What does it mean to dream about stranger?
A stranger often pictures the unfamiliar, in your situation or in yourself, met as either threat or possibility.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
A Freudian reading often takes the stranger as a disguised version of someone known, or of a part of the dreamer, with the unfamiliarity hiding a feeling too charged to recognize directly. The disguise is the dream-work at play.
Freudian reading (our summary).Jung
For Jung an unknown figure, especially one of the dreamer's own sex, is a classic image of the shadow: a disowned or undeveloped part of the self. A stranger of the opposite sex can picture the anima or animus, the contrasexual side of the psyche.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Cognitively the stranger often pictures the unfamiliar in oneself or one's situation, something new, unknown, or not yet understood. Whether it reads as threat or possibility tracks how the dreamer meets the unknown in waking life.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Myth and scripture warn that the stranger may be a god in disguise: the traveler who tests a household's welcome, the divine guest who rewards or punishes hospitality. The unknown visitor carries both danger and hidden blessing.
Bulfinch; Miller (1901).