Many People Have The Ability To Lucid Dream, And They've Experienced Some Truly Wild Things

From Redditor /u/woonboot:

It was actually a two -parter (three if you count the dream within a dream) when I was 12. It wasn't even scary as a dream, more because of the implication.

Night One: It started out normal enough. I was walking through the desert and out of nowhere my mother showed up, desperate to tell me something. I listened, and she begged me to wake up; 'This is a dream, please, open your eyes and wake up," so I did. I was confused when I actually woke up, and went back to sleep (don't remember other dreams that night).

Night Two: Same premise, I was walking through the desert, but no mother to be seen. I then remember what she told me: if you are in a dream desert, wake up. I opened my eyes and woke up in a medieval prison guarded by some sort of monsters. Naturally, I was scared, but the people in that prison were terrified. Telling me this wasn't supposed to happen, and that I should please go back to sleep and wake up in my room. It took a while for me to get to sleep (being in a prison and all) and the longer it took, the more terrified they became. Eventually I went to sleep and woke up in my room, but I still wonder if that dream was trying to tell me something.

From Redditor /u/finklemachine:

It was a dream-within-a-dream and started out as me waking up from a pretty bad nightmare. I sat up in my bed and saw something was off in my very dark room. The chair that was usually standing at the far wall of my room was instead right next to my bed. I found this odd and then realized a small porcelain doll was sitting in the chair. This freaked me the f*ck out, especially when the doll lifted its head and stared at me with its blank eyes. I immediately realized I was dreaming and tried to fly away through my room, but as I flew the room stretched along with me, then the stretching suddenly stopped and at the end of my room was a mirror.

Inside the mirror I saw myself, but not my normal self. Instead I was rather undead-looking. I don't remember exactly what I looked like but I definitely remember the rotting flesh I saw before my eyes. I pointed at myself and screamed while the mirror image pointed at me laughing.

Then I woke up and played Skyrim for the rest of the night, terrified of going back to bed.

From Redditor /u/p3ndullum:

I've experienced one false-awakening. I woke up from a dream to discover that there was a boney, alien-like entity laying in my bed with me. In a panic, I started pushing it away from me (I could feel everything: its texture, its weight - so creepy), and that's when I woke up again for real and immediately flipped the light switch on.

From Redditor /u/damnbanana:

I woke up while deployed in Iraq, and at the end of my bed was a small girl in a white dress. Harmless enough, except after a couple of seconds her face kept pulsing from large-to-small, and when it pulsed she looked like a demon. Just staring at me. I could not move, couldn't turn away or move a muscle.

Eventually I managed to break out from sheer will to kick her in the face, only my foot met thin air.

From Redditor /u/LouieFr:

A little over a year ago I had this dream for the first time. It didn't recur regularly until about a month after it originally happened, then it became quite regular until three months ago when I started taking a sleeping pill. Now the dream's gone but issues persist. I'll describe the relevant bit of the dream.

So I find myself in the back of this limo thing. A man walks in and I'm terrified of him, not panicking, more anxious. He farts and gets out to go to the driver seat. Then he starts driving around like a taxi, picking people up and dropping them off. When each person gets in, they fart, and when the smell has nearly faded, it's their stop and they get out and another comes in.

So I start to feel sick in the dream, then when I woke up that feeling was still with me. It's like a horrible stuffy, body sickness that hangs on till like 5 or 6 pm, when it starts to get darker. Some days it's stronger than others.

It's really affecting my ability to function. My mood has plummeted along with my productivity. I occasionally speak with a counselor provided by my college but I've never brought this up as I'm embarrassed. I haven't told anyone and it's really weighing on me now.

From Redditor /u/patriotic_dysphoria:

I won't go into detail, but I've been... assaulted, physically beaten, and otherwise brutalized by one of my recurring dream characters. He acts like a dream guide except for his hostility and calls himself 'Face of God,' and these dreams are so [intense] that I could smell my skin burning when he stuck me in a red-hot metal cage.

I found out recently it was Cymbalta causing these dreams. Slasher-film nightmares are a common side-effect of this drug, and they don't always start until later into the drug.