A typical dream symbol for the structure of the psyche is a house (or similar living space). Discovering a new room may indicate new psychic territory. Descending to the basement or lower levels implies movement into deeper unconscious layers. Cooking in the kitchen carries themes of alchemical transformation brewing within. Bathrooms to the urge to expel and release shadow material.
Share your house dreams in the comments below. I’ll be offering some reflections (utilizing an archetypal and symbolic perspective). Feel free to comment on other dreams if you’re inspired or have an insight to share.
In film school I remember discussing this. Sometimes you can watch a film, understanding that a house represents the psyche. Hitchcock’s film “Rebecca” is one such case. This would apply to books as well. These creative works are often inspired by dreams, or at least connect to our subconscious.
I saw this at the perfect time bc I have a reoccurring dream (nightmare) and I just had it again two nights ago. The dream is I’m trying to rent an apartment and I’m always back at this same building that has a haunted floor/unit. It’s the only room on that level, number 5. It’s run down and there’s a spirit in there that I can’t see but it tortures you - I try to escape using an elevator but no matter what floor you go to, it always takes you back to number 5. In the dream when I revisit, I know to stay away from this room and somehow I always end up back there and if I don’t run out fast enough I know I’ll get stuck there forever. I have never told anyone this and was gonna reach out to Demi about it but I guess I’m typing it here. Thx for this.
I am constantly dreaming of packing up and moving. It has been a motif for years, one that I have never really been able to unpack the root of or understand much at all. It's never the same house. Some are places I recognize. Some are in locations I recognize or have lived, but one thing is consistent, I am always leaving and the packing isn't going well. I think I am just about done and then I open another drawer or closet and there is a bunch of crap that isn't even mine or there is something to repair that has been left unattended to the whole time we lived in the house. I am also always moving my family with me, and no one is helping me pack and get us ready to go. Some houses are also really disturbing, run down, terrifying shacks; most though are just random houses that it's time to leave.
This is timely, as I had a house dream just last night…. In the dream I was living in the countryside in a modest house. My husband commissioned an architect to help reconstruct it to better meet our needs. I felt intimidated by the architect initially because I worried I wouldn’t have any insight to contribute. However I also felt strongly that the house needed more windows in the front and an expansive front porch. (In waking life I have always been taken by front porches, especially in southern homes). The architect suggested the same, and I was heartened that we shared the same idea.
I rarely remember my dreams but when I do I have two recurring locations and one of those is a building with lots rooms. Sometimes it's been a house with twisty halls and many, many rooms. It can also take the form of a hotel or hospital. Buildings with lots of rooms and halls and doors. Usually these dreams are dark and shadowy.
In my house dreams, I always find evidence that someone has broke in through a window or door and I can’t seem to make them lock or shut properly. Sometimes I see the shadow of the person lurking outside at night. I struggle with boundaries a lot I guess.
I find interesting that even though we moved out of my dad’s house like 7 years ago and we never visit, I still dream like I live in it and the house we’ve been living now has only appeared a couple of times in my dreams.
It’s like my unconscious didn’t fully move out. And one recurrent theme is that I’m there looking through old stuff, things I didn’t took to the new place and constantly searching for ‘something’ that will resolve a situation of my present. Unresolved issues with my dad and that part of my life that I’m still trying to make sense of!
Recently I had two dreams, in the same night, where I was living in two different houses (not my dad’s neither the one I currently live in), one was really spacious and clean and it felt like I’ve been living there for a while and I was comfortable, the other one was old and far from the city and I was worried I wasn’t going to feel right there but I started to notice little details that filled me with hope: flowers in full bloom in the front yard, a big, tall table for my sewing projects, etc.
It was very significant as I feel like I’m entering a new stage in my life with my Saturn’s return.
