Have you been dreaming of someone dying? Or dreaming of someone dying again? Perhaps your mother, father, boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife?
Are you wondering what it means when you dream about someone dying or dying again when they have already past?
- If they are alive, does it mean they will die?
- Could they be coming back to life?
- Does the dream of someone dying mean someone is pregnant (which is one of the common interpretations)?
- If you dream about someone dying who is already dead, what does that mean?
There are very many ways to interpret a dream about someone’s death or a dream about someone who is already dead dying again.
In this guide, I will explain the most common interpretations of this dream and what it could mean for you. And you might also like to read my guide to ending nightmares.
Ultimately, dreams are about the subconscious mind communicating with you [READ: Power Of Your Subconscious Mind]
Have you experienced these dreams about someone dying or dying again?
One of the most common dreams that we universally share are dreams about death and even dreams about someone who has already died dying again. For instance, you may have experienced some of the following:
- Dreams of someone dying and coming back to life.
- Fatalities in a fire, car crash or plane accident, drowning, gunshot, lethal injection.
- Dreams of someone dying of cancer or heart attack.
- Dreams about the death of someone who is already dead.
- The fatality of a relative, a parent or child or perhaps your husband, boyfriend girlfriend or wife.
- Dream of your dead mother dying again.
- Dream of your dead father dying again.
- Dreaming of a deceased person coming back to life.
- The fatality of a relative, a parent or child or perhaps your husband, boyfriend girlfriend or wife.
- And they might pass away in your arms, while you’re away, in your bed, while making love…
As gruesome as these nightmares may seem, they are in fact commonplace and perfectly natural. Dreaming is the process of the brain and the unconscious processing information [1]. The dream of someone dying is also the result of your brain processing information. But what information, and why?
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How do you interpret a dream about someone dying or someone dying again?
One big mistake people make with interpretations is taking things literally. Your dream of someone dying returning does not mean that those things are actually going to happen.
If you’ve been dreaming of someone dying again, breathe. Be assured, it probably does not mean what you think it means. Your mother, father, boyfriend, girlfriend, or whoever you dreamt about is not in any genuine danger. Your subconscious isn’t sending you text messages. You can’t read it like a book. You cannot simply interpret your dream to mean that someone is quite literally going to pass away.
How the brain creates, interprets, and remembers dreams is far more complicated and nuanced than that. That’s the reason famous psychologists like Sigmund Freud spent so long researching the origins and meanings of dreams.
It all comes down to the way your subconscious mind processes information and emotions.
Nighttime subconscious messages
There is a language of dreams. And it is possibly the most important language in the world. It is the language through which your subconscious mind communicates with you.
Your subconscious mind is the most powerful part of your mind. It’s like a powerful sage inside of you.
Naturally, when your subconscious mind communicates with you, you will want to know what it’s saying.
And the first thing to know about it is this: Your subconscious is not literal.
Dreaming of someone dying, coming back to life, or dying again does not mean they are going to pass away unless you have some serious psychic abilities.
You can’t interpret these subconscious messages so directly. I mean, can you imagine how messed up you would be if those dreams of yours all meant what they show?!
Dreams cannot be interpreted directly.
The language of dreams is a language of visual, auditory, and sensory information that is (often but not always) told through an emotional storyline.
Bedtime craziness!
I’ve always been fascinated by dreams because, honestly, mine are crazy.
I’ve always had an overactive imagination.
As an author, I am always happy and thankful for my imagination. It is a very valuable tool.
When it comes to bedtime, my imagination goes AWOL (absent without leave) and my dreams are bonkers. And yes, I have had dreams of loved ones dying, dying again, and returning.
But guess what? My dreams were not a direct message about reality. Just because I dreamed of someone passing away does not mean they actually did. And when I dreamed of loved ones coming back to life (my father, mostly), that did not happen either.
So, what is it all about?
To get a better understanding of what dreams mean, we need to investigate the process of dreaming.
5 Stages of dreaming
- Go to bed
- Fall asleep (hopefully)
- We then get to the first stage of sleep, which is light sleep. This is the first stage.
- The second stage is deeper.
- Stages three and four are the deepest. At this time, our brain is only using delta brain waves, which are the slowest.
- The fifth stage is REM sleep. Many physiological changes occur at this stage. We experience increased heart rate, heightened blood pressure, our bodies are paralysed, and we have increased amounts of alpha brain waves. If you are like me and have sleep paralysis, your brain will wake-up before REM sleep is finished, at which point good luck because oh hell is it awful. It’s also at REM sleep that you dream of people dying. (Dreams can occur at any stage of sleep. But they are most common at the REM stage).
- We then wake up.
- When we wake up, we forget half of what we dreamed about, and this very quickly increases until we can hardly remember any of our dreams.
- We then remember parts of our dreams, but (importantly) we distort those memories.
