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Death and dying in dreams: what it can mean

  • Loss and grief
  • Change

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The short answer

Dreams of death, your own or someone else's, are frightening but common and do not predict a death. They often mark an ending, a fear of loss, or a big transition.

Your dream is not everyone's

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Typical-dream surveys find dreams of death and dying among the themes many people have had. Dreams exaggerate: a worry about someone's health, a fear of change, or the end of a phase can turn into a literal death on the dream stage. Continuity research points to the emotional concern behind the image rather than the image itself. Dreaming that someone who is alive has died often comes from caring about them, or from a change in the relationship. Freud also wrote about dreams of the death of loved ones as a typical dream, though his explanation of them is not supported by later research.

Classic texts

History

Artemidorus did not read dying in a dream as a literal death. Because death is a great change of state, he could read it as a release for someone in fear or hardship, or connect it with other life transitions such as marriage. The image was a turning point, not an ending.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What in your life is ending, or feels like it might end?
  2. Who died in the dream, and what is happening between you and that person now?
  3. What would a new beginning after this ending look like?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Tore A. Nielsen, Antonio L. Zadra, Valérie Simard, Sébastien Saucier, Philippe Stenstrom, Carlyle Smith, Don Kuiken (2003). The typical dreams of Canadian university students. Dreaming 13(4): 211-235.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: typical dreams questionnaire, results (reference not yet checked)

    Survey of how many people report having had common dream themes (being chased, falling, teeth, flying, exams, nakedness and others) at least once.

  2. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  3. Sigmund Freud (1913). The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill. New York: Macmillan.

    first published 1900

    public domain

    • Cited at: Ch. V, section D, typical dreams (dreams of the death of beloved persons) (reference not yet checked)

    First English translation, of the third German edition. Public domain; scholars consider it looser than the later Strachey translation, which is copyrighted.

  4. Artemidorus of Daldis (1644). The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), in five books, translated by Robert Wood. London.

    first published 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Book II, on dying (reference not yet checked)

    Greek dream manual from the Roman era. We paraphrase the public-domain Wood translation (1644). Modern translations (White 1975, Harris-McCoy 2012, Hammond 2020) are copyrighted and only cited.