The Visitation Dream: communication from a passed loved one.

Image from Earth Magic Oracle by © Stephen D. Farmer

Have you ever fallen asleep and had a dream about a passed loved one that seemed so real and was so memorable that it felt as though the passed loved one was truly present?

We are so used to waking up and passing off the events of a dream as being our minds processing aspects of waking life, often in an abstract way. Some regularly find it difficult to remember their dreams, whilst others can remember the content and rationalise that, for example, “I must have dreamt about my boss scrutinizing my work, because in waking life, I am actually worried about something else unconnected. In the dream, my boss’s appearance is simply to fulfil the role of a person in a position of authority.” The dream may then be forgotten about within a couple of days, if not hours, or minutes as we go about our daily lives. From childhood, social expectations convince us not to pay much attention to dreams. Were you ever reassured by an adult “it was just a dream”, “don’t pay attention to it, it doesn’t mean anything”, or worse, when recounting a dream to someone, the listener responds by laughing, making you feel rather silly for taking the dream seriously at all?

However, what if the dreamer dreams of a passed loved one so lucidly, that it felt as though the dream was reality? People often say, “that dream felt so real”, quickly dismissing it by drawing the conclusion that it must simply be the usual incomprehensible activity of the subconscious mind that lies beyond human understanding. What if the dream is about a passed loved one and is so lucid that it can be remembered in detail and event order, years after it happened?

There are many ways that passed loved ones can connect with us, placing significant objects in our path, manipulation of electrical equipment, drawing your attention to significant songs on the radio, to name but a few. Visitation dreams are said to be one of the easier ways for Spirit and passed loved ones to connect with us. When we are asleep, the ‘veil’ is thinner, our conscious minds our ‘quiet’ and our subconscious is free to be open and active. This provides the perfect opportunity for those no longer bound by the physical plane to connect – we become more receptive and in line with the spiritual plane when we sleep and when we dream.

How can we know that this experience is not a regular dream, but is a visitation from a passed loved one?

Example of a visitation dream

The following account is when I knew for sure (from doing post-dream research) that I had had a visitation dream - it changed my life and my perspective forever. It affected me deeply. I can still remember it and recount it for you now, five years on. I had had visitation dreams from passed loved ones in the past, but I had no idea that is what they were, so I passed them off as being a manifestation of my bereavement process. I thought they were just vivid dreams, even though they made me wake up in floods of tears, and I can remember them in detail decades on.

Note that when I had this visitation dream, both my parents-in-law had passed over within months of each other, and the dream occurred several months later.

In my dream, I was at my in-laws’ family home of 30+ years, alone in their kitchen, whilst my husband was in an upstairs room. (In waking life, I hadn’t been in that house for several years.) I became aware that the once kitchen window was now a (closed) pair of French doors with ten panes of frosted glass in each - all except one pane midway down one of the doors, which was clear. I became aware of a golden light behind the doors and I tried to look through that clear pane to see what was behind and try to open the doors and go through. The light was so bright, golden and intense that I had to back off and turn away. (I also sensed that I wasn’t supposed to be trying to look through the pane of glass anyway, as though it was not permitted.) When I turned back around, the doors were open wide and my late father-in-law (I’ll call him John) was stood there smiling, wearing his checked/plaid pattern shorts and a lemon-yellow t-shirt, holding secateurs in hand as though he had been outside pruning his beloved plants in the garden on a summer’s day (as that was one of his favourite pastimes throughout his life). He looked well and a little younger (still of retirement age) than he was when he passed over.

“

John! John!” I blurted out. I could not believe my eyes. “Are you okay?!”

Still smiling, he said calmly “Yes, I’m fine.” I burst into tears of joy, threw my arms around him and hugged him. He gently put his arms around me, and I was overwhelmed with the feeling of pure love coming from him. In life, my father-in-law always found it difficult to know how to respond to any tactile greeting from anyone (bless him, it was a bit like hugging an ironing board), and although his ‘hug’ reflected that awkwardness, I sensed purest love emanating from him.

After this hug, I was deeply puzzled. “But John, you died. How can you be here like you’re alive?” He didn’t reply, he just stood there smiling with the golden light from the garden still glowing intensely from behind him. It suddenly struck me that I needed to call my husband to come down to the kitchen to see what I was seeing. “Stay there, John, exactly where you are. I want to get him down here to see you…..and I’m going to keep my eyes fixed on you so you can’t disappear before he arrives.” I called and called to my husband, and all the while my father-in-law stood there smiling at me.