So, when you remember a dream of someone dying, dying again, or coming back to life, your memory is actually not the dream you had.
Why?
In 1900, Sigmund Freud coined the term Wunscherfüllung, meaning “wish fulfilment” [wiki].
Freud argued that the motivation for dreams is to fulfil our wishes. Specifically, we fulfil wishes based on the information the mind stored in the day (which Freud called “Day Residue”).
Freud argued that there are four stages used to interpret dreams:
Condensation: This is the idea that one single element of a dream can represent several things. For instance, in the dream, the person dying may actually represent a group of people.
Displacement: This is the idea that the emotionally important event in the dream may happen to a substitute instead of the real, intended person or object. In our dream of a loved one dying or dying again, the person who dies could be a stand-in for someone else entirely.
Visualisation: This is simply the idea that thoughts in dreams are communicated visually.
Symbolism: Just as in poetry, dreams use symbolism to replace people, objects, actions, and ideas.
When we apply these concepts to the dream, we can start to see what’s going on.
Based on Freud’s theories, we can speculate on various interpretations of your dream.
What your dream of someone dying or dying again actually means
When you’re dreaming of someone dying or dying again, it could mean a variety of things. All of which are to do with endings and beginnings.
- A relationship is over
The most obvious interpretation for a dream of a loved one dying is that your relationship is over.
Heck. This doesn’t even require an explanation. It’s like poetry 101 to symbolise the end of a relationship with a funeral.
- A pattern / bad habit is over
Your dream of someone dying does not actually represent a person at all.
Surprised?
Truth is, the death of a person could represent the end of a pattern or a habit. And that could be a particularly good thing, depending on the habit.
So, take heart and feel reassured. Death might not mean death in the way we think of it.
- You’re about to start a new chapter
Is it time to start a new chapter in your life?
If so, dreaming about someone dying might mean that it is the end of one stage of your life and the beginning of another.
- You need to move home or are about to
Homes represent our connection to many different people.
Moving home can feel like the death of many relationships.
To emotionally prepare us to move home, we may have dreams of someone dying or dying again. In the latter, moving home represents the end of your period of life when you were with the person who has now past. This is an emotional prelude to a huge change in our real-life relationships.
- If lots of people die in your dream, you might need a new social circle
If lots of people die in your dreams (or even just a few people), it could be a sign that your social circle isn’t doing you any favours.
Is it time to find new friends? Or perhaps you need to drop your old work colleagues in favour of new ones. Heck, if you’re self-employed this could be a sign to start networking with a different group.
What Does It Mean If You Dream Of Someone Dying Who Is Already Dead?
If you dream of someone dying who is already dead, it could mean several things. Based on the theories that we have looked at so far, here are some of the possible meanings of a dream about someone dying who is already dead:
- Your memory of the person is changing.
- The things you associate with that person, particularly at the time of their passing, is changing
- Your life since the person’s passing is about to change.
What Does It Mean If You Dream Of A Loved One Coming Back To Life?
One of the more positive experiences is to dream of a loved one returning to life. This can make us wake up happy and feel reconnected with that person. Actually, in many ways, this is the entire point of dreaming. It’s about emotional processing.
Here are some possible meanings of a dream about someone dying coming back to life:
- You are about to reconnect with a group of old friends or acquaintances.
- You are picking up old habits or old pastimes again.
- The way you feel about the deceased is changing.
- You are reconnecting with the deceased on an emotional or spiritual plane.
- It is a new beginning in your life.
Why not make use of your dreams?
Our dreams offer a unique and powerful way to train the mind.
Our dreams are a way for the deeper parts of our minds to guide our consciousness.
We can all make use of that guidance. The key is using Dreamworking.
Dreamworking is a practical way to connect to your dreams, to understand them, and to make use of the messages they send you.
Christopher Sowton RP ND has written an excellent guide to Dreamworking in his book Dreamworking: How to Listen to the Inner Guidance of Your Dreams [AMAZON].
In the book, Sowton shares five steps to making use of your dreams.
I was gawping at the pages of this book. Honestly, it is fascinating. Totally unlike anything else I’ve read. It’s a truly original take on dreamwork. Definitely worthy of a read. Plus, the guidance is easy to follow even for those who have never tried dreamworking.
Dreams. They’re an amazing, profound, and often misunderstood aspect of the human mind
As we’ve seen, dreams work like poetry. They use allusions, symbolism, emotion, and even story to communicate with you.
That’s the brilliant thing about dreams: they can mean so many different things.
What do you think your nighttime visions mean? I would love to hear from you. And if you want to dream in an all-new way, try meditation for lucid dreaming.
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Paul Harrison is a passionate meditation teacher who believes in genuine, authentic meditation. He has more than 15 years experience in meditation and mindfulness. He studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK, and Hamilton Ontario Canada, and earned his degree at Staffordshire University.
