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What are hell dreams about?

This symbol is identified by words like hell, netherworld, underworld, etc.

Hell in dreams is a relatively common dream symbol, occuring in about 3.1% of dreams. That's about 1 out of every 35 dreams.

What are the major highlights of hell dreams?

Hell is a normal dream symbol. Having hell in a dream changes the dream in the same way as most other dream symbols.

Dreams with hell might be a nightmare

Dreams of hell are frequently associated with nightmares. Of course dreams that contain hell might not be a nightmare. Plenty of dreams with hell are not nightmares. But, dreams of hell are more related to nightmares than 80% of all other dream symbols. Other symbols that are like this include Jamaica, torturing, unconscious minds, fantastic beings, ears, backs, windows, shaking, gas, and tackling.

What are the symbols that help define hell?

The symbol of hell in dreams is highly related to magical_places.

How does the dream symbol of hell affect the different aspects of a dream?

Explore different elements related to dreams of hell

Who is in hell dreams?

Overall, dreams with hell are less related to characters in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hell are more related to fantastic beings than dreams in general.

Animals

the same as usual

Insects

the same as usual

Different roles

the same as usual

Fantastic beings

more than usual

Distant people

the same as usual

Close people

the same as usual

Family

the same as usual

Romantic partners

the same as usual
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What are the emotions in hell dreams?

Overall, dreams with hell are more related to emotions in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hell are much more related to confusion, more related to fear, and much more related to hatred than dreams in general.

Happiness

the same as usual

Sadness

the same as usual

Grief and sorrow

the same as usual

Embarrassment

the same as usual

Confusion

much more than usual

Fear

more than usual

Pain

the same as usual

Hatred

much more than usual

Fun

more than usual

Love

the same as usual
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Who is in hell dreams?

Overall, dreams with hell are much more related to places in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hell are much more related to magical places than dreams in general.

Home

the same as usual

Work

the same as usual

Human places

the same as usual

Transportation

the same as usual

Natural places

the same as usual

Magical places

much more than usual
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What happens in hell dreams?

Overall, dreams with hell are more related to events in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hell are more related to sex and more related to disasters than dreams in general.

Aggressive interactions

the same as usual

Friendly interactions

the same as usual

Sex

more than usual

Disasters

more than usual
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How do hell in dreams related to other dream phenomenon?

Overall, dreams with hell are more related to dream events in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hell are more related to lucid dreams, more related to nightmares, and more related to recurring nightmares than dreams in general. They are less related to recurring dreams.

Lucid dreams

more than usual

Nightmares

more than usual

Recurring dreams

less than usual

Recurring nightmares

more than usual

Sleep paralysis

more than usual

Sleeping

more than usual

Waking life

the same as usual
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How do hell in dreams related the senses?

Overall, dreams with hell are aren't really related to senses in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hell are more related to hearing and more related to taste than dreams in general.

Hearing

more than usual

Smelling

the same as usual

Taste

more than usual

Vision

the same as usual

Touch

the same as usual
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How can you make sense of hell in dreams?

Hell dreams are relatively common. Among other things hell dreams are normally interconnect and nightmare.

Do you think this is true for your dream of hell? How might your dream of hell 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 hell 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 hell in dreams. See how you feel about hell now, in your waking life.

What are possible meanings for dreams of hell?

Dreams make metaphors, and hell can be a poignant metaphor for describing your life or a situation. Do you ever catch yourself saying something like, “My life is hell,” or “I’m going to burn in hell for this.”

You hear a description of the misery or stress someone is going through and think the situation is comparable to being in hell.

