What Does A Serial Killer Dream Mean

  Of the thousands of dreams I’ve interpreted, serial killer dreams are some of the most fascinating. Dreamers are chased by serial killers, even play the part of the killer, but what does it all mean exactly? In this blog I draw from my decade of experience interpreting nightmares to reveal the various meaning of serial killers in dreams, walk you through interpretations, and show you how to get rid of them.

Serial killers appearing in your dreams mean the presence of death. Yet there’s much more to it than that. When you dream you’re being chased by a serial killer through your house, it means death and destruction have found a way into your life and are chasing you down.

Horror movies, serial killer documentaries, and true crime podcasts are just some of the reasons you’re dreaming of psychopathic mass murderers. Other reasons are: your dream is giving you a warning about death, the spirit of fear is making a play to gain greater ground in your life, or the dream is maneuvering you into a place to confront and defeat fear and death. Don ‘t believe that’s possible? Read on.

In order to figure out what’s going on with serial killer dreams, you must first consider the dream’s context. Serial killers can pop up anywhere and do everything from just chase you to run through your house and kill your family before they come after you. These may seem like subtle changes, but even the smallest of changes can change the meaning the dream. If you understand the context you’ll have a distinct advantage and zero in on the meaning.

If you want to gain this advantage, find out more about Dream Context click HERE.

To begin we’ll take a look at the most well known serial killers and their identities.

Leatherface

An encounter with Leather face can be downright terrifying. Just knowing this killer from Texas Chainsaw Massacre is wearing the skin of his victims over his face to cover his identity, keeps you wondering who this blood thirsty psychopath is and what his motivations are.

The mask of human skin he wears is a disguise of death and fear. When his victims see this mask they’re immediately overcome with the horror of their impending death and dismemberment. Leather face tries to take on the identity of someone he’s not, and in doing so communicates a paralyzing presence that feels like murder itself, and you’re his next victim.

If Leather face is chasing you in your dream it symbolizes that you’re being pursued by a fear and evil so heinous that it can’t be talked out of violent death and destruction. Your death is certain.

Here’s a dream from a Redditor that means just that.

I don’t call my dreams with leather face nightmares, but dream terrors. These dreams consisted of Leather face. He was constantly chasing me. I was constantly running away from him and when I finally felt like I was far enough away from him, I would turn back and boom! there he was right in my face. Over and over again I would run, look back and he was still there. There was no escape.

Finally one day I had the dream and somehow got ahold of an axe and split his head in two. It’s hard to express how victorious I felt when I woke up. It took me years and years to finally get rid of this dream, but that one act did it. Ever since then I have not had one dream about Leather face.

The Interpretation

This dream is as fascinating as it is telling. Years of recurring dream terror culminate when the dreamer’s armed with an axe and destroyed the destroyer. The dreamer was finally free from the terror of pursuing death. The dream doesn’t give any hits about why the dream is different this time. It does, however, reveal the dreamer has changed something about their waking life. The dream’s showing a progress and a defeat of the pursuing presence of death. This could have been the result of something as simple as asking light into the dream, or having a personal victory over fear apart from the dream.

Whatever the case, the dreamer was able to cut off the source causing these dream terrors.

Freddie Kruger

Freddy Kruger terrorized fans in the Nightmare on Elm Street as the serial killer who murders people in their dreams. If you die in a dream you die in real life. When he appears in your dream, your impending dream death brings back all the terror you experienced watching Freddy enter his victim’s dreams and finish them off. Thankfully, Freddy’s supernatural power apparently does him little good when he enters the dreams of normal dreamers. We know this since so many dreamers wake up to share their Freddy Kruger dreams. Here’s one of them:

I look out my living room window, it’s dark out and I see a figure out in the back yard dressed like Freddy Kruger. I tap the glass and he turns around, then I open the window and I say “Cool Freddy costume, bro.” and give him a thumbs up. He gives me a thumbs up in return with his clawed hand. That’s all I remember about the dream. There was also a sense of deja vu about it, as I remember similar instances with Jason Voorhees and another instance it was the grim reaper.

I find this Freddy dream interesting because the dreamer is not being chased and he’s not afraid. In fact, the dreamer refers to a costume. He doesn’t think he’s seeing the “real” Freddy Kruger. And he may not be. In fact, in there previous dreams Jason may not be Jason either. However, when the dreamer sees the Grim Reaper in those past dreams, we can be assured it’s not a costume.

The dreamer’s being shown the spirit behind the Freddy and Jason costumes.

The Interpretation

Here’s the meaning of this dream: The dreamer is having an encounter with death, giving it a small opening to enter their life and then giving them a gesture of approval. In a sense they’re making an agreement with death. The fact the dreamer doesn’t recognize they’re making this agreement with death is the most terrifying part of this dream. The dreamer has this recurring dream because they are allowing death into their life. This death, however is fooling them into thinking it’s just a costume representation.

Sadly, these dreams will continue until the dreamer recognizes what they’re doing and closes their life (the living room they’re in) off to death.

Jason Voorhees

For the few who are not familiar with the Friday the 13th franchise, Jason Voorhees is the main character who was a deformed child who nearly drowned and grew up in the woods. In the first movie of the franchise he saw his mother get murdered by a camp counselor and takes out his revenge on those who return to camp Crystal Lake. Later in the franchise Jason goes to hell and returns as a demon.

