Do The Dead Visit Us in Our Dreams?

Have you ever dreamed about friends or loved ones who have died?

Like me, you may dream about your deceased mother, your recently departed Uncle Pete, or a friend who left too soon. In my dreams, these people seem to pop up in odd and unexpected ways, sometimes as a leading figure, but other times part of the supporting cast. My father, who passed away five years ago, recently showed up at a beach party I was hosting.

In the new memoir The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, the singer-songwriter Neko Case writes about her hardscrabble upbringing (reminiscent of Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle) in the Pacific Northwest. But in one chapter she talks about her dreams, specifically ones where a recently departed friend or relative turns up, just to tell her they’re okay.

In one dream, Case receives a phone call from a recently departed friend. After telling her he was “fine,” she asks him, “Where are you?” His response: “I’m just a couple of dimensions over, I’ll be here for a little while.” The friend says, “I’m looking out for you,” and Case awakes with a feeling of “peace and lightness” she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Another of Case’s dreams involves her “Gramma.” A few weeks after her death, Case dreams she is sitting on a chair in an open field, a tiny wooden table with a gray Princess phone next to her. It rings. She picks up the receiver and hears her grandmother’s familiar greeting, “Saaaaay! There’s my girl!”

Her grandmother’s voice sounded like it hadn’t in years, “as ringing and robust as it used to be” when she was younger and healthier. When Case asks her how she was doing, she says, “I feel so much better. I’m traveling and feel great!” Gramma later said she had to go, “to get my connection to Thailand!” But just before that, she offers some guidance in this exchange:

 “Gramma, what do you have to tell me?”

She was quiet on the other end of the line for a second.

“Have your say,” she said in a very sober and serious voice.

I told her I love her, weeping in the dream.

She said, “I love you, too. I’ll look out for you.”

Can the dead really talk to us in our dreams?

I’ve previously told the story about my cousin who has the occasional ability to hear from and talk to those who have “crossed over,” including her deceased mother, father and husband. They appear to her as faint and fleeting images, often times whispering in her ear. But her experiences, which happen during her waking life, are uncommon.

For Neko Case, the dearly departed visit in her dreams and there may be a reason for this. It the book The Holographic Universe, the late Michael Talbot explains there is much happening in our subconscious that we are only remotely aware of.  He believes that when we dream, “some deeply unconscious part of us can reach across the boundaries of time” and even space.

Talbot mentions studies that show 60 to 68 percent of all precognitions, defined as the awareness of an event before it happens, occur during dreaming. Seeing the future, or communicating with the dead, is something our conscious brains are unable to do—because we are thoroughly conditioned to believe it isn’t possible. But the subconscious, which is linked to the soul, does not share the same belief system. Talbot writes:

The mind appears to be able to access some type of “holographic soup” (or field of information), in which all points are infinitely connected not only in space, but in time as well.”

It is in this realm that we might see the future, like the bassist from the band Weezer who predicted his own sudden death by heart attack. It’s also a place where we might reunite with those who have passed to the other side. We cannot see them in our waking life, but when the thinking, overly rationale part of the brain shuts down during sleep, magical things happen.

Encountering the deceased while asleep is often called a “visitation dream.”

People dreaming of deceased friends and family who come to comfort them is a widespread phenomenon. Dreamers often describe these experiences as feeling incredibly real, sometimes more so than ordinary dreams. They’re referred to as “visitation dreams.” Two notable examples include:

• Paul McCartney. The former Beatle has spoken about having a visitation dream from his deceased mother, Mary, when he was a teenager. In the dream, she reassured him with the words “Let it be,” which inspired the song of the same name.
• Carl Jung. The Swiss psychoanalyst, known for his work on dreams and the unconscious, was visited several times by his deceased father. The encounters influenced his theories and in one instance, he was forewarned by his father about the impending death of his mother.

Then there are countless lesser-known stories too, like this one reported by the Dream Studies Portal:

A North Carolina man awoke from a dream in which his late father—looking very much alive—instructed him to “find my will in my overcoat pocket.” Checking the pocket, the dreamer discovered a note pointing him to a specific chapter in the family bible. Between two pages in that chapter, the will was discovered.

Are these experiences the mind’s way of processing grief and finding solace? Or are they proof that there is only a thin veil between us and another dimension where those who have crossed over reside? Either way, visitation dreams offer a unique and often comforting connection to those we’ve lost. They remind us that the bonds of love and connection can transcend even death.