I dream weird stuff all the time, especially if I'm over-tired, but these two really stand out (and yes, I often dream about death, but I've never killed anybody so I don't worry about it). Warning, this is gonna be long.

I once dreamt that I was asleep and dreaming, and in the dream I was visited by a man who had lived in the area during the Civil War (American, that is, 1861-1865). He was trying to tell me something about his seven-year-old son who had died, but I couldn't understand. THe next night, he visited me again and conveyed to me that I was to look for a painting. I found the painting buried in my yard. It was long, maybe 12 inches tall by 30 inches long--like the shape of one of those large group portraits they take of high school classes and army divisions--and painted in black and brown watercolor or ink. The setting was in a clearing in the woods, looking out through he woods towards the nearby farms. On the right was a house that was still standing in my time (1999, in this case). In the middle was a church with a tall steeple, which was gone. On the left was the man's farm, which was also gone (he had been poor and the buildings were in disrepair). In the front and center of the painting was an open grave and the silhouette of the man holding his son's stiffened body, wrapped in a blanket. The painting, in effect, showed me the location of the grave so I could put up a marker and keep his memory alive. The dream was so vivid that, if I had the talent, I could still reproduce the painting from memory. Gave me chills.

I had the second dream last week after getting 3 hours of sleep total over two nights (like I said, I dream even stranger things when sleep-deprived). It involved the ghost of a woman named Judith who had been tortured and killed--I'm not sure why, but I got the impression she was a Joan of Arc kind of figure. Anyway, the torture involved closing her left foot in a metal boot with spikes on the inside. The ghost was dressed in neoclassical robes (like a winged Victory), a knight's helmet with a face mask, and the boot. It wasn't such a weird dream by my standards until I got so deeply into sleep that, when she decided to climb into bed next to me and smother me, I could FEEL the covers lift, the mattress depress, and the pressure on my chest. I kept expecting to feel the cold metal boot against my legs and forced myself to wake up before it happened. I was amazed at how aware I was while it was happening, which made it creepier.