nightmare

This is an interesting lucid that happened about 40 minutes or so after first falling asleep. These are very unusual for me! Also had a much more nightmarish start than most of my lucids.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #247: Happier!

I’m standing by my pool, which looks distressingly green and nasty. While I’m stressing out about how this happened, a large snake comes slithering out of the pool toward me. “Whoa, are you kidding me?” I shout, running a few feet away toward a stone wall that’s about eight feet high. I scramble up to the top before the snake can get me. I notice that this felt easier than it should have, and I become lucid.

I let go of the wall and float away, my feet rotating gently upward until I’m lying on my back, looking up at the sky. I’m in some kind of miniature canyon, and the green water is now just a calm pond rather than my pool. I fly down toward the only exit, which seems to lead into a cave.

The cave interior is well-lit but feels sinister. The walls are stained red as if they’re covered with blood and strange growls echo off of the walls. Further down the slope I see dim, hulking figures shambling through the fog. I think that they look like zombies. I remember that I want to summon Dreamer but I want to wait until the environment becomes more pleasant.

I walk further down the slope and a huge, crazed-looking man with a black beard charges at me, his hands outstretched for my throat. That’s not real, I think, and I feel only a dull impact as he passes through me. Out loud, I say to Dreamer, “I know you’re here with me. I’ll call you in soon.” (I still don't want to call her in while the dream's still going all horror show on me.)

Another crazed figure charges me, decayed flesh hanging off of his face. Yuck! Why is this dream trying to be so scary? I turn away, knownig that he’ll pass right through me, and he does. I emerge from the cave into a large tiled room that looks like an industrial kitchen. About a dozen or so zombies are in here, rising up from the floor, shambling forward, and then collapsing with a sigh into a heap of bones. Then the cycle begins again. It’s gruesome to look at and I really want to fix it.

I decide that the zombies and I are all going to sing together! I come up with some song where the chorus goes, “Happier! Happier! Happierrrrrrrr!!” I belt it out with all I’ve got, and the zombies join in with me. Each cycle they look more and more normal, until after about 30-40 seconds, all of the zombies are now blond guys wearing shades, suits, and sporting 80s looking haircuts.

I keep singing with these guys for a while, really enjoying the turnaround of this dream. I realize that I should think about other goals, and as I’m making my way into the next room, the dream thins out and fades.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/19/2014. (I think so at least. I'm embarrassed to say that my records got spotty right here.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #211: The Bag Lady

I’m high up on a hotel walkway that encircles an atrium. The room’s huge and bustles with people. I see a group of familiar people from my life seated in plush, comfy-looking chairs and realize that I’m dreaming.

I walk up to “Cyclone”, a friend from high school that I occasionally catch up with. I try to explain to him that I’m having a lucid dream. He’s trying to respond but I’m confused and unable to understand what he’s trying to say. As I grow frustrated by this, the dream fades into a false awakening.

I get up from what I believe is a hotel room and walk out to the street. I’m someplace that looks like New York City and it’s early morning. I walk out onto a brick-lined path toward another building. Maybe 30 feet away, there’s a bad lady standing near a little planter that looks like it contains a vegetable garden.

She seems to notice me and comes staggering over. I hope she won’t approach and try to scurry cowardly away. As I do this, she lets out a blood-curdling scream and starts flying after me. I feel a combination of embarrassment at my wimpy reaction and outright fear that I’m about to get mauled on the street. Her hand grabs my shoulder and I think that come on, this has got to be a dream. What a relief that it is in fact a dream!

The bag lady screams in my face and grabs at my chest and shoulders with clawlike fingers. I’m not feeling very calm at this point, but I try to calm her down by saying “Shhhhh…” and raising my hands in as nonconfrontational a gesture as I can manage.

She seems to settle down and I notice she looks a fairly normal person now. She’s in her late 30s, wearing a hood and shawl. Kind of cute-ish, even. Her teeth are still bared but now she just looks like she’s upset rather than truly demonic. For some reason I start kissing her, and she seems to calm down completely.

I hear another scream from nearby and I see a second dangerous-looking bag lady quickly approaching. Time to go. I make for the building entrance, a simple looking glass door into what looks like a darkened school hallway.

As I make my way down the hallway, nobody follow. That’s a relieft. I emerge from the hallway into what looks like ground floor fo the hotel atrium I’d been in before. I wonder if I can make my way back up, but the dream ends before I can find out.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #204: Ozone

I’m sitting at a craft table with three other people: a guy in his late 20s (“Guy”), a woman in her 30s (“Lady”), and a crazy-looking woman in her mid-40s (“Crazy Lady”). Crazy Lady keeps talking to herself and acting disturbed as she works on her project.

