Strangers appear in my dreams. Their features are clear, but none are familiar, not even from an earlier dream. What is going on in my brain, and do others experience the same?
Tony Holkham Boncath, Pembrokeshire, UK
Considering that my dreams almost always involve going somewhere, either on foot or by car, I should expect to meet many strangers. Yet I hardly ever do. Most of the people I interact with in my dreams are either well known to me or curious hybrids of more than one friend or relation.
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Many of the places I dream about, though, don’t exist. When I wake, I marvel at how these events could have been created in such minute detail by my brain – and, more to the point, why.
Christine Warman Hinderwell, North Yorkshire, UK
Dream pundits, of which there are many, tend to go along with the idea that strangers in dreams are real people. They say our brains can’t fabricate faces, so these people are actually recollections of real people we have seen but don’t consciously remember.
Such accounts support the concept that everything we experience is accurately stored in our memory, if only we could access it. Yet it is more likely that memories are reworked and edited, and can be false. I think dream people are invented from a stock of general images.
In 1996, Castle conducted a survey of the content of dreams. They found that most involve the dreamer and two or three others. . Male strangers were aggressive more often than female strangers, and female dreamers were more likely to encounter hostile characters. Dreams rarely involve aspects of everyday life, but seem to be a way of examining, in symbolic form, our own anxieties.
Elwyn Hegarty Armidale, New South Wales, Australia
I see a parade of clear but unfamiliar people’s faces in my mind’s eye just as I am about to fall asleep, rather than later. If I have been waiting a while for sleep, I find this reassuring, as it means that rest is just round the corner. I have heard of two others who have had the same experience.
Peter Gandolfi London, UK
I get visual hallucinations sometimes when I am tired and I close my eyes. It is as if I have entered a world of people, none of whom I know, and always different. I quite enjoy the experience and marvel at the workings of my brain.
Some of my friends with severe visual impairments also have hallucinations, a phenomenon known as Charles Bonnet syndrome. It is quite common among those with sight loss, especially those who are newly blind, and tends to go away as the brain adapts to the loss of vision.
I hear that many people with the syndrome are wary of talking about their symptoms, thinking that they are experiencing a mental health problem. I believe that I am in good health, with good vision.
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