Or so my neuroscience professor told me about five years ago. I hope he's correct, because I had a rather strange and haunting dream last night.
My wife (I'm not married) got off the phone hysterical and told me that my father had killed my mother (they're no longer married.) That was alarming, since my father would never do that, but in the back of my dreaming mind, I knew his mental state was heavily deteriorating (it has been slowly deteriorating for years, but he's not currently bad off.) When I saw my sister, she was also hysterical and all she could tell me was that our dad had killed our mom. Somehow we shifted from her house to the house we grew up in (the one I am currently living in). I lost my sister briefly, but then headed into our parent's old bedroom to ask her exactly what had happened. She told me, speaking in my head as I moved forward, that my dad had shot my mom and that he was laying in bed with her body asking, "Isn't your mother beautiful sleeping like that?" As I finally entered my parent's old bedroom, my sister was laying in bed with my mom, whose eyes were wide open, and it was obvious she was dead because of the empty stare and blood all over the sheets. Luckily, by this time I had figured out I was dreaming, but it was still rather strange.
I don't normally have dreams like this.