Often the setting of a dream will be my home which is completely logical since this is where I spend so much of my time.. The place where I live represents me, my security, my place of existence, and the place where most of the things I own are. Home is something I value and sometimes fear losing.
Oddly though, when I dream about "my house" what I experience in my dream is typically not exactly the house where I live and sometimes nothing like the house where I live. Usually the house is more vast with rooms that do not exist in waking life. There might be odd features like basements or attics that are not in my waking life house. Frequently the house seems somewhat dark and old, perhaps having long hallways with many doors leading to unknown places. The house may be a combination of other houses where I have lived or visited.
Occasionally the house will be connected to other houses, buildings, or places similar to shopping malls or the like. The aura is typically darkened, eerie, and at times foreboding. Sometimes there are people present who I don't know or who would not logically be in my actual home.
I've heard other people say that the houses that they dream about are similar to what I've described here. My belief is that the houses in dreams represent our minds and memories. We are experiencing thought and mind as a physical representation in part. Also since a dream story must have a setting, a house is often a logical setting to appear in the dream depending on what the nature of the story is.
When you dream about being at home in your dream is the house the same as the house where you actually live? What do you think the houses in your dreams represent? Do the houses in your dreams give you a good feeling or a strange feeling of foreboding?
I have those dreams too. It'll be like a jumble of places that I've lived - the livingroom from my SF apartment, the stairs of my townhouse, the upper level like my home in WA, but the yard is my parents' on Cape Cod. I do have the 'creepy room' dreams that bum me out big time. I was in a big old house that turned into an antique collective, in Ilwaco, WA and there was room after room. I was upstairs going through everything and walked into a tiny back room off another bedroom and it was filled with old dolls. I got that 'creepy room' flashback and I was filled with panic. I never exited a building so fast in my life.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to visit your creepy dream homes, JoJo.
DeleteLee
Hi, just caught up with your dream theme posts :) dreams are very interesting but I don't dream often for not reaching full deep sleep I think. When I do they often feature family, sometimes my children when they were much younger, often my deceased father. If I dream about my childhood family home the setting is usually quite close to reality, although sometimes the general location of that house is different. dreaming about my own home, sometimes it's an unknown place I've never been but that recurs and has hidden rooms that I discover in my dream. Sometimes it's my current home but with differences, like having a verandah that's no here in reality - that's maybe wishful thinking and too much childhood TV! Verandahs are not common in the UK. Or sometimes the house is very similar, sometimes more like a previous house from twenty yeras ago and an unknown neighbourhood with strange street layouts. Dreams seem to be an odd mixture of memory, imagination, conscious and sub-conscious thinking. Greta theme and superb posts, look forward to visiting again and thanks again for dropping by my blog :)
ReplyDeleteStu, you might be onto something with that wishful thinking supposition. I agree that a lot of the jumbled house visions come from that hodge-podge of memory and other thought processes.
DeleteLee
I often dream about our family's first owned house, where I spent most of my younger years. Most of the time I believe I dream of it because a lot about my character was shaped on that house. I miss that house, most specially for the fact that the roof is made of coconut leaves. When the rain falls on that roof, it makes a lovely sound which often gives me the best dreamy sleep ever.
ReplyDeleteStrangely, I don't have dreams about home. I have dreams about hotels, factories, and offices, although at any given time one or the other might have certain features of my house. I never actually get the feeling that it's home, even if it actually is.
ReplyDeleteJohn Holton
Blogging from A to Z 2015 Cohost
The Sound of One Hand Typing
Yep, my home dreams mirror yours except for one extra scary recurring dream where the creep is trying to chase into my home through the front door to kill me--and it is my house and front door.
ReplyDeleteI always have to get up after this dream no matter the time.
I even find myself thinking when I use this door how difficult it could be to get in from this door. Strange and creepy.
There must be some deep-seated fear at play here. Is there some real or imagined person that you are afraid of?
DeleteLee
Interesting post! I often dream about my parents house, and it's pretty accurate, but sometime I dream of houses I've never seen or lived in, but which do resemble what you wrote about, with the hallways and darkness and odd little spaces. It's kind of creepy!
ReplyDeleteHow extensively do you explore the house that seems to be that of your parents? When I dream of a familiar place like that there are usually a few oddities present and if the dream takes me deeper into the house that dwelling starts becoming very different.
DeleteLee
Thanks Arlee - dreams of homes are always interesting to me. Many times people are at my home, or unexpected visitors arrive and I am unprepared for them, no food in the house, place is untidy etc. Or people, perhaps my late mother, is sleeping upstairs in a bedroom. I wonder what my unconscious is trying to say to me ...
ReplyDeleteNot being prepared is a frequent theme in my dreams although it usually has to do with a work or school situation. I too have had those dreams where I know someone is present though unseen--often someone who has passed from my life.
DeleteLee