A co-worker just said, “Some scientists swear that you cannot die in your dream. . . The sub-conscious mind mind will not let you see your death in a dream.”
Is this true? False? Neither?
WRS
I died in a dream once, and woke up immediately.
I’ve died in a dream as well. So your co-worker is wrong.
I used to die in dreams on a regular basis. I was having severe anxiety issues, and very bad heart palpitations.
It isn’t fun.
I died in a dream just last week. I remembered it vividly…
Odd dream too… I was running a sponsored jumping up and down contest for kids to take part in and use a bit of energy, when I got the adults taking part too. Two of the women caught my eye and stayed to chat after the event. The younger woman was disabled (couldn’t see how, just ‘knew’ she needed looking after somehow) and the older woman went off for a canoe on a lake whilst the younger woman and I went for a steam train ride around the lake. I was thinking, ‘I mustn’t let anything bad happen to this girl’ when the train fell into the lake.
I tried to rescue the girl but she had disappeared and I was out of breath… struggled to get to the surface but every time I tried to move I let out a breath of speech bubbles which all said, “I need to get married” and eventually ran out of breath and died.
I’m sure that dream is incredibly meaningful and gives you all a lot of insight into that brain that makes up brainfizz, or, of course, I could just be nuts!
I’ve had many dreams where I was falling and when I “hit the ground” I woke up. For you folks that “died” in your dreams, how did you know you were dead?
[hijack]I’ve always been impressed with myself that in dreams I seem to handle the realization that I’m going to die very well. I hope that serves true in real life when the time comes and I don’t go screaming and flailing my arms like a little girl.[/hijack]
Thanks for the responses!
He also said that the brain wakes you up just before you die.
Bruce_Daddy had a good question - how do you know you’re dead?
WRS
Thanks for the responses!
He also said that the brain wakes you up just before you die. Seems like the above posts refute that claim. I wonder if there’s been any serious research done on this. From what I have heard, waking up just before one ends a fall is common, and kind of goes along the line of reasoning that the brain prevents one’s death in a dream. Yet, as said before, the above are very enlightening. (I was hoping people would post that they died in their own dreams, rather than their friend’s brother’s sister-in-law’s roommate’s niece’s boyfriend did.)
Bruce_Daddy had a good question - how do you know you’re dead?
WRS
It’s true!!! I fell off a roof in my dream last night and did not wake up before hitting the ground, my wife woke in the morning to find me dead beside her.
It is an unverifiable statement, simple as that.
Whenever I’ve died in dreams the dream just “resets” and I’m in a new dream, with the memory of having died in the previous dream.
When I was about 12 years old I had a dream where there were burglars in our house. One of them started chasing me so I ran upstairs to my room to get my shotgun. I tripped on the top stair, fell into the room, and reached into the closet to get the gun. It was, of course, unloaded but I figured the burglar didn’t know that. So there I am, laying on the floor pointing an empty shotgun at this big bad burglar and telling him to get his nasty ass out of my house. He just laughs and says, “That gun ain’t loaded. But this one is.” He then reaches under my bed, pulls out a big-ass shotgun and shoots me in the face with it. I suddenly felt all warm and tingly all over, but I was still aware of what was going on around me. When the burglar left, my parents came into my room, looked at me with terrified looks on their faces, and said, “Oh, my God, he’s dead!” I tried to tell them that I wasn’t, but they couldn’t hear me. So I guess I was. I finally woke up and thought, “Damn, I always thought you couldn’t die in your dreams. Guess I was wrong!”
Then a few months later, I had another dream where I died. A friend of mine had gotten trapped in a building with a whole bunch of really nasty critters, and another friend and I were outside trying to figure out how to save him. Suddenly, the guy inside busts out and runs screaming down the street away from us. Friend #2, who is standing a little bit behind me, says something about putting friend #1 out of his misery, pulls out a gun, and starts tracking the guy running away. Just as the trigger is pulled, guy #1 turns the corner at the end of the block, guy #2 swings his arm around following the motion, and I end up right in the line of fire at point blank range. Again, I get all tingly inside and think “Aw, shit! Here we go again!”
So, yes, it has been my experience that you can indeed die in your dreams and not suffer any long-term ill effects.
SC
In my 20’s, I “died” quite a number of times in my dreams. Sometimes I woke up, sometimes I just moved on to another dream.
But one time, I kept coming back in other characters in the dream, only to ‘transform’ back into myself. It was a space aliens conspiracy plot type thing and I kept coming back over and over again to foil it. An “Agent Smith”, as it were, fifteen years before The Matrix. (The dream plot bore no resemblance to the movie, so I am making no claims here!)
I’ve had dreams where I died and my corpse was starting to decay, but I was still walking around like a zombie. I got shot in the throat with a machine gun once too, but I woke up before I found out how that turned out.
I died at least 5 times in a dream.
4 involved very unusual incarnations of the grim reaper, and the fifth is one I can’t remember but it involved sex over a handknit sweater.