Communication with the Deceased in Dreams: Overcoming the Boundary between This World and the Otherworld or Its Conceptualization Strategy?

Abstract

Starting from the concept of death in contemporary Serbian culture (in the context of thanatological and anthropological studies), the author focuses on the analysis of communication with the deceased in dreams, which is still perceived as an important form of contact with the otherworldly. The analysis of material collected during field research at various locations in Serbia and in Serbian communities in Romania (from 2017 to 2024), supplemented by dream narratives from the internet, has shown that based on the main messages conveyed by the deceased to the living, dreams can be divided into: (1) dreams about “the unappeased deceased” (who lack something in the otherworld, usually due to an omission by the living related to funerary rituals); (2) dreams in which the deceased show the otherworld and provide verbal assessments of it; (3) dreams in which the deceased inform of their departure or final passing into the world of the dead; (4) dreams in which the deceased demonstrate their presence in the world of the living, i.e., providing information pertaining to the sphere of the dreamer’s social reality; (5) dreams in which the deceased convey their messages, advice or warnings to the living; and (6) dreams interpreted as the deceased person’s call to the dreamer to join them in the otherworld. Basic element analysis of the spatial world image, projected via the dream, highlights the importance of the locus perceived as a border space. Dreams about the deceased seem to be ambivalent in this respect, given that, on the one hand, they are perceived as an important means of communication between this world and the otherworld, and on the other hand, through the ideas on which they are founded and that they further transmit, they are also part of the narrative strategies of the boundary between this concept of two worlds.

1. Introduction

This study aims to define types of dreams about the deceased depending on the message conveyed by them, as well as to determine the basic spatial and temporal parameters of dream narratives that participate in the conceptualization of the notion of the afterlife and the otherworldly.

The following analysis is based on experience and the results of the field research that the author conducted in the last several years. The beginnings of the research were predominantly oriented toward the study of dreams in traditional culture; therefore, the interviews were conducted primarily in rural areas (at various points in Serbia and in Serbian communities in Romania, predominantly since 2017) with members of the senior population as the supposed cultural pattern bearers. The author’s interest in dreams, however, has expanded quite naturally toward the general functioning of narratives in the virtual environment (internet forums and social media groups). Having found out about this aspect of her research, colleagues and friends started telling her about their own dreams. In that way, they have enriched the author’s insights into the life of dream narratives in various social settings, as well as related to the attitudes of different narrators to their own dream experiences and dream content.

In the corpus consisting of around 150 narratives, almost half are dream narratives about the deceased, and the insight into the functioning of dream narratives about the dead in the virtual environment provides a similar image, where in some forums, dreams about the deceased (alongside prophetic dreams) are classified as a separate topic. The interviews conducted in the field show that speaking about dreams can be a sensitive topic due to the fact that believing is an inherent quality of the genre.1 It is interesting, however, that the interlocutors showed notable openness precisely toward narrating and commenting on dreams about the deceased, introducing them, more often than not, spontaneously into the conversation through associations of the deceased person’s relatives and acquaintances. In the virtual space, the urge to narrate dreams about the deceased stems from the need for their interpretation as a search for their potential meaning, but apparently also from the simple desire to share a powerful emotional experience with others.

2. Toward Defining Context: Death Conceptualization in Contemporary Serbian Culture

In writing about the history of Western European culture, as reflected in the changes in the understanding and accepting of death and the way the individual and society perceive it, Philippe Ariès singles out several concepts that describe a complex transformation path—from the tame death model to the invisible death model. The former is related to the culture spanning from the 11th to the 17th century, where death was ritualized to a great extent, connected to the community, present and visible. The latter model is typical of the 20th century, when death was medicalized, to a certain extent concealed, in the culture ruled by individualism, and social solidarity was losing its momentum on every level. Death encompassed feelings of discomfort, shame, and repulsiveness (Ariès 1989, 2004). A similar view of modern death perception is proffered by Louis-Vincent Thomas (1980, 1989), who explains it in a sociocultural context: “Technical and industrial civilization relies on the power of science, it is predominated by the civic world which defines the problems of place and time. That society develops full-fledged individualism within the framework of life which represents the nameless human multitude; traditional values vanish from it, in particular the religious ones …” (Thomas 1989, p. 9, translated by author). The model proposed by Ariès is extended to include the concept of spectacular death, elaborated in a recent study by Michael Hwiid Jacobsen: “‘Spectacular death’ inaugurates a period in which death is gradually returning from its forced exile during ‘forbidden’ death and is now something discussed and exposed in public through the media, although ‘spectacular death’ simultaneously commodifies death and makes it the bizarre object of shallow consumption and entertainment” (Jacobsen 2016, p. 17).

The change in the relationship with death in modern Western culture is consequently interpreted as the result of the processes that started no later than in the 17th and 18th centuries, eventuating in the absence of believing in ritual as a means of catalyzing fear of death. On the other hand, despite the cultural conditioning of the perception of death, the cultural specificities of funerary rituals and beliefs, ways of mourning, etc., what stands out as a cultural universal is the fear of death. This universal fear was confronted with the belief in immortality as a form of a functional response already in Bronislaw Malinowski ([1925] 1954). The fear of “contamination by death” is accompanied by the feeling of its spiritual dimension, by the belief in the sacral and otherworldly, thus making the connection between the living and the dead ever ambivalent. Anthropological studies have pointed out the problematic side of establishing stark opposition “between the ordinary, shallow, secular death culture of Western society and the intricate, profound, sacred death rituals elsewhere” (Robben 2004, p. 1).

Bearing in mind the abovementioned, the relationship of a member of contemporary Serbian culture with death cannot be defined in simple and unambiguous terms. Death conceptualization correlates with the dynamism of sociocultural structures: fast-paced traditional culture transformations, complex relations between secularization and re-traditionalization processes accompanied by a return to religiousness, as well as complex relations between the collective and individual identities. Namely, the reduction and transformation of the traditional culture elements, conditioned by modernization, urbanization, and technologization processes, etc., have led to serious reductions in the elements of funerary rituals and the system of beliefs encompassed by the cult of the dead, regardless of how stable the cult might appear to be. Moreover, being firmly linked to religious thinking, the attitude toward death underwent significant changes during the period of proclaimed atheism and later on in the processes of returning to various forms of religiousness. Finally, attitudes toward death are also conditioned by individual views and concepts that function in social groups that one belongs to (family upbringing, etc.).

