#1 September 17th, 2005 11:22 PM

liandra_dahl

Member

Near Death

Ok, I've given this a misleading title, but only because the topic I am bringing up is one i have brought up before. I had a dream the other night that I died! I was told when I was a teenage that this was impossible because to actually dream you were dead would kill you. However I'm still here, so I guess that was more teenage bullshit, like eating an apple and looking in the mirror at midnight or saying the lords prayer backwards at midnight and all that. I've felt really wierd ever since my dream though. Then I had a dream about my father doing something he shouldn't have and when I rang my sister the following night exactly what I had dreamt he was doing, he had actually been doing. oooooh! it's all too spooky for me! I think it's because Verity brought some very pongy blue cheese over the other night and I've been eating it before bed.

Oh I nearly forgot to mention what I was intending to ask. Has anyone else had a death dream? Or a near death experience of any sort?

miguel_juan

Member

Re: Near Death

One dream i remember most clearly i was watching myself die.  A crowd of people were huddled around me asking me things i could hardly hear.  I felt so detached from everything that was happening and i only had a vague sense of what happend just moments before. There were cars overturnd so i can only guess that there was an accident. 

i rememeber the look of my face was bewilderment. I stood away from the whole thing in a ghostly sense and watched myself struggle to breath and gasp till it was over. 

i'm not so articulate about this sort of thing and i wish i could better describe the vividness. it felt absolutely real. 

creepy as all hell yes. but maybe it was just bad cheese too.

milestones

Member

Re: Near Death

I almost drowned once when I was a child and despite what most people think it wasn't horrible, after I'd stopped struggling and my lungs had filled up I was overcome with this immense sense of peace and comfortable resignation. I felt detached and dreamy but still sharply alert to my situation, it just didn't matter, a sense that things would be ok. It felt like being swaddled in freshly laundered, still warm cotton sheets. Then a friend managed to drag me out to safety, I remember actually being pissed off with him!

Ironically, I've been terrified of deep water ever since.

Dreams wise I don't remember dreaming of my death, just near or about to but not actual. There was a documentary on recently about 9/11 and there was awful footage of a guy at a window on god knows what floor, hopelessly waiving his jacket for rescue with smoke billowing out behind him. There was some damage to the outer wall around the window which enabled him to climb out a little to get away from the heat, then he climbed back to the window and seemed to be lowering himself on a rope, he slowly slid down the outside for a metre or so and then he detached from the building and started plummeting to earth....horrible stuff of nightmares and that image hung around in my head for a few days afterwards, someones husband, father, son left to go to work as normal and that's how the day ended, before it had really began, a living nightmare.

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Television, drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and bleeding radiation.

voyeur2

Member

Re: Near Death

When I was 15 I was a snotty kid at times.  At summer camp I angered a counsellor who then attacked me and put me in a choke hold.  He strangled me unconscious.

I believed I was being murdered.  I was unable to stop it, and it terrified me,  thoughts filled my head like "I didn't want to go, I am not ready, I am not finished."  I could not scream or yell for help, my friends around did not realize I was in as much danger as I really was.

As the oxygen in my brain lowered, I lost sensory input.  First sound, then sight - fade to red- then I came to a sense of calm detachment.  Before going under, it was a peaceful, accepting, slippping away.

When I came to, the counsellor was gone - from the camp as well as just from the rec hall.

I do not like tight collars, neckties.  I do not think about it much - years go by between being reminded. 

Except - it is a comfort to me knowing what dying is like - at the very last bit before going.  Perhaps.

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Have I ever lied to you before?

jdudley76

Member

Re: Near Death

I had a death dream once when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I dreamt I was in a garden picking blades of grass with my grandmother sitting several yards away. There was a huge circular object maybe 50 feet over us, but it didn't seem at all odd to us, and it just hovered there. Suddenly I picked the wrong blade of grass, and my grandmother screamed "NO!" and the circular object became like a magnet for my soul, tearing it away from me, and I died. At that point I woke up in a sweat, scared, but really confused too.

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"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."   - George W. Bush, as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002

liandra_dahl

Member

Re: Near Death

Though the responses haven't been vast I think this has been one of my favourite threads. I wonder if dreams of our death will come to be, or if they reflect something going on in our lives right now, or if it is after all, only the bad cheese we had before bed.

Miguel-juan - I don't think it's about being articulate the impressions dreams leave on you are immensely hard to convey in words. It never seems to do them justice.

Milestones - I've heard that about drowning, that's it's peaceful, maybe all death is peaceful once you've got beyond pain and accepted it's inevitability

Voyeur2 - You must have been one hell of a snotty teenager, or was your school in the practice of employing COMPLETE AND UTTER PSYCHOPATHS! That sounds horific, and bratty teenager or not, I hope you prosecuted him and sued him and made sure he never worked with teenagers again.

jdudley76 - ooo that made me shudder. I can see why you woke up in a sweat. Unfortunately I can't make head nor tail of what it might mean, Head's pretty good at interpreting dreams. Maybe he'll give it a go, and resolve that confusion for you.

vadek28

Member

Re: Near Death

I had a death dream once when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I dreamt I was in a garden picking blades of grass with my grandmother sitting several yards away. There was a huge circular object maybe 50 feet over us, but it didn't seem at all odd to us, and it just hovered there. Suddenly I picked the wrong blade of grass, and my grandmother screamed "NO!" and the circular object became like a magnet for my soul, tearing it away from me, and I died. At that point I woke up in a sweat, scared, but really confused too.

