What are basement dreams about?
Basements are, by definition, located underground. Basements are usually a part of houses. We put forgotten things into basements, things we're not ready to give up, but things we do not want in our daily environments. This symbol is identified by words like basement and cellar.
Basements in dreams is a relatively uncommon dream symbol, occuring in about 1.4% of dreams. That's about 1 out of every 70 dreams.
What are the major highlights of basement dreams?
Basements is a normal dream symbol. Having basements in a dream changes the dream in the same way as most other dream symbols.
Dreams of basements are aggressive
Basement dreams have more aggressive interactions than a lot of other dream symbols. This doesn't mean that all basements have aggressive interactions or only aggressive interactions. It simply means that having basements in a dream increases the probability this dream contains aggression. Other symbols that are like this include bears, vampires, relief, creatures, hairdressers, antelopes, dead bodies, mafia, revenge, and mosquitoes.
Dreams with basements might be a nightmare
Dreams of basements are frequently associated with nightmares. Of course dreams that contain basements might not be a nightmare. Plenty of dreams with basements are not nightmares. But, dreams of basements are more related to nightmares than 80% of all other dream symbols. Other symbols that are like this include decapitation, locks, other fantastic beings, waking, abandoned places, shaking, windows, darkness, beginnings, and other verbs.
What symbols more present in dreams of basements?
Basement dreams are notable because they have substantially more verbs, harpoons, locks, underground, descending, laundry rooms, abscesses, stairs and ladders, tornados, dungeons, living rooms, elevators, attics, movement, grey eyes, janitors, dolls, trapping, jackals, parts of buildings, pressing buttons, devouring, entrances, kitchens, prisoners, general movement, Saudi Arabia, hallways, hunger, toys, weasels, candles, doors, childhood homes, creeping and crawling, hurricanes, houses, abandoned places, couches, cages, soil, talismans, Cambodia, acid, going, torturing, televisions, altars, Greece, walls, back doors, noises, ovens, kidnapping, floors, Iceland, objects in space, cannibals, horrors, and closets than 95% of other dream symbols.
What symbols less present in dreams of basements?
Basement dreams are notable because they have substantially less famousness, lucid dreams, crushes, lodging, places, giving birth, pregnancy, infidelity, sadness, jungles, epidemics, former partners, calendars, precognitive dreams, paramedic, menstruation, seeing a dead pet, donkeys, love, genitals, penises, seeing a dead mother, train stations, relationship events, subconscious, sexuals acts, boyfriends, afterlife, coworkers, kissing, thanking, arrows, acne, deserts, mirror, the morning, United Kingdom, teacher, actors, teeth falling out, adoptions, bodies of water, girlfriends, real locations, and France than 95% of other dream symbols.
How does the dream symbol of basements affect the different aspects of a dream?
Explore different elements related to dreams of basements
Who is in basements dreams?
Overall, dreams with basements are aren't really related to characters in dreams. Specifically, dreams of basements are more related to animals, more related to insects, and more related to fantastic beings than dreams in general. They are less related to different roles.
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What are the emotions in basements dreams?
Overall, dreams with basements are aren't really related to emotions in dreams. Specifically, dreams of basements are more related to fear than dreams in general. They are less related to happiness, less related to sadness, and less related to embarrassment.
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Who is in basements dreams?
Overall, dreams with basements are much more related to places in dreams. Specifically, dreams of basements are much more related to home and more related to magical places than dreams in general. They are less related to transportation.
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What happens in basements dreams?
Overall, dreams with basements are more related to events in dreams. Specifically, dreams of basements are more related to aggressive interactions and more related to disasters than dreams in general.
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How do basements in dreams related to other dream phenomenon?
Overall, dreams with basements are more related to dream events in dreams. Specifically, dreams of basements are much more related to nightmares, more related to recurring dreams, and more related to recurring nightmares than dreams in general. They are less related to lucid dreams.
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How can you make sense of basements in dreams?
Basement dreams are relatively uncommon. Among other things basement dreams are normally interconnect, aggressive, and nightmare.
Do you think this is true for your dream of basements? How might your dream of basements be different?
All dreams have meaning
You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.
Look for the differences
The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience basements in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.
Return to the feelings
Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about basements in dreams. See how you feel about basements now, in your waking life.
What are possible meanings for dreams of basements?
