Dreaming of the deceased

Hello dreamers.

My name is Donald Lyon and I am a PHD student in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. My research focuses on the theme of dreaming of the deceased. I myself am an avid dreamer and regularly dream of my deceased friends and relatives. I have recently began learning how to lucid dream with Charlie Morley in the UK. I have had three lucid dreams so far. One of these involved a very interesting encounter with my dead brother. My research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and will lead towards a thesis in which I hope to challenge Western academic assumptions regarding the boundaries between both waking life and dreaming, and the living and the dead. My assumption is that these boundaries, if they can be said to exist at all, are very fluid indeed. I am hoping to find people who likewise experience dreams of the deceased (whether lucid or not) and who would be willing to share these experiences with me. If you think you can help, or just want to find out a little more about what I am doing, please get in touch. I would love to hear from you. You can also check out my page on the University of Aberdeen website for more info (I cannot include the URL as I have only just joined this forum. If you are interested my page can be found under the current students section of the postgraduate pages in the anthropology section of the University of Aberdeen site).

Thank you, Donald.

I frequently dream of my grandparents. This was the first one from 2006. I still occasionally remember dreaming about them and sometimes it triggers lucidity. I can provide more dream journal links if you would like but it will take some digging.

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-jour...tml#post325907

Do you have any more material about your research available somewhere online? Are you saying that possibly one's mind isn't confided to merely one's brain as well as being dead is just another way of being? It would be interesting to read more about what your actual hypothesis is.

I dream about my dead great grandparents a lot both lucid dreams and non lucid. I don't know how it is for others but for me they appear as both ghosts, being alive and sometimes something in between or having come back from death which I think is weird because in the dreams I always know they have died no matter how they appear.

Good luck with your research!

I have always got things in my dreams like a visual form of intuition that I seldom get when I'm awake. There has always been a difference when I dream of dead people vs. when the dead visit me in my dreams. I can only compare it to the difference between looking a picture of a person vs looking at a person that is in front of you or more like video chat. I can feel the difference but It may be easier for some to see the difference w/ what they feel. Also helpful in waking life in feeling the presence of someone nearby that you can't see. Much easier recognize who it is that is almost like the way you do when answer a call w/o caller id. Which is good when u want to be able to hear the phone ring from someone you hope to hear from but for me keeping the line open was like going from an unpublished number to published. A phone that I cant shut off or block unwanted calls. So be careful because what started out as comforting at 1st is now more often than not disturbing. While ignorance is bliss knowledge is powerfully disturbing if you pan out to the bigger picture. What I would recommend highly is learning dream control. Reality as you know it will be forever changed when you learn this. There is the more fun on this planet. Nothing that even comes close. I will close with that because I have over 35 years worth of experiences to ramble on about that may or may not be useful to you. Hope this helps
K

Thanks for the replies. I will PM you. If anybody is interested in getting involved with my research or has any comments or questions please feel free to email me on [email protected] Thanks.

[Oops! I just noted the age of this thread! Feeling a bit late to the game and likely irrelevant, but I'll leave the post anyway...]


That is a tough thesis indeed!

I too dream often of my deceased parents and friends, though I do so almost exclusively when not lucid. I have a feeling we all dream regularly about deceased loved ones. Which raises the question of difficulty:

Since our loved ones no doubt enjoy a substantial foothold in our unconscious minds, it seems very likely we would continue to dream about them long after they are gone, just as we dreamed about them when they were alive. How we interpret our encounters with them would likely vary from person-to-person, based on individual expectations, hopes, and beliefs, and though those encounters might be quite memorable and even seem very real, or unusual, they might all just be the continued appearances of dream characters generated by our unconscious minds. Not that I would mind seeing you do so, but how on earth do you disprove that?

That said:

I do hold dear one medium-level lucid I had in which I ran into my parents at an outdoor bazaar. Normally when my parents appear, I have little to no lucidity and do not remember that they are dead; also, they always appear as they did in the years just preceding their deaths. This time, however, they appeared to me as they looked in their early 20's (long before I was born), didn't speak a word, and gazed upon me with a kind of loving joy I cannot describe. I both knew well that they were both dead and that I was dreaming, but something made me pause and just soak up their presence as if they were real, that they wanted to let me know that they were doing well, and that, well, there was more. This time, I chose not to make any lucid changes to the dream, chose to suspend disbelief for just a minute, and chose to keep silent myself, lest I corrupt this perfect moment. It seemed worth it then, as it does now. Whether there was a connection with the actual dead, though, I can never be sure and certainly never prove, even to myself.

... just thought I'd share. Good luck to you, Donald, and please be sure to share with us if you discover anything, because, as Sowitbe noted already, any verification in a subject like this is indeed huge!