Just as my husband entered the kitchen, I instinctively turned and began urgently telling him that his Dad was here with us. At that moment, my late mother-in-law and my siblings-in-law entered, each one dressed in black, looking sombre and sad. It was as though they had just returned from a funeral – that of my father-in-law.

“Look! John’s here! He’s come to see us! Look!” It didn’t seem to make any difference what I said and how much I tried to make them see. It was as though they couldn’t see past their grief. I turned back to look at my father-in-law, but he had already vanished. My husband didn’t see him either because he was too busy focusing on how sad his mother and siblings were.

It was at this point that I suddenly woke from the dream, with tears streaming down my face – a mixture of euphoria of the meeting with my father-in-law, and frustration that no one else saw him. I just could not stop crying with joy, on and off for the whole day, and when I recounted the visitation dream to my husband, the euphoria returned and made me tearful. Recounting to my siblings-in-law, a week later, I still had the same tearfulness and euphoria. Even after several years have passed, I feel overwhelmed whenever I recall this dream.

I wondered why he came to me in this way and not my husband or my husband’s siblings. After all, they all have a strong and long-held belief in the Spirit realm, as did my father-in-law. The only conclusion I can draw is that he came to me (we always got on well anyway) in order to pass the message on to them that he was fine, happy on ‘the other side’ and doing the things he enjoyed. Perhaps he felt that I was ready for such Spirit contact, even if I wasn’t aware that I was ready!

So, what are the characteristics of a visitation dream (others prefer to call it a “sleep connection”)? From my own personal experiences (I’ve compared previous and subsequent visitation dreams that I’ve had),……

These are the key features:

• During the dream you are aware the person has passed over. You may even mention this to the passed loved one, express this aloud to yourself or have your own internal monologue within the dream.

• The dream is extremely vivid and is also in colour.

• There is a clear series of logical ordered events – the dream isn’t fragmented and doesn’t jump around. The part of the dream where you have contact with your passed loved one is straight to the point, literal, linear and is not symbolic. Another part involving other people may be symbolic. In the visitation dream that I described above, the part where my husband, his siblings and my mother-in-law did not follow my urgent requests to look at my father-in-law, left me with the message that on this occasion only I was supposed to see him. Perhaps because in bereavement process terms, I was in a better place emotionally than they were. Therefore, when we are consumed with grief, it can cause an obstacle for passed loved ones trying to make contact with us.

• Passed loved ones’ communication may be limited to a few words/a sentence, or it may be a sense/feeling that is conveyed to you, telepathically. They address you directly. You are aware that your passed loved one has come to see you for a strong reason, even if you are not clear for a while what that reason is. Your intuition will suggest what the reason is, but you may need some time in waking life to contemplate. Other signs may be put your path when awake in the days following; your loved one is trying to confirm that they were really with you in the dream and are around you through life in general.

• You can remember the dream on waking, and in detail, down to the clothes your passed loved one was wearing, objects in the dream, colours, and other significant visual details. Your passed loved one will appear as a very clear image - there will be no blurring or fuzzy image. You will have no doubt it is your passed loved one.

• Being touched or any physical contact feels real.

• Your passed loved one looks healthy and well and often younger than he/she did when they passed.

• They are accompanied by a golden light or glow, which in some cases can be intense.

• The dreamer senses overwhelming love, peace, joy, accompanied by a feeling of euphoria and comfort.

• The visitation dream is remembered for days, weeks, months, even many years later.

• Experiencing a visitation dream can have a profound effect on the dreamer, to the extent that it can be life-changing in the spiritual sense.

Apart from further confirmation to me that passed loved ones continue in another realm, this visitation dream affected me to the extent that it was one of the catalysts for me to seriously make a start on my own spiritual journey, and to re-evaluate long-buried spiritual experiences from my past.

Not everyone will advocate the existence of the visitation dream phenomenon. Respect is given to this viewpoint – and I’ve done my fair share of questioning and reasoning on the subject during the past few years. I’ve also spent a large part of my life sitting-on-the-fence about the existence of the ‘other side’, always looking for scientific explanations. However, for me, the conclusion about visitation dreams is always the same – I can say, from personal experience, that they happen, and they are real. I have no doubt.

Here at TouchWood Mystics, we would love to hear about your visitation dream experiences. You are welcome to share your comments and thoughts on this topic, below.

Love and blessings,

Cate