Research case · Death & the departed
About to be nailed down
England · before 1911
I dreamed that I had died (though, somehow, I was not myself, but had become more or less identified with an ugly old woman)… Preparations for the funeral were meanwhile being made, and I was about to be nailed down in my coffin. At this point I became horribly aware that these proceedings would cause suffocation, and, with great effort, I succeeded in moving my arms and speaking incoherently.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. Ch. V
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Research case
- Place
- England · British
- Date
- before 1911
- Uncertainty
- Low
- Imagery
- Coffin · The dead
- Feelings
- Horror · Fear
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Dreams of the dead returning are widely reported after bereavement. Ellis noted how such dreams often move, over years, from disbelief to quiet acceptance; many people describe them as comforting rather than frightening.
Ellis (1911), ch. VIII
Mythological
In Homer, dreams pass through gates of horn and ivory; across many cultures the dead were believed to visit the living in sleep, and dreams were a place where the two could meet.
Odyssey XIX
Chinese traditions
Chinese poets wrote dreams of the departed as acts of remembrance: Su Shi’s “Ten years, living and dead” and Du Fu’s “My old friend entered my dream” are read to this day as elegies.
Su Shi (1075); Du Fu (759)
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- The guillotine fell France · c. 1850
- Buried a thousand years in stone Grasmere, England · c. 1817–1819
- The pale student of unhallowed arts Near Geneva, Switzerland · June 1816
- The false dream of one’s own death India · c. 6th–10th c. (text)
- My dead brother with bleeding fingers England · before 1911
- A cannon before the Arch of Constantine Rome (dreamed) · before 1912