Hell can be an apt way of describing emotions that torment you. See: Emotions

It can be a general symbol of fear, or be a metaphor for how fear makes life hell. See: Fear

Hell is associated with a place where bad people go, and it can be used in dreams to symbolize guilt, regret, or self-knowledge that you (or someone you know) have done something sinful or wrong. Hell is punishment, eternal torture for wrongdoing. You think you belong in hell. You’ve been a bad, bad boy or girl. You’re tortured by guilt over things real or imagined. This notion is common in the minds of people exposed to “hellfire and brimstone” dogma. See: Guilty, Torturing

Keep in mind, most dream characters are projections of something about you, so if a dream refers to a person in hell, it might be a projection of something about you or an aspect of yourself. For example, your lustful sex life that could land you in hell.

Hell is conceived as a place where people suffer the consequences of their actions, and that association can be used to create a story about consequences and taking responsibility for your actions. See: Courts

For example, a man dreams he’s in hell with members of a group he’s in that challenges beliefs and notions, akin to an encounter group. Hell is a huge stone quarry, and their job is to break rocks. He’s told by the group that anyone who tries to leave will be hunted down and vaporized by demons that exist unseen in guard towers surrounding the place.

One day he decides the demon guards don’t exist and he tries to leave, and ends up in a dark cave. There, he burrows through hell’s wall and is confronted by several pairs of glowing red eyes, like stoplights—the demons! He’s afraid and makes a right turn. A powerful, disembodied voice tells him, “Learn to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions!” He then slides uncontrollably and appears in daylight over a bottomless chasm, and the dream ends with him falling helplessly through open air.

In this metaphorical story, the walls of hell and the demon guards symbolize the beliefs and notions that keep a person imprisoned, unable to see beyond them, constrained. The guards are unseen because beliefs and notions are intangible. The man is learning to challenge them and leave them behind, symbolized as breaking rocks and burrowing through the wall of hell. The dark cave symbolizes the lonely personal place he finds himself in as he questions not only his beliefs and notions, but also those of his social group.

When this happens, constraints will make a final stand, symbolized as the red eyes appearing. They’re like stoplights because something inside the man wants him to stop and go back to the relative comfort and safety of his prison. He’s afraid. Instead he makes a right (correct) turn, meaning a turn in his journey of life, and absorbs the lesson that his unconscious mind, speaking through the powerful voice, is teaching him:

Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions!

Doing that means that the ground he’d based his life on disappears, as symbolized by free-falling, but it also means he will eventually find better ground to stand on. It’s a lesson that will stick with him for the rest of his life.

While hell is believed by some people to be a real place, an alternate conception of it is as a state of being cut off from God while alive in body. When translated to a personal situation, hell can mean a person is cut off from the goodness in him- or herself, or alienated from fellow humans.

Burning in hell can connect with a burning temper. Losing your temper can make you feel guilty. Guilt is associated with hell. The ideas all interconnect.

Dreaming about burning in hell might be a response to physical stimuli as you sleep. You could dream about being in hell when you have a high fever, your body is overheated, or you have the sweats. Or it might be in response to something you heard, especially if you have been exposed recently to religious notions about hell or a person’s beliefs about it.

Or the “heat is on,” meaning you are tense and under pressure.

See also: Darkness, Demons, Devils, Evil, Fires, Heat, Guilty, Heaven, Ovens

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 hell

Read some real dream reports of hell 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.

Dreamt about hell twice in a row

Dream consisted of me trying to get through this part of a forest, which an insanely angry stag was guarding, raging and sprinting and ready to kill.

I asked ‘someone’ (I don’t know who) to point me in the right direction, before I saw an image flash in my dream of an old painting of Jesus with him pointing diagonally upwards with the words “Hell.” (I’m not religious by the way)

Before waking up in the middle of the night with all the lights seemingly off, like all the electronics. Not the first time I dreamt of a hell this week

Dream consisted of me trying to get through this part of a forest, which an insanely angry stag was guarding, raging and sprinting and ready to kill.

I asked...

Source | Show dream

I had a dream about sucking my female best friend off.

Sooo, first of all excuse my English it is my second language.

