the thought, how can this be happening but not realising it was a dream at that point."
 
escargot said:
A BBC Radio 4 series started yesterday which fits perfectly here. :D

Powell mentions the appearance of the dead in people's dreams, which in ancient times was taken as genuine contact with them.

I really enjoyed this programme and can highly recommend it.
In fact, I'm going to Listen Again right now, before I get up. ;)

Our Dreams: Our Selves



We suspect that our dreams are meaningless, and yet we can't resist the urge to interpret the most vivid, transporting or troubling of them.
How true. 8)
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I seem to remember this being unavailable at one time but it's back now if anyone's interested.
 
escargot said:
The Robert Peston Interview Show

Blokes discussing bereavement and grief on Radio 4. They mention dreaming of their dead spouses at about 25 minutes.
One says his deceased wife seemed happy and smiling, when he'd dream that he'd realise that she was really dead. Sometimes he wakes up and other times he carries on dreaming, conscious that it's a dream but enjoying seeing her again.

Another only dreams of his when he hasn't thought of her for a while, as if she resents being forgotten about.

Just a small mention of the subject but I found it interesting.
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Here's another relevant programme that disappeared for a while but is now back!
 
Funny you should bump this thread today: last night I dreamed of my dad's late sister, who died of the same kind of tumour that is killing my mum (which, quite apart from anything else, not least the impact on the female relatives in question, seems like a particularly cruel twist of fate for my dad...) Bizarrely enough though, in the dream, I was far more concerned about my aunt's husband, who is still alive, but was long since lost to vascular dementia. I'll record this here, on the off-chance that I will hear news.
 
escargot said:
:bump:
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Well, OK ...

A week or two ago I had a vivid and emotionally disturbing dream involving all 3 of my immediate family (Mom, Dad and brother) who've all now passed on.

I was in a large open space (like a public building lobby) dealing with requests and giving out information to a slowly swarming crowd of people (generic dream characters). Some of the requests and questions were frustratingly trivial, but I did my best to be polite while trying to move myself somewhere else.

As this impasse dragged on, I started hearing comments from two parties who were standing to either side of me. No matter how I turned my head they remained just out of view at the edge of my peripheral vision - essentially no more than shadows. They addressed me by name, and I soon recognized their voices. They were Dad and my brother.

They were telling me that Mom was lonely and sad over on the other side of the veil, and they told me I needed to contact her. As the dream went on, they became more strident in pushing me - complaining about what they saw as my dereliction of duty in contacting Mom and comforting her (somehow) in the afterlife.

I asked them - at first politely, then with increasing irritation - how Mom could be lonely on the other side when they were there, too. The shadow figures wouldn't answer me; they simply continued to bug me ever more intensely or changed the subject before returning to their attempt to guilt-trip me. I began pointedly asking them why they weren't taking care of Mom, but again they either dodged my query or simply continued bitching at me.

I finally got sufficiently frustrated with the situation to say "Screw it ...", punched out of the dream, rolled my old bones out of bed, and went in search of coffee while still trying to shake off the unexpectedly deep emotional aftershocks from the dream. About halfway to the kitchen a thought flashed through my mind, and I began laughing so hard it brought tears to my eyes.

You see, Dad and my brother were the biggest heartaches Mom ever endured owing to their alcoholism. Dad was the great heartache throughout her adult / working life until they reached retirement age, when (as promised; to everyone's surprise) he completely stopped drinking and they were happy again. My brother's utter collapse into even worse dependency and retreat to the original nest (family home) for the remainder of his life was the even greater sole heartache she carried all the way to her grave.

So why did I burst out laughing? It finally occurred to me that even though all 3 of them were over on the other side, my sainted mother and the two sources of her greatest sadness(es) might not have been assigned to the same place or domain for their respective eternities.
 
In 2005 had a dream about my Grandad the night before his funeral. He was being attended to by nurses in a hospital room, they eventually stopped working on him and left. He sat up and motioned for me to come over. He said, you know I'm not really dead, don't you? I said yes. I asked him what he had been doing, how he was. He laughed and said that he had been eating all the sweeties. This was funny, as he had always had a really sweet tooth, but had diabetes for the last few years of his life and had been unable to eat sweets. He then started asking if I had seen his special pen. He was very insistent, asking over and over about his special pen. I kept telling him I hadn't seen it and eventually woke up.

