The study of dreams has been poured over for centuries as to their hidden meaning, but are these studies in vain? Can dreams warn us to avoid harm or show us something important? I personally keep a dream journal simply because my dreams are pretty freaky, and I’ve gotten to the point that very few dreams (perhaps one every couple of years) actually upsets me. These dreams are those that entail the violent death of a loved one or perhaps to someone I don’t even know. Though the scary dreams we have as adults are actually of scarier content than those that frightened us as children, the world was scarier back then and probably affected us more. As in, the scary things when we were children were simpler. But I digress, and get back to the original topic. If we have violent dreams does that entail a violent nature? If you have a dream of hitting someone, does it usually follow a day when you were angry at them?
For example, here is a dream I had about one year ago: I am standing in a funeral home parlor, yet there seems to be a party going on. Lots of people, drinks, food, the works. I step outside and it’s a cemetery bathed in moonlight. As I walk amongst the tombstones I see a small crypt and feel inclined to open it. I shove the stone lid off only to find a wooden crate of root beer bottles. Great. I pick up the crate only to see a long thick chain on the ground. Suddenly it starts to slide across the ground so I drop the crate of drinks and follow this thick chain. It picks up speed as I chase after it until I’m in a full blown run. It dissapears from my sight and I look up to realize I’m in front of the old Fire Watch tower that my dad used to climb when he worked in the Forestry Commission. I climb the many, many steps until I’m at the five story top. To get into the tower building you push up on a door in the floor, like a tree house, and as I do this I’m looking at four people’s legs while they sit in chairs and at a table. I recognize the legs of my little brothers and sisters. And there is a large snake on the floor. I yell and reach out for the snake but it suddenly nails my little sister’s leg seven times. I grab my bitten sister and disapear through the floor opening with the snake sliding closer. (My other siblings are no longer there) I run down the steps as my sister’s body gets heavier, and eventually find myself at the bottom and in Carowinds. My little brother is now dying in my arms instead of my sister. I scream for help but no one listens so I run to an emergency phone (the ones with the blue light on top) and dial the Poison Hotline – they put me on hold. I scoop up the now colder body of my little brother and turn around to see the step of a hospital about fifty feet away. I run laboriously up the steps to find a large marble floored waiting room with one receptionist behind a large desk. “Quick I need a doctor!” I scream, to which she calmly replies, “There are no doctors, they’re all out.” …. I scream at the lady and glower over the desk until she gives in and escorts me to a room. I watch as doctors and nurses hook up my little brother to tubes and monitorng devices. I can even see a milky antidote-like substance being pushed into his veins, then they all leave. I turn behind me and instead of more medical equipment there is TV equipment. “Weird,” I think and turn back to my brother, only to see a different child in the bed. I understand it to be …mine. Her sandy hair and blue eyes only seem to reaffirm this, and shes only about three years old. She’s hooked up to all the equipment, throat tubes and everything that my little brother was just moments ago. Her eyes open and she wimpers, stands up in bed, and holds out her arms. A maternal instinct takes over as I hug her. I suddenly hear a snap, and I pull her away from me to see that I had broken the tube that went into her throat, and a length of it was still inside her. She gagged and grew heavy in my arms as I screamed for help that never came as I woke up.
Does this dream mean that troubles will come to me? Do dreams really mean anything?
