Dead tired
Death a common theme in dreams, researchers say
The question: Is it true that people always wake up before their death in a dream?
The science: Death is a common theme in dreams, either of the dreamer or someone else. Death by murder, misadventure, animal attacks, vehicle accidents and natural causes are some of the most common, said Kelly Bulkeley, a dream researcher, author and founder of the Sleep and Dream Database, which includes more than 40,000 dream entries. In recent years, COVID-19 has been a prominent scenario in death dreams, he said.
Many people wake up the moment before they’re shot, stabbed or fall to their death in a dream. It’s a natural reaction to a nightmare — a way for people to protect themselves from uncomfortable or unnerving scenarios, experts said.
“The fear is waking them up,” said Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist who studies dreams at Harvard medical school and author of The Committee of Sleep.
But not always. Research has shown that people do dream about their deaths and, in some cases, their afterlives.
For some, the moments leading up to death are the most frightening. But the moments of the death and afterward tend to be less scary and, in some cases, positive — with some people reporting a sense of peace or freedom — according to a 1989 study of death dreams among undergraduate students.
When people die in their dreams without waking up, those are “much less unpleasant, and to the extent they are unpleasant, they’re likely to be sad rather than terrifying,” which may help explain why people continue dreaming, said Barrett, who conducted the study.
Barrett also found in her study that in their dream afterlives, participants described leaving their bodies for an “afterworld experience,” getting a “second ghostlike body” or becoming “a passive observer of others’ reactions to their death,” which can “resemble accounts of ‘out-ofbody’ and ‘near death’ experiences.”
The reasons people dream about death are complex. Humans are hardwired to fear death, and dreaming about it may help some people navigate the feelings they have about their own mortality, experts said.
Other times, however, dreams about death may have nothing to do with the end of life. They may represent other endings such as a job or relationship, or reflect the start of something new.
“It’s very important in exploring dreams to avoid literalism,”
Bulkeley wrote in an email. “Some dreams about death are about the actual cessation of biological life, but in other cases, indeed perhaps the majority of dreams, death is symbolic or metaphorical, gesturing toward themes of change, loss and renewal.”
What else you should know: In one survey of British adults, about half said they always or often remember their dreams, with women more likely to remember them than men. Experts added that younger people tend to recall dreams more often than older people, and their dreams are often scarier.
Not everyone remembers their dreams, and some people also go through phases where they don’t recall them, said Jeffrey Sumber, a psychotherapist who analyzes dreams.
For those who want to remember their dreams, he recommends these steps:
Keep a journal by your bedside. When you wake up, jot down the date, time and, assuming you don’t recall any details from your dreams, write “no dreams to record.”
Within several weeks, you may start to recall fragments. Eventually, the goal is to remember your full dreams.
Not every dream is noteworthy, however, Sumber said.
“But when you have a dream that stays with you, there’s a reason for that,” he said.
In ... the majority of dreams, death is symbolic or metaphorical, gesturing toward themes of change, loss and renewal.
The bottom line: It’s more common for people to wake up at the climax of a death dream — just before they die. But some do dream about their deaths and even afterlives.