Dreaming about
demons

Demon dreams are some of the most frightening dreams people have, and many wake from one afraid that it meant something, that the demon was real or that it was a warning. In almost every case, dreaming about demons is about something in your own life that feels darker and stronger than you are. That's usually a fear, guilt, a habit you can't shake or a person whose influence drags you down.

Which one it is shows in the details of the dream. A demon that possesses you is a different dream from one you cast out, and a demon in your own home isn't the same as one chasing you down a street. What you did in the dream matters as much as what the demon did. Did you run, freeze, pray or fight? The answer, set against what's been weighing on you lately, is where the meaning is.

What dreaming about demons means

The Greek word daimon first meant a spirit or a minor god, good or bad, and it took centuries for it to harden into the evil being of Christian art. What every version shares is a force that comes from outside, gets in and takes over. That's the shape to look for in your own life.

A fear that has grown too big

Nightmares take an ordinary fear and give it a face, and a demon is the biggest face a fear can wear. If you've been dreading something for weeks (a diagnosis, a court date, a confrontation), the dream may simply be showing you how big it has become in your head. The demon's size tells you how frightened you are, but it says nothing about how dangerous the thing really is.

Guilt you're carrying

In many religious traditions demons punish, accuse or remind people of their sins. So a demon that watched you, judged you or whispered things you'd rather not hear can be guilt in picture form. Did you hurt someone recently, break a promise or do something you haven't told anyone about? Those are the dreams in which a demon tends to know your name.

A habit or craving you're fighting

English talks about "fighting your demons" for drink, gambling, anger or anything else that keeps winning against your better judgment. A demon that tempts you, or one that keeps coming back however many times you drive it off, often lines up with a habit like that. People who are cutting down on drinking or drugs commonly report vivid, frightening dreams, and a demon is a natural shape for the part of you that wants one more.

Dreaming about demon possession

Being possessed is about losing control of yourself. People dream of it after a stretch of doing things that didn't feel like them (snapping at their children, drinking too much, getting swept into a mood they couldn't stop). If someone else was possessed, it's usually about a person who has changed in a way that scares you, a partner whose temper has turned or a friend who's become a stranger. And if you'd recently watched The Exorcist or something like it, start with that.

Dreaming about casting out demons

Driving a demon out is one of the better demon dreams. In the Gospels, Jesus casts out a crowd of demons who call themselves Legion and sends them into a herd of pigs.^[4] Later he tells his followers that they too will cast out devils in his name.^[5] In Pentecostal and charismatic churches, a dream of deliverance is often read as spiritual victory. Outside any faith, the dream usually shows you getting rid of something, a habit, a toxic friendship or a belief about yourself that you've finally stopped accepting.

Dreaming about demons in your house

Home is where you should be safest, so a demon indoors means something dark has come very close. It often goes with tension under your own roof, like a family argument that never quite ends, an addiction in the household or a relationship that has stopped feeling safe. Which room was it in? A demon in your bedroom points to your relationship or your own rest, and one in a child's room to a worry about your children. One in the basement is more often something buried that you'd rather not look at.

Dreaming about demons attacking you

Attack dreams are among the most common nightmares, and one theory holds that they're the brain rehearsing danger while we sleep, so we're readier for it awake.^[1] A demon is the threat with every limit removed. When one attacks you, ask what in your waking life is coming at you with no rules, whether that's a boss, a debt or a fear that won't listen to reason. Being bitten, scratched or held down usually tracks how personal the attack feels.

Dreaming about fighting a demon

Fighting back is a good sign, even when the fight is hard. It usually means you've stopped running from whatever the demon stands for and started dealing with it. If you won, the dream may be catching up with progress you've already made. But if you kept fighting and nothing changed, think about whether you're struggling with the thing head-on when it needs a different kind of help, a doctor, a friend or a change of circumstances.

