What Does It Mean to Dream of a Cemetery?

What Does It Mean to Dream of a Cemetery?

A cemetery can be creepy, contemplative, or calm, depending on the circumstances. While any of those emotional atmospheres could be present in your dream of a cemetery, at bottom might be a question about how you handle endings in your life.

Cemetery Dream Summary

Cemetery Dream Symbolism

As a cemetery is where dead people are buried, understanding the symbolism of a cemetery dream requires looking at the symbolism of a death and dying dream. Death dreams often indicate that some part of your life is ending or being transformed.

A death dream where the death is still in the process of happening, though, may show that there is some ambiguity about the nature of the transition you are going through. There might even seem to be a possibility that the big change won’t happen after all – that you will somehow be able to get out of it and go on as before.

In contrast, a cemetery dream shows that an ending or transition in your life has already irrevocably happened, as the dream imagery has shifted from the death itself to what happens after the death. Your cemetery dream may symbolize that there is a need for you to put what has been completed to rest and move forward from it.

Common Cemetery Dreams

  1. Dream of visiting a grave
  2. Dream of your own grave
  3. Dream of watching a burial
  4. Dream of graves being dug up
  5. Dream of seeing ghosts in a cemetery

Cemetery Dream Symbolism

Cemetery Dream Symbolism

Rest

Cemeteries are often calm and quiet places. Spending time in a cemetery in your dream could therefore show that you need more rest and peace in your life. In an extreme circumstance, a cemetery dream might suggest you are headed for an early grave if you don’t find a way to reduce the level of stress in your life.

Alternately, sometimes your dreams can make fun of you a little bit. In this way, a cemetery dream could be teasing you that your life has gotten too quiet. If you feel like there is a grain of truth to this, you might accept the playful nudge to liven things up.

Ancestors

People often go to cemeteries to visit the graves of their ancestors. A dream of a cemetery could therefore symbolize that you are trying to maintain a connection with your family roots. You may be continuing a tradition that your ancestors started, or you may be looking for their support or blessing in an endeavor of your own.

Alternately, you might feel like some aspect of your family heritage is holding you back from reaching your fullest potential in the present. In this context, a cemetery dream featuring your ancestors’ graves could point out to you that life is for the living.

Closure

A cemetery dream could symbolize that some matter in your life is finally, definitively over – dead and buried, so to speak. The emotional atmosphere of the dream may show how you feel about receiving closure in this situation. If you are calm in the dream, this might mean you are relieved to be able to move forward, even if you didn’t get everything you wanted.

If you are openly upset in the dream, this could symbolize a situation where someone else is pushing for closure while you still feel like additional negotiations need to happen. You might not be able to get what you want, though, so you may have to grieve that loss.

Storage

A cemetery is where a society stores the bodies of its dead. Dreaming of a cemetery could therefore symbolize a situation where you are putting things in storage or purging whatever you have kept in storage.

A danger with any form of storage is that you can forget what you have put there. You might devote more and more of your space to storage without really thinking about what you are storing or why you are storing it.

A cemetery dream could therefore push you to confront how you are using your physical space. Does it emphasize that life is for the living, in the sense of giving you room to pursue the passions that currently make you happy, or is it a shrine to things you enjoyed in the past but aren’t really that into anymore?

Common Cemetery Dreams

Dream of visiting a grave

Dream of visiting a grave

Dreaming of visiting a grave of a deceased loved one can symbolize that you want to remain connected to this person. You may be going through a major transition in your life and looking for their guidance. You might also be seeking their approval for how you are now handling things in your life.

Dreaming of visiting the grave of someone you know who is still living could symbolize that you are concerned about the health or mortality of this person. If this is someone you have had a falling out with, however, dreaming of their grave might symbolize that their role in your life is complete, and you have to move forward without them.

Dream of your own grave

Dream of your own grave

If you dream of seeing your own grave, this could symbolize that you are worried about your health or mortality. This website does not provide medical advice, so consult a healthcare professional if you have specific concerns of that nature.

More broadly, a dream of your own grave could represent your concerns about the legacy you will leave behind after you die. You may wonder how you will be remembered or whether your loved ones will be provided for. Even if there is nothing wrong with your health now, this might be a good time for you to put effort into addressing these issues.

Alternately, your dream of your grave could symbolize that you have made a radical change in your identity, to the point it feels like the old you has died. Even if other people in your life have a hard time accepting the new you, whatever happened is final, from your perspective.

Dream of watching a burial

Dream of watching a burial

If you dream of watching a burial take place, this could symbolize that you are putting some matter in your life to rest. Whether you are happy or sad about the way it ended, you have to accept that it is over and move forward from it. A burial is often an occasion where people come together in acknowledgment of a loss, though, so you may need to seek support from others to process what happened.

Dream of graves being dug up

Dream of graves being dug up

If you dream of graves being dug up, this could symbolize that some matter in your life that you thought was resolved will actually need to be addressed again. Even if you are unhappy about this, you may have grown since you last dealt with the issue, so you might see it from a new perspective that will enable you to deal with it more productively.

Alternately, a dream of graves being dug up could symbolize that you are gaining access to power buried deep within you. In psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s comparison of the mind to an iceberg, the unconscious, the biggest part of the mind, is like the bulk of an iceberg submerged underwater, as reported by Verywell Mind. Getting in touch with the bottom of your iceberg, as a cemetery dream might indicate, can push you to confront things you find uncomfortable, but it may make you stronger.

Dream of seeing ghosts in a cemetery

Dream of seeing ghosts in a cemetery

If you dream of seeing ghosts in a cemetery, this could symbolize that you feel like some important matter in your life cannot be put to rest, even if others around you seem to have moved on from it. You may need to find a way to acknowledge and resolve the remaining unresolved issues.

If ghosts must hang out anywhere, though, it at least makes more sense for them to hang out in a cemetery than it does for them to hang out in your home, school, or business. A cemetery is a place where one might expect something outside the normal flow of life.

In this sense, dreaming of seeing ghosts in a cemetery could symbolize that you are going into a situation that you know is risky in some way. You might be entering someone else’s territory, and this could involve having to accept that their norms are not your norms.

Conclusion

Your cemetery dream may ask you to look at the balance between death and life in your life. While life is for the living, death and those who have gone before are also unavoidable realities that must be acknowledged.

A cemetery dream could point to an imbalance in either direction. You might be living too much in the past. Alternately, you might be totally resistant to acknowledging the past or your own mortality.

Either way, like a death dream can symbolize any of the smaller endings in life, your cemetery dream may symbolize that you need to accept something in your life has finally ended.