Dreaming about
a coffin

A coffin is the object that makes an ending final, and most coffin dreams are about exactly that. Dreaming about a coffin usually means something in your life is finishing, being put away for good, or closing in on you. It isn't a sign that someone will die, and most people who dream of one are dealing with change, not with death.

The detail that matters most is what was in the coffin. A stranger's body, someone you love, nothing at all, or you yourself make four very different dreams. Your place in the scene counts too, whether you were looking in, carrying it, standing back at a funeral or lying inside with the lid coming down.

What dreaming about a coffin means

A coffin does three things. It holds what's gone, it closes so nobody has to look anymore, and it's carried to its last place by other people. Most coffin dreams lean on one of those.

An ending you're living through

Like most dreams of death, a coffin usually points to something that's over or nearly over, like a job, a home, a relationship, the version of you that went with them. The coffin adds a sense of ceremony, of a thing being properly finished. If you felt calm, you may be readier to let it go than you thought.

Something you want closed and put away

Sometimes the coffin is a lid you'd like to shut on a memory, an argument or a habit. "Another nail in the coffin" is how English talks about one more thing finishing off a lost cause. If you were nailing the lid down yourself, ask what you've decided to be done with.

Feeling boxed in

A coffin is also the tightest space there is. When the dream is about being inside it, the reading moves away from endings and toward being trapped, in a role, a family pattern or a mood that leaves you no room.

Dreaming of a coffin with a dead body

Seeing a body in a coffin brings the ending close. If it was a stranger, the dream is about a change in your life more than a person, and the stranger's look (old, young, someone like you) can say what kind. If it was someone you know who is alive, look at how your relationship has changed, or at a worry for them. A coffin holding a dead body you recognize as yourself is about an old you that's gone, and that's often a hopeful dream underneath.

Dreaming about being in a coffin

Lying in a coffin while alive is one of the most frightening versions, and fear of being buried alive was real enough in the nineteenth century that people patented coffins with bells and air tubes. In a dream it's about feeling shut in or written off, unheard at home, stuck in work that's wearing you down, or low in a way that makes everything feel closed. If you climbed out, the dream is about getting free of it.

Dreaming about an empty coffin

An empty coffin is an ending with nothing to bury, or one you aren't ready for. It can mean you're preparing for a loss that hasn't happened, like an illness in the family or a breakup you see coming. It can also mean the thing you thought was over isn't, and the coffin is waiting for something you still haven't given up.

Dreaming about carrying a coffin

To carry a coffin is to help bring something to its end, often for someone else. It can be a family duty, like sorting out a parent's affairs or holding everyone together through a hard time. If the coffin grew heavier as you walked, the weight you're carrying for others may be more than you've admitted.

Dreaming about a coffin according to Jung and Freud

Jung: the coffin and the role you're burying

Persona, to Jung, is the mask you put on for other people, covering roles like employee, parent or the one who always copes.^[1] Read through that idea, a coffin can be the funeral of a role that no longer fits, which would explain why so many coffin dreams leave relief behind as well as grief. It's his idea carried over to the coffin, not a reading he gave.

Freud: a coffin in his typical dream

Freud listed the death of someone you love among his typical dreams, and one of his own examples has a coffin in it. A young woman dreamed that her sister's surviving little boy lay dead in his small coffin, hands folded and candles all around, exactly as at the funeral of the first boy, who had died earlier. She was appalled, and Freud told her it wasn't a wish for the child's death. After a long absence, the man she loved had come back into her life beside the first boy's coffin, and Freud read the dream as her wish to see him again, set in a scene so full of sorrow that nobody would suspect love of being in it.^[2]

Other readings

Hundreds of the trance "readings" given by the American psychic Edgar Cayce were about dreams, and he taught that death in a dream stands for change and not for literal death, and that a dream can speak about your body and health as much as your mind.^[3]

Questions to ask about your coffin dream

Before you read anything into the coffin, look at what was in it and where you stood.

• What, or who, was in the coffin, if anything?
• Were you watching, carrying it, or inside it?
• How did you feel: afraid, calm, relieved, grieving?
• What in your life is ending, or should?
• Where do you feel shut in right now?

Oniri asks how the dream felt before it reads it, because relief and dread at the same coffin lead to different readings. And if coffin dreams keep coming back and spoil your sleep, there are simple ways to have fewer nightmares.