Does anyone else have recurring characters in their dreams? I’ve had two dreams that featured the same person. In my last dream, his name was David (later in the dream–it might have been something else in the beginning). He’s a really nice person, and he loves to cook. David is very quick to clean up leftovers and dirty dishes, but he has taken food that I wanted. I can’t be mad at him, though, because he’s taking the leftovers to make them into something greater. He aspires to be like the chefs on Food Network who can make something amazing out of random ingredients.
In my last dream, I was attempting to make strawberry eclairs. I walked away for just a minute to do something, but when I came back the table was cleared, all of the dishes had been washed, and all of the food was gone. I was a little bit upset because I didn’t get to eat any of the strawberry eclairs. I found some of the strawberries in a plastic container with basil leaves and whipped cream.
Later on, I realized that I had forgotten to put the filling in the eclairs. I don’t know exactly what I was trying to do, but it involved whipped cream, chopped strawberries, and strawberry slices. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me I need to make strawberry eclairs! Or maybe I need to stop watching so many cooking shows.
I have one. In my dreams, I’m always around 20-25, though I’m 57 in real life, and I have a recurring love interest around 20 that I never seem to be able to figure out. She appears in very different dreams, and I’m fond of her, but I’m always clumsy around her, say the wrong things and make a fool of myself. She’s not even very attractive physically, but I lean to her, because she’s very smart with a great wit. I thought hard about her maybe having a real life model, but I’m drawing a blank. And though I’m very attracted to that woman, I never get a foot in the door, it’s futile. She likes to make sarcastic comments to my advances.
I don’t know what these dreams tell about myself, but at least they’re quite interesting.
I could do that as a child, change my dreams or even chose a subject to dream about before I slept. I could also opt out of any dream if it became too uncomfortable, by letting my dream character jump up in the air. But not anymore.
I’ve had the same recurring dream for years.
It’s my Mother. Either she’s laying on the bed reading a book and motions for me to look. The page is blank.
Or, I’m standing at a door behind her legs trying to hide because I’m afraid of going in.
I can’t say I have had that. But what happens in my dreams is something surreal and weird (a place, person, thing, or just a concept) is just assumed to exist and we are entirely familiar with it, as it was a recurring feature I’ve seen before. Even though I have no memory of actually encountering this thing before. It’s like tuning into a TV show half way through the second season. What? of course the US government is run by manatees, of course Wembley stadium is made entirely of cheddar cheese. Everyone knows that, it’s been thoroughly discussed as nauseum.
I don’t actually know if when this happens it’s because I have dreamt it before but forgotten it, or if it’s just my brain being weird
My former boss at Blockbuster 13 years ago, who’s now my sister’s boss at Taco Bell, appears in my dreams as my boss whenever I have another dream of working at Blockbuster.
I sometimes dream about old friends I haven’t seen in years. Last night, I dreamed my old roommate installed a Carolina Hurricanes bouncy castle in the front yard.
Not person, but house. I’m in a house that is supposedly mine, although it looks nothing like any house I’ve ever actually lived in. There is a part of this house that I always forget exists. It has a huge bathroom with odd looking fixtures. Almost hospital-like with lots of tile. In my dream, I always come across this room and think - I forgot about this room. I haven’t cleaned it in a long time. Nothing else ever happens. I just come across this room. I have this dream at least 4 or 5 times a year.
I got out of the Marine Corps over 30 years ago but I do have recurring dreams of my time in. I never saw combat in my 14 years of service so thankfully my dreams are not traumatic. My empathy goes out to those haunted by their combat service.
There’s a recurring house that has features vaguely reminiscent of various places I’ve lived or stayed. But it’s a very wacky house. An open plan master bedroom with a full kitchen in it. A bathroom in an external alcove with no roof. A screen porch the size of a Home Depot store and full of shelving full of boxes of gosh knows what stuff. Waterways big enough for small boats winding between each house. Slowly flowing despite the very hilly terrain.
I show up, look around, see stuff that needs doing, then decide to walk to a different room instead. Usually accompanied by people somehow representing friends or family from decades ago. Or composites thereof.
For me it’s a car. When I was a kid my dad had a blue 1979 Corolla wagon. He sold it in like 1994. To this day that car continues to show up in my dreams. In most of them, it’s become my car and I’m driving it. Sometimes I’ve had it restored and it’s in like-new condition. In most, it’s still the old beater it was in '94, but I still prefer driving it over the newer car I own.
Most of the people in my dreams are distorted versions of real people I have known throughout my life. Or they’re strangers who never return in a second dream.
However sometimes a dream will tell me I know this person, or have been to this location, or recall an event I previously experienced, when in reality none of that is true, it’s just a construct within the dream.
It’s tantalising to want to explore the details more after waking, but you just can’t.
I don’t have this dream anymore, but as a kid, anytime I had a fever, I would often have a dream about a young girl who was swinging on a swing, inside a cave, as the boulders inside kept growing larger and larger until it sealed her shut in the cave - all the while her being unaware. This recurring dream only happened when trying to sleep off an illness with fever.
Since others have gone beyond recurring characters to recurring settings, events, etc., I’ll weigh in.
Much earlier in my life, I worked in radio. I started in college and worked my last radio job over 15 years later in 1988. Nevertheless, I always have radio dreams several times a year. Sometimes, they’re set at actual stations where I’ve worked, with the same studio, same board/cart racks/tape decks/turntables, etc. But more frequently, they’re random studios with no real-life counterpart.
The one thing all these dreams have in common is that EVERYTHING always goes seriously wrong. The tape spools off the reel, I can’t read the labels on any of the carts (or the cart rack is empty), the copy I’m supposed to read is written in Swahili…and most frequently, I’ve just played my last record and cannot find any others in the studio, no matter how furiously I search.
The consequence of this is panic because I’m going to have ad lib something to avoid the dreaded “dead air,” the cardinal sin in the radio biz.
I wake up from these dreams in a cold sweat. It amazes me that the last time I did this for a living was nearly 37 years ago. And yet, the dreams are as vivid as ever.
The recurring “nothing goes right at work” dream is pretty common.
For some reason, my version of that tapered off about halfway through my career and haven’t been back. But all the stupid stuff that piled up in the dream still happened occasionally out in the real world. Just not all at once.