“I had the weirdest dream last night” is a phrase many people hear on almost a daily basis. Dreaming is something billions of people do every night, whether it be the best dream they’ve ever had or a nightmare. According to MedicalNewsToday, dreams are stories and images that our minds create when we’re asleep during the REM (or rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. 

Although dreams seem to last either three seconds or sometimes an hour, an average person has about three to six dreams per night, lasting about five to 20 minutes each, and about 95 percent of people who have a dream the night before can’t remember the dream before they get out of bed, according to MedicalNewsToday. Many popular believe dreams such as the death of someone or yourself can be interpreted from stress or anxiety. Although some common dreams can be scary, 43 percent of Americans think that dreams reveal unconscious desires and wishes, according to a poll conducted by Newsweek. 

There are eight different types of dreams: daydreams, lucid dreams, nightmares, healing dreams, recurring dreams, prophetic dreams, signal dreams and epic dreams. Of course, there’s the common ones that people know about such as nightmares, daydreams and recurring dreams, but there’s other names of dreams that many people have but didn’t know have names. Such as epic dreams, which are dreams that are so big and vivid that they’re hard to ignore. Signal dreams are dreams that involve problem solving and making decisions in your conscious life, according to facthacker.com. 

Dreams can be fun, but they also can determine your thinking for your conscious self. Determining what certain dreams mean can be confusing, such as not being able to scream in your sleep could mean that you don’t have control over your life or you feel ignored.

Regardless of what dreams mean or are trying to tell the dreamer, dreams are a fascinating part of the way the human brain works.