Real Dream Locales

I track how often I dream of three specific locales:

1. My grandparents’ house
2. The apartment complex I lived in as a kid in Georgia
3. The College Town, which is usually a mix of features from Lincoln, NE and Corvallis, OR

I track airports and grocery stores, too, but those can be more variable. The places on this list are very clearly drawing from real life and, I assume, symbolize something important to my subconscious.

My grandparents bought their house in the 1960s, and lived there for my entire life. Grandpa was in the process of moving into assisted living when he died in 2020. It is a house I know very well, one I can picture easily. I can hear the creak of the screen door that leads to the kitchen; smell the coffee that permeates the kitchen; picture Grandma’s bedroom with her pop up books; picture Grandpa’s John Wayne lamp in the living room.

Sometimes in my dreams, the house is “normal,” and looks as it did when I knew it. Often I am meeting/speaking with family members. But sometimes the house is subject to dream architecture, often a greatly enlarged second floor.

When I was very little, still living in Wisconsin, Mom and I visited my grandparents at least once a week. In first grade, I spent every Friday night with them because my parents worked. But we moved when I was 9, and visits became quite infrequent. The last time I was inside the house was 2009, when my mom died, and the last time I saw its exterior was 2017. Still, it looms large in my memories and dreams.

So I wondered: how often to I actually dream about that house?

	Grandparents’ House	Apartment Complex	The College Town
2024 (Nov & Dec)	3	0*	8
2025	18	9	20
2026 (thru March 9)	4	2	3
	25	11	31

*While the complex wasn’t recorded in the two months I tracked it in 2024, clearly it had happened enough previously that I felt it was worth tracking.

First, what was surprising was how low the count was for all three locales. It feels like I dream about them all the time, but there were months where I didn’t record at least one of these locations. I suppose those dreams are simply the most memorable or long lasting. They often involve family, so that makes some sense.

Second, I feel like I dream about my grandparents’ house a lot, but in real numbers, I dreamt about the house less than The College Town.

Looking at 2025’s data, there’s no clear pattern. I don’t seem to be more likely to dream about one of these places when I have my period, for example.

(I use a tracker made by Drxgonfly, and I love it.)

This particular month, July 2025, has a big cluster in the middle. That is a very busy time at work, so that’s the only correlation I can think of.

On the plus side, dreams dissipate much faster for me than they used to. I wonder how often I forget to track them, and then later just have a feeling that I dreamt about X or Y.

I kind of appreciate dreaming about my grandparents’ house because it’s such a clear symbol: childhood, family, youth, innocence, stability. Doesn’t require much guesswork.

What does surprise me, in a general sense, is how rarely I dream about my current house, where I have lived for a decade.

I visited my grandparents weekly for nine years
I lived in the Georgia apartment complex for nine years
I lived in college towns for a total of eight years

The house I live in now is literally the longest I’ve lived anywhere. *laughs bitterly* Well, unlike those other places, this house has been primarily happy memories, so I suppose there’s no reason for it to show up in my subconscious.