I am 21yo male and am a little bi-curious (Full gay for Ed Westwick tho). So last night after me and my girlfriend went to sleep, I had a dream about my female best friend having a dick, and me sucking it for about 30mins. All this was happening and we talked causal about it after that (still in the dream). I don't know what the hell my brain is doing and I am meeting her (the best friend) in an hour. I am not sure wheter to tell her about this or no. I am writing this here to get it off my chest cause I can't really talk to anybody about it. To clarify, my female best friend does not have a dick. :D

Sooo, first of all excuse my English it is my second language.

I am 21yo male and am a little bi-curious (Full gay for Ed Westwick tho). So last night after...

Source | Show dream

Does anyone feel like death will feel like a dream? Personally I dont think death is the end of consciousness.

Do you ever ponder your death and wonder what happens? Like where you go or what you feel? It gives me such a weird feeling of being alive and aware. I think either heaven and hell are real, or there are different lifetimes/worlds. I feel it would be like a dream, but you'd never "wake up" and it would be reality. The problem is its basically impossible to prove it. Its just a fun thought experiment and wondered if anyone else relates or doesn't. I just want your opinion.

Do you ever ponder your death and wonder what happens? Like where you go or what you feel? It gives me such a weird feeling of being alive and aware. I think...

Source | Show dream

A Nightmare I Want To Forget

I debated wanting to share this since one- this dream is disturbing, and two- I barely remember most of it (thank God).

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Okay, here I go:

I remember that it was a long dream, and had something to do about experiments of "making the voice strong", whatever the hell that means. There were experiments regarding the throat, with needles being shoved in peoples' throats, or syringes of some sort drawing out phlegm. It was disgusting. I know that it had some cult like aspects to it, but it wasn't that entirely. The person doing the experiments was wearing a red robe, but still, the dream felt more "scientific" than "cult", if you know what I mean. But the main thing I remember from this dream, we're the cries of babies.

I so wish that I could get rid of the images my mind conjured up.

You're still reading? Oh...okay, please don't think of me as some disturbed individual. But the cries of babies is what I remember too vividly in this dream. And the sounds of cracking belts. You sure you want to keep reading? Okay...

The belts were whipping that of newborn babies; blood everywhere. They would take this blood and use it to inject in peoples' throats to, quote-unquote, "make the voice strong."

I remember an up close image of a toddler having his inner thighs whipped over and over, and I couldn't do anything to help him; couldn't do anything to end this dream. It literally felt like I was being deliberately held to watch this nightmare.

I remember an up close image of an experiment gone wrong, where a patient, a man, puked up this white slime, and was killed off.

That's all I remember but I'm sure there's more that mind is suppressing. I hope you don't get this nightmare, now that I put images in your head. I'm so sorry.

I debated wanting to share this since one- this dream is disturbing, and two- I barely remember most of it (thank God).

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Okay, here I...

Source | Show dream

My dead friend told me what happens when you die in a dream

My freshman year of college I had a dream that my friend who had died in a car accident earlier that year approached me at night, I was in a dark house, and there were people around him moving in studders. He looked at me through a stained yellow window, and I asked him "
what happens when we die?" and he told me, "whatever you believe." After that dream I had another where an aztec man broke through my childhood room glass window and started shedding blue nails from his fingers, until he was just a pile of nails. Like the information my friend gave me was sacred or something.

Cool concept though. If you believe in heaven, you'll go to your brain's idea of heaven. Reincarnation, you'll live the life of some other animal/person. Hell, you'll live in your brain's idea of hell. Nothing, you'll live nothing. Maybe there is something to that, with the chemicals released in your brain when you die, and the few weeks it takes for that electrical activity to completely dissipate in your brain after dying. Maybe when we die, we're at least alloted a brief respite living in whatever colorful fantasy we imagined we might pass on to when we were living, before the electricity shuts off like a light switch and we do too. That dream always stuck with me.

My freshman year of college I had a dream that my friend who had died in a car accident earlier that year approached me at night, I was in a dark house, and...

Source | Show dream
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