The Death Dream

Okay, so I'm not the first to discuss this...but the last decent thread was 2007.

I died in a dream, and that's not necessarily abnormal. What I want to know is how people experienced that death.

In my dream I experienced organ failure, lack of breath, screaming "NO!" and successively losing volume, and the vision fading and closing in on me as I fell backwards (after having my chest blown out with a shotgun placed directly against my body) and literally "died."

My dream did not continue after I died. I did wake up after everything went black.

Have you experienced a realistic death? How did it happen?

And did you learn anything about yourself from this dream?

Shotgun to the chest, that sounds intense! :shock:

I've died in dreams several times, though more often I almost die but then wake up (that usually happens with drowning). Every death dream I can really remember (except for one when I was a little kid where I got punched in the face by an old lady and died immediately, yes...) revolved around drug overdoses. Sometimes from ridiculous things, like vitamin B12 and fish oil. Other times from things like speed. They usually involve suffocating and vision fading, like you said. I remember in a few of them I watched my fingertips turning dark blue, and in one of them I pissed my pants and was shaking violently. They all pretty much ended with the same thought. "Why didn't I stop doing this shit when I had the chance...."

I guess my case is abnormal because I only remember 2 death dreams, both of which were when I was 6 years old, both by being shot at with a pistol after trying to defend myself against someone. I could look at the wound and instead of blood flowing out it just suddenly appeared around the wound in small spots, then I woke up. I've had a lot of strange and some theoretically painful things to wake me up but no death itself after that. When I was playing some games in my dreams I even died and respawned a moment later, like it's no big deal.
But hence these dreams didn't really tell me something about myself.

Erm, in one dream a while back some guy held a rifle to my head, he stood about 5 ft in front of me. I stared down the barrel of that rifle for a good 20-30 seconds before eventually saying, "just do it already", he grinned, pulled the trigger, boom, right between my eyes. I literally felt the bullet go in and come out the other side. With a couple more in my chest on the way down. I hit the ground, laid there motionless. Then it got really cold as my body temperature slowly dropped, right up until my heart just stopped beating, lungs stopped breathing and blood stopped flowing. This was the worst bit - after my body went cold and everything went black I just laid there, couldnt feel anything, I honestly thought i'd died.. never been so afraid to open my eyes... :shock:

But yeah, luckily dont get many more of them now, went through a stage of being shot in almost every dream for a good week or two.

Yeah.. I usually wake up after a death, too. That, or an FA. Very rarely, my point of view/perspective might change to another dream character's.. but.. eh. Personally, I think it's just something to do with waking life. i.e. my girlfriend dreamt of a psycho killer lose at her university. She's just been stressing about uni because she's just settling into it. I don't think it has any huge meaning to learn from.. Or, not necessarily.

I remember this dream from my childhood (which is incredibly rare for me as I have TERRIBLE dream recall) where I was playing football (thats soccer for ye across the pond). I got slide takled from behind and I fell head first into the ground. Everything goes black for a moment. Then I'm faced with THE BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!! http://www.webanswers.com/post-image...0E64C3222F.gif
Except instead of a buggy operating system, this was fortelling of the immenent crashing of my young life. Then everything goes black again and I start to find it harder and harder to breath untill I was sufficating. I was trying to fight it with my will. It was a strange and scary struggle. I can only describe it as how a drowning man continuously enters and exits the sea as his arms flay about with his remaining strength, but this was a sea of pitch black velvet that crushes. Eventually I puntured the dark and woke up. Even though its a bit funny in retrospect, it still one of the scariest dreams I had.

Ha, I got that once, too!

I always wake up right before I die. Sounds like a cool experience

I tend to have very profound death dreams...

for example my most recent one started with me visiting the doctor, and the doctor telling me that I had terminal cancer and only a matter of weeks to live. The rest of my life then played out through the rest of the dream. I came to terms with everyone in my life, and my situation. I remember the decline in my health and the sterile hospital, and the tearful bedside visits...

I ended up coming to terms with my death, and finally accepting it, at which point I died...
I awoke almost incapacitated by the weight of everything that I saw, and just laid in bed thinking about the dream for about 20 minutes. Overall I felt enlightened by the experience, and I think it gave me some perspective on things. So unlike others I do not fear dreams about death, but welcome them, because they tend to be the most meaningful dreams I have.

I have two death dreams that I recall. In one I was shot and killed. In the other, I was possessed by a demon who took control of my body, then smashed my head into a wall, killing me. In both dreams, I didn't really feel much pain or sensation when dying. My spirit detached from my body, became a ghost, and begin floating upwards. It felt very liberating and I continued the rest of the dream as a ghost and went flying around.

I was running towards a robber to protect my brother or something, and they shot me a few times then I just woke up with a huuuge gasp and sweating pretty bad :(

Ive had a few where I think I died but wasnt 100% sure.

One where I did die still bothers me, and another where I may have died still kinda bothers me.