Dreams featuring serial killers are terrifying nightmares. This is especially true if Jason shows up in your nightmare.

I had a nightmare last night where i was doing my shift as usual and the store was looking dead. I looked outside and saw Jason Voorhees just staring at me through the window. His mask was red for some reason. I thought nothing of it (somehow) and ignored him until he began to look more menacing and entered the store, heading in my direction.

At this point I got scared bc you know Jason Voorhees is after me, so I ran out the store and of course he follows after me. I run all the way to the end of the plaza and ask people to help me and they all respond with something along the lines of “with what? He’s not gonna do anything just let him get close” and they all acted as if he wasn’t about to kill me. The rest of the dream involves me running from him around the parking lot until he starts sprinting after me and is about to catch me… and then I wake up.

The Interpretation

I find this Jason nightmare interesting because it takes place while the dreamer is working a shift with no one around. Jason stares at him through a window and is sporting a red mask. In this dream red means the color of war and the window means he’s outside looking in on the dreamer’s life. The dreamer runs and can’t find any help because they say “he’s not going to do anything.” The dreamer knows what’s up, that Jason is dangerous and they’re his next victim.

This dream comes to a conclusion communicating its clear meaning to the dreamer: there’s demonic danger at your work place and no one else sees it.

How to Terrify an Audience

Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal from The Silence of the Lambs, is by far the most popular serial killer who’s a cannibal. What makes Anthony Hopkins face so scary in this mask? One reason is because the mask is designed to be a reminder of the killer’s cannibalism, which just happens to be the most terrifying aspect of this serial killer.

So what does Hannibal Lecter symbolize if you see him in a dream? This death is a metaphorical symbol of being devoured one bite at a time. The loss of a job or a relationship in which little pieces of the dreamer have been taken from them.

As I’ve mentioned before, the meaning of the dream depends on context. Here’s a Hannibal Lecter dream and its interpretation.

I’m Hannibal Lecter Dream

My arms are crossed in front of me and fastened tight in a straight jacket. A muzzle’s lashed tight across my mouth. I’ve worn them both for so long that I’ve grown to hate the smell of leather. My arms are completely numb. I don’t let the detective across the table from me know that. I’ve got the upper hand here and I want to keep it that way. I’m in a scene straight out of Silence of the Lambs.

In the next scene things are switched around. This time I’m on the other side of the table and another detective is interrogating me, this time its a woman. She strikes an uncanny resemblance to Clarice Starling. I’m being questioned, always questioned. She’s describing a different murder now, asking me if I know who might have defiled the body in the pictures shes showing me. They’re desperate. They have no idea who is capable of such brutality now that I’m locked up. I toy with her, tease her, hinting that I know more than I do, then I wake up.

The Movie Connection

I’ve gotta be honest with you, when I was first told this nightmare I couldn’t see much meaning in it. I think what threw me off was the dreamer telling me her favorite movie was Silence of the Lambs and her favorite character of all time was Hannibal Lecter. To add to it, I also met her at Comicon and she was in character as, of course, Hannibal Lecter. Everything my eyes and ears were telling me was she watched Silence of the Lambs one too many times.
This is one of the most common assumptions that gets dreamers tripped up on understanding what they dream. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told — “Oh, the reason I had a dream about John is because I saw him just last week.” Or in this case, “I watch that movie all the time, it makes so much sense that I would have these nightmares.” This is perhaps one of the most, if not the most, popular misconceptions about nightmares. I bet you’ve said something like it, maybe even recently. But almost always this is not the case. Things are being brought to our attention for a reason. Although I couldn’t see it at first, there was a a very specific and very terrifying reason this dreamer was having this nightmare over and over.

Want more dream blood check out my blog The Line of Blood

Murder in Real Life

One thing I’d like to say about this nightmare before we go any further is that, at first glance, this dream may not seem like much of a nightmare to you. The dreamer loves this movie and she loves this character, and it’s not dark like the first nightmare. I used to hold the opinion that if the nightmare didn’t appear to have dark surroundings, and there was nothing violent about to happen than it couldn’t be categorized as a nightmare. I didn’t categorize this fragment as a nightmare at first. Then, the strangest thing happened to me. As I was talking to the dreamer, I heard this little voice in my heart whisper to keep talking, there was something else here.

So I kept talking, asking questions about the nightmare, and out of nowhere the dreamer says “Yeah, that’s how my ex boyfriend tried to kill me.” We were nowhere near the subject, she just blurted it out. I was so shocked at what she said that I wanted to make sure I heard her right, so I asked her to repeat herself. “My ex tried to stab me to death when I was eighteen.” Her husband standing next to her confirmed what she said.

Suddenly everything fell into place. It’s kind of hard to explain how this happens for me, this light bulb moment when the mystery of a nightmare becomes clear, but it is literally like a light bulb going off in my understanding.

The Interpretation

    The interpretation of this nightmare is simply this: a deathly presence attached itself onto your life when you were eighteen and is trying to conform you into its deathly image.

These are only a sample of serial killer dreams and their meanings. Post your serial Killer dream in the comments and share if you found this blog helpful.

EB