The next morning I spoke to my Mum and told her about the dream. She was really happy he was able to eat sweets again but had absolutely no recollection of any pen he might be referring to. So she kind of brushed it off, as did I, that I was just having a dream about him as I was emotional due to it being the night before his funeral.

After the funeral, we went to his wake. We were sat on the opposite side of the room to my Mums sisters, as there had been a falling out during my Grandads illness and they weren't speaking with us (this is important later on!)

Varying friends of his and my Mum came over to talk about their memories of her Dad. One of them, a friend we hadn't seen or spoken with for a long time came up to my Mum and hugged her, saying she had been thinking about when they were at school and everyone used to go to my Mums house after school, where my Grandad would get them all playing music and singing, and that he had that special pen that he kept in his pocket that could be turned into a conductors baton...

I didn't know about the pen/baton, and my Mum hadn't thought about it in years. It gave my Mum a lot of comfort to know her dad had visited me in a dream.

The story doesn't actually end there. My Mum and her sisters reconciled in about 2010, and in 2012 I was back up in the north of England visiting family when unfortunately my Dads Mum died. We were far enough away from home that it made more sense to go to buy funeral clothes, rather than go back home to collect them. My sister and I invited our cousin (my Mums sisters daughter) along to shop with us.

We started to talk about how awkward it had been at my Grandads funeral not being able to talk to one another and our last memories of our Grandad. My cousin said that her last memories of my grandad weren't all that great, as he had been very agitated. He was asking her to bring him his special pen, he wanted his special pen etc. She didn't know what he meant and had been upset that she couldn't help.

My sister and I couldn't believe it. We told our cousin about the dream etc and I was able to explain to her what pen he was talking about. It spooked her a little bit, but she also found comfort knowing that his last thoughts on earth were of conducting my Mum and her friends one last time.
 
The writer David Keenan describes his dreams of his late father and how he put an end to them.

My dead father haunted my dreams – until I drowned his caul

I had been plagued by nightmares of my father, who had died six years previously, in 2013, and who would return to me in dreams as a zombie, his beautiful suits all ragged and torn, his flesh putrid, his rotting arms holding in his exposed organs, his beautiful face half eaten away.

When Dad died, he left me his caul, the membrane that covered his head when he was born. He called it his lucky cap and told me that if you had a caul in your possession, or better still, were born with one, you could never drown.

Indeed, there was once a great trade in lucky caps among superstitious seamen.

I carried his caul with me everywhere, sewn into a simple white pouch with the letter D on it and secreted inside my wallet.
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I lost my half-sister and an ex-girlfriend about a month ago, both deaths being total surprises. And both turned up in my dream last night.

My half-sister had come round to borrow some milk; hers had been poisoned because of a disease she had and her milk had something that sounded like 'peonies' swirling around in it [she died from a previously undiagnosed condition that caused a heart attack].

And then I dreamt I was with my ex-girlfriend. We were together, I was tired and was resting my head and arms on a table. And she thought it would be better if she put her arms me. It was, of course.

***** *****
It's my half-sister's funeral tomorrow, my dad so looked terribly, terribly frail yesterday and my mum likewise on Sunday, when we visited her in her home.
 
cycleboy2 said:
I lost my half-sister and an ex-girlfriend about a month ago, both deaths being total surprises. And both turned up in my dream last night.

My half-sister had come round to borrow some milk; hers had been poisoned because of a disease she had and her milk had something that sounded like 'peonies' swirling around in it [she died from a previously undiagnosed condition that caused a heart attack].

And then I dreamt I was with my ex-girlfriend. We were together, I was tired and was resting my head and arms on a table. And she thought it would be better if she put her arms me. It was, of course.

***** *****
It's my half-sister's funeral tomorrow, my dad so looked terribly, terribly frail yesterday and my mum likewise on Sunday, when we visited her in her home.
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So sorry to hear of your losses. Thinking of you and your family.
 
Condolences to you and your parents!
No matter what age, the worst thing for parents is to lose a child.
Condolences too, to your girlfriend's surviving family and friends.