Dreaming about a demon chasing you

A demon on your heels follows the rules of every chase dream, and in one large survey of students, 81.5% said they'd had a dream of being chased.^[2] What you flee at night is usually what you avoid by day, and a demon makes that thing as frightening as it can be. If the dream comes back, try to remember to face the demon next time, since a pursuer you look at directly often loses its power. A chase by the devil himself has its own page.

Dreaming about a demon with a familiar face

Sometimes the demon wears the face of someone you know, a parent, a partner, a sibling or a boss. That's rarely a verdict on the person, but more often about the effect they have on you, a relationship that takes more than it gives, or a side of them that frightened you once and never quite went away. And if the face was your own, look back at the reading on guilt and on habits above, because the dream may be about you.

When the demon is in your bedroom

There's one demon dream that isn't quite a dream. If you felt awake and couldn't move, and you saw or sensed a dark figure in the room (perhaps sitting on your chest), that's most likely sleep paralysis. The body stays switched off for REM sleep for a moment after the mind has woken up. It's harmless and very common, and the post on the sleep paralysis demon explains what causes it and how to make it stop.

Dreaming about demons according to Jung and Freud

Few dream images have been read in as many ways as the demon. Jung's shadow fits it better than most images do, and Freud's method gives you a different question to ask.

Jung on the demon as shadow

Jung gave the name shadow to everything in you that you'd rather not own (anger, envy, a desire you don't admit to), which often turns up in dreams as a dark intruder or pursuer.^[3] A demon is about as dark as an intruder gets. Seen through his idea (the step from his figures to a demon is ours, not his), a demon dream may be showing you something in yourself that you've pushed out of sight, and the work is to recognize it, not to win the fight. Dreams of a dark shadow figure, a close cousin, have their own page.

Freud on the costume and the wish

Freud's symbol list has no demon, so this is his method applied, not something he wrote about demons. His method starts from the wish a dream disguises and from the day before, where much of its imagery comes from,^[10] which gives a demon dream two questions. The first is what from the last day or two could have supplied the material (a film, a sermon, an argument), since the demon is a costume sewn from whatever was lying around. The second is harder: what is the costume covering? The guilt, the craving and the temptation in the readings above are, in his terms, a wish you wouldn't sign your name to, which would explain why it comes back with horns. He'd also have asked what a demon means to you before anything else, because the dreamer's own associations came ahead of any symbol.

Other readings

Neville Goddard, a 20th-century teacher whose creed was that imagination shapes reality, offered a practice he called revision as his answer to a bad dream.^[6] For a demon dream, that means lying in bed before sleep and running the scene again with a new ending, the light coming on, the demon shrinking, you walking out of the room. It's close to a technique nightmare clinics use today.

The spiritual meaning of demons in dreams

Both the Talmud and the hadith treat a frightening dream as something with a source, and give you something to do about it.

Demons and false dreams in the Talmud

Rabbinic Judaism's central text, the Talmud, sorts dreams into two kinds: those sent through an angel, which are true, and those that come through a demon, which are false.^[7] A rabbi named Shmuel is said to have quoted the verse about false dreams after a bad one, and the verse about true dreams after a good one.

Frightening dreams in Sahih Muslim

A hadith in Sahih Muslim, a Sunni collection of the Prophet Muhammad's sayings, gives three kinds of dream instead: good news from God, a distressing dream from Satan, and what comes from your own mind.^[8] The advice for the distressing kind is to seek refuge in God, spit lightly to the left three times and tell no one,^[9] which treats the dream as something to set down more than something to decode.

Questions to ask about your demon dream

A demon dream is easier to read once the fear has worn off. Go back over it with a few questions.

• What did the demon do: watch, chase, attack, possess or tempt?
• What did you do: run, freeze, pray, fight?
• Where were you, and whose home was it?
• Did the demon look or sound like anyone you know?
• What in your life feels stronger than you right now?

Oniri asks you this kind of question before it reads a dream, so your demon is read in light of your own week. If demon nightmares come often enough to wear you down, the post on how to stop nightmares has techniques that work, and a doctor can help too.