Most Disturbing Dream I've had in Years

In my dream, I went to a strange college which is supposedly near my home. One of my classes was held in a room in a small, detached building at the back of the college. The building had a green roof, was wooden, and looked very dilapidated. When I went inside, the classroom was filled with students. The Professor was a stout man with white hair and a square shaped face.

The next day, the Professor walked with me to the classroom. While walking, he confessed to me that he would do something inappropriate with a female student before killing her. He would then dismember her body and place the parts inside a refrigerator. "You don't believe me? You can ask my previous students."

When we went inside the classroom, there was no one else there. I ran away to the adjoining classroom and begged the lecturer to let me sit in his class for now. Afterwards, I had another student walk with me to the college office where I requested to speak privately with someone - anyone. I was feeling desperate and paranoid. I didn't want the Professor to see me at the office because I was afraid he'd hasten to kill me.

I was told by the person at the desk to take the back door so no one would see me. When I asked to speak to someone, my former employer came to talk to me. I wondered why she was working at that college now. I told her everything. She assured me that there were previous complaints about this professor and that they would investigate immediately.

In my dream, everything seemed to fast-forward into the future - I saw my mother and several police officers go into the Professor's home. Fast-forward some more. I talked to my father and he looked very disturbed. He said that the police went inside the Professor's home this morning. They found love letters between him and female students. They also found bottles of poison. Apparently, he poisoned his maid and her body was just one of the few they found in the refrigerator and inside the cabinets. I saw the bodies - they were gray and covered with dried blood. The arms and legs of these bodies were hacked off. My father didn't want to talk about it anymore.

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I'm a twenty two year old female. I went back to study at a university (to pursue a dream) after working for one year. Also, I just converted into another faith, which I think my father is against.

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I'm sorry if that was quite long. This dream has been haunting me for days now.

Although it would usually be best to have additional general background information about you as well as recent events just before this very upsetting dream in order to provide an accurate interpretation, broadly speaking the function of a nightmare is to alert the dreamer to a potentially damaging situation and to elicit an emotional response which usually tends to make the person want to pursue finding out what the disturbing dream was about and take any appropriate action.

The background detail about how you went back to study at university seems to be very relevant since the dream places the action at a college.

Although you might be generally aware of certain aspects of your current overall situation (the college is “close to home”), it looks as if you could be very unconscious about another more potentially threatening part of the situation (the Professor’s classroom is in a “detached” building at the “back”, the latter usually relating to the state of being unconscious and unaware of something).

The color green often relates to the practical world of the five senses and a sense of three dimensional reality, so maybe the dilapidated condition of the wooden building hints at this part of your life needing some kind of work overall.

Of course, this is where the white-haired Professor operates from, his age perhaps suggesting that a certain habit of mind has been around for quite a while.

In fact, the image of a male in the dreams of a woman often symbolizes “mind”, the intellect, thinking, judgments and opinions for example, so this could be a clue about the area of yourself which is perhaps in danger of becoming “destructive” to say the least.

Dreams often exaggerate a situation in order to make the dreamer sit up and take notice, and therefore your possible interest in the intellect and the spiritual isn’t probably meant to be, for instance, totally discarded but only tempered in some way.

Broadly speaking, the dream is reminiscent of the Bluebeard folk tale, and something can be learned from looking at that story’s basic meaning since the source of dreams and folk tales/myths/art/music etc. etc. is the same, i.e. the psyche.

Bluebeard kills a succession of wives and keeps them in a locked chamber, reminiscent of the bodies kept in a refrigerator and in cabinets.

The refrigerator hints at the presence of semi-conscious “cold” thoughts which can include a web of calculating schemes, ideas and destructive attitudes that often arise when a feeling obligation of some kind has been skirted in some mostly unconscious way.

The dead women would then come to partly symbolize the danger of the paralysis of all emotion and values in favor of certain “sacred beliefs” and opinions for example.

In a worst case scenario, this can unfortunately lead to negative unconscious opinions such as “Why bother chasing your dream? It will all come to nothing” etc. etc., leading to feeling down too often for instance.

There is also a motif in folk tales where the villain of the piece “makes a mistake” virtually on purpose, allowing the heroine or hero to escape.

This idea appears in your dream when the Professor candidly tells you about his sordid hidden life and what he does to women.

The dream is then probably showing how you SHOULD act in the situation you’re in, that is, to respond emotionally and with natural instinctive reactions.

For example, you are shown as seeking protection from the deadly Professor essentially by relating to others (the lecturer, the other student, your former employer).

Perhaps you could try seeing what traits of your former employer spring to mind which you may be able to adapt and use in order to help keep from slipping too one-sidedly into the intellectual and spiritual realm for instance.

The image of your mother going into the Professor’s home along with the police could represent a strengthening of your feminine relationship side in order to keep the Professor from continuing his murders.

Your father’s image could symbolize your natural liking for “mind” but one which is still moved in an emotional way and guided by the need for close relationships.

The dream ends with a kind of reiteration of what could happen if the Professor, who is apparently on the loose, could continue doing if not “caught” and “contained”, i.e. the feminine could be cut off and life could become “gray” and lacking in élan and vitality (dried blood).

Your father in the dream didn’t want to talk about it anymore, perhaps a way of emphasizing that it’s up to you to consciously seize the current situation and take any appropriate action in corralling the blood thirsty Professor in order that a balanced and productive spiritual and intellectual approach can be developed in the years to come.

If this approach to your nightmare seems to make any sense in your personal circumstances, you might like to read some of analyst Marion Woodman’s books because she has dealt extensively with the topic of the “inner man” in women among many other very valuable themes. Perhaps “Body and Soul: Honoring Marion Woodman” would be a good start in order to obtain an overview of her work.

I hope that these ideas can be helpful in unraveling the personal meaning of this frightening nightmare in order to prevent a similar one from happening again.