I had a house dream a few weeks ago. I was in a house I used to live in, and had snuck in because I forgot something (even though new people now lived there). They were shocked I was in their house and started yelling. I was trying to calm them down and get into my old room but they wouldn't let me. I turned and left and down the hall saw a whole huge part of the house they had added, a new living room and stairs that I wanted to climb but didn't. It was all wood and hadn't been decorated yet. I took it as a sign to stop going back to past situations and realize the growth I've made since then.
I dream a lot of houses and places generally. One common thing is that the places I dream of are often places I’ve been in real life - I know specifically in the dream that this is my house, or this is a base I was at, etc - but the places as dreamt of bear no actual resemblance to the places they are supposed to correspond to. They are usually much larger and grander, even fantastic. For example, the military college I went to crops up in dreams a lot, but the dream version of it has been a gigantic gothic style complex carved into a mountain, sort of like the city in the Lord of the Rings movies.
Wow I actually don’t even know where to begin with this. I have sooooooo many dreams in houses and a lot of them are re-occurring houses or different houses but a re-occurring dream. I guess the most common one lately is the house (it can be a different house depending on the dream) is full of rooms and I’m going through each one. Again depending on the dream some are scary, some are very mysterious, some have sad memories, and some rooms I never want to leave. The most common theme is I’m typically moving up towards the attic.
I was looking at the house which looked as if it had no walls on the outside, see though, no windows or doors.. but the curtains were there ? The frame was there, a box ?
I once had a dream after mum passed..a table in a room with an empty black purse open. Classic bereavement dream apparently ! I was agasp when I read that.
I have recurring dreams of moving out of houses without enough time to finish. It is generally an Airbnb type situation and there is way too much stuff for me to even pack into a vehicle to go anywhere.
I used to have this dream where I started in the basement of a house. The environment is dark and shaded - haunted house-esque. I’m surrounded by family members (I don’t recognize these faces in reality). With my family, I progress through the multiple floors (levels) of the house. There are 2 stages I recall. Each floor has a challenge. One of the first floors was full of large spiders (I’m terrified of spiders), the next full of giants. At each stage, my family members sacrifice themselves for me. I feel extreme remorse for this but continue to press forward. I’m confused why I’m being sacrificed for. When I get to the attic, it’s dark, bare. There’s a barred window I move toward it to peer out. It’s dark and stormy outside but I come to the realization I’m stranded on an island. I feel isolated, alone, and afraid. I lay down on the ground in the attic feeling helpless and grieving. In the dream, I awake, almost as if I just got out of a haze, in the same attic but it’s lined with red silk. My dream family is surrounding me, checking in on me, asking if I’m okay. I awake from the dream.
A reoccurring house-adjacent dream I've been having lately is one where I'm back in college. We're all returning to campus after summer break and it's a few days before we all settle into classes. Throughout the dream, I'm with my college friends and towards the end, I realize that I don't have a roommate for the dorm I've committed to while everyone else has figured out who they're living with
In some initial research, the reflections that resonated were that I'm feeling a sense of uncertainty about aspects of my life and that I'm at the cusp of significant change that's unfolding. The sentiment of feeling excluding in my waking life resonates a bit less
These comments are so interesting. This certainly fits with my experience of dreams that take place in houses. One big theme of my dreams growing up, and even into my 20s, was trying to tell everyone in my childhood apartment to leave the building because something bad was going to happen, and no one would listen, so I would try to get out on my own. I usually either had trouble finding my way out or something in the lobby of the building would distract me, and I would have to go back upstairs. Sometimes I realized the threat was not outside when I got downstairs, and I felt silly. trying to leave But when I went back upstairs, I felt it again, so the process would start over. Regardless of the order of operations, I rarely made it off the block. And when I did, I was like "What's it all for?" I had these dreams for many years, until I managed to shift my mind from saving my family to making a life for myself. So, I guess that was my psyche, entangled in a fearscape. Dreams that have taken place in my current home have been about renovating or telling people I don't want around to leave, which is much more empowering than the old themes.
