Most abstract recurrent nightmares ever!!

I haven't had this dream for a long time, but I remember years ago having it recurrently, and I am not entirely sure what it means.

You're in a huge house. It's a standard suburban home, but it goes on practically forever. Room after corridor after staircase after room. You wander from room to room, noticing that there are reminders of every place you have ever lived (I've done a lot of moving in my time). As you explore the house, you see furniture, mementos, random belongings, and after a while more and more of them are covered by white cloth sheets.

Then you come to that one room where the lights aren't on, like in some stereotypical horror movie. IT emerges and starts chasing you.
IT is almost indescribable. It looks sort of like a cross between a 7 foot tall thundercloud and a black hole special effect. It literally sucks the light out of the rooms as it moves. Somehow you just know that if it touches you, you're dead. And not physically dead. You'll lose your ... soul? identity? whatever you like about yourself, whatever defines you, all meaning, would be simply destroyed if it catches up with you. And you feel this horrible malevolence, as if it's coming for you personally and enjoying every minute of the ensuing chase.

You run, of course, and in that horror movie way where everything is slowed down as the monster gradually gets closer and closer. Somehow, you always manage to get outside. You know you're safe if you can make it outside: for some reason it never follows.

You fling open the front door. Looking around, it's night, and the street is totally empty. No-one to turn to for help. The house, from the street, isn't that big at all. It's actually impossible for all those rooms to fit inside it. You don't really think about that, you're just thinking about how you want to get back inside but that thing is going to be waiting for you. And then the dream ends, usually with the sound of your own screaming in real life.

The nightmare has some variations, occurring in the following frequency:

* The monster's after you, and you run, but you never see it.
* There is no monster, but you open a door, and find yourself in a big party. It's never the same party, but it is always some formal affair going on. You want to join in, but nobody reacts to you ... because they all have no faces. Desperate to get some reaction, you grab one of the faceless people by the arm, they then all "look" at you, and then resume partying like nothing happened. (Waking up screaming blue murder is probably an understandable reaction to literally faceless crowds, lol)!
* You never meet the monster, just wander around the house and wake up before anything bad happens.

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I've had other nightmares too, never as similar or recurrent as this series, and all involving being pursued, persecuted or attacked in some way, or being in a huge natural or man-made disaster. I think these are all persistent themes of powerlessness and social irrelevance or overwhelm, personally. The meaning of the "soul destroying creature" is still a bit vague.

Any ideas???

Just my take:

The rooms are that portion of your mind that holds memories. The room with the lights off are the memories that your subconscious is still withholding from you. The feeling that you'll lose your soul if the monster touches you is the inner knowledge that you may not yet be strong enough to face the memory or memories that your subconscious is withholding.

The feeling of safety outside is the emotional need to escape from your memories by immersing yourself in something outside yourself. However, that's an illusion. You can never really escape from yourself.

That's why the outside world of your dream is either devoid of safety and people, or the people are faceless. Until you can face your monsters and see that they're actually powerless over the person that you've become, you'll be unable to "be here now", that is, to be fully emotionally and mentally involved in the moment, outside of all those rooms.

The good news is that, right now, you want to get back inside the house. You're building yourself up to eventually do what you need to do. Slay the monster by staring it down and fearlessly throw the front door wide open!

I was completely unprepared for that response. Thanks! It got me thinking (in a good way).

Good to hear! Puts a smile on my face.

I have had a similar nightmare only it's always a house I can't get out of, the thing that ive never understood was theres a morgue in the basement, and a body is always burning in the crematory. I don't know how else to describe it but the dream is layered, I think I'm awake then I'm still trapped in my dream, so by the time I wake up I have to get up to insure I'm not still dreaming. It always ends in me sweating like crazy and in a full fledged panic attack when I awake, I hate it & it's at least once a month.

Anxiety due to invisible child syndrome.

I loved this part of your post:

"black hole special effect. It literally sucks the light out of the rooms as it moves. Somehow you just know that if it touches you, you're dead. And not physically dead. You'll lose your ... soul? identity? whatever you like about yourself, whatever defines you, all meaning, would be simply destroyed if it catches up with you. And you feel this horrible malevolence, as if it's coming for you personally and enjoying every minute of the ensuing chase."

It totally reminds me of one of the most terrifying dreams I've ever had. There was this sort of black hole in our basement, locked deep behind layers of doors or something. It wasn't quite sentient, but it was still malevolent. I knew that it would one day destroy the universe. If you got close to it, it would destroy you too.