Disturbing dream in a recurring setting.

**Cutlery** · 06-21-2013 08:08 PM

I'm walking down to the cul de sac in my neighborhood, it's usually a familiar place, I had a lot of fun with my friends who live there when I was younger. Except this is not the normal cul de sac, its completely desolate. There is nothing green, only dry desert dirt and a few scraggly dried out weeds. It only has my friends house and the old lady's house. I've seen this distorted reality in another dream too. The old lady has been dead for a long time. (she doesn't actually exist, but my friends do)

I'm walking absent mindedly to her house, it is hot and stuffy, like the summer. I go up a small stone path to get to the side door, which should lead to a garage, but instead leads right into her bedroom. It is dark, despite it being bright outside. The room is dark blue and the furniture is dark green. There is a large bed centered on the wall to the west, it takes up most of the space. There is a tall dresser diagonally from the bed, right next to the first door that leads to the house. There are two doors on one wall opposite of the bed, they both lead to the house but I have never opened them. I feel hazy and bored, I probably came to the house just because I was bored, to explore the house. The house gives me an eerie feeling and I decide to leave.

I walk back to my house with the lady's body. I do not know how I acquired it, as she died a long time ago but the body is not decomposed. I can't remember the walk back with the body and I feel hazy and confused by this. Her corpse matches the house very well with her grey skin and hair, muted pink shirt and long blue skirt. She has sweat all over her from me carrying her back. I don't understand how I could have carried her all this way, as I am not very strong female. My family is disappointed I decided to bring this body home, but they will help me bring it back. I have a very tight knit family consisting of my parents, brother and sister in law. My father seems to be missing in this dream. I ask myself over and over "Why a body?" I'm trying to remember why or how but I cannot. I go and grab the key to her house, the keychain is one of those plastic lids you get at a fast food place, which I remember from the other dream.

My family assures me that they will help me take care of this. The one most annoyed at me is myself. I somehow end up back in the house without them, I am becoming aware that I am dreaming at this point and the creepiness of the house sets in. I become afraid and I don't dare walk even one more step past the door. I turn back to see my brother in a wetsuit, my mother standing next to him. They are next to the old lady's tiny shed (I don't remember it being there, its small enough be an outhouse) my sister in law is inside with the body. A sense of dread washed over me. My brother assures me that this is the only way. I peer in the shed and my sister is cutting up the body and mashing it in a plastic bag. The smell is horrible, it looks like pasta sauce. I feel like I need to puke, I almost do, in the completely dried out lawn (which also wasn't there before) I realize this is what has to be done, I had done this and it had to be dealt with.
Then I woke up.

Sorry, there are probably many spelling errors, I wrote this quickly on my phone. I would really appreciate your help with interpreting this.

**Wakinyan** · 06-22-2013 04:10 PM

This story is outside of any context for me, so of course it is impossible to "interpret" the dream, but some general remarks from another can be of help when one tries to understand one's dreams, not the least because a dream is often depicting "blind spots" of the dreamer.

Since the setting is a street from your childhood, the inner dynamics the dream is displaying probably has its source from that period in time. (Much of our psychology naturally has it’s source from our childhood, and therefore presumably it is common that dreams are taken place in our childhood surroundings.) So generally speaking, if there would be a problem in the dream, that problem could probably be traced back to one’s childhood.
The environment is desolated, one could speculate that the dream describes a part of your self that you have lost contact with, or otherwise is abandoned. But on the other hand, one could also speculate that there is really nothing here to gain; if you for instance try to reach back in real life, the dream might comment on that, that there’s really nothing here and you should go on with your life or whatever (in which case the fact that it is a cul-de-sac would emphasize this).
If, on the other hand, desolated places are commonplace in your dreams it might describe a general state of mind. It’s not possible for me to draw the correct conclusions, but the main point is that you in this dream are visiting your childhood street, you're in a dynamic which has to do with your childhood. Perhaps you involuntarily is looking for something which belongs to these times?

There’s a strong feminine presence here, so to speak, all the main characters are women and the father is not present as would otherwise be expected. Whether this is part of the problem or whether this is a pronounced feminine part of your inner life I cannot tell, but it is an interesting circumstance. I sometime finds that energies – if characters are representing energies in a way – push and drag each other out of and into the scene in dreams. If so, one could here speculate that the father is not here because of the dead woman – these are incompatible energies at this point, in this particular room.

So you are sort of digging out a dead woman from your childhood surroundings. The million dollar question is of course: What is she representing? What is the contents of this symbol? What is it you dig up and carry home? Something that doesn’t belong there, that’s for sure. Dead people belong in the grave. I believe this is a difficult nut to crack because not even in your dream are you sure what you are doing, so this dream might very well describe something that is happening, which is outside of your ability to see – right now. If that is right, it may and probably will change. Dreams often repeatedly describe a particular circumstance from several angles, so you may dream about this several times, in different ways. Keep an eye out for recurring symbols (settings, persons, things) because they let you identify a recurring theme, and once you have several dreams about the same problem it is much easier to interpret the content.

An interesting detail is your boredom, that you seem to go into the house out of boredom. Doing things out of boredom seldom results in anything good. We know that from our own experience, when one is young and bored one often do bad things; but we also learn that from folk stories, when the protagonist is bored he or she does something that awakens a being or puts him or her in a dilemma, and so forth. Boredom is perhaps the worst motivation for doing things!

This can be a thread to pull for you, if you are at a place in time when you are meddling with stuff, psychic or whatever, because you feel that there is no real meaning in your life right now – or something to that effect. An old woman is as an old man often a symbol for wisdom, for spirituality, and so on. But here it takes the form of a physical, dead body which you then have to get rid of. An old lady or a ghost or a spirit can be good, but a dead body is not, it is almost an empty container and even a mockery to spirituality and wisdom if carried around.
But you didn’t do this on purpose, you only went to the house out of boredom, and then you got this body with you when you left. So unwillingly you “took” it from the house, and the meaning of it could be: If you visit this place (out of boredom), you get to carry this with you.
For instance, in Bluebeard he gives his wife a key and says that she mustn’t open the door. Of course she does and what she sees she will always carry with her. Just as in this dream, when you go into the house, you will carry this and that (represented by the dead body) with you. Luckily you get help from you family, and even though I wouldn’t say it is a good ending, at least it is not particularly bad – you are able to bury it anew.

So these are my thoughts, things I came to think of while reading your dream and writing about it. Remember that nothing of this has anything to do with you, it is just a guy on internet throwing out associations about a dream you told. Perhaps it is of any help to unlock this mystery, perhaps not, but thanks for sharing the dream. It was interesting, well written and well spelled!

**Cutlery** · 06-23-2013 08:17 AM

Thank you for the detailed reply! It helps me figure out this dream a little bit for sure. It's out of context even for me (though I would imagine even more so for you

) Thanks