Hi Michael. Those sound like quite intense dreams. I don't know what they mean, but I've had similar dreams myself.

Some I would classify as past deaths. One example: I was with a bunch of other people who were standing all around me. I was getting a belly piercing, only for some reason this one entered at my spine before exiting in front. Once awoke, I knew I had been captured by a patrol and run through with a sword for spying and betrayal. Awake, I also felt shame, which I had not felt in the dream. Was that dream a memory of a past death? Who knows? I'm Buddhist; the possibility is not shocking to me.

But I've also had dreams that were like sped-up, full-on life experiences of other people in contemporary life. Like being a foster kid who was sexually molested in a group home; the molestation was covered up and the kid was moved to another group home where, having lost everything they cared about, they committed suicide. I woke up crying after that one, but, while some points of the emotional history matched with my personal issues, most didn't. So where did THAT come from?

Could that have been a past life/death dream? Given my age and what I know of the history of the child welfare/foster care system, I don't think so. Some kind of psychic leakage? Maybe. Who knows? As far as what did it mean, it means I am now motivated to have a great deal more compassion and understanding about a situation I had never really thought about much before.