What does it mean to dream about murderer?
A murderer often stands for a force that feels destructive, an ending, or a part of yourself you fear, rather than a literal threat or prediction of violence.
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
Freud would read the murderer as the bearer of aggressive wishes that waking life forbids, projected onto a frightening figure. He would look for the hostility the dream lets the dreamer disown.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see the murderer as a dark shadow figure, the destructive force in the psyche met as an outside threat. To kill in a dream can also mean an old self or attitude is being brought to an end.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Threat-simulation theory sees a murderer as the mind rehearsing an extreme threat, giving fear or anger a frightening face. The figure usually reflects an intense emotion or a part of life that feels endangered rather than foretelling harm.
Threat-simulation theory (our summary).Mythological
The slayer haunts myth as the figure of fatal violence, the kin-killer pursued by furies and the price of blood guilt. The figure tends to embody destruction and the heavy reckoning that follows it.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Brewer).