It is night time, and we are outside on a street. It’s sort of old fashioned with wooden houses, patchy flagstones, and a bit derelict. We are with a group. They are headed up some stone stairs to go through the fairground attraction haunted house. Although reluctant, we don’t want to be left out on the street by ourselves, so we follow up the stairs and inside the haunted house.

While inside the haunted house, it is almost impossible to stay together. When someone gets ahead, the reality splits and we’re split off in our own experience of the house, our own instance of each room. Although we can keep it together: we know the wax figures are illusions; we move fast and rush through the house, trying to find our friends or get out. While looking for the person in charge of the house, we find several spooky replicas of office ladies, creepily doing their admin at black computer screens. We get annoyed and assertive with the props, finally charging at a woman who backs away, hands up. She says something logical. We understand she’s real, and the manager of the haunted house. The whole group coalesces around us. We’ve reached the end.

As with many of these dream examples, this one is based on a dream I experienced. I’m going to run through some of the associations and how I’d explore a dream like this, touching only facets of what the full picture could be, but sketching out one of the ways of working with your dreams.

First, you could list all the imagery in the dream and general and collective associations. For your dream you’d also add your personal associations.

Settings:

  • Village street: where the life is, where people come together, a place of exchange
  • Being out at Night: subconscious, shadow aspects, sleep, being out when no one else is out
  • Stairs (in this case going up stairs): relating to the upper realms of your consciousness, or superconsciousness, relating to higher thought or awareness.
  • Haunted House: illusions, enacting a scary situation in an overall safe space, mirrors, reflection of your own reactions and interior state
  • House in general: often relates to your body, mental, psychic state, your own home in yourself

Characters in the dream:

  • With a group of friends: different personas or parts of your self, relating to a social faculty of your life
  • Wax figures: illusions, trickery, make-believe, reflection of your perception
  • Haunted house manager: In this case, it could be the part of you who’s aware of the whole set up, the one allowing the playthrough of the game

Emotions / feelings:

  • Reluctance to enter the house, panic inside the house, finally frustration and assertiveness which creates the dream-response of bringing forth the house manager.

Once we have gone through and outlined our associations and the functions of the elements we saw in the dream, is there a common or strongest thread? We had a few key themes which seemed repeated: relating to social life, shadow/unknown parts, and illusion or simulation.

So for example: the dream might be relating to a part of our life that’s socially-oriented (village) that contains elements we are unaware of (night) and are only reluctantly looking at. This part of us is also full of projected bias or illusions (haunted house), which are unobscured when we decisively and closely observe our surroundings.

The dream could be saying, what are you not keen to look at clearly around your social relationships? Where are projecting something which is causing you distress? Could looking at the situation carefully bring about cohesion of the group and order?

If this doesn’t paint a clear picture after some consideration, you could try different meanings for those symbols, turn them over as you go about your day, and it often clicks into place. Being specific to your own situation, feelings and what’s in your life right now really helps to click this into place, because dreams are often commenting on specifics.

We could continue our dream process by picking up the thread that was strongest for us. As an example: in this situation of illusion, multiplicity and panic, there is someone who knows what’s going on, is probably watching us, and is keeping the experience within a safe domain. If we reflect on our experience in the dream, our experience of the haunted house could have come from a) the speed we rushed through it in panic and b) our perception of the illusions inside it.

By itself, this could be a valuable insight from the dream, which you could apply to daily life.

It’s also fine to interpret or gain meanings up to a point which is helpful, and leave the rest. Often in following nights, your dreams will elaborate on the topic to help you get to the end of the communication, using different settings and scenes and activities. You can often recognise the theme being elaborated on.

If I were to boil this dream down to something to take with me during my day, it would be: what you make real is real. 

Sometimes trying to make a one-liner from a dream, while it can take extra contemplation time, can make the dream’s lesson memorable.