Well. I guess that's the crux of it. What are dreams? Rather ... how do they function?

0ur vocabulary is inadequate here. The statement "dreams are real" is basically empty. Of course they are subjectively real... actual experiences, memorable sensations, etc. etc. Real information.

But are they about "real places"...about actual entities / beings, having actual sensations etc. etc.?

One can just assume that dreams are not about real places and people. That is convenient. Comfortable. But is it true? "Real", here, might mean: "capable of being experienced in common for entities of the type."

Well. Have you ever seen something (a person, place, thing) in a dream that you've never seen elsewhere in waking life, personally or in any movie or picture? This could be the smallest thing, really. Even a single example? If so, what do you suppose is the source of such coherent and anomalous information? What did you see? Have you ever really thought about it?

Did you mind just make it up? If not, then you (your perceptual reach) "went" there, more or less ... and that "there" thus necessarily HAS ITS OWN REALITY.

See what I mean?

Without knowing "how it works" and what all exists, really, and being unable to rule out the possibility, and having a lot of weird science coming together to say how it might be so ... I just think it's much more responsible to assume that people's dream rampages might have victims just as real as (if less defenseless than) the perpetrators. Who might those victims be? What is their media, their reality? Are they nothing, though we can perceive and interact with them ... even kill them?

I dunno. And that means that I don't know enough to deny much of anything, either.

Thanks,

PQ