A basement in a dream can symbolize your emotions or instincts, which are felt primarily in the gut area of the body. Buildings in dreams, especially houses, tend to symbolize your body or psyche, so think of a basement in general terms of “below” or “beneath.” See: Below
It can mean that something is below the threshold of your awareness—subconscious. The subconscious is where information is just outside your awareness. The unconscious is a deeper layer, the root programming level of the mind—the sub-basement. Sometimes it is full of things you don’t want to know about yourself, don’t want to remember, or don’t want to acknowledge. You’d rather let them stay stored away in the dark, out of sight. They’re usually the most difficult things you face about yourself and your life. See: Unconscious minds
The symbolism of a basement can connect with the root word “base.” It’s used in the sense of “base instinct” and “home base.” Living in a basement can mean you’re following instincts or acting from them, or acting from base impulses. See: Reptile
It can symbolize the foundation or base that you build your life on, or around which you construct your psyche. It’s the support for the ground beneath your feet. See: Feet
The symbolism of beneath and above potentially come into play, such as when something is “beneath you,” or “above the fray.” See: Above
A flooded basement can symbolize emotions that need to be cleaned up, especially negatively perceived emotions like anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, and fear.
Something hidden in your basement can symbolize emotions hidden from you, or instincts that aren’t conscious.
Something lurking in your basement can symbolize emotions or feelings you need to deal with, or something you don’t know about yourself that needs to be conscious and dealt with before it starts causing major disruptions in your life.
Because a basement can be used for storage, it can symbolize something you don’t know what to do with or how to handle. It can be something you have pushed out of your mind or ignored. See: Barns
Exploring a basement can symbolize investigating your roots. It can relate to hereditary traits, or the psychological foundation of who you are. This symbolism applies especially in dreams about finding and exploring a sub-basement.
In a dream about visiting his childhood home, the guy finds a sub-basement where his old neighbors live, including the son and daughter who used to bully him. It’s a way of saying that feelings from that experience continue to live deep down inside him.
In another dream about visiting his childhood, a different guy goes to the basement because a tornado is coming. His sister is already there, and she screams, “I should have seen it coming!” It symbolizes the divorce of their parents, which happened long ago and caught the siblings by surprise. Years later, feelings related to the experience are coming up from deep within the dreamer—his inner basement. The tornado symbolizes the turbulent feelings he repressed. He knows they’re still inside him.
A woman dreams that down in her basement is a homicidal young girl holding a knife, which sums up in one image the state of her relationship with her childhood. She had an unhappy childhood, and she’d rather forget it, as symbolized by the basement setting. But the longer she ignores it, the more hostile this part of her becomes. She’s angry and sad and unable to address the source of it.
See also: Below, Caves, Childhood homes, Constructing, Emotions, Emptiness, Falling, Feet, Floors, Home, Rectangles, Squares, Unconscious minds
This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.
Examples of dreams of basements
Read some real dream reports of basement dreams.. These real life dream reports come from the moderated dream sharing communities of Reddit including r/Dreams, r/Nightmares, r/DreamInterpretation, or r/thisdreamihad. Please note that some of these may contain graphic, sexual, or violent images and text. Use the source link for each dream to view and join the discussion of each one.
Strange semi-recurring dream
31M, INFJ, heterosexual.
I have had this dream several times over the course of my life. It has been a different setting with different people each time, yet, I know it's the same dream.
It always starts with me being outside with someone who I don't recognize. It starts out with good weather, lots of yellows and greens, natural tones. The weather turns bad and it begins to storm heavily, shifting into greys and blues.
We somehow wind up inside a building with many other people. The first time I remember having this dream, we wound up in the church I was raised in with members of the congregation in there as well. One of them, familiar to me, was wearing the Santa suit he always wore for Christmas, but it wasn't Christmas.
Anyway, It always winds up that I see a tornado through a window. When I see this, nobody seems to know what to do, so I always wind up taking charge and directing people's actions. The most recent occurrence was last night. We were in the basement of a house that I didn't recognize. Nobody was taking action after I saw the tornado, so I started telling them to board up the windows and barricade the exterior basement door. I have no idea where the boards came from, they weren't down there to begin with, they just appeared and they were already the perfect size for the windows.
Everything, including the people in the room with me were in grey and blue tones. I'm not really sure what happened/happens after that, I usually wake up at this point.
If anyone has any ideas about what this could mean, I would love to hear it.
31M, INFJ, heterosexual.
I have had this dream several times over the course of my life. It has been a different setting with different people each time, yet,...
Source | Show dream
I “woke up” 3 times before I was awake
I don’t know exactly how to categorize this whether it is something related to sleep paralysis or something paranormal. All I know is it freaked me out to my core.
A few months back I was staying with my sister’s family after a breakup and I had a terrifying experience in the middle of the night.
I had gone to sleep in the guest bedroom in the basement they made up for me and I was awoken in complete darkness to the feeling of large hands holding my arms down and someone crawling on top of me. I started thrashing around and screaming only to “wake up” out of the nightmare.
I reached down and felt my sisters sweet lab mix curled up next to me and felt relief that she was near me and it was all a dream.
Then, out of nowhere she started getting all wiggly and hyper and crawled up toward my face and started licking me. The licking turned into aggressive scratching and she started to bite me. I went to push her off of me and then I woke up...again.
This time, my head was spinning because I already thought I was awake twice so I was questioning if I was really awake or if I was in sort of loop that I couldn’t get out of.