This week's dream: I am checking meters in the house and realise that there is a white door with a metal handle on it behind the meters. I open the door to find that there is a basement level to the house that contains all the things that make it function: boiler, pipes, other meters, sort of the mechanics of the house. I think that this is meant to be a safe room against intruders but I also think that it would be an un-safe room because there would be no way out of it if trapped.
I had a dream recently that my dad found some sort of device that was activated and a missile from Russia was fired, destroying our family house.
I walked around aimlessly feeling sorry for myself telling people that my house was destroyed. I heard there was a place where it still existed so I cycled to it. It was through a muddy field and there was a girl nearby to where the 'house' was on the map. I saved her from a magician type man by getting him to disappear. Weirdly, I was talking to my therapist about the dream and she told me about Jung's illustration of the shadow in the red book that looked identical to the magician in my dream!
Before bed, I saw this old Victorian-looking house for sale pop up on my Facebook timeline and the dream house was a mix of that house and my childhood house. The layout was a mix between the two and the house sat in a cul-de-sac and had a shed and everything.
When I first get to the house, I walk in and it looks like the pictures from the posting but there’s vines sweeping overhead and spread across the ceiling like a jungle. It's not a natural MESSY jungle, but a planned out one, like someone decorated it in rows of vines. Everything had it’s place. There’s fake colorful birds hiding and resting on the vines above me, a puffy yellow bird, and throughout the house are hidden speakers that play bird sounds. It was completely fabricated. I look up and above me is a victorian bird cage. I don’t see anything in it.
I go upstairs and there’s a bedroom with a low hanging ceiling. Next to it is another bedroom. And another bedroom. Each one has a different low ceiling and they don’t impress me like the jungle entry did. The last bedroom has a washing machine and sink/counter combo though and that was cool but nothing stood out so I go upstairs again and the sunny vine energy is completely gone. This staircase is more narrow and everything is antique. Dark colors, deeper browns. Mahogany and dust. Nobody had been there in a long time. There’s a box on the stair landing that opens into a zodiac music box. All the pieces are made of tin and are broken and laying inside of it but I don’t know what means what.
I keep going upstairs and its more narrow and dark. My deceased aunt and her grieving husband are there and its their house (or tour guides). They show me more antique things but I don’t remember what, maybe pictures. We go to this hallway, and there is a set of French glass doors that are curved at the top much like the bird cage from the first floor.
I look through the door and there are two lumps sitting, covered by a dingy, washed out quilt. One of the lumps has a foot sticking out. There’s a mass of flies covering them except for the foot. Somehow the door is open a little or opens and a sick, sweet smell comes out for just a second and I know what it is. I think my aunt shuts the door and looks at me, scowling through her eyebrows. Somehow I know the body is of Cecilia (no idea who that is). I tried talking to someone about the body but they didn’t think it was a threat. They told me that there was a reason and that it belonged there and shouldn't be moved.
Vague memories of spilling something and the house absorbing it through the corner of the table but there being no crack.
Horror films made them something else, in terms of archetypical inversion. Hollywood is a haven for occult rituals. Films are deeply invasive, ingraining unhealthy patterns of mind, as apposed to the Right Mind of The Eightfold Path.
In a series of dreams recently, in the first one, I am following my mum. We are in a new house I bought, and because some of my family and my husband's family were visiting, I was trying to manage and ensure everyone had beds to sleep in. So we go to what seems like a hidden, undiscovered lower part of the house, and we discover 5 new bedrooms with beds and everything. Initially, I am happy because now everyone will fit, but as we go around checking the bedrooms, we find one with a little dressing table and a big bed in the middle of the room. A bell and some strings hang from the ceiling in the middle of the bed, and my mum says, "Do you realize what this means? This means the family that you bought your house from has someone kidnapped here." In that moment, I am looking at the garden, a big one that we were planning to redo, and I have the thought that the family (a couple with 5 young children, all with different disabilities) had killed a young woman (maybe their oldest daughter) and had buried her in the garden. I think that is the reason why they sold the house so quickly and cheaply, and I think that if we start doing the work we wanted in the garden and dig it, people will find the body, and they will accuse us of killing her.
