- A dream about aliens is read in modern dream books as the unfamiliar entering your life: a stranger, a new idea, or the feeling of not belonging where you are.
- Miller (1901) has no entry for extraterrestrials; his word alien meant a foreigner, and he reads dreaming you are an alien as abiding friendships and a pleasing stranger as good health.
- Psychology reads aliens as parts of the self or of one's situation that feel foreign, and alien abduction as loss of control over one's body or life.
- Research shows that reports of alien abduction are strongly associated with sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations, which occur in a large minority of people at least once.
- Dream interpretation is a tradition of reading symbols; it does not predict events.
What does it mean to dream about aliens?
Aliens in the extraterrestrial sense are too new for the old dream books. Miller (1901) uses the word only in its older meaning of foreigner: to dream of a stranger pleasing you denotes good health and pleasant surroundings, a displeasing stranger disappointments, and to dream you are an alien denotes abiding friendships. Twentieth-century dream dictionaries took the new image and read it by the same logic as the stranger. Aliens arriving mean something unfamiliar entering your life, a new person, idea or technology; friendly aliens mean help from an unexpected quarter; hostile aliens mean fear of outsiders or of change; being abducted means being carried off by circumstances you do not control; being an alien yourself means feeling out of place among your own people.
Three ways to read a dream about aliens
| Reading | Who says it | What the dream is taken to mean | Based on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dream books | Folk tradition, Miller (1901) | Aliens in the extraterrestrial sense are too new for the old dream books. Miller (1901) uses the word only in its older meaning of foreigner: to dream of a stranger pleasing you denotes good health and pleasant surroundings, a displeasing stranger disappointments, and to dream you are an alien denotes abiding friendships. Twentieth-century dream dictionaries took the new image and read it by the same logic as the stranger. Aliens arriving mean something unfamiliar entering your life, a new person, idea or technology; friendly aliens mean help from an unexpected quarter; hostile aliens mean fear of outsiders or of change; being abducted means being carried off by circumstances you do not control; being an alien yourself means feeling out of place among your own people. | Custom |
| Psychology | Freud, Jung and later authors | Psychology reads the alien as the most complete image of the foreign: what is inside us or around us that we cannot yet recognise as ours. Jungian writers treat aliens as shadow figures dressed in the language of the age, carrying the qualities the dreamer has disowned, or as pictures of the unconscious itself, vast and indifferent. Dreams of being an alien among humans often accompany periods of social displacement, moving, immigrating, coming out or changing class. Abduction dreams, being taken, examined and unable to move, picture loss of bodily and personal autonomy, and often appear during medical treatment or in relationships where the dreamer feels handled. Friendly contact with aliens can picture an opening to unfamiliar ideas. The dreamer can ask what has recently arrived in their life that they cannot place. | Clinical interpretation |
| Sleep research | Sleep laboratories, surveys | Sleep research has studied alien imagery more than most dream themes because of abduction reports. Studies find that people who report abduction experiences show high rates of sleep paralysis with hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations: waking with the body still in REM atonia, sensing a presence, seeing figures, feeling pressure or being touched. Sleep paralysis occurs at least once in a large minority of the population, and its imagery follows culture, so where earlier generations saw demons or witches, modern sleepers may see aliens. Ordinary dreams of aliens are rare in content-analysis samples and rise after films or news about space, which fits the continuity hypothesis. Bizarre and impossible content is a normal feature of REM dreaming. | Measurements and surveys |
Aliens in the dream books
What each source says, in its own terms. Dream books are quoted as tradition, not as fact.
Miller's alien is a foreigner, not an extraterrestrial: to dream of a stranger pleasing you denotes good health and pleasant surroundings, a displeasing stranger disappointments, and to dream you are an alien denotes abiding friendships.
Aliens arriving mean the unfamiliar entering your life; friendly aliens help from an unexpected quarter; hostile aliens fear of outsiders or change; abduction being carried off by circumstances; being an alien yourself feeling out of place.
