“You aren’t able to die in your dreams, so if you dream that you’re dead then you are actually dead”

The informant said that he heard this growing up, and so of course he developed this fear about having a dream that he was dead. He probably did at some point, whether he remembers or not, but regardless he thought this was a fact for much of his childhood. I found this belief strange, but the more I thought about it I realized in most of the nightmares I can remember I was trying to escape death or run away from something, but I had never actually died in a dream (that I can remember). This belief shows the interest we have in dreams as a society. We often try to interpret them or analyze them to get answers, so it makes sense that they would also indicate our demise.