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Dreaming Of The Dead

I hope, especially seeing as it's only my second post here, that I ain't going to make to big a fool of myself by admitting that I was relieved and pleasantly surprised to see this thread!

I too tend to dream of the dead, but not necessarily people I have known. I can't really describe how I 'know' this, but the dreams have a certain....flavour, a difference to what I might consider more run of the mill, ordinary dreams.

In the dreams I often ask the person if they are dead and I am told yes. One of them was my maternal grandmother as a teen, which was a pretty interesting conversation - for me!- But not, perhaps, all that fascinating to someone else.

The most potent began when I moved into an end terraced house form the early 1900's about 7 yrs ago. The same night I moved in I had a dream that three children stood at the top of the stairs smiling at me. They introduced themselves and proceeded to tell me that they would 'look after me'. One said he has been killed by a 'dray' and another died whilst suffering illness in the back bedroom. The eldest girl (about 9 yrs old) was most conversational. She was quite a clever soul and liked to tease me about stuff. Over a series of around 8 dreams whilst I lived there (tenancy only lasted 6 months) the kids appeared just like my company, and actually said goodbye when I had to leave.
Oddly I never felt any presence in the house, or felt a fear of them. Although in real life i would have to admit that the idea of seeing ghosts terrifies me.

A few others over the years involve souls which are kind of enigmatic, but many implying or suggesting reincarnation, one guy even mad at me for taking the 'body' he had wanted when I was born. Don't ask!

Not sure what to make of them, but it is possible my own desires and concepts get in there too, but I am still left with a true sense of knowing when I have talked with the dead.

Interestingly, the one about my maternal grandmother had her appear with long black curls and an old style romany bandana scarf thing around her head. Only much later did I discover from my aunt that she actually did dress like this as a young girl.

There you go.
There are more so I shall relate them as I recall them.
 
Oook!

One more for the road: please don't slate me, this was a dream!

Was in a countryside area, fields, accompanied by an archetypal 'wise old man' figure and a young man in his 20's. The young man did not appear to like me very much, and remained silent with a scowl on his face. The old man was very talkative and explained to me that he was going to take me on a journey that might interest me. He told me he was a spirit, not a living person, and the boy was angry because I had 'taken' the body he had wanted at birth ( I am female, btw). Apparently we had fought for it and I won, which seemed to have left him in a perpetual sulk.

They led me into a large, old building something like a public house or restaurant, where there was some sort of function going on - a huge table with people seated around it, like at a press conference or board meeting. I noticed my sister and mother with them, which surprised me, so I asked the old guy what was going on. He told me that I was viewing a scene from a past life, which was set in Ireland, and I knew my sis and mother then. I had written a book and doing a talk on it to these people, was even given the title of the book (sadly forgotten now) that had gained a fair bit of popularity but not what you'd call fame.

Then the old man led me to a corner of the pub and introduced me - laughing his head off - to what he described as my guardian. This guardian was called Gary, and looked like detective Poirot. I was appalled for some reason I can't explain and didn't particularly wish to know more about him. He was sat cross-legged atop a mahogany wardrobe grinning at me insanely. He was pretty much amused by my reaction.

So I asked the old guy what the deal was here, did we all really live before, and what the hell was I seeing here......He told me that all of these people were dead, but I had known them in a past life. There is an actual real life trauma from my childhood that he said I was still working out over time, and that what we perceive as the 'end' of our life is merely a step into a new one which, although not the same, will contain many of the past issues we are trying to work out. I presume he meant issues of the soul/spirit, such as dealing with certain types of pain, loss or ambition....I dunno!

I had a spate of dreams like this over a 10 yr period, but can only say that I haven't had a massive interest in reincarnation, and had positively felt terrified of it as a kid, for some reason. Hadn't done any reading about it prior to the dreams either, so not sure what they could represent about my unconscious mind. I had never suffered loss at this period of my life, and although I do believe in a sort of universal spirit, am not interested in any kind of organized religion.

Will write more soon.
(Feel slightly like a prat writing them down, but what the heck) 8)
 
Another lunatic installment from me.

The dream about my maternal grandmother.