How hard it must be to lose two people you were close to in such a short time. :group:
 
Krepostnoi said:
Funny you should bump this thread today: last night I dreamed of my dad's late sister, who died of the same kind of tumour that is killing my mum (which, quite apart from anything else, not least the impact on the female relatives in question, seems like a particularly cruel twist of fate for my dad...) Bizarrely enough though, in the dream, I was far more concerned about my aunt's husband, who is still alive, but was long since lost to vascular dementia. I'll record this here, on the off-chance that I will hear news.
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I was across at a friend's place today, for reasons that will become apparent. He recounted how, earlier in the week, he had dreamed of his dad (who died three years ago). He appeared young and healthy, and dressed to the nines. He had an expectant expression on his face. Last night, my friend dreamed of three clocks on a wall, which all fell to the ground at once. This morning, he awoke, and discovered that his mother died from Covid at 3am. She was 2000 miles away.

Anyway, this conversation brought to mind the dream I described in my earlier post. I've had no news about the uncle in question, but I was struck today by the coincidence that he shared his first name with his late wife's brother, my dad. I'm quite worried for Dad just now, as it happens, because after a very sudden and very rapid decline, my mum died last Sunday morning, almost exactly a month after my dream.
 
Krepostnoi said:
I was across at a friend's place today, for reasons that will become apparent. He recounted how, earlier in the week, he had dreamed of his dad (who died three years ago). He appeared young and healthy, and dressed to the nines. He had an expectant expression on his face. Last night, my friend dreamed of three clocks on a wall, which all fell to the ground at once. This morning, he awoke, and discovered that his mother died from Covid at 3am. She was 2000 miles away.

Anyway, this conversation brought to mind the dream I described in my earlier post. I've had no news about the uncle in question, but I was struck today by the coincidence that he shared his first name with his late wife's brother, my dad. I'm quite worried for Dad just now, as it happens, because after a very sudden and very rapid decline, my mum died last Sunday morning, almost exactly a month after my dream.
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Sorry to hear of your mom's death. Hope you and your family are doing ok. Yes, your dad will be in shock and it is a difficult adjustment for a surviving spouse. Hope better days are ahead.
 
Very early this morning I dreamed that my phone had an app that made it function like a walkie-talkie, almost like a Nextel, except it was my current phone. Some random dream people standing behind me, including deceased family members, had shown me how to use it and that "You'll be able to talk to us like this".

My late uncle Mike's voice came over it, saying "Hey, how are ya, haven't' heard from ya!" etc. In the dream it didn't occur to me that any of them were dead, as if I'd forgotten, if that makes sense. I remembered when I woke up.
 
Impybat said:
Very early this morning I dreamed that my phone had an app that made it function like a walkie-talkie, almost like a Nextel, except it was my current phone. Some random dream people standing behind me, including deceased family members, had shown me how to use it and that "You'll be able to talk to us like this".

My late uncle Mike's voice came over it, saying "Hey, how are ya, haven't' heard from ya!" etc. In the dream it didn't occur to me that any of them were dead, as if I'd forgotten, if that makes sense. I remembered when I woke up.
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Awww, that's so lovely. No expert, but if I dreamed that I'd interpret it as my clever brain reminding me of how important people we love still are after they're gone. They are part of us.
 
Impybat said:
Thank you, it was really a nice dream. Mike was one of my favorite uncles.
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I've read that phones never work in dreams but that's not true because we've had lots of phone dreams described on'ere.
Yours is a perfect example.

My take on it is that as society has moved on and we're all now familiar with telephones, they have become part of our 'dream lexicon'.
Phones can symbolise communication.

Perhaps they can further represent the desire to speak with someone who isn't here just now, but whose voice we know very well and would love to hear from... :wink2:
 
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escargot said:
I've read that phones never work in dreams but that's not true because we've had lots of phone dreams described on'ere.
Yours is a perfect example.

My take on it is that as society has moved on and we're all now familiar with telephones, they have become part of our 'dream lexicon'.
Phones symbolise communication.

Perhaps they symbolise the desire to speak to someone who isn't here just now, but whose voice we know very and would love to hear from... :wink2:
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I like your take on this, with the phone symbolism. Off to look for phone dreams threads!
 