Sounds like the pre-title sequence of a new Spielberg movie.  Better find an agent quick! 

miguel_juan

Member

Re: Near Death

i love to talk about dreams. i have to agree that its with you about this being on of the more intersting topics.  i know there are lots of technical theories about what dreams are but i've never taken a psychology course.  I'd just like to know what you think dreams are, to you personally.    I tend to think that a dream is the minds effort to sort out the probelms  we seem to dismiss or dont understand quite yet.  Its just a matter of learning to understand your own minds dream language.

voyeur, after i read your post i recalled having that same feeling of, "its not my time, not yet i'm not ready". i relayed this a while back to a friend (who fancies herself a bit psychic) and she seems convinced that i'm actually dreaming about my twin. ( he died in infancy).  but maybe thats a whole other topic

nihilonx

Member

Re: Near Death

I wrote a book (my first) about exactly this subject -- death and dreams and the thin line that separates both.  I'm a lucid dreamer who when I was younger used to often wake up -- but not wake up -- and lie trapped in bed unable to move for minutes until I finally forced my body to roll over off the bed or into an uncomfortable position that would make me completely awaken.  I also have had dreams where I saw things that were simultaneously happenning in reality, but I don't do that so much anymore, by choice.  I don't think that its good to know too much sometimes...

I have had dreams where I should have died many times (being shot, falling off a cliff, bitten by a snake, etc) but I never do.  Instead I simply wake up with a tingling sensation in the area where the pain should be.

voyeur2

Member

Re: Near Death

Voyeur2 - You must have been one hell of a snotty teenager, or was your school in the practice of employing COMPLETE AND UTTER PSYCHOPATHS! That sounds horific, and bratty teenager or not, I hope you prosecuted him and sued him and made sure he never worked with teenagers again.

Aww come on Liandra, that was the fifties.  It was a YMCA summer camp.  15 yr old boys suing?  I didn't even tell my parents.  I bet the camp didn't either.  Who to sue>  The Y?  The CAmp? The counsellor?  I never knew his name even, (wasn't my counsellor) and I was in a sort of denialshock reaction for some time.  The reaction of the Camp was to immediatly fire and expell the guy.  Boys don't cry.  I didn't even complain to the camp directors.

The act was unfortunate, possibly criminal on a misdemeanor level, but pursuing 'justice' is a lonely road.  Prosecutors want slam dunks, not actions where rounding up witnesses would be a problem.  Another thing about Canadian law at the time is that the unsupported testimony of minors is insufficient for a criminal conviction.  Still is.  All the witnesses were 15 or younger. No visible damage, no physical evidence, no prosecution.

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Have I ever lied to you before?

Merricat

Member

Re: Near Death

During the breakup of a 4 year relationship, I had my very first death dream. At the time the boyfriend I was with and I were trying to make things work, but it seemed pretty doomed, he wasn't putting in any effort. And so I had this dream that I kept telling him I was afraid of something, but he wouldn't listen. Suddenly someone came into the house. Again I told the boyfriend that we should hide, that this person was dangerous, but he wouldn't listen. I hid in the closet. The boyfriend opened the closet door to tell me everything was safe, but just as he started speaking he was shot in the back by the intruder, who then shot me in the stomach. The dream ended with us both dying slowly, the boyfriend saying "you were right" with his head in my lap.

I was pretty shaken from that dream for a long time.

I've also had a recurring dream over the last several months where I'm drowning in the ocean.

liandra_dahl

Member

Re: Near Death

During the breakup of a 4 year relationship, I had my very first death dream. At the time the boyfriend I was with and I were trying to make things work, but it seemed pretty doomed, he wasn't putting in any effort. And so I had this dream that I kept telling him I was afraid of something, but he wouldn't listen. Suddenly someone came into the house. Again I told the boyfriend that we should hide, that this person was dangerous, but he wouldn't listen. I hid in the closet. The boyfriend opened the closet door to tell me everything was safe, but just as he started speaking he was shot in the back by the intruder, who then shot me in the stomach. The dream ended with us both dying slowly, the boyfriend saying "you were right" with his head in my lap.

I was pretty shaken from that dream for a long time.

I've also had a recurring dream over the last several months where I'm drowning in the ocean.

That's a pretty chilling dream, was your dreaming perspective inside or outside you body as you died?

You're first dream sounds a tiny little bit like one I had recently, and I was in a similar situation relationship wise. I dreamt I was in the house with my ex boyfriend and this huge bald man with swords and knives was chasing me round the house and trying to kill me. I finally managed (beyond all physical possibilities) to pin this huge man on the ground in the bedroom, and then I kissed him and ... so my ex boyf is there and he asks if I am OK, but leaves with out getting an answer. Then in my dream I woke up, and the huge guy was still lying in bed with me and the knives and swords were stuck on the walls with tape around the entire room. Then the guy woke up and started trying to spoon me and being really affectionate, I was thinking the whole time 'I'm going to have to stay with him my whole life or he'll kill me'. Then I actually did wake up.

In my death dream I drowned in the ocean. I wonder what it is representative of.

I see from your avatar you've shaved your locks off. I've always wanted to, but never had the nerve.

jdudley76

Member

Re: Near Death

I dreamt I was in the house with my ex boyfriend and this huge bald man with swords and knives was chasing me round the house and trying to kill me. I finally managed (beyond all physical possibilities) to pin this huge man on the ground in the bedroom, and then I kissed him and ... so my ex boyf is there and he asks if I am OK, but leaves with out getting an answer. Then in my dream I woke up, and the huge guy was still lying in bed with me and the knives and swords were stuck on the walls with tape around the entire room. Then the guy woke up and started trying to spoon me and being really affectionate, I was thinking the whole time 'I'm going to have to stay with him my whole life or he'll kill me'.

See what happens when you get affectionate with someone who's trying to kill you? ;o)

I see from your avatar you've shaved your locks off. I've always wanted to, but never had the nerve.

I knew a girl that had shaved all her hair extremely short except for her bangs. It was really sexy.

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"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."   - George W. Bush, as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002