Traditional Serbian culture has developed a complex mechanism of symbolical representations, rites, and beliefs related to the cult of death and the deceased, the pronounced stability of which has been confirmed by repeated ethnographic research and a number of ethnological and anthropological analyses (Zečević 1982; Bandić 1983, 1990). The moment of a person’s death is always an event pregnant with meanings in concert with the collective, regardless of whether such meanings are interpreted using an ontological, symbolic, functional, structuralist, sociopolitical, or any other key offered by thanatological and anthropological research (see the analytical overviews in Palgi and Abramovitch 1984; Robben 2004). Such a semantic burden stems from the fact that death is not only the (gradual) transition of an individual from the world of the living to the world of the dead but also a moment of significant redefining of social and emotional relationships in the community affected by death (as pointed out in Arnold Van Gennep ([1909] 1960) in his acclaimed concept of the rites of passage), and equally importantly, a (protracted) moment of the undoing of the boundary between the worldly and otherworldly. Death and funerary rituals thus mark the sacral liminal time (Turner 1967, pp. 93–110). Speaking of traditional Serbian culture, a number of beliefs and ritual practices related to funerary rituals testify to the contact between these two worlds: from the belief that one of the omens of death is the communication of a dying person with the dead in the form of premortem visions, to taboos, apotropaic, and lustrating actions that the elements of funerary rituals are imbued in, i.e., all the actions pointing to the belief in the presence of the soul of the deceased in the proximity of the world of the living for a relatively long time (especially 40 days after death, and sometimes even up to 3 years). The transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead has several phases—the period of dying is a “drawn-out process”, as pointed out by Robert Hertz (1960). The functionality of Hertz’s concept (based on the analysis of Indonesian funerary rituals) and its essential universality has been proven by Éva Pócs in an analysis of the specificity of funerary rituals and related demonological systems in European cultures (Pócs 2019b, pp. 150–51), while Serbian anthropologist Dušan Bandić introduced the term “posthumous dying” (Serbian posmrtno umiranje; Bandić 1983, pp. 40–41).2

The notion of undoing the boundary between this world and the otherworld (or merely the awareness of its heightened permeability) is also related to the days devoted to all the dead, as well as to the particular parts of the traditional calendar (especially to the winter holidays and summer solstice). Communication between the living and the dead is maintained via special ritual practices initiated by the living (establishing contact with the dead by individuals with special abilities, predominantly through ritual trance). Unlike these practices, which are sometimes also interpreted as “disturbing” the deceased, the reverse communication is one initiated by the deceased, by appearing to the living in visions or dreams.

Observing death phenomena in contemporary Serbian culture from various angles, anthropologist Aleksandra Pavićević states: “Death is both mystical and usable, and symbolic, and literal, and despised and adored. It is an epitome of contradictions in itself, and the memorization techniques which rest on it bring us indirectly to the conclusion that it is a peculiar universal and inexhaustible source of (the contradiction of) culture in its entirety” (Pavićević 2011, p. 163). However, the author remarks that modernization has led to the simplification and relative unification of ritual forms, despite the fact that the belief complex related to death is the area of spiritual culture least susceptible to change. The author conditionally singles out two models of attitudes to death: one is closer to traditional representations and is typical of rural settings, and the other is related to urban environments (primarily Belgrade). What was noted in the latter model was the more prominent dispersion of representations, the development of individual rituals in accordance with individuals’ affinities and beliefs, a higher degree of experience interiorization, a diversity of beliefs related to posthumous existence: from a materialistic worldview, to believing (sometimes interwoven with doubt) in the existence of energy cycles, immortal souls, and the spirituality of nature. Pavićević purports that both models feature the loss of the awareness of ritual appropriateness as a result of secularization (ibid., p. 39). However, the author notes that most of the interviewees, from both rural and urban areas, regard dreams as a significant means of communication with the dead.

3. Communication with the Dead in Dreams: Theory Foundations

The aforementioned conclusion by Aleksandra Pavićević comes as no surprise, bearing in mind the fact that dreams are “a reservoir of the semiotically undefined”, “neutral space” that can be filled with various signs/message carriers, which always have the potential for multiple interpretations, individual and culturally conditioned (Lotman 2000, p. 126). It is precisely the complexity of dreams as neurophysiological and psychological, as well as the experience that connects an individual world with the world of social reality, that makes dreams an important segment of culture, as has been shown in a number of anthropological studies (Tedlock 1992; Mageo 2003, 2021; Stewart 2004; Rabinovich 2013, pp. 9–32; Sheriff 2021; see also Burke 1997, pp. 23–30; Pratt Ewing 2000, pp. 154–56; Bulkeley 2008; Trunov and Vodenikova 2012; Marić 2014, pp. 84–87; Barova 2021); thus, one can posit a “folklore of dreams” (Kaivola-Bregenhøj 1993; Lewis and Oliver 1995, pp. 85–86), “dream-culture” (Milne 2019, p. 132), and “dream mythology” (Milne 2017, p. 78). In general, dreams are seen as a window into another world, whether that world is constituted in the mystical and religious realm, in which the experience of the dreamed is interpreted as equally important when compared to real-life experience, in which the dream source is the world of metaphysical and transcendental and the dream is actually “the gate between the worlds” (Rabinovich 2013, p. 34), also another reality or the space of death itself (Tolstoy 1993; Gura 2012), or in a psychological and psychoanalytical realm in which the dream source is the inner life itself (see analytical overview of psychological and psychoanalytical postulates in Shafton 1995). In a historical and evolutionist view on the understanding of dreams, Yuri Lotman (2000, pp. 127–29) notes that the nature of the understanding of dreams has not changed significantly from the perception as an insight into the world of gods or the future or the notion that the dream is a view of one’s own internal being: the source of dreams is the mystical, and what has changed is merely the space in which that mystical is situated.

Such a perception of dreams, their importance in concert with the understanding of death, and the models of communication with the dead have been confirmed by the field research conducted by the author in the past several years.

4. Messages from the Otherworld

Dreams about the deceased reflect a wide range of emotions: from fear, the desire to establish contact with deceased loved ones, to expressing belief in a connection between the living and the dead that is uninterrupted by death (Đorđević Belić 2021). They feature a thematic variety with regard to messages communicated through such dreams, as has been confirmed by contemporary research on other European cultures (Razumova 2001, pp. 86–113; Tolstaja 2002; Kiliánová 2010; Andriunina 2012; Hesz 2012; Safronov 2016; Moroz and Petrov 2020). It should be emphasized that a relatively matching spectrum of messages conveyed by the dead to the living was reported in all the aforementioned studies, which generally corresponds to the range of messages in the corpus that this study was based on, and further comments regarding this aspect will be provided below.

One of the most frequent motifs is that of “an unappeased deceased”, the deceased who asks the living for whatever they are missing in the otherworld. Interpreted messages are based on the imperative of respecting the funerary ritual elements, i.e., on believing that the deceased should be sent off to the otherworld by lighting a candle and furnished with appropriate clothing, shoes, personal belongings, money, etc., which are placed in the coffin. Gifts are also sent to the deceased at memorial services, which also include a ritual feast (prepared at the cemetery itself or at the home of the deceased, and as of late, also in restaurants), when an empty seat is left for the deceased family member.