Impybat said:
I like your take on this, with the phone symbolism. Off to look for phone dreams threads!
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We don't have any thread(s) dedicated to phones within dreams. You'll have to search for posts involving phones within the many dream-related threads.
 
EnolaGaia said:
We don't have any thread(s) dedicated to phones within dreams. You'll have to search for posts involving phones within the many dream-related threads.
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Thank you, Enola. I'll look around.
 
This "dream" happened sometime between mid-September and early November 2017. I wrote what I could remember a week or two afterwards, and am kicking myself that I didn't write it down immediately, because it seemed important, and not exactly a dream at all, and some of the incredible detail is forgotten now.

I had gone to bed as usual and fallen asleep, I think, when I suddenly found myself out of my body and formless, like a pinprick of consciousness with 360° vision, all around, in all three dimensions. Then a being that I recognised as an angel came to me, it was also like a pinprick of consciousness radiating multicoloured light. It said to me that it had to show me something. I had to take hold of a glowing orb. I had no hands, but somehow managed to hold it inside me. Everything spun in a frightening way, and suddenly I was back in the kitchen of the house that I had lived in during the 1970s (and which I haven't seen since we moved out in 1981). I could see the kitchen in full detail, as if I was actually there, and my dad, who died over ten years ago of smoking-related illness, was sat at the table. There were stacks of copper coins on the table, which I remember my parents used to count out for the electricity meter. My dad was rolling up a cigarette. What really struck me was how young he looked.

I tried to scream at him to stop, that the cigarettes would kill him, but he could not hear me. The angel told me that it was no good shouting, we were invisible and inaudible to him, and that dad had already had two chances, and he had made his choice. I understood somehow that this moment was where the illness that killed him started.

I was very upset and released the orb from within me. Everything span and it was like I was hurled out of the orb into some inexplicable space and there was a sense of violent transition, as if I were hurled through a barrier. Then I was back in my body, in my bed.

As I say, I wish I had written this all down sooner, since I am sure I have missed out or confused some of the detail, but in essence that was it, with a very real sense of having travelled back in time to the 1970s. I've had some strange dreams in my time, but this was something else...
 
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SimonBurchell said:
when I suddenly found myself out of my body and formless, like a pinprick of consciousness with 360° vision, all around, in all three dimensions.
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!!! A state some people strive all their lives to achieve !!!
SimonBurchell said:
that dad had already had two chances, and he had made his choice.
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:( And what were those moments like, when his choice hung in the balance, and was he aware of it; and do we pay attention ourselves in the moments when we can make such choices?

Such a deep and heavy dream. Thank you for sharing it!
 
I've had two or three dreams featuring my mother just lately. She looked frail and old in them both whereas when I dream of my dad he tends to look healthy and fit. My mum died with dementia, whereas my dad gradually just faded away, and I wonder if this has anything to do with the way I 'see' them in dreams? As in the kernel of who my dad was remained until the end, but my mum was gone before she was gone, if you see what I mean?
 
My brother died last year and had been very ill for a long time. By the end, he couldn't talk at all, but was conscious. He had always been an entertaining story teller, so it was especially sad.

I've recalled two dreams with him since then. In the first, he couldn't talk. He had locked himself in a walk in refrigerator type of space, and wanted to be left alone because he was trying to eat. A few nights ago, I had another dream with him. He could talk, but came out of his to room a couple of times to complain about the noise my companions and I were making as we worked on something. He was dressed in his bathrobe. He'd been trying to nap because he didn't feel very well. I like to think this is progress, and that he'll feel better when he shows up in my dreams the next time.
 
A friend of mine died during the first lockdown. I hadn't seen him for a while. He was in hospital (unfortunately at the worst possible time) recovering from a procedure but caught COVID. His body wasn't strong enough to fight the infection off. I found out what had happened from his daughter who posted the sad news on facebook.

He appeared in a dream I had a few months ago. In the dream I was at a drama class (I first met them in a drama class) and he appeared. I was flabbergasted and said something like "How are you here? I thought you had died." He said of course he hadn't died.....and I was pleased to see him, hugged him etc.

It was a combination of wishing it hadn't happened and that he could reappear in my life/processing my shock/sadness.
 
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