In film school I remember discussing this. Sometimes you can watch a film, understanding that a house represents the psyche. Hitchcock’s film “Rebecca” is one such case. This would apply to books as well. These creative works are often inspired by dreams, or at least connect to our subconscious.
I saw this at the perfect time bc I have a reoccurring dream (nightmare) and I just had it again two nights ago. The dream is I’m trying to rent an apartment and I’m always back at this same building that has a haunted floor/unit. It’s the only room on that level, number 5. It’s run down and there’s a spirit in there that I can’t see but it tortures you - I try to escape using an elevator but no matter what floor you go to, it always takes you back to number 5. In the dream when I revisit, I know to stay away from this room and somehow I always end up back there and if I don’t run out fast enough I know I’ll get stuck there forever. I have never told anyone this and was gonna reach out to Demi about it but I guess I’m typing it here. Thx for this.
I am constantly dreaming of packing up and moving. It has been a motif for years, one that I have never really been able to unpack the root of or understand much at all. It's never the same house. Some are places I recognize. Some are in locations I recognize or have lived, but one thing is consistent, I am always leaving and the packing isn't going well. I think I am just about done and then I open another drawer or closet and there is a bunch of crap that isn't even mine or there is something to repair that has been left unattended to the whole time we lived in the house. I am also always moving my family with me, and no one is helping me pack and get us ready to go. Some houses are also really disturbing, run down, terrifying shacks; most though are just random houses that it's time to leave.
This is timely, as I had a house dream just last night…. In the dream I was living in the countryside in a modest house. My husband commissioned an architect to help reconstruct it to better meet our needs. I felt intimidated by the architect initially because I worried I wouldn’t have any insight to contribute. However I also felt strongly that the house needed more windows in the front and an expansive front porch. (In waking life I have always been taken by front porches, especially in southern homes). The architect suggested the same, and I was heartened that we shared the same idea.
I rarely remember my dreams but when I do I have two recurring locations and one of those is a building with lots rooms. Sometimes it's been a house with twisty halls and many, many rooms. It can also take the form of a hotel or hospital. Buildings with lots of rooms and halls and doors. Usually these dreams are dark and shadowy.
In my house dreams, I always find evidence that someone has broke in through a window or door and I can’t seem to make them lock or shut properly. Sometimes I see the shadow of the person lurking outside at night. I struggle with boundaries a lot I guess.
I find interesting that even though we moved out of my dad’s house like 7 years ago and we never visit, I still dream like I live in it and the house we’ve been living now has only appeared a couple of times in my dreams.
It’s like my unconscious didn’t fully move out. And one recurrent theme is that I’m there looking through old stuff, things I didn’t took to the new place and constantly searching for ‘something’ that will resolve a situation of my present. Unresolved issues with my dad and that part of my life that I’m still trying to make sense of!
Recently I had two dreams, in the same night, where I was living in two different houses (not my dad’s neither the one I currently live in), one was really spacious and clean and it felt like I’ve been living there for a while and I was comfortable, the other one was old and far from the city and I was worried I wasn’t going to feel right there but I started to notice little details that filled me with hope: flowers in full bloom in the front yard, a big, tall table for my sewing projects, etc.
It was very significant as I feel like I’m entering a new stage in my life with my Saturn’s return.
Love how simply you put all of this, so good!!
I had a house dream a few weeks ago. I was in a house I used to live in, and had snuck in because I forgot something (even though new people now lived there). They were shocked I was in their house and started yelling. I was trying to calm them down and get into my old room but they wouldn't let me. I turned and left and down the hall saw a whole huge part of the house they had added, a new living room and stairs that I wanted to climb but didn't. It was all wood and hadn't been decorated yet. I took it as a sign to stop going back to past situations and realize the growth I've made since then.