The message about a lacking appears most commonly explicitly in dreams and it is stated by the deceased themselves. The following example is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it reflects some of the genre-specific features—the development of both segments of the narrative, the text of the dream and the text of the social reality (Safronov 2016, pp. 99–104), alongside the functioning of typical authentication formulas—negotiating verity, which in this case functions in the initial and final positions, constituting the framework of the story (I say, if some kind of force exists, some miracle, my dear sister, there must be. You know, it does not happen of its own accord. There you have it, and who can say that there is nothing in that. Miracles do exist …). The text of a dream is shaped through the dialogue of the deceased mother-in-law and the dreamer, i.e., her daughter-in-law, while a relatively developed image of the feast in the otherworld provided for the dead by the living (the image of food and drinks placed before the deceased) is provided by the deceased. Simultaneously, the narrative also reflects social reality elements, recognized as important for the researcher’s understanding of the story: the absence of adequate and complete offerings to the deceased mother-in-law, due to shortages that Serbia experienced during the 1990s caused by the civil war in the former SFRY, the sanctions imposed on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the ensuing economic crisis. Finally, the narrative also speaks of the actions to be undertaken to be appease the deceased.

[1] I say, if some kind of force exists, some miracle, my dear sister, there must be. You know, it does not happen of its own accord. Also, when Dragan’s [her husband’s] grandmother3 died, and it was the time of inflation, you couldn’t buy beer anywhere, only in kafanas.4 And she, you know, we took and used spritzer and cherry juice, and rakija,5 other things for her funeral, there was no beer. […]. Come half a year, my sister, I neither thought about it nor had that in mind, so, I had no idea. And she came to me in a dream. And she said: – Well, Lela, what are you doing with me, this is not nice.—I said:—Hold on, mom, what do you want now? I took care of you, I changed your clothes, everything about you, and what, I said, is it that you miss now?—“Well”, she said, “to tell you honestly, this is not nice. Everything … There is beer and juice in front of everyone, and in front of me, my daughter—there is nothing. There is neither beer nor juices in front of me now.” […] I said, “Dragan [the interlocutor’s husband], go, man, to the kafana, and see, maybe you can find one bottle when the time comes for a half year”, I said, “half a year since the grandmother died, find one bottle and one glass bottle of juice”, you know, at that time it was in glass bottles. And he went down there and spent his whole salary on one bottle of beer and some 200 grams6 of juice, you know, in a glass bottle. And we served it up there, and I have never seen her in my dreams again. There you have it, and who can say that there is nothing in that. Miracles do exist.

[IZVOR 1 SDJ 2018; female interlocutor born 1964, July 2018]7

However, the message can also be hidden, symbolically coded in multiple ways. The following extensive narrative was recorded in a conversation with the interlocutor who had quite a peculiar relationship with dreams—she had written down all her dreams since her childhood, combining the principles learnt from dream books and logics of interpretation inherited orally and confirmed in personal experience in their interpretation. She ascribes special value to the reoccurring dreams:

[2.1] Prophetic dreams are the ones that keep reoccurring until you realize where you are making a mistake. You should know that! And later when you figure it out, that it’s the same dream over and over again. The same. It means, you think that you have seen a movie, you understand. And when that dream, until you have corrected that mistake, if it is a mistake, or something else, it depends what it is, you have no peace. Something keeps warning you, as you would put it, dreams. Those are the ones that are prophetic.

One such dream was related to her close deceased relatives, which is the type of dream that Jung would classify as big dreams. They are also referred to as intensified dreams, impactful dreams, and highly significant dreams in psychological interpretations (Bulkeley 2009, p. 97). She kept on going back to this dream during the interview, and it seemed to have quite significantly affected her attitude toward dreams in general, since she first dreamt it as a ten-year-old girl and she had searched for its meaning for a long time. Due to its length, the narrative is given here in a somewhat abridged form.

[2.1] I: And now I dreamt this one dream where I was born, how can I put it—a house. It was a small house. I never entered the house, in the dream. So, I was always in the yard, which had a garden in front. And always that dream, it had reoccurred several times. So, that yard, that house, because some things are connected to that place. And it took me some time to realize … So, I dreamt that same dream four times. Do you understand? I dreamt of my grandmother, the one that I didn’t know, that grandmother had died before I was born. I could have only seen pictures, you know from the picture … In my dream I saw her, and my mother, and an aunt that was my mother’s sister-in-law … That garden as it was, they worked, I was just a child. And I was not a child, I was a grownup when I dreamt it, but I was a child in the dream, I was about ten years old. Actually, at that time it started happening—but it was only later that I realized why. You know, that dream tried to warn me, that was what the dream gave me. They plowed the garden, they dug, they picked tomatoes, then they carried them, they put the potatoes away, on some wooden table. That got stuck in my head, that big table, those were the wooden tables in the old days, you know how it was. And she placed on that table potatoes, peppers, some fruit, the table was full. I was bothered by that because our mom had never done that in real life … To put everything on the table, it had never happened. And I felt somehow sad because that grandmother was placing all that on the table. I couldn’t feel happy or say something, it’s simply like you are mute. You are not mute but you simply don’t talk, you just observe. And at that moment my aunt came along, someone was looking for her, but I couldn’t see who it was. So, that person never showed their face. I just knew that it was a male voice. Why did she place the potatoes there when he needed them, she should have given them to him. She did not give them to him … That aunt of mine was killed, just to tell you, when my parents were killed. In reality. That is why I am telling you that. That dream that I dreamt, many things exist in reality … They gave me, instructions, how should I say, how to keep going. And we didn’t know that we should share food [food at the cemetery, remarked by S. DJ. B.] later. Do you get it now? […]

R: And the dream, it kept reoccurring, and until when did it keep reoccurring?

I: It kept reoccurring until I realized that I had never been to my grandmother’s grave to see her, because I hadn’t known where she was buried, you know. Because my grandmother, we were in one place, and she was in another. […] Because I couldn’t have known my grandmother. My grandfather also died during the war. That was, you get it, you don’t know. And that dream, until I found out where grandmother had been … I kept on them … None of them were alive. Neither my mother, nor my aunt, nor my grandmother. […] Then I dreamt it when I was fourteen. Then I dreamt it when I was sixteen. And when it was … It was probably happening because I didn’t know what it was. Because as a child you know only the dream. And when I dreamt it for the last time, I was seventeen years old, it was the same, it was springtime … Now, I was really upset, and my geography teacher, she saw that I was really upset. She saw that I wasn’t myself. I told her “I got scared again. I keep on dreaming the same thing!” and she said “Calm down. Come on, tell me how you are …” And I told her like I am telling you now. I said “It is impossible that she is the same, the same as my grandmother, because they showed me pictures before. I know my mother, I know my aunt, everything is the same.” And I told her the same as I am telling you now. And how that aunt was giving—her brother had died—to her brother … Later on, we figured out why people were where they were. But up until that moment I had only felt certain unease because of those dreams. All until that moment. And she told me “You should go to … To the monastery.” And I, at the Pohor Pčinjski monastery they read to me, those priests, some prayer because I was feeling really bad. I turned white when I dreamt, I was very upset. It caused a lot of unease. And he told me then “You should go … Do you know where your grandmother is?” I said “I don’t know.” “Do you have someone older who knows?” “I probably have.” And it was my uncle Živko. I told him the same way I am telling you now, I didn’t go alone, my uncle took me to the cemetery. Since I went to that cemetery, I haven’t dreamt it again … I dream about my mother even now sometimes, but that is irrelevant. I dream about my mother. You know how I dream about her? I always dream that she wants to warn me. She warns me about what I should do. And my grandmother from that time, that dream, it has never reoccurred, that dream. […] That male voice was my aunt’s brother who had died some time before that in war. But I did not know that.