I was terrified to move or to turn on a light because I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
I laid there still for another hour until the sun started to rise and to this day I’m still afraid to sleep in that basement alone.
I don’t know exactly how to categorize this whether it is something related to sleep paralysis or something paranormal. All I know is it freaked me out to my...
Source | Show dream
i had a weird dream and need help interpreting it please
During this dream it was jumping around alot and it was about me being blind but i could see but i thought i was blind cause everyone else told me i was and for some reason i started to believe it, but i could actually see so one night im in my basement and i realize i can see and the random person i dont remeber and i saw a bottle of apple juice i explained to this person that i could see and he just walked away and said something i dont remember and then i was in my yard in the daytime and crying cause i was blind and searching online if blind was reverseable(yea i know weird) and then i woke up
and i cannot find anything online about a dream of being brainwashed so much that you think your blind even when you can see so what does this mean?
During this dream it was jumping around alot and it was about me being blind but i could see but i thought i was blind cause everyone else told me i was and for...
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Strange nightmare with a bendy iPhone
This is an odd one because it’s literally like a story but basically it started with like an older setting and a girl who’s father works for this publishing place she’s never allowed inside and there are a lot of European women working in there as like maids. Then she’s older and she has her own journalist type expose published and her father’s friend is sort of creepy congratulating her, but says to another friend later that the book is bad.
She asks why she can’t work at the company and one of the ladies starts talking in tongue then they leave planning a takeover. Then I think that part ended and it was my family staying at the place because it was a hotel now that was split into two with a chain fence down the front parking lot. I can’t remember a lot but I remember going into the basement and it was all creepy with like faces popping out and a feeling of supernatural danger and I was terrified, but I got into trouble because someone broke into our house at home and it was nighttime so I was sleeping outside in a bed underneath the balcony of our room. I was really paranoid thinking something would get me.
My phone started bending like it just twisted and cracking and I’m freaking out, then it just shatters in my hand and the pain is awful. The noise I kept making was like a pig squeaking and my mothers partner eventually came down but the phone was fine and even though I’m bawling and had cuts in my hand he just goes back upstairs.
Then there was some issue with the fence and a kid fell over it and it was a desperate thing to get him back over even the other side which is the bad side was helping. But then somehow the bad side got over and they had this guy and strung him up with a tv hurt noose thing and we’re all trying to untie him but we can’t and then I the that’s when I woke up freaking.
I feel like the phone bit has happened multiple times. Sorry for long text I don’t think anyone will read this train wreck
This is an odd one because it’s literally like a story but basically it started with like an older setting and a girl who’s father works for this publishing...
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"The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible"
I was on a bus with my friend and some younger kids from my old boy scout troop. I turned to one of the young ones and asked him if he knew Rembrandt because his face was covered in a birthmark that looked just like Rembrandt's last painting. I described the painting to him saying it was really sparse and empty and contained a self portrait of Rembrandt looking over his shoulder with a really haunted look on his face.
Then, I looked out the bus window and saw that we were parked outside this playground, I wanted to go out and hang from the monkey bars. I decided to go out and my friend hesitantly followed me. Once we were outside, the playground was like this exotic marketplace, with other cultures and aliens. My friend and I ate these balls that made our skin turn blue, green, and pink which we both found funny.
We walked through the market and this guy suddenly was taking us on a tour. He was showing us stuff his company made, I don't remember much but at some point we descended down into the cellar which was full of Arizona tea products. All these different flavors of tea and juice, in a maze of glass walls. We wandered through and eventually all sat down.
At this point, there was a short pause and then people started talking about human potential and how often we limit our experience of the world. They talked about how rich and full life can be and how deeply we can feel the world around us. I remember them specifically saying "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible". As they talked, I was watching these bottles of water, inside the water, these shimmering portals were opening up, inside was the most vibrant blue sky I've ever seen. It felt like life was opening up fully.
Then, we walked back up to the surface and as we went, the tour guide (who was now Danny devito for some reason) was saying to watch for signs of life's flourishing. Each hall we passed was a different biome, like the first was an evergreen forest and the guide said that if we listened closely, we'd hear the signs of life. I listened and heard these nuts on the ground making a chattering sound. We passed some other halls with new environments, all with new sounds of life. Eventually we got to the surface and I woke up.
Additional info: The kid with the Rembrandt birthmark was always shy and awkward. I kind of feel some of that in myself too and can resonate with how isolating it is.
The friend in the dream is super into nature and plant life.
I bought a bus with another friend and we're hoping to travel around the country in it next year.
Overall, I feel like the last few years of my life have been kind of introspective, like a cocoon period and I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to open up and enjoy my life more freely.
I was on a bus with my friend and some younger kids from my old boy scout troop. I turned to one of the young ones and asked him if he knew Rembrandt because...
Source | Show dream
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