One night, it came to me in my dreams, dripping juice and melted cheddar, the crisp lettuce a mere afterthought. I held it in my hands and took a bite.

Instant horror: I stared at the burger like it was an alien object as the realization that I’m a vegetarian stopped me cold.

I woke up deeply disturbed. The mere unconscious thought of taking an eager bite of red meat felt like a personal failure.

I had just had a meatmare.

What, I wondered, would make me dream of eating flesh again after a decade of vegetarianism?

I couldn’t find any good answer for why meatmares occur. Some people ascribe it to guilt at clean-eating imperfection; others to deeply buried carnivorous cravings.

It makes perfect sense to me that there would be meat nightmares, as opposed to broccoli nightmares. Broccoli is just not a substance that people are going to have as much tension and anxiety over.

“

Amy Bentley Food studies professor,  New York University

”

Meat is everywhere. Fleshy slabs hang behind the deli counter at your grocery store; the smoky aroma of your neighbor’s cookout wafts through the window. Vegetarians and vegans are constantly confronted by the choice of eating meat, and they routinely have to ask for accommodations and explain the rationale behind their diet. Anxiety around these encounters, Bentley says, could explain why meat keeps turning up in dreams.

Eventually, 86 percent of vegetarians return to meat, according to 2014 study from the Humane Research Council, and 43 percent say that they find it difficult to keep their diet “pure.” Perhaps meatmares encapsulate a tug-of-war between body and mind: The impulse to bite into that burger was unwelcome, and it tested the strength of my self-control. Temptation won out — and I woke up feeling terrible about it.

In the spirit of a season that’s as spooky as climate, we’re digging up an article for you each week in October.

This Halloween, scare your friends with some climate crisis vocab

‘I had a meatmare’: Why flesh haunts the dreams of vegetarians

The juicy truth about vampire appliances

How human composting will change death in the city

The disease after tomorrow: Five illnesses spreading in a hotter world