MY DEATH DREAM
As the title says, I died in a dream. This happened back when I was in my twenties, I believe. It happened in a recurring dream I’ve been having. So let me paint the picture. In this dream, I’m at the house I grew up in and I am being chased, but it’s more like being hunted by a military-type group. They have on all the gear you could imagine a special force team would carry. They have assault weapons aimed at me, shooting at me, with the purpose to kill me. I don’t remember if I had any weapons, I don’t believe I did, I don’t think I’ve ever used a weapon in any of my dreams. Why exactly I was being chased, I have no idea. It’s one of those dreams where you’re thrown in the middle of a story and you don’t have any clue as to why you’re there, what exactly is happening, why you’re being chased, but all you know is that you need to run for your life. You’re in pure survival mode and everything else doesn’t matter.
I’m completely by myself besides those chasing me. No family members, neighbors, or friends, are present. The entire dream is taking place in the lot of my house and it would spill over to my neighbor’s house, but it never ventures too far into the neighbor’s lot. The chase also never goes inside the house. The lot has a house, garage, back, and front yard, it’s pretty typical for a lot in my neighborhood and so I’m limited to where I can run to, but as dreams often do it has its own duration in time. Meaning, the time it would take me in real life to run from one end of the lot to the other would take minutes if that, but in a dream, it’ll take as long as you’re asleep.
As I said, I’m being chased but since this was a recurring dream I had the deja vu type feeling, where I sort of knew what was coming up next, what direction I would run towards, and how I would avoid getting caught or shot, but not be fully aware that I was in a dream. Being aware that I was dreaming happened once in my life, but that’s for another story. In the sequence before I get shot and ultimately die, I am jumping over the fence that separates my house and my neighbor’s house. As I’m jumping over, like the previous times, I assume I’m going to get away from the danger, always by the skin of my teeth, but this time I actually get shot and I slowly start to disappear. At this point, I’m watching myself in a third-party view and when I get shot I’m immediately shocked. It’s not enough to where I’m now self-aware that I’m in a dream but I knew or had the feeling that this was not the regular outcome.
As I completely disappear, there is sort of a pause to the dream and a void comes over me. I knew I lost something, in this case, me, but I’m also viewing myself and so I’m not completely gone. What’s interesting about dreams is how you could have multiple views of the dream and have awareness of all the views at the same time. There’s an omnipresent feeling to dreams. As I continue to view the dream, I’m waiting to see what happens. Suddenly I see myself slowly materializing, much like you would see in video games until I’m whole again. I would describe it as flashing into existence. Think of the game Pac-Man, when the ghosts are vulnerable to being eaten and when they start to become ghosts again they start to flash on the screen until they’re the attacking ghosts and become a threat to Pac-Man. A more fitting example would be the game Contra, and the way the main characters come back after losing a life. I even thought of Contra during the dream as I was coming back to life. Once I came back to life, I just work up. Even in the past dreams, jumping over the fence into the neighbor’s house was the last thing I did before waking up.
It’s an interesting feeling to experience death even if it was only a dream. This dream, in particular, has become a hallmark in my memories. After I woke up and processed what happened, I didn’t feel sad or overwhelmed, my heart wasn’t racing, or woke up in a sweat. It was more of “Wow, that was crazy”.
This was the last time I had this dream.
Thank you for reading, and on to the next story.
