In Communicating with the Deceased in Our Dreams: Part One I relate a lucid dream experience that I had of my Aunt Helen a number of years after her passing. The dream had a specific message for my cousins, but it also was a harbinger of things to come in the following months when my Dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and passed away soon afterwards. I was able to pass along my aunt’s message at the funeral of my father, and the memory of the dream also brought me some comfort in what was a very difficult and sad period of my life.
“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” ~ Rumi
I have had a number of similar dreams over the years that have come at a time when I’ve needed support or comfort, and the messages are always loving, and sometimes prophetic in nature. My last dream like this involved my grandmother, and I was shown a very specific place, which I had never been to before and that I visited a few days later. In the dream she had been standing at the top of a brightly decorated staircase. It was identical to the entrance way of an ancient house, and tarot museum, and when I arrived there I recognized it immediately from my dream. I wrote it down in my journal for remembrance and because her appearing just there had a significance that I was able to recognize as very magical. The dream helped me to work out an important decision that I needed to make at the time.
The staircase that I saw my grandmother standing on the top in the dream.
You can probably imagine how started I was to see the identical staircase a few days later. Its located in a house that I had never been to before, nor to the best of my knowledge my grandmother ever visited. My grandmother is from my Mom, and Aunt Helen’s side of my family. She was the 7th daughter of seven daughters and all of the women that descend from that side of the family have some psychic talents.
My grandmother. I think she looks a lot like my Mom here.
I have had some disturbing dreams of the dead too, but thankfully they seem less frequent, and I wonder if they are a true visitation or if they are just my subconscious needing a specific archetype like a mother figure to insert into what ever I need to be working out in the dream.
Mom – I took this picture.
I had a very lucid dream of my Mother by the sea. She loved the sea and in life said she wanted her ashes to be scattered into the Atlantic ocean, which in part we managed to do with the help of her dear friend. In the dream she was standing on the beach in a place I did not recognize, but reminded me of Greece. She looked happy to see me, but at the same time melancholic. When I approached her she asked me this “Why does no one ever ask if I am lonely?” She then turned to walk towards some buildings that resembled ancient cave structures, and was gone.
I have since had others dreams, and communications with my Mom, but that one has stuck with me. Likely I need to work it out still.
My photo of the setting sun over Lake Huron, Canada, where my parents met and fell in love.
If you have read my book Cosmic Witch first of all thank you so much! I write about my Grandmother teaching me to read playing cards (appropriate she appeared at the Tarot Museum) and the influence my Mom had on my spirituality and witchcraft. I hope you enjoy the photos I’ve included here so you can now put an image to the writing.
I think it is easier to receive communications from our beloved dead or other entities while we sleep, because our ego is no longer fully engaged, we are in a liminal state between waking, and the other realm where everything is possible.
I’d love to hear your comments, thoughts, and especially your own experiences. If you feel like sharing reach out in the comments or DM me.
Susan
Out Of My Mind's Eye 
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I hope we’re able to get closer to the truth by explaining these anomalous experiences.
I tried a waking visualisation technique to communicate with someone that had passed. It was my partner’s grandfather, who I never met, but we have his photo hanging in our house.
After meditating for a few minutes on the photo and mentally visiting an area that I associated with him, I was able to find and have a form of non-verbal communication. When I asked for information about something I shouldn’t know, I received images in my mind of a rose with two stems, one wrapping around the other.
I told my partner about this and she explained how when both of her grandparents had died, she took one item from their house. It was a rose broach, with a similar tangled stem. She had it in our house.
I’m not really too sure what to make of it and I wonder whether these experiences are some weird self-delusional fantasy, or if there’s something genuine to them.
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Its good to question our experiences, but in your case it seems like a true non-local information exchange. Thank you so much for sharing this with me, and taking the time to read and comment. I appreciate it so much 🙂
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I find the subject of dreams endlessly fascinating and no, I don’t have any theory, new or otherwise, as to what’s going on when they occur. Mostly, the existence of dreams, particularly the ones you describe, Susan, make me wonder – I don’t doubt what you say for a moment, but I wonder why I’ve never experienced such a thing? I’m 61 years old and I’d say that I’ve had what is probably my fair share of bereavements, painful and otherwise, but I don’t ever remember once dreaming of the dead. To try to put this into some context, I spent 10 years living close to Stonehenge, so I was eligible for a local’s pass to the monument. As such, I visited the ruins roughly 3 times a week, often with my two young children, then I continued to study and write about the place for another ten years after that. It dawned on me quite early on, at the start of the latest ten year period, that I’d never actually dreamed about the place once, nor did I ever do so, despite my constant familiarity with the site. This lack of dreaming defies all my expectations, but then again, I’ve been regularly visited by myriad other dreams and nightmares of most kinds ever since I was a child, back in the 1960s. Thank you, therefore, for your intriguing post, with best wishes as always from Dennis
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Thank you so much Dennis! I have no idea why some people have these experiences and others not. Part of the beautiful mystery. I hope to one day visit Stonehenge, you were blessed to live so close!
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I had a very intense series of dreams of my beloved dead—my Great Aunts Emma and Florence, my Gram and Aunt Judy, over three nights. The colors red and black were prominent in all three dreams. Then the fourth night I head a bout of sleep paralysis and had a vision of a shadow person holding a square wrapped in red and black Buffalo plaid flannel. And then the next day, I rescued a cardinal that flew into my window. And the day after that I found a pile of cardinal feathers in my garden. Red and black over and over…..
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Very interesting Barbara! Did you feel compelled to paint in those colours? Would be interesting to see what came out. Thank you so much for sharing this with me. 🙂
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