I tend to just write it off as a hallucination driven by too-wandering associations.

But there is a recent knowledge I could add to this. From my therapy sessions I learned that direct interpretations, even when they come from your own mind, may be very far from your issues or thoughts that may have produced a dream (in case it really is a subconscious experience at least partially). I have found very unusual multi-tier connections between events and my panic attacks, that I could never interpret myself into in a straightforward way. If you're familiar with chess, it feels like your mind looks several moves forward and wide, but a conscious interpretation is just a take on direct attacks.