Recurring zombie dreams - any idea?

[Chevy_3326]

I constantly have recurring zombie dreams. They started with me just seeing zombies, soon I was hiding from zombies, then I was running from zombies. After a long time, I started being turned into a zombie. The dreams have seemed to progress over time into a storyline of sorts.

There are a few particular situations I've been in several times. One is where I try to get all of my friends and family out of an area full of zombies, but only a few of us escape. Another is where there are only a small group of survivors, myself included, and we have to fight them off everyday - the most notable feeling in these dreams is the constant fear of being turned.

The most recent type is where I become a zombie. Every time, though, I'm accepted by my friends and family because I don't actually attack anybody, but rather protect them from other zombies. In these dreams, there's actually a sense of relief that I've been turned, because I don't have to be afraid anymore. I've also dreamed that I had to keep travelling with a group of harmless zombies because we were being hunted down by a human.

I had a dream last night which was a bit of a mixture of the others. It started with a large group of us who were fighting the zombies and trying to get them under control. Every night we would have huge fights in our house and there were always casualties. If a person was bitten, they instantly turned and were shot by one of the group members. Then, in one of the battles, I was bitten and another survivor tried to kill me but failed, so obviously I ran away from the house. Like in all dreams I’ve had where I’ve been turned, though, I wasn’t overcome with bloodlust like I’d expected, so I returned home and discovered the situation was the same for a few others who’d been accepted back into the group.

So the fights continued and we managed to take out even more than before because a few of us no longer worried about being bitten. Searching for zombies, a non-bitten group member and I busted into a room where a group of them were having a meeting (which was incredibly strange) and the leader ran out at us. She went for the other person first, but just before attacking, seemed to compose herself and walked off instead. For some reason I was terrified of this particular zombie and knew she would attack me, so I tried to lock myself into the room just behind me. I knew she was organizing a mass attack with zombies like me, who were able to continue thinking as though they were human. Just moments before I got the door closed, she ran at it, screaming at me about purpose and betrayal as I used all my strength to get the door shut. After I slammed the door, I woke up.

The dreams I've had about zombies are countless, and I really want to know why I dream the same thing so often. I’ve looked at many different books and websites, but I’ve only ever found examples of running from or being afraid of zombies – I haven’t come across people being accepted as a zombie of relieved because they’ve become one. I’ve tried to interpret these dreams myself, but very few interpretations make a lot of sense. I’m worried that the dreams keep recurring because I’m missing some crucial meaning to them. Does anybody have any idea what they could possibly mean?

[Tony Crisp]

Chevy – Having had a series of dreams about two zombies and having over some years got to understand their significance, I have a slight entrance into your dreams.

But my experience might not be the same as yours. My zombies were the result of held back sexual urges over many years. The zombies were the parts of me that had been killed, but were never quite dead, and came to me in a nightmare as two men whose flesh was peeling off and were intent on strangling me. That is all understandable in dream symbolism. The strangling was that in killing my sexual self I was in fact strangling the life in me. Over years they became more ‘civilised’; all from understanding what the dreams meant and trying to undo the damage.

But of course there are other meanings to zombie. In effect it has been stated several times by authorities that most of us are zombies. Some books are written with that as a theme – that we are all moved by political, advertising ad things like the current paradigm into behaving in ways like sheep. It is observable that we are all moved by urges that control us and are not controlled us. This is something like we meet when we see people moved by habits, by propaganda, by religious bigotry or political brain washing.

I can’t say I understand all the symbolism in your dream, but in the way dreams tend to really dramatise, I see the bit about being relieved by being a zombie as a way to not have to be different to all the other ‘zombies’. As the psychiatrist Eric Fromm says in his book Fear of Freedom, the greatest urge is to be like everyone else. So to be the same is the greatest escape from attack in any form.

I would suggest you can find out for yourself by using the techniques outlined in http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-in-your-dream/ and also see http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-paradigm/

Also ask yourself the questions of what have you killed in yourself, and what to you see as dead around you in others?

Tony

[Tony Crisp]

I think the TV shows and films give a very 'film' type interpretation of zombies. An earlier B&W film showed a woman who had lost her soul and will, but all the latest ones show zombies lusting for blood - like vampires.

Tony