I dream a lot of houses and places generally. One common thing is that the places I dream of are often places I’ve been in real life - I know specifically in the dream that this is my house, or this is a base I was at, etc - but the places as dreamt of bear no actual resemblance to the places they are supposed to correspond to. They are usually much larger and grander, even fantastic. For example, the military college I went to crops up in dreams a lot, but the dream version of it has been a gigantic gothic style complex carved into a mountain, sort of like the city in the Lord of the Rings movies.
Wow I actually don’t even know where to begin with this. I have sooooooo many dreams in houses and a lot of them are re-occurring houses or different houses but a re-occurring dream. I guess the most common one lately is the house (it can be a different house depending on the dream) is full of rooms and I’m going through each one. Again depending on the dream some are scary, some are very mysterious, some have sad memories, and some rooms I never want to leave. The most common theme is I’m typically moving up towards the attic.
I had a re occuring dream of my last home.
I was looking at the house which looked as if it had no walls on the outside, see though, no windows or doors.. but the curtains were there ? The frame was there, a box ?
I once had a dream after mum passed..a table in a room with an empty black purse open. Classic bereavement dream apparently ! I was agasp when I read that.
One dream seeing several floor plans of a room with just dining table. Rest of the room vague.
Next dream floor plan with two sofas placed at an angle.
I have recurring dreams of moving out of houses without enough time to finish. It is generally an Airbnb type situation and there is way too much stuff for me to even pack into a vehicle to go anywhere.
I used to have this dream where I started in the basement of a house. The environment is dark and shaded - haunted house-esque. I’m surrounded by family members (I don’t recognize these faces in reality). With my family, I progress through the multiple floors (levels) of the house. There are 2 stages I recall. Each floor has a challenge. One of the first floors was full of large spiders (I’m terrified of spiders), the next full of giants. At each stage, my family members sacrifice themselves for me. I feel extreme remorse for this but continue to press forward. I’m confused why I’m being sacrificed for. When I get to the attic, it’s dark, bare. There’s a barred window I move toward it to peer out. It’s dark and stormy outside but I come to the realization I’m stranded on an island. I feel isolated, alone, and afraid. I lay down on the ground in the attic feeling helpless and grieving. In the dream, I awake, almost as if I just got out of a haze, in the same attic but it’s lined with red silk. My dream family is surrounding me, checking in on me, asking if I’m okay. I awake from the dream.
A reoccurring house-adjacent dream I've been having lately is one where I'm back in college. We're all returning to campus after summer break and it's a few days before we all settle into classes. Throughout the dream, I'm with my college friends and towards the end, I realize that I don't have a roommate for the dorm I've committed to while everyone else has figured out who they're living with
In some initial research, the reflections that resonated were that I'm feeling a sense of uncertainty about aspects of my life and that I'm at the cusp of significant change that's unfolding. The sentiment of feeling excluding in my waking life resonates a bit less
Curious if you have any thoughts on this dream!
These comments are so interesting. This certainly fits with my experience of dreams that take place in houses. One big theme of my dreams growing up, and even into my 20s, was trying to tell everyone in my childhood apartment to leave the building because something bad was going to happen, and no one would listen, so I would try to get out on my own. I usually either had trouble finding my way out or something in the lobby of the building would distract me, and I would have to go back upstairs. Sometimes I realized the threat was not outside when I got downstairs, and I felt silly. trying to leave But when I went back upstairs, I felt it again, so the process would start over. Regardless of the order of operations, I rarely made it off the block. And when I did, I was like "What's it all for?" I had these dreams for many years, until I managed to shift my mind from saving my family to making a life for myself. So, I guess that was my psyche, entangled in a fearscape. Dreams that have taken place in my current home have been about renovating or telling people I don't want around to leave, which is much more empowering than the old themes.
I wrote about this dream I had after a hypnosis session. The dream itself is the last few paragraphs in the post.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ericaphillips/p/adventures-in-hypnosis?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This week's dream: I am checking meters in the house and realise that there is a white door with a metal handle on it behind the meters. I open the door to find that there is a basement level to the house that contains all the things that make it function: boiler, pipes, other meters, sort of the mechanics of the house. I think that this is meant to be a safe room against intruders but I also think that it would be an un-safe room because there would be no way out of it if trapped.
