Recurring nightmare: Uncle poisons everyone

I have the most awful recurring nightmare in which my uncle fatally poisons my friends and family. I have never had a good relationship with this uncle; he hates me because I was brought up by his parents and they spent more time and money on me than they ever did on his children. He bullied me when I was a child and encouraged his sons to do the same, now he has made threats to me involving my grandfather (who is still alive and in a retirement home.)

In these dreams he always manages to poison someone I care about. I have dreamed about him killing my mother, my sister, two of my friends and even my Jiu Jitsu instructor. :? When they have been poisoned their skin melts away and they just collapse to the ground as a skeleton. This is always very graphic and horrible. I dreamed that he killed my sister and she vomited slime over me and then her body just exploded. In another dream, I was staying the night with my best friend and went off to have a shower. I was in the shower and heard her voice but couldn't make out what she was saying, so I assumed she was on the phone. I went back to her room and she was dead: she was literally just a pile of bones on the floor and her skin was all over the carpet. It was so bad I was actually sick when I woke up. I know who has done it because I usually see my uncle poison them. In reality we live so far apart that I never see him (I live in the UK, he lives in Australia.)

I don't actually have a very good relationship with my mother or sister or any of the other people who feature in this dream. The only one I really care about is my best friend, and I can't see why my uncle would hate her. Probably just because he knew she is special to me. The dream always ends with me confronting my uncle who challenges me to prove that he did it, and then says he will stop doing this if I will drink his poison and kill myself. I normally wake up before I can give him an answer.

Any thoughts? I really do not want to keep having this dream. :( Perhaps it's a warning not to underestimate how evil this man really is? Although I wouldn't put anything past him in real life, I also would not have thought that he knew how to make biological weapons!

From my own experience, recurring nightmares are tough to deal with. My personal experience with a recurring nightmare is similar in that it deals with a family member who I have struggled with, but my nightmares rarely include this person harming another family member, he is generally after me. Over time I have found two techniquest that help me.

1. I had to make the conscious decision to be realistic. In reality, the person in my nightmare could potentially hurt me, but the likelyhood is extremely slim. After I conquered my fear of him in real life, it became easier to deal with the dreams.

2. I don't know about you but after I have one of these nightmares, I tend to wake up in a panic. Try to be intentional about reminding yourself that this isn't reality and calming yourself down quickly when you wake up like this.

These things helped me, good luck!

In a recurring dream, there is always some sort of a message for the dreamer, and the dream will continue until the message is understood and acted upon. In this case, one can only guess that perhaps there is something the uncle did in the past that affects the family in a negative way, and is as yet unresolved...