R: And why could you not see him? What do you think, why did he not appear?

I: Well, I didn’t know him. […] Some things were unclear there. […] That table is engraved in my memory. That was all happening in the house where I was born. I used to walk around it. I could see … Now, that I never understood. I didn’t walk into the house to see the table, but when the house was open, I saw that table. Without entering the house! They brought things from the garden, I could see that, I was outside. They brought that all in, placed everything on that table. But I didn’t go into the room! And I saw everything. Their conversations, I listened to everything. I could hear when he called out, she came out, so I was in front, she took that from the table and carried it, she came out the door. I didn’t talk with them. I never spoke with them in the dream, as if … I spoke with my mother in dreams—that happened later, when some things were happening—but never with them. So, those conversations of theirs I heard everything. How, who, where, what, I heard everything, their sentences. When she said, my grandmother to my mother “Put those pears down, but be careful not to bruise them.” And I watched how my mother picked the pears. So, pears were there too. A sack, like a woven one, you know those from back in the day. She picked pears and put them down. She was in the garden with the other one. And that was all in front of me. And later, I tell you, later it was easier for me. When that, when she saw me, I tell you, that teacher. I got up in the morning, my first class was her class, and I was that upset. I was shaken, she said to me, and I didn’t know that it was, she said that I was shaken, when she saw me. I don’t remember that I was shaken. I was probably nervous when she saw me, you get it.

[TRNAVA 1 SDJ 2024; female born 1962, January 2024]

The subject of this narrative boils down to a relatively simple structure (in different periods of her life, the interviewee has the same reoccurring dream, in which the protagonists are her dead relatives). In the dream, in the house in which she lived when she was a child, the dreamer sees her late mother, grandmother (whom she recognizes from a picture), and aunt, who place fruit and vegetables without any clear order on a large wooden table. The dreamer hears the voice of a man that she never sees who is asking for some vegetables (tomatoes). The dreamer does not communicate with the deceased in her dream and she does not enter the house. The dream always (even during the interview) stirs strong emotional reactions. The agitation of the dreamer is recognized by her geography teacher, who takes over the role in further actions that lead to the resolution of the problem, i.e., the restoration of the disrupted balance that is perceived as the cause of the unpleasant, upsetting, repetitive dream. On the other hand, the simple structure is supplemented by a number of details, some of which develop additional narrative potential. Primarily, it provides an explanation of the relationships between the deceased relatives (who are also related to the interpretation of the relationship between what is seen in the dream and what remains hidden; the interviewee identifies her aunt’s deceased brother much later, and she explains the impossibility of seeing him as the consequence of the lack of blood relation: “Well, I didn’t know him; Or, how can I put it, as I did my grandmother, he was not mine, my blood, you get it”). This spectrum of digressions also includes a story about her aunt and her parents dying at the same time (in a car accident). Moreover, it also establishes the parallel relationship between the sphere of social reality and dream (emphasizing the sameness of the familiar space; actions related to fruit (pears, are identified later on in life experience gained by the dreamer) as a typical way of preserving fruit for the winter). The elements that are in collision with reality provoke a special kind of anxiety (her mother’s behavior, about which more will be said in the final section of the paper). Although the interlocutor does not proffer an explicit explanation for some of the details, it is possible to connect them with the concepts of traditional culture (e.g., the table with food is a typical image of the ritual feast dedicated to the deceased). The recurrent descriptions of intense emotional reactions caused by the dream are particularly emphasized, given from the perspective of the dreamer and the perspective of the other—her geography teacher.8 The introduction of this character is functional in a number of ways: on the one hand, it is a witness, very typical in dream narratives, who has the validation function; on the other hand, in this example, the character also has the function of a helper, given that, having recognized the importance of the dream, she directs the dreamer toward someone who will provide her with the interpretation of the dream: the monk who recognizes the message of the dream as a message from the dead who are suffering due to lacking something in the otherworld, and guides her in how to remedy it (by finding her grandmother’s grave and making ritual food offerings).

Quite contrary to such types of messages, in some dreams (or experiences that are later interpreted as visions), the deceased appears to thank the living for a properly conducted funerary ritual, directly or indirectly conveying the message about the peace they have consequently found in the otherworld.

[3] And I have incensed that [the food dedicated to the deceased, remarked by S. DJ. B.]. And then—not that night, but the night after that I dreamt—there is a room, that big one where that door is, I carried that there inside and … When I burnt incense there and all, and I did not dream that night, and then the night after that I dreamt that someone opened the door, my mother-in-law came from there, and my man had already died, you know. I always served him first, and he died there in bed, you know. She opened the door, and I was by the table, she said “Go and give Živko to eat.” I said “There he is”, I said, “he is eating.” As I was saying that, he was already sitting at the table, and she turned around “Have you found the food?” “Yes, I have received the food.” So it means there is something.

[LANGOVET 1/2 SDJ 2019; female interlocutor born 1941, June 2019]

[4] And once that Father Milomir, the one who passed away, the priest. And I lit a candle for him when we came back from Austria. It was a holiday. And I lit a candle for him and sat on that side of the bed, there on that corner. And I bent down to put my shoes on, or something, and I closed my eyes accidentally. And I saw Father Milomir. “What is this”, I said. And Dragan [her husband, remarked by S. DJ. B.] was sitting there and he started talking about something. I said “Hush, Dragan, don’t touch me.” I did it again, the same happened. I said “May God have mercy on your soul, Father Milan, you have come to thank me.” “Yes, I have”, he said. The same thing happened a number of times.

[RIBARE JS SDJB 2023; female interlocutor born 1952, October 2023]

Such dreams and visions are often connected to the significant points of funerary rituals (up to 40 days or a year following someone’s death, i.e., to the days dedicated to the dead), and it is likely that the same temporal markers appear related to the dreams whose message, although most commonly not explicitly stated, can be interpreted as the deceased person’s declaration of departure to the otherworld.

[5] I had a vision about my brother, the one who died in Germany. He was a year older… When he was dying, in the morning, at 4 AM, I was dreaming, and I woke up, and I fell asleep. And I dreamt about him. His name was Rajko, and he said to me “You have never called your brother, only recently.” And I dreamt of Ivanka, his wife. And in the morning the one who died came to tell me why he had died. He told me that while he was dying, in the dream. […] But how it happened that at the very same time as he was passing away that he came to me in the dream …

[MODRA STENA 1 SDJ 2019, female interlocutor born 1940, July 2019]

The ideas about the otherworld are reflected in dreams about the dead, whose structure the deceased also sometimes explain in dreams (see example [13]) or they give a verbal evaluation of it (example [6]). Some of the dreams dominated by the message related to the image of the otherworld also include elements of foreseeing what is to come, in the interpretations of the dreamer (example [7]).

