Yellow Raincoat

When I was about 8 or 9 I had a dream that reoccurred every night for 3 weeks. It became so bad that I would become terrified at bedtime and would try to keep myself awake by force.

I lived in an apartment at the time.

Well every night when I fell to sleep I would see a man in a yellow raincoat in my basement. He had holes dug up all around the basement floor. He would just walk outside and bring bodies into the basement and cover them with an orange tarp.

It had me so frightened even though that is all he would do. I'm much older now, but have wondered for so long why I was having such a dream.

Thanks,

Shelly

Good morning, Shelly.

Children's dreams are often very different from adults' dreams, but a few basic rules still apply.
The basement is a good example of this. Even if you live in a place with no basement, you can still dream of one, because the dream is not about your house - it's about you. Your basement represents the underlayer of your thoughts, a deep, secret place - not quite the animal layer of the mind, but close to it. Freud called this the "id."

The man in the yellow raincoat is a bit more difficult to pin down. He could be an authority figure, because yellow raincoats are worn by such people as crossing guards. Because water is directly related to emotions, he could be an entity without emotion. If we go back to Freud, this could be the "superego."

The bodies are being brought in and hidden, though not well. I suspect that these represent secrets.

So my opinion here is, as a child, you were expected to keep things to yourself - there were secrets you were not supposed to ever tell. I don't know if this was something imposed upon you externally, or if you decided on your own, but the secrets scared you. You were afraid to tell, and afraid of what would happen if you didn't.

Reading this over, it probably sounds more ominous than it really is. Remember that you were a child at the time, and what scares a child isn't necessarily what scares an adult. I'm guessing that you stopped having the dreams because the situation changed, but you can't shake the memory of them because it still bothers you.

Pleasant dreams,

Peregrin