Was a schoolgirl again and being terrorized by a man in a long coat and hat on the school bus route home. The dream basically went around in a sort of repetitive spiral: me getting on the bus to go home and this man getting on to scare me. I knew (in the dream) that he was going to cause me harm eventually.

At some point the cycle is stopped by me getting off the bus to meet a boy about my own age (about 14 in the dream - I am 39 now). He was dressed like a Peter Pan figure with snow white hair and a laughing, pleasant face. He was super sharp and clever though, and told me he had to lead me away from the presence of this bad guy on the bus, or the 'cycle' would not end.

He led me over to a makeshift theater stage amongst trees where he introduced me to a rather aloof young girl of about 15, taller than me, with long dark curls and wearing a colourful scarf around her head. They both struck me as incredibly powerful. I asked the boy what he wanted and he placed both hands on my shoulders and told me why I was living this particular life, and what I had to achieve in it. Sadly I have no memory of what that was, even upon waking. I was aware that he was not 'human' exactly, so asked him who the girl was.

He then introduced me to her. She gave me a sort of half interested, aloof 'hello'.
I liked her, but sensed that she was distracted and not terribly keen to converse with me, but I did want to know more about her. The boy told me she was my grandmother, so I asked 'which one?' and he just grinned and said 'surely you know which one?"
I then asked him 'How many do I have?' in a sarcastic manner, and he replied, 'That's impossible to say', which I took to imply I had lived quite a few lives with quite a few grannies!

When I did speak to her I felt rushed, but she told me her name was Florence. I asked her whether she was dead and why she was so young again and she merely replied 'Nothing ever dies'.

That was it, not very interesting, but left me fairly fascinated at the time.
It isn't the first time I have been told that sentence in a dream, either.

These are what I call 'big' dreams, the type which I never forget and which stick with me for a long time. I am not sure what to make of them, but they intrigue me.
 
I find these 'different' dreams really interesting, I have had them, and remember them, going right back to my very early childhood. They are sort of shamanic.
I have only dreamed about people I have known in life though, not long distant ancestors, and also disembodied animal and human type spirits hat seem to be along similar lines to the Saxon/Viking Disir and Fylgja.
 
Just a couple of evenings ago, my mother-in-law appeared in my dream. I'm an editor (in waking life), and in the dream I was trying to explain to her why editors don't change explicit quotations--even those that have grammatical errors.

Not much of a dream, actually

.
 
re escargot

"That's the point of this thread, that we dream of the dead. The dreams are often a comfort to bereaved people. We know that they are dreams." escargot

the poster wanted to know why her gran and friend were acting so differently to her... she seemed puzzled and seemed to feel THEY were in the dream, that they were really themselves, and it was not a dream cooked up by her mind...and their behavior was puzzling. so while she on one level obviously knew she was dreaming, she didnt seem to realize it wasnt really gran and friend deciding to act like that. a better question to ask herself would have been, why did her mind create a nasty gran and friend.
 
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

Morpheus Descending: Gods and Ghosts in the Ancient World

Puzzling over the nightly drama of our dreams is one of the most enduring of all human endeavours. 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. The way dreams have been understood tells us a great deal, both about long dead dreamers, and the worlds in which they lived.

Over the course of this week, Lucy Powell explores the history of dreams and what we think they mean, a hundred years after Sigmund Freud's great work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' appeared in English.

She'll be exploring medieval mystics, renaissance dreamers, Romantic nightmares and the latest findings in neuroscience, but today she returns to the gods and ghosts of the ancient Greeks.

Freud described psychoanalysis as a kind of archaeology of the mind, a search for buried pieces of the past that the analyst must carefully retrieve, pull up to the light, and unlock to reveal their hidden meanings.

And on Freud's desk, in his north London study, are real archaeological treasures: figures from ancient Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, part of the collection of over 2000 antiquities he collected during his lifetime - statues and frescos and strange, goggle-eyed gargoyles.

He called them his 'old and grubby gods' who aided him in his work. They make of Freud's study a strange kind of dream-scape, filled with fragments of the past. Because in seeking to forge a new theory of dreams, Freud reached right back to the earliest dreams in Western history.
Click to expand...