[6] I dreamt of this man I had worked with, I dreamt that he was coming from the cemetery, from down there. I passed him by, he exited the cemetery, the night before Saint Nicholas [Day]. That man had worked with me, he had been the head of accounting, we hadn’t been related, but I dreamt that I was on my way to Banja, and he was coming out of the cemetery. And I asked him, I asked him, I was coming out of that field, I said “Laki, will you tell me something?” “I will.” “How is it over there?” “They lie about everything”, he said, “fuck them all, that it is good. It is not good at all here.” [laughter] I woke up. He said “They lie about everything. How can it be good over here”, he said, “it’s all bad.” I said that to his wife. She cried after that. And that was, Saint Nicholas was his patron saint, and Saint Nicholas was his patron saint, I dreamt. And later I said, I hadn’t told her for a long time, and later I told her, she cried her eyes out, I shouldn’t have … And how could I not tell her, and why did I tell her. That is what I dreamt.

[RIBARE MGiMG SDJB 2019; male interlocutor born 1952, January 2019]

[7] And the girl died [a girl from the neighborhood, she died in an accident, remarked by S. DJ. B.]. I cannot tell you precisely how many years after that, maybe two, three. I dreamt of that girl and that man [an acquaintance from the village, remarked by S. DJ. B.] in a park. And that is—I can tell you that it is the truth. […] There were a lot of benches there, and little roses, you know what those are? Roses. And mallows. White, missus. And everything was all white. And the concrete garden path. And that man sitting on a bench, there was a bench, everything. He was reading … [the interlocutor also emphasized his affinity for books and reading in the previous interview, remarked by S. DJ. B.]. And that girl was like that, she was full of life, she was going down that path like that, and skipping a bit on one leg. And she was playful, like a child. She kept going there, there. And I came there between them, they … “What are you doing, grandpa Djordje?” “What I am doing is reading, that I am, and I am yelling at this misfortunate one to sit down and rest a bit because she must have grown tired.” And he said “She won’t for the life of her, sit down next to me, to calm down.” And I dreamt of that, the two of them. And at that time, I had an apartment in Timișoara. Those white little roses, that was my happiness. You should know that, if you dream about something white, snow, little roses, that is happiness. That I took as a sign of happiness. White.

[PETROVO SELO 4 SDJ 2019; female interlocutor born 1948; September 2019]

The positive emotional coloring in the last example leads to the next type of dominant messages that the dead convey to the living: the dreams in which the dead in a certain way demonstrate their symbolical presence in the world of the living, i.e., demonstrate their knowledge about the events in concert with the life of their descendants in this world. These dreams are usually related to important family life moments (births, weddings (see example [8]) or death premonitions). Such symbolism is sometimes interwoven into the dream implicitly, marked by the time of dreaming, while in other cases, the deceased appears also as the one who possesses specific knowledge, which makes it possible for them to warn their descendants in moments of crisis (see example [9]), teach them, or bring emotional comfort (see example [10]).

[8] Well, I told you how I dreamt of my son on that very day, the wedding day [the wedding of the deceased’s daughter]. I had never dreamt of him before that day and I have not dreamt of him since. He was sitting upstairs, and there is that room upstairs. And he was sitting and he went down the stairs under my window. And he sat down, just like this, and held himself like this. And I saw him. I said “Slave, why are you sitting like that? What are you waiting for? Why are you not preparing yourself? You will be late.” And he said “I won’t be late. There is no driver, only a conductor” he said. And I woke up, I first cried, cried, and then I went to the wedding. I said, so there is something. There is some kind of force. To dream about him on the wedding day.

[GORNJI STRIZEVAC 3 SDJ, female interlocutor born 1930; June 2019]

[9] I had been dreaming of my grandfather for a long time. I dreamt several times that he was yelling at me. I could not understand what he was saying, but I knew that he was mad. And once I dreamt that he hugged me and asked “Does it hurt?” And the very next day I saw the love of my life with another woman. There is something there … I just do not know what.

(https://www.ana.rs/forum/index.php?topic=160481.0) (accessed on 6 March 2024).

[10] Milica [her daughter-in-law, remarked by S. DJ. B.] was pregnant. And she was a child, my daughter-in-law she was a child, I have told you, that was her first pregnancy. And I was upset because of her all the time. And my mother told me this in that dream. “Have you given birth to a child?” “Yes, I have. I told her.” “Do you remember how you gave birth to Sladjan [her second child, remarked by S. DJ. B.]?” I said “I do.” “She will give birth in the same way, like this.” And I gave birth to the second child easily, as if I hadn’t even gone into labor. […] And she said “Don’t worry, listen to your mother, she will give birth in the same way as you did to Sladjan. Remember how you did.” And a burden was lifted off my chest.

[TRNAVA 1 SĐ; female interlocutor born 1962, January 2024]

The deceased can appear as a helper in dreams related to everyday activities, when they give advice about daily tasks to the dreamer (usually a close relative) (example [11]), but they can also appear to the living in order to warn them of undesirable behavior. Example [12] consists of three associatively connected reduced narratives: in the first one, the late husband scolds the interlocutor for her poor household management after his death, and in the third he advises her about keeping good family relations, in particular the relationship with his sister. Between these two narratives is a narrative with a frequent motif of the deceased, who calls the living to join him/her, which will be further commented on in the final section of the paper.

[11] I dreamt, for example, about her [her late mother, remarked by S. DJ. B.]. I didn’t know how to make furrows. […] And I dreamt, she took the hoe from me and told me this “My child, like this.” And she made all the little furrows for me. She did it all, in the dream. Surely, I saw how she did it, and when I woke up in the morning, and with this neighbor, I said “Mira, I dreamt of my mother and she made furrows.” […] She said “Do it the way she told you to, just the way she did.” Since I started doing my garden the way she showed me, I have been great.

[TRNAVA 1 SĐ; female interlocutor born 1962, January 2024]

[12] Once he [deceased husband] came, and he said “Vita, how come”, he said, “every yard is full, and ours is empty?” And I said “Well, how can our yard be full now when you are not here. You are not here, and I am alone. And chicks, geese, ducks they all need food, they want to eat, and I cannot make everything.” I dreamt it the same way several times. Just like that. And another time when I dreamt of him, he said “Vita, come on, I will turn the tractor on, and we will go to grandma and grandpa.” I said “Alright, but I don’t feel like going, I don’t feel like going now, it is getting dark. You see there is no street light. No, I won’t, I won’t!” And I wouldn’t get on the tractor, and I wouldn’t go. And he got on the tractor, and he went out into the street on the tractor, but where he was about to go—no, I didn’t watch him. And so … And many times he, when I dreamt of him, he said “You should live with my sister, with my sister you should live, with your sister-in-law, my sister, your sister-in-law from Palanka, you should live with her.” And I live with everyone, but he is gone. So, it is painful … Living alone is too hard …

[DONJI STRIZEVAC 2 SDJ 2019; female interlocutor born 1937; June 2019]

5. Liminal Space Representation Conceptualization and the Role of Reduction in Communicational Channels in This Process

Given the fact that the dream space is semantically undefined, as highlighted by Yevgeny Safronov (2016, p. 75), it is impossible to define it as reality or unreality; however, for the sake of its ontological defining, it is necessary to introduce the modality of irreality because irreal modalities cannot be defined as true or false, only as possible. In principle, irreality concerning the deceased, shaped in dreams, can be interpreted as the world of the otherworldly, functioning “autonomously” (at least seemingly—it is spatially and temporally relatively undefined), closer or further from the sphere of the “otherworld” in which the dead are located: the demonic otherworldly sphere or otherworld sphere of “higher powers”—the domain of “the divine.” However, the dream realm is actually not (and cannot be) a perfect match of any of the mentioned spheres.

