Have you had a (sleeping) dream that's stayed with you for 10 years or more?

No, I haven’t.

But when I was very little, between 5 and 6 or so, I had a dream that repeated itself for quite a time, albeit not for 10 years. I have never had one and the same dream for such a long period of time, and I rarely had dreams that would occur more than once or twice.

The dream that I had between 10 and 20 times (if I remember it well) was about a scary tall man who was chasing me, but didn’t get me, because I hid behind a bench in a park. That man was all white, looking like a Yeti. I think he wasn’t even dressed, but was covered with white hair from head to toe.

He never said a word. He was just trying to find me and catch me, but I hid behind a bench. The whole action was very short, it lasted no longer than one minute. The man saw me on the square of the City where I used to live when I was that young, he started to follow me, but I managed to disappear among the crowd and to hide behind a bench of the small park very close to the square. Then he approached the bench, but didn’t take a look behind it, so he kept on going.

I was scared to death, but I survived. :D

I used to have what I called the “Dawn of the Dead” dream. In this dream I had zombies chasing me. But unlike many zombie movies, these were not stupid, slow moving zombies…they were very fast and smart. These dreams would last most of the night and repeated for years. I haven’t had this dream in quite a few years now, not since I left the nuclear power world. I guess I have to equate the zombies to the creeping idiocy that existed wholesale in the nuclear world.

I don’t have any dream that cross the 10 years mark, but I do have a dream that is so scary it’s considered the scariest dream ever. It was ridiculously simple. It involved me in a speeding car colliding head-on with another speeding truck. No context, just two cars crashing. And I couldn’t do anything but watching myself getting crushed in the wreckage. In other dreams I have a way to escape my danger, but this one was just that, me crashing to death.

Another infamous dream involved an interview with a murderer who just killed a woman. He confessed that he killed the woman because he adored her and wanted to make a piece of art using parts of her body. The dream led to a failed project of a guy obsessing over a woman and wanting to make the ultimate artwork to honor her.

I had a couple of recurring ones, usually not-very-scary nightmares that are easy to remember because they were repetitive. Things like my car rolling slowly and I can’t stop it, or, in my teens and early twenties, walking down the aisle at my wedding toward a faceless stranger.

My favorite one-off, that I have remembered forever, was me, very heavily pregnant, sitting atop a small stereo cabinet (that I had just assembled in real life) competing in an Olympic event, racing down a narrow forest trail, leaves and twigs slapping my face and arms as I strove to achieve maximum speed and stay upright.

I didn’t medal. Big disappointment. That was in 1988.

There are a few others, mostly linked to big events, but not as fun.

Sometime around 1985 I dreamed a small stream was flowing around our house and gathering at the front door. The dream was absurd as there had never been such a stream and there was no water anywhere near. The next night there was unprecedently heavy rain and the water from the school playing field behind our house came gushing down and around our house and getting backed up at a blocked drain at the front. As I was clearing the drain in the darkness, I remembered I had dreamed of this happening and at the time I thought it very odd.

I remember this dream as it came true and I have a had few dreams of this kind generally early morning dreams.

As with many of my dreams I wrote the details down in my diary. I have spoken of this dream many times as an example of a dream coming true. I think I even mentioned it before in a Fluther answer.

Having to redo 11th and 12th grade as well as the final maths exams, while at the same time having to do my current job.
It all goes well at first, since maths seems easy in the beginning, but as it becomes more difficult, I start skipping classes, and as the exams draw nearer, panic sets in, as I can not solve any of the maths problems.

I used to have dreams that I could fly. It felt so real, I could just will it and up I’d go and even though I’m afraid of heights it seemed so fantastic. I could maneuver anywhere and zig-zag allover the place. Every-time I awoke, I was so let down because I could not fly and I would be so sad for a while until I could realize it was just a dream, again.

The worst part of those flying dreams is getting tangled up in power lines.

I have a portion of a dream from 35 or more years ago that I remember well. I was in a forest, and there was smoke coming from the tree trunks. I looked, and they were all burning from the inside out. It was an apt metaphor for my life at the time in the closet. I was dying.

I hate the people, institutions, and social mores who make the closet. F*ck them all to hell.

Two reoccurring ones: The first is a tornado headed my way, details vary on this one. The second is about zombies but specifically, in my dream I have a hard time getting the people who are following me to shut up and not alert the zombies. I can’t escape the people, they just follow and they won’t stop making noise. It’s like they just don’t understand the danger and no matter how hard I try to get them to understand, they won’t shut up. I also have these nightmares where I have done something horrible like kill someone. I don’t dream about that part, but in my dream I feel such horrible guilt and shame about what I have done. It’s so intense that I wake up feeling ill.