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)
 
Ademordna's post about dreaming of three kids after moving into a house triggered off a memory of a similar event that happened to me.
In August 1988, my mum, sister and I moved into our new house - nothing special, a 1960's mid-terrace job. Mum had found and bought it by a lucky happenstance: her GP was acting as executor for the property after one of his relatives, an old lady, had passed away, and he found out mum was after a new place, so they arranged a private sale.
On my first night there, after a busy day of moving and unpacking, I had a fairly unsettled night's sleep, which is quite normal for me whenever I find myself in unfamiliar surroundings. However, I seem to have finally got some real sleep sometime in the early morning. And that's when I had the dream.
The doorbell was ringing in my dream, and I went down to answer it. At the door was a tall, somewhat austere woman with Snow White hair, and the most amazing blue eyes. You could tell that as a younger woman she would have been strikingly beautiful, and even though she was now well advanced in years, there was something arresting about her, yet she seemed to crouch slightly, as if afraid, and every now and then a trembling hand would come up to her mouth.
"Can I come in?" She asked.
I didn't know what to say, except "who are you?"
"I live here."
"No, you don't, we've just moved in".
"I live here"
And this conversation went on for a while, me trying to convince her there was some kind of mistake and that she didn't live there.
Then she said, "can't you invite me in?"
I said, "no, it's mum's house. Maybe she can let you in", and I turned round to call for my mum. As I did so, I felt all the hairs on my neck rise, and I had a massive urge to get the hell out of there, which I did by the simple expedient of waking up :D
So, a spooky dream which lingered in my mind for the rest of the day, but not much to write home about really. We got to know the neighbours - all mostly older residents, but with a really nice sense of community. A few days later, one of them showed us some photos of the parties they used to throw together.
"This one shows poor Mrs Thomas - it's her house you live in", the neighbour said.
Guess who was in the picture...... :shock: :shock:
 
Whoa. :shock:
That is scary.
 
gellatly68, that is terrifying!

This reminds me of something my dad used to say (he apparently saw all sorts of odd things, but would rarely talk of them) that if you suspected a house contained a spirit, you were supposed to open the front door and politely ask it to leave.

Likewise, I am glad you didn't let the woman in, for maybe she needed permission to enter, for some unearthly reason.....
 
escargot1 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

Morpheus Descending: Gods and Ghosts in the Ancient World

Puzzling over the nightly drama of our dreams is one of the most enduring of all human endeavours. 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. The way dreams have been understood tells us a great deal, both about long dead dreamers, and the worlds in which they lived.

Over the course of this week, Lucy Powell explores the history of dreams and what we think they mean, a hundred years after Sigmund Freud's great work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' appeared in English.

She'll be exploring medieval mystics, renaissance dreamers, Romantic nightmares and the latest findings in neuroscience, but today she returns to the gods and ghosts of the ancient Greeks.

Freud described psychoanalysis as a kind of archaeology of the mind, a search for buried pieces of the past that the analyst must carefully retrieve, pull up to the light, and unlock to reveal their hidden meanings.

And on Freud's desk, in his north London study, are real archaeological treasures: figures from ancient Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, part of the collection of over 2000 antiquities he collected during his lifetime - statues and frescos and strange, goggle-eyed gargoyles.

He called them his 'old and grubby gods' who aided him in his work. They make of Freud's study a strange kind of dream-scape, filled with fragments of the past. Because in seeking to forge a new theory of dreams, Freud reached right back to the earliest dreams in Western history.
Click to expand...

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)
Click to expand...

I wonder if this is because we somehow instinctively know that they have such a deep connection to us, or our 'higher selves'?

I really love how Fox Mulder described nightmares, I think it goes something like this: Dreams are the answers to questions that we've forgotten how to ask.
 
Likewise said:
I've noticed comments elsewhere on the board to the effect that an evil entity requires permission to enter a person's house, car, etc. I'm curious about the origins of this notion. It seems odd that such an entity would require the permission of humans to do harm but I suppose logic doesn't enter into these matters. I'm just wondering where this idea of seeking permission comes from.
Click to expand...
 
Ademordna said:
I really love how Fox Mulder described nightmares, I think it goes something like this: Dreams are the answers to questions that we've forgotten how to ask.
Click to expand...

The precise quote is:


“Dreams are the answers to questions that we haven't yet figured out how to ask.”
 