“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your own mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison
My father died when i was 2 yrs old 41 years ago in a car accident. Last night I dreamt of my died father died again he was murdered in my dream together with other people I don’t know
My mom died of cancer in 2011, I was 18 at the time. I kept dreaming of her coming back to life and dying again or saying that she has to go back… I used to feel very confused about it. I didn’t search about it, it was a very hard time for me, especially the year right after, when I really realized she was really gone.
I don’t really have that dream that often now, if not at all.
Now that I am more okay about it, I searched and found your article, it is very helpful. I understand better now, it was probably the way my brain was processing it.
Thank you 🙂
I dreamt today that the hospital digged my dead mother out again for “cleaning”. Shes been dead since two years but in the dream she looked like she has been dead for 2 days only. Me and my aunt were watching the process and the nurses weren’t taking their job seriously. They were giggling and making jokes while cleaning my dead mother. At one point she fell down and kind of snapped in two halves, and the nurses picked her up by the head, laughed and held it directly towards my aunts face. I am scared to sleep because of these dreams.
My dad passed in 2017. I dreamed last night he had another funeral and at that point i found out his first funeral was fake and he was still alive this whole time and everybody knew it but me and i was at the new funeral asking my aunt’s and people I trusted because i didnt believe it was really his funeral and they were saying it was true he was hiding
I dreamt about my dead father lying dead on my sister’s staircase in her house. What does it mean
I had a dream about my deceased mother was alive in my dream. I dont remember everything that happened in the dream, but I do remember my mother died in the dream as I was picking up a baby to prevent it from falling.
me and my friend both had very similar dreams that my best friend died. Both of us has these dreams the same night. the story lines were very similar. what does this mean?
Once I dreamt that my brother and I had agreed (without even speaking) that I was to euthanise him. I attempted once with a pillow over his face and I failed because it upset me and I noticed some pain on his face. He calmed and told me it was alright and to try again, but I definitely felt that he was relieved that I didn’t finish it. So I psyched myself into giving it another go and just as I was about to, I burst into raging tears. Like, I started howling with the rawest emotion, more than I have ever actually experienced in my life. It was as though I, in that moment, realised exactly what I was about to do and it crushed me.
This dream has been affecting me for months now and I just want to understand what it may mean. Any insights?
I had a dream of a loved one dying and all of the things it could mean did not happen so what does that mean about the my dream.
I had a dream of my Husband dying and I was crying very badly. My family were also there to visit my Husband. Not sure where’s the place sth like a funeral
Your articles are motivating me. I have a strange weird problem regarding my dreams and also life. In my dream all the time most of the time I see myself in India, although am in the united States. I don’t like to be there than also my dreams take me there, also I fight with my parents in these very dream. Some of the dreams have no relations even with my life, even in 100 of my lives. Now there is a problem going on alone with me. I just want freedom, actually they think I should stay with them. Should care for them. I love them they also do. It’s look like may be my bad deeds in previous life or may be sometime’s I think that I shall be lost in the cosmos to get rid of these hellish life. Stucked in the present physical body. Mentally since my childhood am not feeling free. I have never love myself. I always care about others and took care of their needs. I always has ignored myself. I remember when I was child I was knowing my mental condition. I always thought of feeling inferior than others. Was hiding myself from others. When there was some society function celebration I always told my parents that am not coming because personally I was feeling that if I will go then people will think of me like hey see that stupid comes. In reality some of the people were ragging me. Always making fun of me. I was also like that, don’t care for myself. I was very mischievous. Was saying people. I would love to die for the people caring for them or doing some good works or fighting for the country instead of eating my life. I do believe in the soreness Lord. That means in short am not able to concentrate on 1 thing of what I want. I don’t know what shall I do or what is my target. Right now am taking antidepressant called Lexapro. Always I was and I am negative, now if I want to get the hell outta my life and wants to be free, I can’t because I also think that parents contributed in my life, they spend their life with me they loved me and I am fleeing away. Now they are 60 and 53 respectively. I think if I will flew away, these thoughts will haunts my mind that what they will do, what r they doing right now kinda lots of questions. In one of my dream I was fighting moguls. I killed 2 moguls and threw away their bodies in the lake or may be River or sea. Than they got to know about it, army of moguls is coming after me. Am standing in front of them than also they can’t see me and I am witnessing these stupid dream. Now I don’t know where and how to start my new life? Just thinking to join some ashrams, may be sometime’s I think to flew away to Tibet convert myself to Buddhism. Sometimes I think to flew away to Himalayas. I know by these way never ever am gonna attain an enlightenment. Thanks sir.
Thanks for your comment Rahul. Remember not to take your dreams too seriously. And remember that self compassion is key. I wish you blessings.