Of all the dreams people are reluctant to say out loud, this is one of the hardest. You wake having done the worst thing a person can do, and the feeling of it, the guilt and the adrenaline, can outlast breakfast. So let Miller and Artemidorus say the surprising part first: they read the dream by its reasons, and some of their verdicts were good.
| Variant | What the old books read | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Killing an animal | Bad luck if wanton; abundance for a farmer | Golden Wheel 1862 |
| Killing in self-defence | Victory and a rise in position | Miller 1901 |
| Committing a murder | A dishonourable adventure, a stigma on one's name | Miller 1901; Artemidorus |
| Seeing someone killed | Sorrow from the misdeeds of others | Miller 1901 |
| Being killed | Enemies working in secret | Miller 1901; Artemidorus |
What does it mean to dream about killing someone?
Miller's 1901 dream dictionary (Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted) kept a short "Killing" entry that turned entirely on the victim and the cause. "To dream of killing a defenseless man, prognosticates sorrow and failure in affairs," he wrote; killing in self-defence, or killing a ferocious beast, he read the other way, as victory. His separate "Murder" entry was harsher still, and split the dream three ways: doing it, watching it, and suffering it.
The Golden Wheel Dream-Book (1862) had only a "Kill" entry, and it was about animals. Artemidorus, whose Oneirocritica (2nd century) we cite in Friedrich Krauss's 1881 German translation, read killing through the people involved: who struck, who fell, and what the dreamer's relation to them was.
What the three share is the method. None of them reads the dream as a crime to come; each reads it as a picture of the dreamer's standing, with friends, enemies and fortune. The sections below keep the victims and the reasons apart, because the books did.
Who you killed
These are readings from the old dream books, reported as history — no dream foretells the future.
What does it mean to dream of killing a stranger?
No name, no history, sometimes no face. None of the three books reads a stranger in particular. The modern reading follows the anonymity: a figure with no identity usually stands for a pressure with no identity, an obstacle or a demand you haven't named, finally ended. Notice where it happened and what the stranger was doing; the setting often names what the face didn't.
Was your dream different? Dreamlock reads the one you actually had →
What does it mean to dream of killing a family member?
This is the version people are least willing to repeat. None of the three books reads it. Psychologists rarely read it as a wish about the person, and usually as an ending inside the relationship: an old role, an obligation, a version of yourself that exists only in their company. The dream ends the pattern, not the person, and the guilt on waking is part of how much the pattern mattered.
Was your dream different? Dreamlock reads the one you actually had →
What does it mean to dream of killing an animal?
A hunt, a pest, an accident on the road. The Golden Wheel Dream-Book (1862) read wantonly killing any animal or insect as bad luck and poverty, killing one by accident as a misfortune that would pass without real harm, and butchers or farmers killing fat, healthy animals for food as "a sign of thrift and abundance". Miller read killing a ferocious beast as victory. Psychologists ask which instinct the animal carried, and why it had to be stopped.
How it happened
What does it mean to dream of killing someone in self-defence?
Something pressed in, and you ended it because you had to. Miller's 1901 dream dictionary was clear: "If you kill one in defense, or kill a ferocious beast, it denotes victory and a rise in position." It is the most favourable line in his entry. The modern reading hears someone who has been tolerating something too long, which is why these dreams often leave relief rather than guilt: the dream stages the refusal not yet made in daylight.
Was your dream different? Dreamlock reads the one you actually had →
What does it mean to dream that you committed a murder?
Not defence, but a deliberate act. Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read it as "some dishonorable adventure, which will leave a stigma upon your name." Artemidorus told of Herakleides of Thyateira, who dreamed before a tragedy contest in Rome that he killed the spectators and judges, and then lost. The reasoning: nobody wants to kill a friend, only an enemy, so the audience would be hostile. Psychologists hear the same logic turned inward: whom you killed shows where you feel opposed.
What does it mean to dream of killing someone for no reason?
No threat, no motive, just the act. None of the three books reads killing without cause. The modern reading is aggression still looking for its proper direction: frustration with no address on it yet. That's not an alarm, just a nudge to notice where the pressure is really coming from. If dreams like this regularly leave you distressed, that's worth mentioning to someone you trust.
Watching, or being the victim
What does it mean to dream of seeing someone killed?
You weren't the one who did it, and couldn't stop it. Miller separated watching from doing: he read seeing a murder committed as "much sorrow arising from the misdeeds of others," with affairs turning dull. Psychologists read the witness's position closely: helplessness in the face of something happening around you, a conflict at work or at home you can see but not end.
What does it mean to dream of being killed?
The dreamer is the victim. Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read being murdered as enemies secretly working to overthrow the dreamer. Artemidorus read it as dying in the dream, and was careful: whatever good or ill that death signified for the dreamer, and for many he counted it good, would come through the person who struck. The modern reading is calmer still: something in you, a role or a stance, being ended by someone else's hand, and the question is whose.
What does a killing dream mean psychologically?
Depth psychology starts from the same paradox the dreamer feels: this dream disturbs people far more than most images, yet it reads as transformation with force, the psyche's shorthand for ending something decisively. Ask dreamers what they actually killed and the answer, on reflection, is rarely a person: it's a role, a belief, a version of themselves that had overstayed.
The violence itself carries information. It often reflects how strongly the waking self has resisted the necessary ending: the longer you've refused to let something go, the more force the dream seems to need to take it from your hands. Anger, in this reading, isn't the dream's subject; it's the dream's tool.
A question to sit with
If the thing you killed in the dream were not a person but a name for something in your life, which habit, role or old arrangement would it be naming?
Miller and Artemidorus judged the act; neither could ask what your dream ended, or notice whether the same figure returns next month or never again. That's a pattern only a kept record of your own dreams can show. It's what Dreamlock, on the App Store for iPhone, is built for: it listens to the dream you record, paints it, and remembers what comes back.