GingerTabby said:
I've noticed comments elsewhere on the board to the effect that an evil entity requires permission to enter a person's house, car, etc. I'm curious about the origins of this notion. It seems odd that such an entity would require the permission of humans to do harm but I suppose logic doesn't enter into these matters. I'm just wondering where this idea of seeking permission comes from.
Click to expand...

Good question!

I've noticed a recurring motif in old folklore concerning demons and evil spirits having to trick you or otherwise obtain your acquiescence to enter your space (or enter _you_). Off hand, I can't recall any examples of a benign spirit / entity needing to do this.
 
I've noticed a recurring motif in old folklore concerning demons and evil spirits having to trick you or otherwise obtain your acquiescence to enter your space (or enter _you_).
Click to expand...

Yes, and y'know, it wouldn't stand up in a court of law. ;)

If someone is tricked into agreeing to something (handing over money, signing over property, even having sex :shock: ) then legally they haven't consented to it and a crime has been committed. It has always seemed unfair to me that demons and evil spirits could get away with this.

It''s one rule for us and another for them! :evil:

:lol:
 
Doesn't the permission thing stem from vampires needing to be invited in before they can feed on the occupants of the home? Or was that an invention of Bram Stoker? It was certainly in Fright Night (original).
 
gncxx said:
Doesn't the permission thing stem from vampires needing to be invited in before they can feed on the occupants of the home? Or was that an invention of Bram Stoker? It was certainly in Fright Night (original).
Click to expand...

It also happened in Buffy, IIRC.
 
escargot1 said:
I've noticed a recurring motif in old folklore concerning demons and evil spirits having to trick you or otherwise obtain your acquiescence to enter your space (or enter _you_).
Click to expand...

Yes, and y'know, it wouldn't stand up in a court of law. ;)

If someone is tricked into agreeing to something (handing over money, signing over property, even having sex :shock: ) then legally they haven't consented to it and a crime has been committed. It has always seemed unfair to me that demons and evil spirits could get away with this.

It''s one rule for us and another for them! :evil:

:lol:
Click to expand...

This two-tiered system of justice is indeed intolerable. I shall write to my MP to protest the preferential treatment given to evil entities. ;)

Seriously, though, I do find it intriguing that this motif of invitation recurs in folklore.
 
Think about it, though. That's a decent metaphorical depiction of how evil works.

Nobody and nothing makes you do wrong against your will. You do wrong things voluntarily and in spite of knowing better. Evil is constantly knocking on the doors of action, but you don't do evil actions until you decide to - you invite evil into your life.

But most of the time, you're tricking yourself into thinking it's not an evil action, but a good one, or at least an innocuous and harmless one; just because you want to do it without thinking less of yourself.
 
PeniG said:
Think about it, though. That's a decent metaphorical depiction of how evil works.

Nobody and nothing makes you do wrong against your will. You do wrong things voluntarily and in spite of knowing better. Evil is constantly knocking on the doors of action, but you don't do evil actions until you decide to - you invite evil into your life. ...
Click to expand...

If one assumes this is the theme conveyed by stories involving evil requiring permission, it provides a basis for suggesting this theme affords folklore the means for describing correct behavior (if not prescribing what should be considered in deciding correct behavior). It turns entertaining tales into cautionary parables. It's the sort of spin or twist anyone interested in nurturing 'right behavior' would want to impart to popularly-disseminated stories.
 
EnolaGaia said:
PeniG said:
Think about it, though. That's a decent metaphorical depiction of how evil works.

Nobody and nothing makes you do wrong against your will. You do wrong things voluntarily and in spite of knowing better. Evil is constantly knocking on the doors of action, but you don't do evil actions until you decide to - you invite evil into your life. ...
Click to expand...

If one assumes this is the theme conveyed by stories involving evil requiring permission, it provides a basis for suggesting this theme affords folklore the means for describing correct behavior (if not prescribing what should be considered in deciding correct behavior). It turns entertaining tales into cautionary parables. It's the sort of spin or twist anyone interested in nurturing 'right behavior' would want to impart to popularly-disseminated stories.
Click to expand...

You've both made excellent points and have given me food for thought. Thank you for your comments.
 
escargot1 said:
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)
Click to expand...