In the dream corpus that this analysis is based on, the markers of otherworldly space are often water, certain buildings (more often than not sacral), plants, and trees (which can be recognized as an echo of the Christian image of the original heaven—the Garden of Eden, which has much deeper roots, since it also exists in the mythologies of antiquity), and sometimes spatial organization is further explained. In the following example, this organization, i.e., space stratification, corresponds to the metempsychosis concept as a gradual process, reflecting also the conceptualization of “good” and “bad” death.9 This narrative has been noted in an interview with an interviewee whose brother committed suicide for reasons unknown to the family. In this respect, the interlocutor’s undecidedness in concert with the nature and origin of the dream is interesting. On the one hand, she emphasized several times the importance of psychological factors as dream triggers (And I was burdened because of that. […] And I was thinking about that, and why he’d killed himself, and why he’d killed himself; And I was thinking that all up, that is how I see it. That was no dream; that is what I dreamt of, then, when my brain was much burdened by that). On the other hand, beside reflecting the ideas of postmortal existence from the domain of folklore religiousness that encompass the conception of the otherworld as idyllic scenery, a place marked by lush vegetation in whose horizontal stratification water has a significant place as liminal space, there are also ideas of a different status of the deceased related to the way he died, and reminiscences about the notion of aerial tollhouses—the path of a soul (which actually in this case does not include the expected motif of obstacles). The dreamer’s brother is not positioned in the space in which the dead abide (among others, his mother) because he did not die at the moment predestined for him, which the interviewee explains by referring to, among other things, collective knowledge (Because everyone says, these elderly people have told me “They cannot, they said, be together until it is destined for him to die. He did it himself.”). Additionally, the dreamer expresses concern about what might have happened to the deceased in the otherworld after the dream, also expressing her belief in the reality of his postmortal existence in the world that she herself visited in the dream (And I woke up later, and I was worried later on, why I had to ask him in the first place. He would go to look for mother, I thought, and I asked him, that was what I was thinking. And he couldn’t swim. Now he would, I thought, set off over that water and he would drown. My brother doesn’t know how to swim. And I was thinking about that, thinking, and I was worried, worried).

[13] He’d killed himself, he said. And I was burdened by that. […] And I was thinking about that, and why he’d killed himself, and why he’d killed himself. And my mother had died perhaps some ten years before him. And I dreamt the other night, my brain was burdened by that about him and I dreamt of him. I dreamt of him, my brother. A big field. I remember that and I will remember it for as long as I live. A big field, and some trees, you know, tall, tall, green, green grass, trimmed, a plain, very nice. And I saw, my brother Lane was there. “Little brother”, I said, “well, you are here!” He said “Here.” He told me. “Here”, he said. “Well, why are you here?”, I said. “Well, I am here”, he said. “Well, have you seen our mother anywhere? Have you seen our mother”, I said, “have you meet up with her?” You know, he died, went away, so he should have met up with our mother. “I haven’t”, he said. “Do you see the water?” Honestly speaking, there was something like a sea, water was everywhere, except for the field and those trees. “I see it”, I said. “Well”, he said, “our mother is over there across that water, all the way over there. And I cannot meet up with her”, he said, “until the time comes.” He told me like that. “Until the time comes”, he said, “I cannot meet up with her.” And I woke up later, and I was worried afterward, why I had to ask him in the first place. He would go to look for our mother, and I asked him—that was what I was thinking. And he couldn’t swim. Now he would set off across that water, I thought, and he would drown. My brother didn’t know how to swim. And I was thinking about that, thinking, and I was worried, worried … But nothing happened to me after that. After some time had passed and I dreamt of him again. Then and I never dreamt of him again. I dreamt of some water, a cemetery, some tombstones, who knows what it was. And, look! He was behind a tombstone, there was a hole, and all of a sudden he came out of it, he spread out, it was my brother. I said “Little brother, there you are!” “Well, I am here”, he said. And I spoke with him there and asked him why he had caused his death “Why did you, I said, do that, why?” I asked him. And I was thinking that all up, that is how I see it. That was no dream. He said “Hush, or she will hear us.” My sister-in-law should not hear it. “She would be mad [the deceased person’s wife, remarked by S. DJ. B.] if she heard us, if she heard what he was telling me, she would be mad at both of us.” He protected her and took great care when it came to her, it was a great love, the second wife, you know how she is protected. But he left behind a four-year-old child and he killed himself, that was strange! Strange! “Hush, so she does not hear us”, and we talked our hearts out, but I forgot some of it. All of a sudden, he turned around, and I wanted to see where he would go. And then he suddenly shrank like foam, you know, and he stuck himself into that hole and went away. “Look”, I said, “at where you are, you were there, little brother.” And I turned around and left and came home. That was what I dreamt of, then, when my brain was very burdened by that. And I didn’t find out why he’d killed himself. […]

R: And when you dreamt the first dream, you knew in the dream that he was dead?

I: Yes, I knew, and I asked him … Because our mother had died before him. And in the dream, I asked him “Have you found our mother?” “I haven’t”, he said, “until the time comes.” And I understood that, I immediately interpreted that in the dream. I understood that until the time comes for him to die naturally and to go to her, let’s say. I imagined him that way. Maybe that is not connected, but I imagined that he told me that. “Until the time comes”, he said. Meaning until the time comes for him to die. They will be together then; until then they are not together. Because everyone says—these elderly people have told me—“They cannot be together”, they said, “until it is destined for him to die.” He did it himself. Meaning that “until that time has come”, he said, “I cannot until the time has come.” And I asked him. “She is over there”, he said. “He knows where she is, but he hasn’t reached her yet.” And I was worried later, why I had to ask him, now he would … I thought about all that in my dream. He would set off, I thought, now he would go looking for her and he would drown; he didn’t know how to swim. I knew that he didn’t know how to swim, I really know that he doesn’t know how to swim—didn’t know.

[RIBARE MG SĐ 2023; female interlocutor born 1952; October 2023]

The latter dream that the interlocutor associatively connects in the interview is completely different with regard to space conceptualization—the deceased appears from a hole by a tombstone at the cemetery. That space cannot be interpreted as entirely being otherworldly, but rather as liminal, given the fact that it is significantly determined by the movements of the actors: after the conversation, the deceased, undergoing metamorphosis (And then he suddenly shrank like foam, you know, and he stuck himself into that hole and went away), returns to the place he came from, and the dreamer turns around and goes home.