There was one dream I had like 25 years ago I remember vividly. In my dream my car started to die and I just got it to the car lot and traded it in for another. The very next day that exact thing happened. The car I ended up with was the exact one in my dream, right down to the detailing of the interior. Coincidence?

Oh definitely. I have a few. Exact details varied, but the core of the dream repeated.

1) I saw Jaws when I was too damn young to watch Jaws. As a result, I had shark nightmares for AGES. Details varied, but somehow, I and my family always ended up in the water, on a boat, on a pier or somehow around bodies of water. For some reason I was the only person that would notice it and no matter how much I tried to warn people, it always got us one by one.

2) The proverbial exam anxiety dream. Though mine often had a few twists. It was the day of final exams, usually in college (though the physical rooms often looked like my high school). I didn’t even know where or when the exams were because I had skipped all the classes (which was not a thing I did in real life…I was prone to not do homework but I tended to have excellent attendance).

So I had to find the little class schedule printout to figure out where the exams were and when. But it was end of semester, and they were all gone. The ones for the next semester were out. And so I would go from building to building in my college campus looking for a THIS semester schedule…and inevitably not find it.

Again…this never happened. Nothing LIKE IT ever happened. Yet I was tortured by this dream for decades after graduating college.

Yes. Since teenage years. Recurring every few years until I was in my 40s maybe. Been a long while since.

Inside my grandfather’s house where I was born and raised. Zombies are coming. Each and every time when they finally break into the house, I would pretend to be one of them, walking and grunting like they do. I would then get the feeling I failed in fooling the zombie directly behind me. He reaches for my shoulder. That’s when I wake up. Every…time.

@RayaHope Flying…me too! I would flap my arms and just rise up. I could fly anywhere and however high. One time after having one of these dreams, I cried upon awaking because I knew that I couldn’t fly. I know exactly what you mean about being sad.

^^ I know, it felt so REAL I could swear it was. I really wondered what happened. It messed me up bad. :(

Interesting responses. Thank you.

I apologize for the ambiguity in my question. By “stayed with you” I meant not a recurring dream but a dream that, after ten years or more, you still remember. I do see that some responders interpreted it that way.

I still remember a few dream scenes from childhood and young adulthood, and that was a long time ago. So I wondered about other dreams that have left lasting impressions.

I have had a dream that I was stuck somehow and unable to move. Like my feet were in mud or quicksand but I wasn’t sinking just could not move forward no matter how hard I tried. That scared me so bad that I still remember it several years now.

I remember one that was so real that it bothered me for a few days. I had this co-worker who had waist-long blondish hair. I only mention that because it helped make her image in my dream more realistic. Anyway, it was a very short dream, I simply slapped her on the cheek, hard. The next day when I went to work I felt uncomfortable around her because it seemed so real. That had to be at least 20 years ago.

It’s a bit personal, as it was basically an extremely vivid, massive orgy. I was really young and probably just at my peak hormonal level. I really miss that dream.

Yes. I don’t want to share it.

I have countless sleeping dreams that I experience today that I first experienced as a child.
They repeat, they have morphed, they still carry the same powerful images and feelings.

@RayaHope, your answer made me understand the initial question.

I thought the OP was asking about one of our dreams that we have had for 10 years or longer, but after reading your answer it dawned on me that it’s not about the frequency of one and the same dream, but rather about the time that we have remembered it.

In such a case my dream can be the longest lasting one here, because it’s around 60 years old :D (Besides, that’s the first dream of mine that I can still remember. I sure had some prior to it, since I believe to have been dreaming since I was 2 or 3 at least, but I can’t recall any of those earliest dreams of mine).

As your dream is concerned, you know what it means, don’t you? I mean, somebody had surely explained it to you?

@AhYem I don’t know what it means. I had a very tough childhood growing up and went through some bad stuff. Do you know what it could mean, I’d like to know?

^^ The most common meaning is freedom, but there are other meanings, too, like change.

https://www.thelist.com/406583/what-does-a-dream-about-flying-really-mean/#:~:text=According%20to%20Times%20Now%2C%20many%20people%20have%20dreamt,you%20back%2C%20or%20harming%20you%20in%20some%20way.

@smudges WOW awesome! I know I wanted to be set free