I heard this one as a kid. Anyone have any idea where it came from?

It has been around forever I am not sure where though...when I was a kid...it isnt true. I have died plenty of times in dreams.

one of those urban legends, like when you have a dream that you are falling.. if you hit the ground you will die

It isn't true. Ask any scientist (sleep researcher or no), any psychologist, any person who has had a tramatic experience, or ask me.
I have died (in my dreams) many ways:
Kicked in the face by a pony (hey, it almost happened the next day...)
Car Crash
Bullet
Airplane crash
drowning
asphyxiation (suffocation)
poison
fire
et cetera (and the rest)

Yeah, I die all the time!
And you also die, thousands of times every month, you just don't know it. Your mind takes you through a training course of instict every night. Sleep up, and prepare to die (lol)
You may never have a near death experience, but you will be preping for one for your entire life.

Wow you do die a lot. Do you feel pain in your dreams? Because I remember that when I get shot in my dreams, I feel some pain. It would suck to experience suffocation and fire.

This subject interests me...

Since I was a young girl I remember dying in my dreams.

When I was about 12 I had a dream I died by leathal injection for a crime I didn't commit. I remember yelling for my mom and the just pettering out as everything went black.

I've died in tornados so many time I can't count.

I had a dream two years ago that my husband-to-be shot and killed me with a fire arm.

When I fall in my dreams, sometime I hit the ground and die.

Recently I've been killed by zombie attacks at least twice and once saw my own head ripped from my body.

Weird eh?

how many dead people answered that question?

lol. I have never died in a dream. OH, and Donmar, what do you mean by this?:

I think I might understand it, but I would like to know the meaning without guessing.

It's not true, but it used to terrify me as a little kid.

An episode of the 'Twilight Zone' followed a man who fought off sleep because his death was waiting for him as soon as he slept. Another man, maybe his shrink convinced him it was in his head.
It ended with him falling asleep and died.

As a kid I remembered being scared to fall asleep because of that.

Wes Craven claims that he wrote the original Nightmare on Elmstreet based on these articles he read in newspapers about teens who had such terrifying nightmares they would cut off their own eyelids so they wouldn't sleep and one had even died from a heart attack in his sleep after telling his parents how terrible his nightmares were and was scared of falling asleep. If these articles were real or not who knows.

Well, I was in Hell in one of my dreams. Does that count?

I have never, EVER, had a death in a dream even though I have been close to it, I never got to that point where I loose my life. This is a perfect example wich I quoted above, many times I have dreamt of falling from a building, and it's always the same building, but I wake up before just before hitting the ground, in the last second.

An old wives tale!

I actually die in a lot of my dreams for whatever reason..

A few months ago I had a dream where I actually died but didn't wake up from the dream immediately, I kind of zoomed out and saw my own death, then when I woke up I guess I was in sleep paralysis or something but I was in this weird environment. Well, that faded away in a few minutes and I realized I was in my bed, but for a second there I thought I had actually died .

But other than a change of your mental state, a dream has no effect on reality.

I have never died in my dreams although I have had close calls.

From what I remember it was a Cambodian family that moved to The States and it was their teenage son that died... I can't help you with a link though (check out Wes Craven)

There have been reports of people dying in their sleeps, and reports that they had had problems with nigh terrors and things. But we can't really ask them if they died in their dream, now can we? lol. I think alot of it probably has to do with sleep apnea and I've heard that night terrors have been blamed for some deaths, though I'm sure no one could ever really prove it. Like I said, I think alot of it has to do with sleep apnea. I've known a couple of people that suffered from this, and they seemed like they suffered from night terrors at the same time. They would have these experiences where they would wake up terrified, as if from a nightmare, and gasping for breath. One, who was an old boss of mine, had a father who died from sleep apnea, and he recognized the symptoms right away. The other was an old friend of mine, and it took her a while before she got diagnosed. She used to always talk about being terrified that she would die in her dreams and, in turn, die in real life. I never asked why she felt this, but she was always complaining of terrible nightmares, even though she never knew what they were. They say night terrors are usually found in children, but adults get them too. I haven't known anyone else with sleep apnea, so I don't know if the nightmare thing really fits in with all of them. Maybe, because the body stops breathing, the body sends signals to the brain of distress, which would cause the person to wake up feeling frightened and disoriented. Course, I'm most certainly not an expert on that subject.

