
If you’re intrigued by dreams, astral-projection, or lucid dreaming, you may be familiar with the concept of night working. Perhaps you identify as a night worker yourself.
Night workers, not to be confused with light workers, play an important duty in the dream world.
A night worker’s evening may look something like this: You go to sleep, begin your dream time, and find yourself in a nursing home, a hospital, a therapist’s office, a classroom, maybe even outside-and quite simply, you help people who need it.
night work = astral projection + healing work
Night workers’ nights can mirror their days. Therapists hold spaces for clients. Teachers help children. Doctors operate. Mediums cross over the deceased. Reiki masters heal.
The exception is, these healers may or may not know their night clients. Oftentimes night workers are helping total strangers.
Unless they aren’t.
Dreamtime

My childhood friend was dying. She lived in South Carolina, which is many hundreds of miles from our hometown, where I still lived.
It was like clockwork. Once a week we would meet in dreams, and she would appear younger and healthier every time, until she looked as happy and carefree as when we were little kids playing together during elementary school days.
We’d meet in grocery stores in the bulk candy section for Peachie-O’s and giant boxes of Rainbow NERDS, or at the Eat n’ Park for Smiley cookies and a strawberry pie, once, a dark and luxurious hotel room for spa time-pampering with her mom and sister.
Those were the happy astral visits. We were goofy, dancing by the bulk candy barrels, joyful, smelling the waft of sugary sweet baking, and comforted as she let her guard down and allowed others in. She was cared for, fractured relationships were repaired, all her needs were met by those who parented her and raised her and loved her deeply.
I knew she was going to die when we met at the hospital. It was October in waking life, the month she was diagnosed with stage four cancer.
In dreams, we were all gathered together to celebrate her 40th birthday. We sang, had cake, and enjoyed one another’s company. My family was there, her sister, and so was my friend’s partner. I remember us laying hands on her feet. She showed me her back which was fused with a large metallic device. She said with a twinkle in her eye that she looked like one of the Borg from Star Trek.
When I woke, I knew she may not make it to her January milestone.
By December, there were several devices- a pain pump, tubes, and other medical apparatuses implanted inside, blooming from her paper-thin skin- to help keep her organs functioning and her body alive.
Her eight-months-pregnant sister and I booked a flight to South Carolina before Christmas. We decked the halls, decorated the tree, made the traditional family sugar cookies we’d always baked and enjoyed as kids. We slept in the hospital with her. We heard the doctor give her the news that it was OK to fight, and OK not to. Her decision. When we flew out, I think I knew it was the last time I’d see her alive. I told her I’d try to come back as soon as I could, in spring.
She had her 40th a month later. Two days afterward, her niece was born.
And then the pandemic hit.
At that point, we knew there wouldn’t be another visit, but we had our dream time.
And this led me to the most intense night work task I’ve ever experienced.
Demon Busters

I went to sleep in my bed and woke up in hers. I sat up, bewildered by the scene shift. My friend was snugly tucked in between me and her dad, who was sleeping on her other side by the door. The only light in the space was a salt lamp I’d given her for Christmas.
As I tried to get my bearings in the soft pink glow of the room, my eyes were pulled to the open door and from the black hallway emerged something earthy, lizard-like, low, and growling. The slitted red eyes and chunky body gathered darkness around it as it slithered into the space. It looked like some kind of alligator or miniature crocodile, sculpted from earth. The creature turned its large head, razor sharp teeth flashing in the dim light. It wore the darkness like a cloying perfume, the scent of dirt and the must of an old damp attic rolled off it in waves, and the closer it got, the more certain I was that an elephant was standing on my chest.
Paralyzed, I just stared. Then, it sniffed the air.
My immediate concern was my friend’s dad who was right next to the creature, but as it prowled further into the room and around to the foot of the bed, I realized it was cruising for my dying friend.
Forehead to forehead, without words, we formed a plan to catch it in a blanket. The creature began pawing its way up the box springs, its stink more present, sludgy and earthen. The infernal growling. The red eyes. The trap-like jaws.
We watched, hearts beating rapidly in our chests as it crested the foot of the bed. We waited. We felt its dense mass as it came to rest at our feet. It began to scrabble up the sheets. It was almost on top of my friend when she made her move, quickly grabbing one of her many blankets. Between the two of us we trapped it. I grabbed the black blanket and then jumped up from the bed. It was the size of a toddler, but peculiarly heavy. I remember carrying it across the room at arm’s length to my friend’s pink dresser, which was suddenly and inexplicably coated in a layer of thin quartz crystal.
Then the blanket began to slip. I had to look this thing in the eyes and hold it under its tiny arms while I pinned it against the chest of drawers. Face to face, eye to eye, and suddenly eerily silent, it was entirely too personal. The knowledge under the heavy-lidded gaze. It knew what I had to do, and it felt like a taunt. It was smiling at my secrets, my fears.
Sheer anger seized me, and a laser-sharp focus- I knew I had to destroy this creature for my friend. But I desperately needed that blanket back over its head-its eyes.
Just four strikes.
I took a deep breath and slammed the creature into the dresser.
The blow fractured the crystal coating of the bureau and the clay shell of the creature’s head.
Bang.
I began to tremble.
Bang.
My arms grew exponentially heavier with each hit. It was still smiling, even as its head was crumbling. The blackness around the creature fell away, a coiling vapor pouring onto the floor.
Sweat beaded my forehead. My arms radiated pain.
I was going to drop it.
I gritted my teeth and mustered up the last of my strength for the final hit, and without warning, the creature lost its substance and broke apart into two smaller versions of itself.
Twins. I watched them scrabble toward the bed.
Good thing my friend had two hungry little dogs.
The wee beasties triumphantly claimed a meal, a snack for each of them.
I turned around to the bed’s occupants. Her father had slept through the entire thing, totally oblivious. His daughter was weakly smiling in her own slumber.
I knew the creature had come from outside her patio door in the backyard. There was some funky energy out there in the waking world. I could still sense the creature’s trail, and I turned to follow it, but apparently, it wasn’t the time to investigate. I was yanked into my body and woke up back in my bed, hundreds of miles away, shook and bone tired.
When we spoke that day, my friend said the troubling energy she’d been feeling in her home lately was gone, and she wasn’t having nightmares anymore.
She also said her father had spent the previous night in her room.
It was the first night he had.
A few months later, my friend passed peacefully, a smile on her face. A fighter until the end, her blazing bright spirit now casting a vibrant glow across the universe.
She told me from the other side that she’s the busy one now, helping others. Perhaps she’s even a coach to other night workers in their busy dreams. Maybe you’re one of them.
5 Signs you may be a Night Worker

