Although in order to provide a more accurate interpretation of the connection between your dreams and the terrible accident you suffered it would usually be best to have some additional general background information about you, it’s safe to say that childhood recurring dreams can have various underlying causes.
In your case, it’s probably extra important that the dreams were recurring instead of you just having only one striking dream which is also a common occurrence in childhood.
The fact that they were repeating dreams with some small alterations points to the possibility you were in a set of family and societal circumstances etc. which somehow could affect some aspect of your personality over time, unfortunately with the potential result of some kind of physical and/or psychological damage happening at a point in the future.
In this sense, the dreams could have been what’s called “Prospective” dreams which say something like “If you continue doing such-and-such, then such-and-such could possibly occur”.
Of course, as a child, you would have no practical way of understanding what the dreams were trying to express.
And as the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung writes in his autobiography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”:
“I was never able to agree…that the dream is a ‘façade’ behind which its meaning lies hidden - a meaning already known but maliciously, so to speak, withheld from consciousness. To me, dreams are a part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can, just as a plant grows or and animal seeks its food as best it can.”
So even though you were a child, very deep natural and instinctive processes were able to “see” a potential future “event” or at least the possibility of it, and were just automatically, as it were, trying to tell you about it.
This is partly because every living being’s mind is the result of millions of years of evolution and has at its root what can be called the “Collective Unconscious” where countless repeated life experiences have been somehow encoded into our DNA. These aren’t “memories” of events per se but are some kind of abstracted residue of events.
These are awakened in our own minds and shown in dreams etc. when certain situations arise that have been “seen before” in the past, as it were, in order that, for survival’s sake, the person can hopefully take any appropriate actions to protect themselves if a negative event is involved.
Contrary to the modern scientific approach which believes it can explain everything rationally, Carl Jung (and the many brilliant analysts that have been inspired by him over many decades) also allows for the presence of mystery and “not knowing” even though he and his followers employ in addition various scientific methods which confirm their findings in a reliable way. It’s also clear that many of Jung’s ideas have been corroborated by independent scientific research in various other fields such as biology and brain research etc.
A couple of other quotes from Jung which may help in approaching the meaning of your repeated dream include:
“Dream symbols are the essential message carriers from the instinctive to the rational parts of the human mind, and their interpretation enriches the poverty of consciousness so that it learns to understand again the forgotten language of the instincts” (“The Red Book”, p. 236)
“Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic but nature does not” (CW 16 par. 524)
So in your dream, your were chased by a blond ghoul who had morphed from a very good-looking woman in her early twenties.
Symbolically speaking, a girl in the dreams of a guy usually represents a part of his psychology which is the opposite of his usual conscious everyday side.
Although not meant to be a stereotype, generally speaking, even as a little boy you probably weren’t all that sensitive to the emotions and values of others for example.
Maybe for some set of reasons, your ability to accept and handle emotions was made difficult so that the possibility existed for them to move from being part of your everyday awareness (as symbolized by the attractive blond woman) into being a part of your unconscious mind where they would be mostly unseen and uncontrolled (as represented by the blond ghoul).
If so, certain self-hurtful feelings for instance, could potentially “kill” you.
Luckily, the dream always ended in you landing on a soft area even though you did suffer excruciating pain, pointing to the idea that you would be able to perhaps learn from some kind of very unpleasant experience and move on, maybe actually by learning more about how to let in and accept various emotions in a conscious way. If this does seem to fit with your own situation in some way, you may like to read a couple of books about the subject such as “Emotion: A Very Short Introduction” by Dylan Evans and “Nothing's Wrong: A Man's Guide to Managing His Feelings” by David Kundtz.
How the dreams were apparently able to foretell the nature of the accident and the presence of a blonde girl are, of course, the central part of the mystery involved.
I often feel that this type of experience, at its root, is meant to make us humble by realizing that there are forces in life over which the ego has no control and which therefore it should “worship” in some alert yet critically aware way.
Although the dreams and the accident were separated by many years, the idea of a “synchronistic event” or more simply, a “meaningful coincidence” could be involved.
This type of experience occurs when two events aren’t related by “cause and effect” (i.e. the dreams did not “cause” the accident), but instead they’re connected by “meaning”.
For example, it looks like you maybe hadn’t thought about the dreams for years but immediately connected them with the accident because they had visualized a kind of similar event.
If you’re interested in learning more about “meaningful coincidences”, reliable books about this subject by professional analysts include “There Are No Accidents” by Robert Hopcke, “The Tao of Psychology” by Jean Shinoda Bolen, and “At the Heart of the Matter” by J. Gary Sparks.
Anyway, I’m glad that you’re recovering from this frightening accident and hope that these ideas about your recurring dream can be helpful in some way.
Please feel free to comment on, or to ask any questions about this particular way of looking at your dream.
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