And that's my new signature! :D

A good friend of mine said that she had a dream about her mother in law (who passed away earlier this year) last night & put it down to being pregnant. She's terrified of anything other worldly, but I did think maybe her MiL wanted to check she was ok from the other side. Odd for me to think something like that as I usually wouldn't believe in anything so silly! :shock: :?
 
And that's my new signature!
Click to expand...

My work here is done. 8)

:lol:

Had a dream about a former friend a couple of years ago. We'd been big mates but she'd nicked a load of stuff from me and we weren't friends again. To put it mildly.

She died a few years later and in the dream I had about her she was sitting in a big Gothic-looking bay window, wearing her usual mutton-dressed-as-lamb new-agey clobber and bemoaning her lack of ability to help her family, who were in a mess. Drug/drink/police trouble, y'know. All the things that she'd brought them up to think were OK.

I thought, can't you stop feeling sorry for yourself? Haven't you learned ANYTHING? When you passed over, weren't you met by people who loved you, who helped you?

Woke up as she was still droning on about how terrible things were and how unhappy she was…
 
Escargot, I wonder if it's a good thing that people stay the same once they've gone over? Your post reminds me of similiar dreams.

I had a childhood friend who I was close with for a while, particularly into our early to mid-teens. Heady times we were both besotted with the same girl but she ended up with some rough dude a few years older than us.

Anyway after school we both went different ways and our relationship became very distant to the point when I last saw him, we hardly had a thing to say to each other, we must have been around 20.

Shortly afterwards he was killed and since then I get occasional dreams about him, maybe two or three a year.

He has no real personailty in it and unlike yours Escargot I'm not thinking "you are dead".

I think he represents something, lost youth, unfufilled dreams, maybe guilt and I always wake up feeling a bit sad.

He was heading career-wise, on a much better path than me as I sank into the embrace of the usual demons that plague the young, drugs and booze. I knew he was a bigger "success" at the time than me.

Maybe it is guilt?


Whilst talking about dreams I've had many dreams about a girl, (when younger) and now a women who I'm immediately attracted to, to the point that it is like finding your ultimate soulmate. The women changes appearance, a completely different women everytime, but I always feel the same about her and it's intensisty is greater even than that of your first love.

Someone suggested it is a representation of my female side. This makes sense as I sure my wife would agree that I love myself too much. :lol:
 
One of the theories about dreams is that everyone in them is actually oneself. That one about my former friend, though, that was very specific indeed and it's hard to see how it applied to me. :?
 
escargot1 said:
One of the theories about dreams is that everyone in them is actually oneself.
Click to expand...

I had a dream the other night that my best friend knitted me a onesie and was absolutely adamant that I wore the ghastly thing.

If everyone in your dreams is actually a part of yourself I hope this doesn't mean there's a part of my selfconscious that really desperately wants to wear a knitted onesie all day...
 
Freud believed that dreams were about what we want. We dream about fulfilling our desires because if we didn't, we'd never sleep from worrying about them.

So… what colour was this onesie? :lol:
 
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Freud also believed that women had penis envy, that cocaine's health benefits outweighed the risks, and that psychoanalysis would be a science if he repeatedly called it that. I'm not letting his thumbprints all over my dreams.

And I am quite certain we don't want to know what he thinks a onesie represented (but I bet we all suddenly are sure that we do).
 
Yup and Freud also seemed to consider that the material of a dream was derived from the dream-day ie. the waking life of the subject in the day before the dream.

I can't recall exactly how dogmatic he was about that point. I am taking the Interpretation of Dreams to bed with me tonight to find out.

I am pretty certain that at least nine-tenths of my own dreams are a by-product of the mental filing-system which sorts information into piles. Computer students will be aware of push-and-pop or Last-In-First-Out operations . . .

More fundamentally, I am sure we categorize information in much the same way as a database. That is to say, the categories are laid down early on with our earliest experiences forming Headings. What causes the end of the Headings and the start of the assignment of later experiences to these declared Fields, seems to determine who we are.

So much for the routine dreams.

But a few dreams seem to come from quite another place. In their extreme forms, they cause people to change their lives. In milder forms, they take us to a region which provides solace at times of crisis . . . etc etc.

But it is late at night and I have a big book to re-study. I think I read it last fully when I was a very geeky 15. :)
 
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