I had a dream recently that my dad found some sort of device that was activated and a missile from Russia was fired, destroying our family house.
I walked around aimlessly feeling sorry for myself telling people that my house was destroyed. I heard there was a place where it still existed so I cycled to it. It was through a muddy field and there was a girl nearby to where the 'house' was on the map. I saved her from a magician type man by getting him to disappear. Weirdly, I was talking to my therapist about the dream and she told me about Jung's illustration of the shadow in the red book that looked identical to the magician in my dream!
Before bed, I saw this old Victorian-looking house for sale pop up on my Facebook timeline and the dream house was a mix of that house and my childhood house. The layout was a mix between the two and the house sat in a cul-de-sac and had a shed and everything.
When I first get to the house, I walk in and it looks like the pictures from the posting but there’s vines sweeping overhead and spread across the ceiling like a jungle. It's not a natural MESSY jungle, but a planned out one, like someone decorated it in rows of vines. Everything had it’s place. There’s fake colorful birds hiding and resting on the vines above me, a puffy yellow bird, and throughout the house are hidden speakers that play bird sounds. It was completely fabricated. I look up and above me is a victorian bird cage. I don’t see anything in it.
I go upstairs and there’s a bedroom with a low hanging ceiling. Next to it is another bedroom. And another bedroom. Each one has a different low ceiling and they don’t impress me like the jungle entry did. The last bedroom has a washing machine and sink/counter combo though and that was cool but nothing stood out so I go upstairs again and the sunny vine energy is completely gone. This staircase is more narrow and everything is antique. Dark colors, deeper browns. Mahogany and dust. Nobody had been there in a long time. There’s a box on the stair landing that opens into a zodiac music box. All the pieces are made of tin and are broken and laying inside of it but I don’t know what means what.
I keep going upstairs and its more narrow and dark. My deceased aunt and her grieving husband are there and its their house (or tour guides). They show me more antique things but I don’t remember what, maybe pictures. We go to this hallway, and there is a set of French glass doors that are curved at the top much like the bird cage from the first floor.
I look through the door and there are two lumps sitting, covered by a dingy, washed out quilt. One of the lumps has a foot sticking out. There’s a mass of flies covering them except for the foot. Somehow the door is open a little or opens and a sick, sweet smell comes out for just a second and I know what it is. I think my aunt shuts the door and looks at me, scowling through her eyebrows. Somehow I know the body is of Cecilia (no idea who that is). I tried talking to someone about the body but they didn’t think it was a threat. They told me that there was a reason and that it belonged there and shouldn't be moved.
Vague memories of spilling something and the house absorbing it through the corner of the table but there being no crack.
Horror films made them something else, in terms of archetypical inversion. Hollywood is a haven for occult rituals. Films are deeply invasive, ingraining unhealthy patterns of mind, as apposed to the Right Mind of The Eightfold Path.
In a series of dreams recently, in the first one, I am following my mum. We are in a new house I bought, and because some of my family and my husband's family were visiting, I was trying to manage and ensure everyone had beds to sleep in. So we go to what seems like a hidden, undiscovered lower part of the house, and we discover 5 new bedrooms with beds and everything. Initially, I am happy because now everyone will fit, but as we go around checking the bedrooms, we find one with a little dressing table and a big bed in the middle of the room. A bell and some strings hang from the ceiling in the middle of the bed, and my mum says, "Do you realize what this means? This means the family that you bought your house from has someone kidnapped here." In that moment, I am looking at the garden, a big one that we were planning to redo, and I have the thought that the family (a couple with 5 young children, all with different disabilities) had killed a young woman (maybe their oldest daughter) and had buried her in the garden. I think that is the reason why they sold the house so quickly and cheaply, and I think that if we start doing the work we wanted in the garden and dig it, people will find the body, and they will accuse us of killing her.