The big question is can blind people dream? The short answer is yes they can absolutely dream, also I have had a talk with someone who is blind and is a lucid dreamer.

Do blind people dream?

Blind people can in fact dream and lucid dream, however people who were blind from when they were born can’t see the dream itself but they can still use the other senses in the dreams. This means that blind people can hear, smell, feel, and taste in dreams. People who were not blind from when they were born and got blind later in life can still see dreams visually, despite after a long period they will probably have less to almost no dreams left where they can visually see things.

What do blind people dream about?

Blind people dream about stuff we do as well but without vision. They dream about common things that happen in their lives such as school, work, friends, or family.

According to a study in 1999 where they researched 15 blind adults over a period of 2 months. They had recorded 372 dreams and they found evidence that blind people dream about similar things as sighted people.

These are the few exceptions blind people dream more about than sighted dreamers.

• Blind people dream less about failure or success
• Most blind people dream about animals more and often dream about their service dogs.
• They dream more frequent about food and drinks
• Blind people dreamed less about aggressive interactions, rather more peacefully.

According to the study, blind people also dream a lot about travel and movement. The sad part about this is that it often leads to a feeling of falling or walking against something.

Do they have nightmares?

Blind people also experience nightmares just like sighted people, interesting enough they experience nightmares more often than us according to studies. This has probably to do that blind people experience more likely a threatening experience.

People who were born blind experience nightmares more often than people who came blind later in life. This has more likely to do with their childhood.

Nightmares they experience often are about frightening sounds and with movement. Imagine yourself not able to see and that you suddenly hear a creepy voice while you are being pushed toward it, this would be an awful experience.

Do they lucid dream?

Blind people do lucid dream, their lucid dreaming goals are interesting. Our goals are almost similar to how blind people describe their goals. An example of a goal sighted people would do is flying, while blind people also have the goal of flying they instead focus on the feeling of not feeling gravity.

Blind people also use the same lucid dreaming techniques we would use, such as Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD) and Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD). I was able to talk to a blind lucid dreamer named Skyfall. He talked about how he would use a combination of MILD and Reality checks to become lucid. At the moment of making this article, he has now experienced 64 lucid dreams in the past 3 months.

Can they visualize?

Blind people can visualize with 4 senses, they often cannot visualize with sight. People who got blind later in life are able to visualize with sight but often experience it in a small color palette, because they forgot how the other colors looked like. Blind people are really good at visualizing taste and touch what we sighted people lack a lot.

Do they experience sleep paralysis?

Blind people also experience sleep paralysis just like sighted people, the only difference is that we can see in sleep paralysis and they don’t see anything in sleep paralysis.

Final thoughts

You can experience being blind in a dream yourself with a virtual reality blind dreaming experience. This is not close to the real experience, because you can still see the dream scene with blue pixels but it could be great to learn more about being blind.

I have met the creator of this VR experience when I was a volunteer at the IDFA event in 2017. This VR experience also won the prize of the best VR experience at the event.