I was browsing a forum where people were talking about ‘scary dreams’. I have had plenty over the years, but one stays with me long after the others are just a vague memory. It is my own particular version of a ‘House Dream’.

The dream was too long to write about on a forum post, so I’m writing about it here instead. And I have to say, that for anyone who studies the meanings of dreams, or for any students of psychology, you are probably going to have a great time dissecting this. 🙂

My House dream is a recurring dream, by the way. It occurs during times when I am overtired or stressed-out. The House in the dream is never quite the same, but the characters are.
Anyway, here is my dream as I remember it:

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My House Dream

I am looking for a new place to live. I want somewhere large, with lots of rooms for different pursuits and a very large room where I can hold parties.

An estate agent takes me along to look at a house. It already looks creepy on the outside. It’s leaning a bit and some of the bricks are crumbling, but she assures me it’s okay, so, despite my misgivings, I go inside.

She takes me from room to room. There are so many of them, all with strange and different interior designs. It is like a group of mad artists, architects and interior designers have been let loose. I’m already creeped out and I am still only on the ground floor!

I ask the estate agent where is the largest room, as some of the rooms we have seen are very tiny.

She smiles and points to a room leading off of the room we are in, so in I go.
(she doesn’t follow me…).

It’s another strange-looking room, but this one has a door at the end – a low door which you have to bend down to go through. So I crawl inside.

The door opens out onto a huge ballroom. It is so large it is difficult to make out the furniture and pictures at the opposite end. Hundreds of chandeliers hang from the ceiling. They sparkle as if someone has dusted them recently. The ballroom floor glistens with newly-applied polish and the high, wide windows sparkly in the sunlight. I have never seen such a huge room in my life. It is like the house is a Tardis. There is no way this room would fit into the house you can see from the outside.

But the huge room doesn’t feel right… It is clean and sparkling, unlike any other room in the house, but it feels unreal in a way I can’t quite grasp. It is completely silent, apart from my echoing footsteps as I cross the floor. And as I walk, I get the sense that someone is watching me…

I want to run from the ballroom, but I can’t find the door I came in by. The only other way out is through another door on the far side, almost hidden behind a pillar.

I know this will take me even deeper into the house, but I feel I have no choice but to enter.

As I go through the door, I am faced with a long corridor with many doors leading off. I truly do not want to go through any of them!

Then a door half way along the corridor creeps open… and a girl slowly appears.

She is sepia-coloured, like an old photograph. She beckons me to come and meet her, but I know that something terrible will happen if I do.

My heart is beating so fast it seems it will jump out of my chest. I want to move, but I’m stuck to the spot.

The girl is slowly walking towards me….

Then I wake up! 🙂

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I know that the ‘House Dream’ is one of the all-time dream classics. Some dream interpreters say that the house represents the body, others that it represents the mind, others would say that it represents changes in our lives and decisions were are being forced to make.

As this dream occurs with me at times when I am faced with turmoil and indecision, or simply tiredness from burning out at work, I tend to go for the latter theory. I would also say that the size of the house represents my aspirations, which have always been larger than life and which themselves can put me under stress. 🙂

But that doesn’t explain the sepia-coloured girl.
Or does it…..?