Edit: I have died in my dreams plenty of times. I feel something, although I can probably say in all honesty that its not the pain that I would ACTUALLY feel if some of this stuff REALLY happened to me. Usually, when I have a "dying dream", I have the dream over and over again until I live or force myself to wake up before I die. It's really annoying. Thankfully, I've become a master of waking myself up. It's actually pretty easy. I just keep saying "This is a DREAM" and it sort of melts away. Oddly enough, I still haven't been able to actually, consciously, have a lucid dream. I only ever get any control at certain points during nightmares. Again, really annoying.

when ever i have a dream im falling i always wake up before i hit the ground

Ive died many times in my dreams.
death by fire
death by falling
death by drowning
death by lethal injections
death by chickens
death by zombies
death by robots
death by car (or plane) crash

i remember getting shot twice in the back by a robber in a dream i had. i remember closing my eyes like i was dying but then i woke up.

I have been beheaded in one of my dreams. I even watched, in this very dream - I was now a disembodied being, whilst my body was cleared up, all the people watching the beheading via a guillotine etc etc.

I am still here. Personally, I do not believe that you can die in real life because you died in a dream.

While napping this afternoon, I dreamed I died while posti

Its a fun urban legend to scare kids, but its false. I die all the time in dreams. Purposefully, I might add.

I wanted to test this out when I was younger(17).. so I killed one of my friends in a lucid dream to see if he'd die. I know that sounds alittle mean but I was pretty sure he wouldnt. So I was walking next to him in this dream.. and I went lucid and found myself holding a big knife.. so I did this very quick move and cut his throat. It was really horrible and he bled everywhere and just looked at me with this horrified look. I told him the next day and he wasnt too happy about it. lol. He gave me a weird look(violated), and I told him at least we know now that you cant die in dreams!

I've died a few times too in dreams... its weird.

I've died several times in one single dream. I died repeatedly of electrocution, I was in a jeffries tube on the starship Enterprise and these little darts came out of the ceiling and stuck in my chest and zapped me and i felt my heart stop.

Is he still your friend?

lol. Nah I dont really have any friends. Go figure eh.

lol.. Nah he was cool with it... like everyone knew I was into lucid dreaming and trying out new things in dreams.. so it wasnt too surprising. I told him and laughed about it.. and others laughed.. and he just gave me a weird look. lol I mean it was kinda funny... but he wasnt sure how to take it and that was what was funny. Still makes me laugh.

Wow. How did chickens manage to kill you?

I remember once I had a dream I got shot in the head for trying to run away from this summer camp thing, and when I woke up I had a horrible headache

Heh, I don't even know how to control myself in my dreams, let alone getting myself killed. However, I remember I got shot and died but I saw it from a third person view in my dream.

I also Died in my dreams But..In crazy ways o.o

-first Dream death: Falling of a Waterfall

But when I had that dream, I didn't Fall and Bam Everything went black and I got a Diffrent dream ( I twitched When The Boat I was on Fell)

- I just suddenly died o.o in my dreams

- I had a 2nd Dream (I didn't Die in this one) but I had one of those Sleeping-Awake Dreams. I saw The Grim reaper in my dream and I was About to scream but I was as stiff as a Board.

That's Pretty much all I can say

A nightmare on elm street

Not even. The belief, or urban legend, has been around far longer than that.

Unprovable

Huh. I've never heard that one.

oh geeze dreams are one of two things some people think that it is just your imagination running wild others thing it is your higher self telling you someting in code if you die it usually means that something in your life died like a bad habbit your self essteme or something and rebirth must take place

Whether it was original with him, I don't know, but the root idea is "You cannot die in your dreams" (which implies the conditional that is the title of this thread), and the idea has currency because of Freud. Its truth depends upon the "fine print" of what he meant by to die in your dreams.

Freud's point was that you cannot quite both accurately imagine your own non-existence and also be aware that you are accurately imagining your own non-existence (just as you cannot be conscious of complying with the request "do not think of apples").

