ANIMAL DREAMS dream meaning

To dream of a flying bat means an impending catastrophe (not infrequently from water), but not necessarily to the dreamer. To dream of a motionless bat means some impending illness of a more or less serious nature, but not necessarily of the dreamer. If, however, the sleeper dreams the bat settles on him, then he himself will be the sufferer either from some physical injury or from some grievous sickness. To exemplify my theory that bats portend disaster in a greater or a less degree, I will quote a few cases I have collected for that purpose. A lady, whom I will designate Miss Spenser, once dreamed she was crossing a hayfield when she heard a loud buzzing overhead, and, on looking up, perceived a number of bats some feet above her, engaged in whirling round and round in a state of hopeless chaos and confusion. Presently they swooped down, swirled round and round her face, though never near enough to touch her, and whilst they were still swirling, she awoke. A day or two afterwards, her favourite sister was drowned in Lake Lucerne. A Major Roper: writing to me some time ago from India, said: Here is an experience that may be useful to you in compiling your work on dreams. I have twice dreamed of bats, and on each occasion the dream has been followed by a calamity. In the first instance, I thought I was sitting in my bedroom in my old home in Bedford (I am an old B.G.S. boy), when six bats, one after the other, flew in at the window, and, after whizzing round the room, vanished in the marvellous fashion that seems so natural in a dream. The next day I had a cablegram from England to say my brother was drowned while bathing in the sea.”The other dream, which occurred only last year, was to this effect: I was riding outside an omnibus in London when a bat suddenly flew past me. All my fellow-passengers cried out in a chorus, ‘How remarkable! A bat!’ and I awoke actually repeating those words. I was so impressed that I jotted down the dream in my memorandum book. Exactly a week later, I received tidings of my father’s death: he had been thrown from a trap, whilst descending a steep hill near Dublin, and killed on the spot. “In reference to motionless bats, a lady informed me, that one night she dreamed her counterpane was covered with bats, and bats being her pet aversion, she was so terrified that she immediately awoke, to find her whole body bathed in perspiration. The following day, she learned that an aunt to whom she was greatly attached had been taken seriously ill, and within the week she received the news that her aunt was dead.Another lady once dreamed she saw her youngest sister lying on the grass, apparently asleep, with two bats on her face. With a cry of dismay, for she loathed bats, my friend picked up a spade, the first thing that came to hand, to knock them off, when the scene changed, and she found herself digging a grave! She awoke in terror, and two days later heard of the death of her youngest sister, who had succumbed under an operation for appendicitis.Writing to me from Gipsy Hill, Norwood, a lady said: My sister Mabel once dreamed a bat settled on her shoulder, and she could not get it off. She awoke in a great fright, she told me, and she could not help feeling that the dream prognosticated something unpleasant. Her presentiment, unhappily, was only too correct, for shortly afterwards she caught a severe chill which terminated in a fatal attack of pneumonia.