Figures that are utterly foreign to the dreamer picture contents of the unconscious not yet recognised as one's own; the modern mind clothes them in the images of its age.
Aliens dream meaning, by variation
The details change the reading.
| In the dream | Traditional reading | Psychological reading |
|---|---|---|
| Being abducted by aliens | Carried off by circumstances beyond your control. | Loss of bodily or personal autonomy; often tied to sleep paralysis imagery. |
| Friendly aliens | Help from an unexpected quarter; Miller's pleasing stranger is good health. | Openness to unfamiliar ideas; a foreign part of yourself becoming an ally. |
| Hostile aliens invading | Fear of outsiders or of a coming change. | Feeling that something alien is taking over your life, a job, a diagnosis, a technology. |
| Being an alien yourself | Miller: abiding friendships; folk books, feeling out of place. | Social displacement; not belonging among your own people. |
| A UFO in the sky | News from afar; a strange event. | An idea or possibility hovering that you cannot yet name. |
| Talking with aliens | Understanding reached with a stranger. | Dialogue with the unconscious; making sense of something foreign. |
| Aliens examining you | Being judged by strangers. | Feeling handled or scrutinised; common during medical treatment. |
| The end of the world by aliens | A great upheaval feared. | Anxiety about change on a scale you cannot influence. |
When in the night do such dreams happen?
Vivid, story-like dreams happen mostly in REM sleep. REM periods are short early in the night and get longer toward morning, which is why a dream like this is often the last thing before waking.
Spiritual meaning of aliens in a dream
Spiritual writers read aliens as messengers from a wider consciousness, a modern form of the angel or spirit visitor, and read contact dreams as an invitation to expand one's view of what is possible. Some read abduction as an initiation, a forced encounter with the unknown that changes the dreamer, while others read hostile aliens as a warning against influences that do not belong to the dreamer's path. They advise the dreamer to notice whether the encounter felt like fear or awe, and to treat awe as the more useful clue.
What has recently arrived in my life that I cannot place or do not recognise as mine?
Where do I feel out of place among people who should be my own?
Did I wake unable to move, and might sleep paralysis have shaped the dream?
Questions people ask
What does it mean to dream about aliens?
Modern dream books read aliens as the unfamiliar entering your life or as feeling foreign yourself. Miller's alien meant a foreigner and reads as abiding friendships. Psychology reads aliens as disowned parts of the self. Research links abduction imagery to sleep paralysis.
Is dreaming about aliens a bad sign?
No tradition reads it as an omen with any weight, and there is no evidence that dreams predict events. Alien dreams reflect how you feel about change, outsiders and belonging; hostile aliens usually accompany a stressful change.
What does it mean to be abducted by aliens in a dream?
Folk books read it as being carried off by circumstances. Psychology reads it as loss of autonomy over your body or life. Research finds abduction imagery strongly tied to sleep paralysis, in which the sleeper wakes unable to move and senses a presence.
Why did the alien dream feel so real?
If you woke unable to move, with a presence in the room, that is sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucination, which occurs at least once in a large minority of people. Its imagery follows culture, so modern sleepers see aliens where earlier ones saw demons.
What does it mean to dream I am an alien?
Miller reads dreaming you are an alien, meaning a foreigner, as abiding friendships. Modern books and psychology read it as feeling out of place among your own people, common after moving, immigrating or changing social worlds.
What do friendly aliens mean in a dream?
Folk books read them as help from an unexpected quarter. Psychology reads friendly contact as openness to unfamiliar ideas, or a foreign part of yourself becoming an ally; spiritual writers read it as an invitation to widen your view.
- Miller G. H. Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted, 1901
- Jung C. G. Man and His Symbols, 1964
- Hall C. S., Van de Castle R. L. The Content Analysis of Dreams, 1966
- Schredl M. Dream content analysis: basic principles. International Journal of Dream Research, 2010
- Folk dream books
Each symbol page sets three readings side by side and names where each one comes from. Dream books are quoted as tradition. Last reviewed on the date in the header.