As in; have you ever had a dream, while sleeping, in which you experienced your own death, right up to the instant in which your Earthly existence ceased?
I have. Twice; once a year or so ago, and again a few days ago. Both times it was the same way; I was on airplane that was taking off, the engines failed after it had climbed a few thousand feet, I saw the ground approaching and knew I had seconds to live, I thought something to the effect of “God help me”, and then the plane hit the ground and everything stopped.
Both times I had that dream, I woke up immediately after the impact. The first time it happened, I was confused, as I didn’t expect to still exist as a conscious entity after dying and I wasn’t entirely sure if I had survived or was in Limbo or Hell or what. I soon realized I could feel things touching me, and very cautiously opened my eyes, and realized I was in my bed in my room, and relief swept over me as I realized I’d been dreaming.
I was a little less surprised when I woke up after my second in-dream death, and it started making sense to me why that’d be a thing I’d dream about; plane crashes almost always happen immediately after takeoff and are almost always fatal to everyone onboard, and the passengers have absolutely no control over the situation. I’m terrified of death, and a situation where I know my death is inevitable and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it particularly terrifies me, so it isn’t really all that surprising that it’s what my brain would happen to conjure up while I’m sleeping.
It’s often said that if you die in your dreams you die in real life; that obviously isn’t true, seeing as I’m posting this and all. I wonder; has anyone else out there had a similar experience in their dreams?
No, but I once dreamed that I drove a car off a cliff. (I think it was an MGB off the Big Sur highway) I woke up thinking “Well, now I know what it feels like to know you ae going to die”. It wasn’t so bad. I woke up while still airborne.
Nope, not at all true. I’ve died in a couple of dreams. I remember a few dreams in my youth (20’s) where I died and then returned to the same dream as a different character. Now that was bizarre, because I’d be ‘x’ and it would make no sense and I’d be me again.
I’ve related in other threads my dream about being killed by a lion. I was sure I had been killed when I woke up, there’s no way to describe it that makes sense, but I did die in the dream.
Yes, a couple times. I didn’t die violently. I just felt myself dying and “knew” I’d died in my sleep or something. I found myself still in the world, but all the living people were gone and I had the world to myself until I became aware of other people here and there who were apparently also dead. Kind of like ghosts. Still in the world, but separate from the living. I liked it.
I also sometimes have flying dreams, either gliding or levitating straight up. In both cases it takes a lot of will power and concentration to do it and I’m aware it’s a sort of lucid dreaming I have a degree of control over, and in the latter case of levitating, I have a strong sense that if I can get up high enough to escape the Earth, I’ll have more or less died and left my body behind but will be otherwise free and “transcended.” Every damn time, no matter how hard I try, my concentration slips and I drift back down to Earth and wake up disappointed I failed again. There’s always a sense that if I’d just tried a bit harder I might have made it and if I had, I’d be gone. In a good way.
I have sleep apnea. I’ve drowned, suffocated, and been buried alive any number of times. If the dream is any hint as to the reality, it’s a very, very nasty way to die.
There have been 3-5 recurrent dreams. Those are the only ones I have any memory of.
The usual one-off dreams leave no traces.
I never die - I can get locked in someplace unpleasant, but never die.
IRL, OP is terrified of death.
I am terrified of being trapped in a body and unable to die, even when the body becomes a really, really unpleasant place to be.
It seems our dreams are parallel - OP has no choice but to die, I have no choice but be trapped someplace unpleasant.
Good thing dreams have no deeper meaning, right? :dubious:
I consciously tried to do that “out of body” thing a couple of years ago, when I was having trouble getting to sleep. I just figured it was a way of distracting myself so I could doze off, and concentrated on the experience. But an odd thing happened: I did seem to be out of myself, and there were things trying to stop me from getting back. I came back to reality in a sweat. I always wondered if that was some sort of auto-hypnosis, coupled with a nightmare.
I die pretty frequently in dreams. The two most common scenarios are falling and hitting the ground, or getting injured (like a gun shot) and then bleeding out.
One of my worst dreams ever played out like the movie Edge of Tomorrow. I died and went back to the beginning of the dream, then died and went back to the beginning, died and back to the beginning… over and over again. I probably died a hundred times that night, and never did “win” or reach any kind of conclusion. (My dream came before the movie, though. I’m still waiting on my cut of the royalties.)
I said “no”, as the closest I can remember was a dream in which I was walking somewhere in a section of New York City (maybe Brooklyn) where there were regular houses as opposed to tall buildings. A guy suddenly emerged, pulled a gun on me, and fired. The scene faded to black, but I woke up (in real life) before the bullet hit me.
Of course, since it’s said we only remember a small fraction of our dreams, it’s possible I’ve “died”, but the experience wasn’t traumatic enough for me to wake up in the proverbial cold sweat or sitting bolt upright and screaming…
I’ve never actually died in a dream, but I’ve dreamed about being in the process of dying. One dream I remember was that I was in an elevator attached to the outside of a highrise building and it broke away from the building and I was plummeting to the ground (think that scene from Towering Inferno). I remember thinking “this must be what it feels like to die” and it didn’t feel that bad really. I woke up before I hit the ground.
A dream I still have vivid memories of even though I haven’t had it in years. I used to go duck hunting with my Dad in this swamp that was on some farmer’s property we had to wear waders cause of the water. Anyway I had a recurring dream where we were there in the swamp hunting and my father kind of wandered off without me realizing and it became eerily quiet.
I was sitting on a tree log and I called out to him but got no answer. After a little more time passed suddenly the grim reaper, giant skeleton in a hooded shroud and scythe and everything comes up out of the black water almost in slow motion right in front of me and then he stabbed me in the chest and I would awaken at that exact moment every time.
Not long after this period of time my parents got divorced and my Dad moved out and it was just my mother and I and I wonder if maybe it was just my brain working through my fear of losing my father because certainly they were fighting a lot at that time and the prospect of a divorce was certainly predictable.
I’ve died in dreams, I’ve cradled my own dead body in dreams, and I recently dreamed I was standing on a riverbank and on the other side was heaven and just as I was about to start crossing the river, I woke up.
I had a dream that I was fighting in the Normandy invasion. It was unpleasant to say the least. It ended when I looked up at the German forts and took a bullet right between the eyes. I was immediately jolted awake.
and all this is your own personal Hell? :eek: