Dreaming of the Dead: New Study Finds Grief and Ongoing Connection Are Deeply Linked
Sunday, April 27, 2025.
Grief may not end at the grave.
A new study suggests that the majority of bereaved souls—whether mourning a spouse or a beloved pet—report vivid dreams or waking sensations involving the deceased.
Far from being rare or pathological, these experiences appear to be a common part of the human grieving process, tightly woven into how people maintain emotional bonds after death.
In fact, people who dream of their lost loved ones are significantly more likely to experience their presence while awake.
This overlap between dreaming and waking encounters challenges older assumptions that such experiences are signs of denial, avoidance, or mental instability.
Instead, they may represent something far more ordinary—and far more vital to healing.
How We Keep the Dead Close: A Brief History of "Continuing Bonds"
For decades, psychologists have wrestled with how people psychologically navigate bereavement. The dominant 20th-century view, championed by Freud, argued that successful mourning meant letting go—severing emotional ties in order to “move on” (Freud, 1917/1957).
But research beginning in the 1990s increasingly challenged this assumption. The "continuing bonds" model (Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996) proposed that maintaining an ongoing inner relationship with the deceased was not only normal, but often beneficial.
Dreams, visions, and sensations of presence are one way those bonds endure. Dying folks themselves frequently report comforting visions of deceased loved ones (Barrett, 1992), suggesting that the boundary between life and death in the mind is far more porous than earlier models assumed.
Still, researchers had not fully explored whether these sleep and waking experiences were connected—until now.
What the New Study Found: Dreams, Visitations, and Grief
In a reanalysis of data from two prior studies, researchers Joshua Black, Kathryn Belicki, and Jessica Ralph (2024) examined responses from 268 adults who had lost a romantic partner and 199 individuals who had lost a dog or cat.
Participants, recruited via Mechanical Turk (MTurk)—a crowdsourcing platform often used in psychological research—completed standardized measures including the Continuing Bonds Scale and a dream questionnaire.
Beyond dreams, participants were asked about waking encounters: seeing the deceased, hearing their voice, or feeling their touch. Responses were rated on a five-point scale and any nonzero experience was counted as positive.
The findings were striking:
73.5% of those grieving a partner and 59.3% of those grieving a pet reported dreaming of the deceased within the past month.
50.7% of partner mourners and 32.2% of pet mourners reported at least one waking experience.
When considering both dreams and waking experiences, 82.5% of partner mourners and 68.3% of pet mourners reported some form of ongoing connection.
Moreover, dreaming of the deceased significantly increased the likelihood of waking encounters. Among partner mourners, 56.1% who dreamed of the deceased also reported a waking experience, compared to 36.2% who did not dream. In the pet group, 39% of dreamers also had waking experiences, compared to 22.5% of non-dreamers.
In other words, if you dream of a lost loved one, you're far more likely to sense them while awake.
What Might Be Happening? Openness to Connection
The link between dreaming and waking encounters suggests these experiences are not random intrusions or psychiatric symptoms.
Rather, they may reflect a general openness to maintaining connection—a cognitive-emotional style that normalizes continued bonds rather than pathologizing them (Field, 2008).
Notably, the deceased often appear healthy and reassuring in these dreams, offering comfort rather than anxiety (Black, 2018).
For many, the experience allows for final goodbyes, emotional closure, or even a reawakening of positive memories. It may be part of an intuitive, self-organizing grieving process that helps the bereaved metabolize loss without severing love.
Challenging Old Pathologies: From Ghosts to Guides
Older grief theories often treated sensing the deceased as a sign of unresolved trauma or unhealthy attachment.
But growing research suggests otherwise. While some folks with Avoidant Attachment styles might experience disturbing visions or intrusive memories (Stroebe et al., 2012), many find these dreams and sensations deeply comforting, even transformative (Steffen & Coyle, 2011).
Rather than seeing these experiences as hallucinations to be eradicated, a growing consensus views them as natural grief phenomena—emotional guideposts rather than signs of pathology.
Important Caveats: Memory, Measurement, and Meaning
Still, there are significant limitations to the study.
Like many grief studies, it relied on retrospective self-reports, which are vulnerable to memory distortions.
One person's "feeling" of a deceased presence could range from a fleeting sense of being watched to a vivid auditory hallucination. The ambiguity of terms like "seeing" and "hearing" also complicates interpretation.
Moreover, the sample was drawn from MTurk, which—while reasonably reliable for psychological research—is not fully representative of the general population (Chandler et al., 2019). Cultural, religious, and personality differences likely shape how people experience and interpret these phenomena.
Finally, the study could not determine causality: we still don't know whether dreams cause waking experiences, or whether some deeper psychological process—such as attachment style, coping flexibility, or spiritual openness—generates both.
Is It Normal to Dream About the Dead? A Quick Guide for the Bereaved
When you lose someone you love, grief doesn’t always follow a straight line.
It curls itself into your dreams. It hums along the edges of waking life.
And if you’re finding yourself dreaming about someone who has died—or even feeling their presence when you’re awake—you’re not losing your mind. You’re grieving in one of the oldest, most deeply human ways we know.
Let’s walk through what the latest research says about dreaming of the dead, what it might mean, and why it’s far more normal—and healing—than you might think.
Dreaming of the Deceased Is Extremely Common
Recent research shows that about three-quarters of people grieving a spouse or partner report dreaming about them within the first two years after the loss (Black, Belicki, & Ralph, 2024). Even pet owners, often overlooked in grief studies, report dreaming of deceased animals at high rates.
Far from being rare or pathological, these dreams appear to be a natural part of how the mind processes deep emotional bonds.
Waking Experiences Are Also Common—and Related
It’s not just in dreams. About half of people mourning a romantic partner also report seeing, hearing, or feeling the deceased while awake (Black et al., 2024).
In fact, people who dream about their deceased loved ones are significantly more likely to have waking experiences of them too. These two forms of connection seem to go hand in hand, suggesting an openness to maintaining emotional bonds even after physical death.
Dreams and Visitations Are Often Comforting, Not Distressing
Most people describe these dreams and sensations as positive.
The deceased often appear healthy, happy, and reassuring. Many mourners report that these experiences helped them:
Say goodbye
Reconnect with cherished memories
Feel that love still exists, even across the boundary of death
Rather than causing harm, these experiences often ease emotional pain.
You’re Not "Stuck" If You Dream of Them
Old-school grief theories used to suggest that "healthy" mourning meant severing all bonds with the dead (Freud, 1917/1957). We now know that’s not how human beings actually heal.
Maintaining a continuing bond—through memory, dreams, rituals, or sensations—is a normal, adaptive part of grief (Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996). Dreaming of a loved one doesn’t mean you’re trapped in the past. It means you’re human.
When to Seek Extra Support
While dreaming of the dead is typically a sign of healthy adjustment, there are times when extra support might be helpful, such as if:
The dreams or sensations feel consistently frightening or violent
You experience significant distress that worsens over time
You struggle to function in daily life because of persistent visions or fears
In those cases, a therapist trained in grief work can help you explore what’s happening and create a path toward comfort and integration.
Why This Matters for Clinicians and Grievers Alike
The clinical implications are profound.
Many mourners worry that dreams or sensations of the dead are signs they are "stuck" in grief or "losing it."
This study suggests the opposite: sensing the presence of a loved one, in dream or waking life, is often a normal, healthy part of adjusting to loss.
Grief therapists and support groups may find it helpful to normalize these experiences, reducing unnecessary shame or fear.
Talking openly about these encounters could foster healing by integrating, rather than suppressing, the ongoing emotional bond with the deceased.
As death rituals continue to evolve in an increasingly secular society, understanding these organic, psychological forms of connection may become even more important.
Final Thoughts: Grief Is a Form of Love
If you’re dreaming of someone you’ve lost, or you sometimes feel them brushing the edges of your waking life, you’re not broken. You’re bearing witness to one of the most enduring truths of human existence:
Love does not end at death. It changes form.
Dreams and visitations are not interruptions to grief. They are grief, speaking its ancient, difficult, beautiful language.
You are not alone.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Barrett, D. (1992). Death dreams: How the dying dream of the dead. HarperCollins.
Black, J. (2018). Dreams of the deceased: A scientific approach to continuing bonds. Dreaming, 28(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000074
Chandler, J., Rosenzweig, C., Moss, A. J., Robinson, J., & Litman, L. (2019). Online panels in social science research: Expanding sampling methods beyond MTurk. Behavior Research Methods, 51(5), 2022–2038. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1174-9
Field, N. P. (2008). Continuing bonds in adjustment to bereavement: A commentary. Death Studies, 32(8), 738–746. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180802215551
Freud, S. (1957). Mourning and melancholia (J. Strachey, Trans.). In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 237–258). (Original work published 1917)
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.
Steffen, E., & Coyle, A. (2011). Can spiritual experiences be beneficial? Spiritual narratives and subjective well-being. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 14(8), 843–856. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2010.536206
Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Boerner, K. (2012). Continuing bonds in adaptation to bereavement: Toward theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(7), 677–693. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.07.009