However, the analyzed corpus shows that the deceased are often placed in spaces that are familiar to the dreamer. Such a finding does not come as a surprise, bearing in mind that a significant portion of psychological research indicates that people most frequently dream about places, people, and events taken from real life (Bulkeley 2008, p. 94). However, familiar loci in dreams are usually more or less transformed. Safronov singles out three types of social space transformations in dreams: (1) amplification (when a familiar place gains additional attributes); (2) simplification (in which the attributes of the place are reduced); and (3) a mixing of these two types of transformation (2016, p. 81). Ana Lazareva supplements Safronov’s conclusions: she notes that spatial transformations are not only quantitative but also qualitative, and highlights that it is spatial transformations in particular that are more often than not subject to semiotization (Lazareva 2020, p. 55).

In dream narratives about the dead, the dream space is more often than not shaped as the space of “the encounter of the two worlds”, fitting in the said dream conception as the “communicational corridor.” Such an image is reflected in the appearance of the deceased (or meeting up with them) at places traditionally coded as liminal spaces—wild (water, pits, forests, cemetery, hills, etc.)10 or domestic (with the following opposites playing an important in semantization: in the dwelling/outside the dwelling, in the house/outside the house, in the yard/outside the yard, at the threshold, at the gate, etc.). Therefore, in example [2.1], the interviewee insists in particular on the fact that the space she dreamed of was exactly the same as the one she remembered from her childhood, the space of her birth house and the yard (Where I was born, how can I put it, a house. It was a small house. I never entered the house, in dreams. So, I was always in the yard, in which there was a garden in front. I always that dream, it had repeated itself several times. So, that yard, that house, because some things are connected to that place), but a pear tree appears in this space (which also has chthonic symbolism in Serbian cultural tradition). Furthermore, there is also spatial inversion: the house is the space in which the dead dwell and the dreamer does not enter it (That table is engraved in my memory. That was all happening in the house where I was born. I used to walk around it. I could see … Now, that I never understood. I didn’t walk into the house to see the table, but when the house was open, I saw that table. Without entering the house!). It is interesting to note that in this context, in Serbian folklore (in particular in laments), the house appears as a metaphor of non-space, and consequently death (Pešikan Ljuštanović 2014, p. 15; for epic poetry, see Detelić and Delić 2014). Various contextual details make the path to the private home space “passable” for the deceased in dreams, e.g., indirect relatedness to the funerary rituals complex (dreaming about the deceased at the ritual table at home, immediately after the ritual dedication of food on the day devoted to the dead in example [3]).

Inverted behavior is also included in some cases—anti-behavior (cf. Delić 2019, p. 353) conceptualization of the otherworldly idea, which is also typical of ritual behavior in general. So, in example [2.1], the interlocutor emphasizes that her mother behaved in a way opposite to how she had in reality, which caused particular emotional unrest: And she placed on that table potatoes, peppers, some fruit, the table was full. I was bothered by that because our mom had never done that in real life … To put everything on the table, it had never happened. In example [8], there is mention of a bus without a driver, and tables covered with blankets instead of sheets in example [14]. In spatial stratification, horizontal indentation dominates the vertical, with the dominant horizontal movement, which concurs with the findings related to folklore narratives about the otherworldly visit (eschatological memorate, Radulović 2019, p. 76).

Some of the features of communication between the living and the dead in dreams especially contribute to the conceptualization of liminal space. The reflections of taboo beliefs about verbal communication with the dead are registered (e.g.: They say they are not allowed to talk to us … God will know …, example [15]), which can be regarded as part of a wider code dominating the “encounter of the worlds”, which are also attested, for example, by certain demonological belief narratives (the prohibition of verbal communication with demonic beings, as a type of protection). Taboos are also related to the beliefs about the concept of asking of/giving to (the deceased), which can also be interpreted as a type of limitation of the visual elements of dreams, or, more precisely, the direct exchange between this world and the otherworld, which is perceived as undesirable and dangerous. In example [2.1], the limitation of the visual elements of dreams is particularly emphasized and is subsequently explained as the lack of blood relatedness between the dreamer and the deceased. In example [12], the interlocutor highlights that she did not even look in the direction in which her late husband left after she had refused to join him (And he got on the tractor, and he went out into the street on the tractor, but where he was about to go no—I didn’t watch him). The visual aspect is sometimes missing from the dreams in which the accent is on the deceased person’s verbal message. Although it probably exists in the dream itself, the dreamer evidently does not perceive it as particularly relevant. Equivalent to the limitedness of communication is the impossibility of the dreamer carrying out the desired actions in otherworldly space. In the following narrative, which features swift changes in scenography (a road, an abyss, the appearance of a mass of people in an undefined space, a church), the dreamer explicitly receives the message that this is a space in which it is impossible to light a candle, by which it is clearly marked as the one not belonging to this world (You should, she said, keep standing here, you cannot light candles here).

[14] One night I dreamt that my man came; my mother- and father-in-law were there, and he came. And I asked him something, he was silent. And my mother-in-law was sitting like that. And she was sitting like that, there was a path, and there was, heaven forbid, an abyss. And my mother-in-law was sitting there. And I told her that she should not sit there, that she would fall. And I pulled her, you know, and they all disappeared, there was no one around. I was alone. Some people, I don’t know, unknown people, and two women came. And I asked them, that was something like a slava,11 should I go. They set the tables. And I looked at them, and said “My goodness, people, you should put some plastic cover or tablecloths on these tables. How can we eat when there is a blanket here!” And those women were standing there, and they were going to go into the church. I asked them what kind of a church it was, where to enter it. And two women invited me, I tell you, I went with them. There were no stairs but that other, like that, like that flat thing. “How should I climb that?” I asked them. “Go on, go on, you.” I went inside. “And where should I light candles?” I said. “You should keep standing here”, she said, “you cannot light candles here.” And I went back. And I woke up. Now, what that is, what kind of a church it was and what that was—I cannot explain what it was …

[KAONIK V SDJB 2019; female interlocutor born 1952; January 2019]

In some examples, communication is thwarted, i.e., in a relatively obvious way avoided, by the deceased themselves.

[15] I dreamt of him. We were somewhere, on some mountain, and I went to him, and when we met, we didn’t come close to each other, I watched the road behind him. He left, but I never spoke with him … They say they were not allowed to talk to us … God know why…

[LANGOVET 6 SDJ 2019; female interlocutor born 1941; June 2019]

[16] Then, I dreamt that it was a wedding, some ceremonial occasion, and my late grandfather was there, who had died five or six years earlier, and who I had been extremely close to … I dreamt that he’d put on a nice suit, a red rose on the lapel, he was walking in the yard … And I ran happily to him, I started crying tears of joy, and he turned around, gave me a despondent look and pushed me away. And then I woke up crying, because it was a dreadful feeling.

