Nightmare or Dark Dream
Frightening Dreams
It’s a popular myth that all frightening dreams are created equal. A dream is a dream is a dream, right? If the dream happens to be terrifying we call it a nightmare and try to forget about it. But what if we can’t? What if a frightening dream is so terrifying that it somehow imprints itself inside of us?
After studying all manner of dreams and talking to as many people as I could about their dreams, I found frightening dreams are incredibly common and I developed a great liking for them. Not only do they electrify the emotions, but they inflict what seems to be an infinite number of fear levels; almost more than we can handle.
Nightmare or Dark Dream
For example, I find it interesting that a nightmare that can terrify a child can also terrify that same child when they get to be an adult. Does anyone else find that the least bit odd? After watching hundreds of horror movies and making their way through more haunted houses than they can count, adult dreamers need a more surprising and intense scare each time in order to produce the same level of fear.
Dark dreams, on the other hand terrify you just as much, or even more, but they have a different feel to them.
Here’s why.
A nightmare does its best to terrify and cement fear within your very soul. It will visit you over and over and over again until you find yourself doing everything you can to stay awake because you dread another encounter. But a dark dream can deliver the same level of fear with one paralyzing visit because it touches a much deeper part within a dreamer.
As examples, I’ve selected both a nightmare and a dark dream to share. I also provide their interpretations to show the difference in how they frighten the dreamer.
A Dark Dream – My Own Funeral
I was walking around a large white room and I saw my step-dad and two grandmas. I got really excited because they’re dead and I was happy to see them again. We went over to see the living members of my family who were all visibly upset and I was confused why. I tried to get their attention but couldn’t and I looked down to see someone holding my picture. Suddenly my coffin appears right in front of me. It opened and I looked in to see myself and I woke up.
When the dreamer told me this dream she mentioned that everything in the dream was black and white. But that’s only part of what makes this a dark dream. The dream presents the dreamer’s death, but it isn’t showing the physical death of the dreamer that will happen sometime in the future. It’s more like forcing the idea that she has no life.
Our dreamer find herself walking among the dead — separated from the living. At first, she’s excited to see her dead relatives, but then sadness. For the dreamer to see herself in a picture someone is holding reveals that the idea that she was once alive but that life is now in the past. The idea that she has no future worth living, that she is dead, can impact the outlook on everything, even imprint hopelessness on her heart. Death is such a powerful, defiling force that it’s nearly impossible to resist its debilitating impact.
The Death of Life’s Purpose
As I already mentioned, this dark dream presents itself in black and white, but that’s not the only quality that makes it a dark dream. This disturbing dream is targeting the dreamer’s life purpose. How? It’s simple, really. The dreamer can only have purpose in life if she’s a participant. It’s her life that’s under attack, and if successful, the dreamer just might give up the idea of doing anything with her life and look at the idea other talents or gifts as something that’s a part of her past. Perhaps this dreamer has a talent to design and make clothes — enough talent to produce her own line of clothing. Or maybe she has an undiscovered talent to be a talented surgeon, and become so good that she will save many people’s lives in the future.
No one knows. This dark dream is trying to kill her future before anyone finds out.
Just as dreams have the ability to reveal to us our life’s purpose, they can also attempt to get us to sabotage our purpose. This dark dream is doing just that. It’s attempting to present a situation to get the dreamer to distort her view of herself and abandon any purpose she may have in this life.
Dark Dreams have the ability to touch the deepest part of us that hopes and dreams to become someone better than who we are.
Melting Skin Nightmare
I’m standing in front of my parents house in my underwear and my skin is melting. I’m in excruciating pain.
End of dream
Interpretation: Some trouble passed down to you through the family line will leave you unprotected and vulnerable, so vulnerable that you will not even have the most elementary protection everyone else enjoys — skin. This trouble will leave you so open that things everyone else can easily brush off will stick to you and cause irritation and infection.
Interestingly enough, the dream does not reveal what that trouble being passed down through the family lines is. The dreamer must diligently search in order to discover the specifics of what this nightmare is referring to as a generational curse.
The Fear of Dark Dreams
The fear presented in the dark dream is much different than that of the nightmare. The dark dream’s purpose is to communicate hopelessness to the dreamer. The hopelessness that she has no life ahead of her, no future.
This is a lie, of course. Everyone who is living has hope of a future, no matter what current life situation someone is is there is always hope as long as they are alive.
The thing about death is, it tries to eliminate life wherever it exists. If it is unable to take a person’s physical life it will settle for stealing the life that resides in hope. Once that hope is gone, it will move on to a different hope. Death is never satisfied and is constantly stepping over its bounds to destroy life.
One of Death’s most successful weapons is fear. The fear of death has had a strangle hold on the human race from the very beginning. The fear that this dark dream presents is that the dreamer’s life is over. It’s one of the most cruel and debilitating things fear can do to a dreamer.
The Fear of Nightmares
The fear experienced within the skinless nightmare may seem similar to the dark dream, but it’s different in a lot of ways.
The fear this dreamer experienced is quite personal. To have no skin on your entire body is terrifying for a whole host of reasons, that are incredibly personal.