What Do Dreams of Zombies Mean?

Leaping all the way down the staircase in a single bound – you’re in your office, terrified, your life in danger. But how? In a nutshell, your workmates are all trying to eat you.

It started during the lunchbreak. Something infected the cafeteria food. It’s transformed your previously delightful colleagues into bloodthirsty zombies. (Thank God you packed your sandwiches today.) But now it’s you on the menu.

Landing at the bottom of the stairwell, you sprint to the carpark. A dozen ravenous former-colleagues are hot on your tail. You dive inside your car, moments before the horde starts swarming around it.

Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath, count to three and slam the car into reverse – running over your boss in the process, (no chance of a promotion now) and zoom away at top speed.

Then you wake up in a cold sweat. It was all just a horrible nightmare. But what on earth could it mean?

It must be one of the most terrifying of nightmares. Being chased by flesh eating zombies is said to be a sign that you’re running from your problems. So if you do have this dream maybe it’s high time you faced them. According to Dreamsopedia, dreams about being chased by zombies are, “a message for dependency and reliance on other people. Your dream is a signal for negative energy or a bad temper. You are not expressing your feelings effectively.”

If you dream about turning into a zombie it’s likely that your subconscious mind is trying to tell you that your emotions are unsettled. Having feelings that vary from day to day can be stressful because you might feel overwhelmed by the quick change in how you are feeling.

You can be reassured that if you have a dream about trying to destroy a zombie, it actually has a positive meaning! According to the experts the dream can mean you’re about to achieve all your goals. “Escaping and shooting the zombies in the dream is a positive omen,” says Aunty Flo. However, if you shoot but cannot kill the zombies then this is associated with you trying to aim for a target but cannot quite achieve it.

If you are ever unfortunate enough to dream about a zombie invasion, it could be that your subconscious mind has revealed you’re struggling to forgive yourself because of a misunderstanding. According to Millers Guild, “if you keep dreaming about zombie invasions, you need to ask yourself whether it is possible to fix things because your emotions are suffering as a result.”

People have been fascinated by the idea of the ‘living dead’ for centuries. Indeed, the English word “zombie” was first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of “zombie”. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as West African, and compares it to the Kongo words “nzambi” (god) and “zumbi” (fetish).

Since then the depiction of zombies has evolved. The modern zombies portrayed in books, games, TV series and films are quite distinct from zombies of folklore and has only emerged in popular culture during recent decades. This “zombie” is seen in George Romero’s formative film Night of the Living Dead.

As Zombies have gained so much popularity in urban legends and popular culture it’s no surprise there has been an increase in the number of dream reports about zombies across the globe.