(https://www.ana.rs/forum/index.php?topic=160481.0) (accessed on 6 March 2024).

In dreams about the deceased, which the dreamer perceives as the call of the dead, what is in concert with is not just the liminal space and the taboos that emphasize such liminality, but the representation of the dream itself as a potential contact danger zone. The following narrative reflects the notion of the deceased relatives or acquaintances as guides to the otherworld (psychopomps), and the notion of traveling as passing through a tunnel cannot be overlooked, which is reminiscent of the descriptions of the transition from one dimension to another in contemporary NDE narratives (the same concept has been noted in some traditional Serbian and Christian representations close to narrations about seeing the otherworld, see Radulović 2019, p. 87). The other associatively connected narrative is a mediated testimony of the vision that indicates that the conceptualization of time in this world and the otherworld is not the same (in concert with this topic based on the analysis of the Serbian fieldwork material, from a comparative perspective, see in more detail in Delić 2019, pp. 354–59; Radulović 2019, p. 77): the mother sees her deceased children in the vision as changed from her image of them (I have seen them, I have seen my children there, they have changed).

[17] R: And tell me, to ask this first, before someone dies, do they dream about something, how they will die? Is there a sign, a premonition?

I: Well, there is, for those who are very ill there is. There is, they dream about the ones who died before them, either their mother or father, they come, they call them. They open the door for them.

R: What does that mean?

I: Well, they call out. They say “I dreamt that my mother came under my window last night and she said ‘Come, my son, come!’—And she called me to go there, and it was dark, dark. There were some tunnels, but I didn’t want to go. But she would take me away. they said ‘She won’t, she won’t!’ Well, how she won’t. She will take me away because she has started coming to me.” Or to some woman whose children had died young and she saw them, she started seeing them. And she started telling other people in her household “I have seen them, I have seen my children there, they have changed, they are waiting for me, they cried ‘Mom, come on, when are you going to come to us?’”

[RADOVNICA SDJ 2019, male interlocutor born 1961, 2019]

Such dream narratives often insist on emotional reactions upon waking up, when the dreamers have an intense feeling of fear or discomfort, or some kind of resignation about what is expected and imminent. The absence of fear after the call of the dead is registered quite often in the narratives of elderly interlocutors, or in general of the interlocutors who feel prepared for death, the ones whose life circumstances naturally lead toward thoughts of death as the future meeting with the deceased who were close to them (in example [18], the female interlocutor lives alone; her daughter and husband died a long time ago). The dreams in which the deceased were not close to the dreamer in their lifetime often (but not exclusively) cause intense fear (Razumova (2001, p. 117) comes to the same conclusions in her research on family folklore).

[18] And my daughter comes, but she never speaks to me. She is quiet, and nudges me to come into her room … In dreams. And my man [her deceased husband, remarked by S. DJ. B.], he calls me “Come on, grandma!” He calls to me like that …

[KAMBELEVAC 1 SDJ 2019; female interlocutor born 1933; June 2019]

[19] No, it is not good when a dead man is calling you there, when they are asking something of you … It is not good. Don’t give anything. Remember that you should not give anything.

[SIOKOVAC 1 SDJ 2023; female interlocutor born 1960; December 2023]

6. Conclusions

In the narratological approach to communication, Wolf Schmid (2010, pp. 34–35) differentiates two main levels of communication: authorial, which is related to the concrete communicational situation or the author’s voice in a literary work, and narrative, which is related to communication in the narrative. The third and all the other levels are related to the communicational events taking place within the potentially existent stories within stories. Having in mind this classification, it is clear that up until the present, this has dominantly been the third, inner level of communication (simultaneously, it is interesting to note that the dreamer, even when they are not the direct addressee in communication, interpret the said, seen, or experienced in the dream as a message sent to them in particular). In this sense, dreams about the deceased can be divided into the following types: (1) dreams about “the unappeased deceased” (who lack something in the otherworld, usually connected to an omission of the living regarding funerary rituals); (2) dreams in which the deceased show the otherworld and give verbal estimations of it; (3) dreams in which the deceased convey information of their departure or final transition into the world of the dead; (4) dreams in which the deceased demonstrate their presence in the world of the living, i.e., give pieces of information from the sphere of the dreamer’s social reality; (5) dreams in which the deceased convey their messages, advice, or warnings to the living; and (6) dreams interpreted as the deceased person’s call to the dreamer to join them in the otherworld.

For the question posed in the title, however, it is pertinent to turn to the level of authorial communication, i.e., the situations in which dream narratives are communicated.

Research conducted in the past several decades in a number of European cultures, mentioned in the opening segment of this paper, confirms that narratives about the deceased can be transferred by all community members. Narrating such content is related also to everyday private (and especially family) communication, as well as to the contexts that could be labeled as ritualized. Thus, Safronov pinpoints the importance of narrating dreams about the deceased within the scope of funerary rituals (Safronov 2016, pp. 226–35),12 while Irina Razumova highlights their importance within the framework of family folklore.

Dreams showcase the possibility of communication between friends and family in the virtual space, revealing the true meaning of what is happening, fulfilling prognostic and normative functions using a visual code language, which is supplemented by the emotional and psychological, making them a particularly significant form of family unity demonstration (Razumova 2001, p. 105).

Besides ritual and ritualized functions, narrating dreams about the deceased has an emotional and a social function: translating the dream into a narrative is necessary for the communication of the dreamers among themselves, as well as for the communication of the given dream within the community (Hasan-Rokem 1999, p. 214). Therefore, narrating dreams is seen as an important social interaction element (Wax 2004, pp. 84–92) with the aim of creating and confirming sociocultural relations (Vann and Alperstein 2000, p. 113).

Since dreams also reflect social reality (Fine and Fischer Leighton 1993, p. 95), as they are private experiences and collective narratives (Stewart 1997, p. 878), the functioning of dream narration always fits into the cultural codes of the community, and in the case of dreams about the deceased, in the conceptualization of the otherworldly, the taboo system, and the understanding of the cult of the dead in general. In some cases, even in an induced narrative situation such as a folkloristic interview, one of the functions of such narration can be registered relatively clearly—knowledge transfer related to the dreaming culture code (when the interviewee takes up the position of an authority and a teacher in regard to the researcher, e.g., Prophetic dreams are the ones that keep reoccurring until you realize where you are making a mistake. You should know that! [2.1]; No, it is not good when a dead man is calling you there, when they are asking something of you … It is not good. Don’t give anything. Remember that you should not give anything [19]; You should know that, if you dream about something white, snow, little roses, that is happiness [7]). Such pieces of knowledge reflect the cognitive, ethical, and emotional dispositions of a community, spontaneously reproducing the image of the other reality and the otherworldly, and taking part in its constant (re)shaping in accordance with individual perceptions. Examined from this perspective, dreams about the deceased are ambivalent, since they are interpreted on the one hand as an important means of communication between this and the other world, and on the other hand through the ideas on which they are based and which they further transfer: they are part of the narrative strategies of the boundaries between these two worlds’ conceptualization.