The other night I had a dream about my grandfather’s house. It’s weird, because I barely knew him when he was alive, but in the past several months, I have had a huge amount of dreams involving him or his house. Anyway, in this dream, I was trying to get from one part of the house to another, and was looking for a hallway or stair or something.

And I discovered this unusual man in one of the alcoves. He was not pleased that I had discovered him, but he revealed that he lived in a hidden section of the house. The man reminds me of Mr. Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. He took me inside some trap door or hidden door into what was basically a floor of the house which was concealed in between two other floors I knew about. And the ceiling was very short, sort of like in Being John Malkovitch, how that office occupies a half-floor.

Inside was a small but pleasant apartment, fully furnished. I said something to the effect of “This is all original furniture,” in astonishment, meaning that he had somehow acquired all the cast-off furniture dating back to when the house was initially built and occupied. It’s the sort of thing there’s no way I could realistically know about; he congratulated me on noticing. Then he took me through his living quarters to another hidden doorway which entered back into the normal full-size part of the house, which is where I was trying to get to originally.

There was more to the dream but I’ve since forgotten. I’ve heard before that dreams wherein you uncover previously hidden rooms signify accessing hidden parts of your psyche. That makes some kind of sense in this case. I just found this web page which has some basic interpretations of different types of rooms and parts of a house in dream symbolism. They aren’t amazing, but this one about passageways is not without its worth:

To discover secret passageways in your dream, parallels to something new and/or exciting that is occurring in your waking life. It may refer to new opportunities, a new relationship, or a new attitude toward life. If you wake up before fully exploring these passageways, then it suggests that you may not know how to go about taking advantage of these opportunities or how to move forward with a relationship. Perhaps the newness and uncertainty of this discovery also makes you a little more cautious. This is a positive dream.