10 Common Nightmares (And What They Actually Mean)

7. Seeing Your Dead Loved Ones

Seeing a dearly departed nearest and dearest can be a truly horrifying experience, even if it only happens in the realm of a dream, rather than in a zombie-movie-turned-real-life scenario. Being haunted by your deceased loved ones may seem like the plot of a truly scary horror movie, but seeing your dead friends and family in nightmares is possible, surprisingly frequent, and a shock to the system. What It Means... The reason that deceased loved ones appear in dreams is simply due to the dreamer being unable to let go of them. In other words, the dead ones literally become like ghosts of the mind, infiltrating the subconsciousness and forcing the mind to realise that the dreamer has not perhaps come to terms with the loss of the person, or even what that person represents. Seeing a deceased mother or mother figure in a nightmare might be representative of the end of childhood, youth, and naive innocence, rather than explicitly meaning the dreamer is finding it hard to come to terms with the death of the loved one.