Dreaming about being watched in a forest

The most consistently reported quality of forest dreams, and the one that almost never resolves. Dreamers describe a persistent sense of not being alone, and describe nothing ever appearing.

The non-resolution is the finding. In most settings a sense of presence eventually produces something; in forests it usually does not, and dreamers report leaving, waking, or simply continuing with the feeling intact.

There is a structural reason worth preferring to a symbolic one. A forest is the setting that most reliably breaks sightlines: you cannot see far, sound comes from the wrong direction, and there is always something behind something else. A dream does not need to supply a watcher when the setting supplies every condition for feeling watched.