Mall World: why are people dreaming about a shopping centre?

Some say there’s nothing more boring than other people’s dreams, but something very interesting is happening while we sleep.

Many people seem to be dreaming that they’re visiting a similar mall-like setting while they sleep. No one is sure why this is happening and it’s all quite “bizZzare”, said the New York Post.

Liminal spaces

When Jessica Tilton, a 32-year-old artist from Texas, had recurring dreams about being in a “labyrinthine mall complex”, she drew a “detailed map” of her “dreamscape” and shared it on TikTok, said The New York Times.

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Her video struck a chord. It’s been viewed more than a million times, and thousands of people on TikTok and Reddit have said they also dream of the same space, which they collectively refer to as “Mall World”.

Some said they have “dreamed of the same food court, or of a staircase that leads nowhere”. People have said that the malls are “liminal spaces”, which “evoke in the dreamer an eerie feeling of nostalgia, confusion and emptiness”.

Although Tilton “wasn’t really thinking much of it” when she posted the drawing, it “started blowing up” and, with “so many” people “reaching out” to her, it took over her life.

You “probably have” been to the Mall World too and “just haven’t realised it yet”, said Candice Darden on Medium. So “I’ll meet you in the Mall World indoor playground for more discussions”, and “you don’t need detailed directions” to find it, because “it will find you when you’re ready”.

Telepathy or mind control?

Why is this happening? “Theories vary wildly,” said The New York Times. Some have suggested the trend is “proof” of Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness, which is the notion that “all humans share a deep layer of the mind filled with universal archetypes that shape how we think, dream and behave”.

More fancifully, others have speculated that this could be a result of the CIA’s “notorious” MK-Ultra mind control experiments, an illegal human experimentation programme to develop procedures and drugs that the agency could use to weaken individuals and force confessions through indoctrination and psychological torture.

But there’s no proof that the “collective subconscious” or “some kind of telepathy” explains it, said Dylan Selterman, an associate teaching professor at the Johns Hopkins University department of psychological and brain sciences.

It’s already known that people have similar dreams, such as their teeth falling out, and because malls are places that many people visit in their waking lives, it’s not particularly weird that such venues would regularly appear in dreams, Selterman said.

We are “problem-solving” when we sleep, dream analyst Layne Dalfen told the New York Post, and “the goal is to help you connect to that very specific, very recent situation you were discussing with yourself when you had the dream”. So “the mood evoked by Mall World” may have “connections to real-world anxieties that many of us share”.

As for Tilton, she said “we live in a spiritual world” and “there’s a lot that we don’t understand and we’re not supposed to understand”, so we should avoid going into “mass psychosis over this”.