When I died for sure it was a flashback from when I was in germany in WW2. Im 26 so I wasnt ever in WW2 but I swear this was a full blown flashback. Ive been told Im a old soul. Ive died and been reborn, I never beleived this but maybe its true. Maybe this was how I died before.

I was running from some nazi soldiers, I was injured and didnt have use of my left arm. The 2 nazi soldiers were slowly catching up as I ran. I figured as close as they were getting Id get shot trying to run out in the open so my best chance was to hide. I came up to a old barn and ran inside hoping it was full of junk to hide it. But the barn was empty I looked all over and no place to hide. I turned around and watched the nazis come in. I knew I was dead, one raised up his rifle and shot me in the head.

The other dream was what I always called a TV show dream. Where you see everyhting like your watching TV. I dont know what happened but it was bad, really bad. It was wet cold and out in the woods in a nasty place. There was a piece of someone face laying in a puddle of water. For some reason I had a sick feeling that it was a piece of my face.

I have died a couple of times - other than sudden deaths from falling/shooting, etc. One was getting stabbed and bleeding out, and it was a fade. Another I can't remember the cause, but I remember for what seemed like an extended time (up to a minute) my vision was fading, breathing harder. There were people around me. It 'felt' like a natural death. Interestingly, that whole next day I was extremely flat and had no energy, felt extremely sleep deprived/fuzzy-headed.

I have died a lot in my dreams, usually in very vivid horrible detail. I don't hate these dreams because I get to process feelings and experiences with no physical harm to my body, which is an unbelievable gift.


In an early dream I fell into a swamp, the dream immediately went into third person. In a moment other people pulled my body out of the water, but I had been killed and half devoured by piranhas! I was a ghost and no one could see me. This dream was only horrifying for a moment until I realized my best friend could see me and we played pranks on people together.

In one, me, my brothers, and sister were in a car that lost control and went over a cliff, we were falling for a long time and the terror was sickening, seeing most of my family about to die and having no way to stop it. I hugged my sister tightly and turned so that my back would hit the ground first, I had the vain hope that she might live if I cushioned her with my body. (The car seemed to disintegrate as we fell) I hit the ground, there was a feeling of painful compression, but it only lasted a moment, and then I was floating in endless blackness with no body. I had a horrible sickening fear that I would exist forever in the emptiness but I woke up very slowly.

In another, I purposely cut my wrist with a knife (this was lucid, I was trying to wake up). The knife slicing was incredibly realistic feeling, the dream tilted and I realized I was laying down without having felt myself fall. I couldn't move at all and found myself staring at the "X" I had carved in my wrist. Then, strangely, grass began to grow over my hand and my flesh slowly broke apart and sank into the ground, I felt the thousands of tiny roots of the blades of grass bury themselves all over my body, but it wasn't painful anymore. I was then floating above my body, and saw my corpse completely decompose into the grass, I awoke into an FA in a few moments.

Once I immediately transported to The Fade (a concept from the game series Dragon Age) and was accosted by invisible demons.

I had another similar death dream that had to do with tarot, and one specific demon ghost that wanted to devour my soul.

In probably the most gruesome and gory dream I have ever experienced, I was in a horrific fight with Freddy Kruger. (don't read if you are sensitive):

I sliced his head and chest up into hamburger meat with a machete, but he just laughed through it and reformed his body, I split open his stomach and his rotting entrails fell onto my feet, making me slip and slide giving him even more of an advantage. He dragged me to the edge of a cliff to throw me into a lava pit when I decided I was going to take the bastard with me. With his razor claws at my ribs I put all my energy into a head butt, snapping his neck back, but at the same time letting his claws stab me and pierce my lungs and heart.
I knew by then it was just a matter until I was dead.
There is a bit more struggle, but he falls into the lava, dying.
I spent the next few minutes slowly getting stiffer and quickly losing the ability to breath as my sheared heart pumped blood directly into my torn up lungs. This was incredibly painful and I felt my body contracting into a smaller and smaller ball, every muscle cramping, until I slowly lost feeling and faded to waking.


What have I learned from these dreams about myself? Well, for one, I am terrified of dying. I am obviously very inconsistent on what the afterlife is, and fear both that there will be nothing after death, or that if there is something, my soul will be vulnerable to all sorts of malicious things. Sorry for the wall of text.

It's realistic in the dream, though, compared to waking reality, not sure, haven't died here yet. Sudden impacts: guns, falling; and fading away.
I've learned to not fear death as much as I used to. That moment that you know you're going to die and there's nothing you can do except accepting it... is peaceful.

I think I find quite a few similarities between my feelings and some posted in this thread. Sensations, thoughts, fears.

I honestly do fear dying, but I don't think I fear it for being dead. I think I fear that I will leave behind things unfinished, that I will be gone leaving a void in my family, that my kids will struggle and feel pain because I am gone.

I don't want to die because I really do want to see what happens in the future, but not being able to tell people that I love them frightens me more.