Dreams-Do they have a life of their own?

I have always had a fascination with dreams since I was young. They seem to be one of life's greatest mysteries that people over the centuries have tried to define. There are all kinds of answers for dreams; interpretations and definitions which I am not quite sure totally define the realism of a dream.
These dream definitions try to take every aspect of your dream literally and break it down into words. For instance, a bear in your dreams could mean victory over an enemy or a rat can mean sneaky and untrustworthy. In order to understand your dream it would mean to break it into a million definitions this way in hopes of finding a logical meaning, and who knows, maybe there is some truth to this.
What I wanted to write about though, was some questions I have pondered about different aspects of my dreams-the more abstract or less concrete. Questions I am sure no one has ever been able to answer.

**Say, you dream of a large group of people or there are lots of people in your dream around you. They may be talking or carrying on conversation and you may not be able to hear or comprehend what everyone is saying. Even if you cannot see or hear them, are they talking real dialogue even without you acknowledging them? Maybe you only hear some people and some are too far away or your back may be turned to them. Even if your ears can't hear the conversation, are there true conversations going on?

**When you dream of places and say for instance, you walk outside or into another room, does the place you just left disappear or is it still there just waiting there for you to possibly re-enter? Has the whole dream already been played out even before you dream it, or are things are being made in your head as the dream progresses?

**Do the people you meet know they aren't real? Do they have any substinence or any thought of who they are? I've also heard that groups of people can carry on the same dream, so are we linked somehow maybe not conciously, but do we really interact with real people in our dreams across our souls or subconcious? How do we know for sure what we dream isn't shared with others? Sometimes we do meet people in real life that seem familiar to us. That would be a quite interesting thought.

There are a lot of people who don't remember their dreams or think they don't dream at all. Maybe there is something more to that. Who knows what the human mind can conceive or the power it can do.

I have had many lucid dreams where I know I am dreaming. I will look around and listen, touch everything, smell, feel, and taste things. I have all these feelings in my dreams. I have died many deaths and know how to get out of bad dreams even when I am not lucid dreaming. Yet, those questions have always baffled me. I have told people in my dreams that I know they aren't real and I ask them if they know they aren't real and they just look at me. Sometimes it's weird that way, but I will always enjoy my dreams even without all the answers.