So, you get something like the earlier poster's "I remember I got shot and died but I saw it from a third person view in my dream." A big but, no?

Freud was surely aware of the Attending Your Own Funeral dream - it is a perennial favorite - but again, the essential you has not died, on the contrary you are taking in the show, enjoying your role as guest of honor.

First person viewpoint dreams of accomplishing the transition to death are rare, but people imagine what it would be like to die this way or that way all the time when awake, often vividly. Anything you can think, you can dream. Dreams are, after all, thoughts.

It's just that most death-dreaming people wake up, since we are usually "nearly" awake anyway when we dream, and Cheating Death is the best dream of all, ours for the taking on such an occasion. Only a chump would stay in the dream.

But if you do choose to continue dreaming, then you are back to Freud's point: you didn't die.

Heads, Freud wins. Tails, Freud doesn't lose. This is why everybody thinks he was a smart guy.

false i have died in my dreams many times and im still typing. so either im a ghost of its false.

There are on occasions where I am about to die within a dream, though I always wake up just before it happens. It generally happened alotmore when I was younger, maybe it was caused by stress or just having a colourful imagination. I sometimes find that my dreams involve many things that I had been subconsciously thinking about during that day.

I dont get these anymore but most of my dreams included:

Being chased and stabbed by a dark figure, this can also include animals, vicious/rabid dogs trying to take my arm off.
Drowning/sinking in deep water - Just as I am about to give up I suddenly take a breathe and realise I can breath underwater.
Falling - Slipping uncontrollably from a high place or being in an elevator, it shoots up and out the top of the building.
Being shot - When I am shot or stabbed I sometimes find that I do not die, but am infact invincible. I mock my attacker by laughing at them.
Being crushed - Suffocation or crushing by large machinery, being in like an egyptian pyramid, crushed by booby-trapped walls.

I have also been told I have once laughed in my sleep.. I do actually remember laughing within the dream, and it just hapened to come out physically.

I've sometimes kicked my legs very suddenly and woken myself up - I have actually read that when you go to sleep you can on occasion swallow your tongue. You stop breathing and after a while you subconciously kick out and wake yourself up. If you are dreaming about drowning or suffocation, maybe thats why!

in my dreams i never died before , sometimes like when i fell from somewhere but when comes near the ground the i'll wake up

it could be a possibilty that that someone had a heart attack during a dream but who knows?

I don't think I have ever died in a dream. Good for me.

I do have sleep apnea, but am not plagued with nightmares.

I asked this doctor he said its half true have false if you die in your dream and your brain will sometimes but very rarely just stop working and then your body will die because your brain stopped

I have been shot in a dream and felt myself die. I was in horrible pain from the wound, everything faded to black, then I woke up. I had a lingering pain in the spot where I received the gunshot for several hours afterward. Thankfully that was the only time that happened to me...once was enough.

i did dream of something attaking me....
insane chase of like 15 min until he runs over me with a snowmobile......
but the thing is that i alwais try to kill in my dreams but i cant.....
anoys me alot.

Well, I don't believe this can possible happen but I do believe that a very strong impact or any sort of that in your dream can effect you physically to some extent.

When we dream our body becomes paralyzed which means that our body cannot move no matter what you do, its so because in our dreams we move our hands,feet etc which shows up in real world also but since we are paralyzed our body remains still. Experiencing this paralyzed state consciously can be a frightening experience. And I think if by any chance, our body is not paralyzed and we experience a strong impact or blow it can seriously affect us in real world, might even kill us. But its really far fetched. What do you think ppl?

like people have said before if you die in adream you do not die in real life. I died in one of my dreams last night and I'm still here

I heard that you can't actually die from your dreams whilst your actually asleep. But your dreams can ad to the cause of your death:

For example:

If your dreaming that your head is about to be chopped off, and then, someone, comes and taps you on the neck (to wake you up) right at that critical point in your dream, then you can die from from the fright of thinking your head was literally being cut off at the neck... Does that make sense?!?!!?

I don't think its true. I heard that if you are falling in your dream and you actually hit the ground you die. I don't think its true though. But when im falling in my dreams i usually wake up before i hit the ground.