- You have vivid dreams.
Dream time is the realm of a night worker. You may have been able to recall your dreams from an early age. Maybe that’s just started kicking in for you. You may easily discern the difference between the dreams conjured up by the mind recycling your day, and the vivid and palpable psychic dreams of a night worker.
- You wake up tired.
Even with eight hours of sleep, you feel drained. Some folks have reported that their bodies are physically exhausted after a full night’s sleep; tired and shaky muscles like they’ve been running a marathon.
If this is true for you, just remember, you’ve been busy! Demon-busting, helping accident victims cross over, or traveling around the countryside to lay hands on others.
Your work may not even be that physical. You might be sitting in night classes with other people learning how to do the work, or just having a conversation with a friend. Maybe spirits come to your room and you guide them into the light.
Movement or not, you still wake up exhausted.
- You can astral project.
We all astral-project when we sleep, and come back to ourselves before we wake up. You may feel yourself start to pull away from your body as you fall asleep. It has been described as feeling like a rushing, or a vibration just as you start to move out of your body. I often catch myself here and am afraid I’m going to launch into an outright vertigo attack. The fear halts the experience, and I either wake up with a lurch or slip into dreamless slumber.
You may be someone who can actually control the process of astral projection, and you enjoy the view of the wide world around you. I have a friend whose dreams were exclusively astral projection until they reached an age where they chose to focus on academia and the physical world. Whether it was the lack of sleep or changed focus, the dreams stopped-at least that they remember!
You may also feel yourself being tugged back into your physical body as you start to wake up.
There are loads of books and articles about astral projection, and like many things, it is a skill that you can learn.
- You have healing abilities.
Not all night workers have crazy dreams, sometimes their dreams reflect the gentle aspects of light work (which I think of as anyone who brings light and love to the world through kindness or healing).
As a healer, people in the waking world will come to you with their problems, you listen and validate. You may have to shut your door at work to get some alone time because you have so many people seeking you out! You may identify as an empath. You may be involved in a healing profession such as massage therapy or you could be a Reiki Master. In your dreams you act out your usual 9-5 or simply hold space for others.
- You sense the good and the not so good from the astral plane.
I’ve had a dream or two where I was getting coached on transmuting negative energy to positive, but I wasn’t there yet. I don’t remember the face of my coach either, just that we were in my home and he was patient and kind.
Interestingly, a few months later, a friend of mine had a dream where she was being followed by a negative entity. I created a ball of purple glowing energy and shot it off at her pursuer. We were fine. Perhaps the coaching paid off.
If you are a night worker, one night you may visit with people who are crossing over, and other times you are fighting scary demons, apparitions, or monsters. You may be totally creeped out by what’s in front of you, but you can feel support behind you. There may be angels or guides around you in the dream as backup. Perhaps there is a voice coaching you in the line of duty, or as you are falling asleep.
Clairaudient night workers often report hearing their guides teaching them as they enter their dream state.
An Unfolding

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and no two people experience psychic phenomena in the same way. Psychic development is often an unfolding, and each person’s experiences are as unique as they are. (In fact, you may be a night worker and don’t remember your dreams at all.)
I believe we all have the capacity to be night workers, and like anything, with some dream work practice, and a lot of patience, you may be able to get to the point of better dream recall, better astral projection control, which may possibly lead to remembered night working experiences.
Remember, night work = astral projection + healing work.
I haven’t had intense night working dreams since my friend’s passing. In fact, when I am working, my dreams are less vivid, and often involve counseling people, or clearing astral debris out of my own body. No demon busting lately.
Dreams are fascinating, and even if you aren’t ticking off all the night worker boxes, the fact you’re reading this article may hint that you are indeed a night worker.
And on that note, keep in mind that being a night worker is a sign you may have psychic or mediumship abilities.
Do you identify as a night worker? Feel free to drop a line in the comment box below to share some of your dreams and experiences.
Night work is a fascinating topic. For additional information you may want to check out the Podcast, “Psychic Teachers” with Samantha Fey and Deb Bowen. They have an episode entitled “Are You a Nightworker? Exploring the Mystery of Soul Travel in Your Dreams.” Enjoy it, fellow journeyers.