Lady gets the bright idea to tell Crazy Lady that Guy has a prize for her. “If you get all your work done, maybe he’ll give it to you.” Crazy Lady keeps asking what the prize is, becoming more and more fixated on this prize until she gets out of her chair and approaches Guy. I have a feeling that something awful’s going to happen but that I can’t stop it.

Spoiler for Unpleasantness:

I see a pair of dirty scissors flash in Crazy Lady’s hand. She gouges them into the side of Guy’s neck and then grinds the thick, dull blade across his throat. Blood everywhere. Guy collapses to the ground.

Crazy Lady disappears from the scene as Lady and I rush to help Guy. Now I’m on the phone with emergency services begging them to come help us. They sound very unhurried and tell me that the wait will be “about 30 minutes”. I’m stressed out that they’re going to take so long but I hope they know what they’re doing. I nose pinch reality check in the hope that this isn’t real, and when I blow throuigh I think, No way am I so lucky that this is all a dream. I confirm with a second nose pinch, that yes, I’m dreaming!

Guy and Lady both disappear from the scene and I’m left along in an empty classroom. I wander outside into a misty nighttime street scene. I feel happiness and contentment to have escaped a nightmare and I peacefully explore the environment.

The bricks on the side of the building fascinate me first, and I bring my vision right up close to them. No matter how close I get, my eyes never lose focus. I seem to be able to look further and further in, zooming into every crack and imperfection. My fingers explore the moist bricks and it’s like I can sense each individual drop of moisture with my fingertips.

I suddenly give the wall a huge sniff. It feels invigorating and seems to bring the scene even more fully to life. I sense moisture and a sharp whiff of ozone when I do this, just like what you might smell after heavy rain.

There are a few DCs hanging around nearby, talking softly about something I can’t make out. I approach one of them, a brown-haired guy that’s facing away from me, and examine his hair and scalp up close. I’m fascinated how I can see down to the individual hairs on his head. The DCs’ conversation ceases as I do this and it feels like I hit pause on what they were saying.

I take another huge sniff, this time of the guy’s scalp. It just smells like a bunch of hair. I laugh self-consciously at what a creepy thing this is to do. Fortunately the DC doesn’t react. I walk onward now through the misty night toward a short stone bridge that runs over some unknown river or creek. Before I cross it, the dream ends.

This is the second of two lucid dreams from the morning of September 6, 2013. So glad I caught that emotion dream sign for this one because it gave me an exit from a nightmare and brought me into a really nice lucid.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #144: Cooling Off

I'm in a furniture store, looking around at couches. A plump Hispanic woman is seated nearby, answering my questions. The front of the store is a huge glass window with a clear view of the street outside.

Spoiler for Upsetting dream premise:

A big luxury car pulls up outside and a man in a light gray suit gets out. He has a mustache and is wearing shades but I can't see him well enough to make out the details of his face. I see other men in the car that look just like him. The man reaches into the car and pulls two teenage girls out of the car by their forearms and tossing them to the ground. He jumps back in the car and it speeds off.

I run outside. Both girls are weeping and it's obvious that they've been terribly mistreated by these men. They're bruised and bloodied and their clothes are in tatters. I help them inside the store where they disappear together into the store's bathroom. I'm boiling with rage and at the same time feel like I'm close to tears.

I tell the woman that these girls have been abused by these men and that we have to do something. She says, "I know" and then calmly tells me that these girls are her daughters and that she willingly sold them to the men. Now I'm yelling at her, telling her that she's an awful person, demanding that she tell me who these men are and where I can find them. I stalk back and forth in the store's aisle, the anger getting worse and worse. Again I demand that she tell me where I can find these men so that I can dispose of them personally.

The rage is so over the top that it feels bizarre to me. I can't remember feeling this way any time in waking life, so I reconsider my situation and I become lucid.

Immediately I feel this huge sense of relief as I realize that there's nothing to be angry about and that none of these awful things have actually happened. I'm still a little shaken from the preceding scene, and I walk to the bathroom where the girls retreated to earlier. I open the door and to my relief it's empty. I close it again.

I take a few deep breaths, cooling off the last of my anger and reminding myself that I'm dreaming. The anger has been replaced by happiness and a sense of peace. I feel contentment at the idea that I took control of this nightmare.

Now happy and relaxed, I remember the goal of getting to the Colosseum. I imagine that the bathroom door now leads to one of the tunnels beneath the Colosseum. I open the door, but nope, still an empty bathroom. I close the door again and walk to the back of the store.

I find myself in a hallway made of cinder blocks. There's some kind of socket wrench lying on the floor and I scoop it up. I feel like playing so I throw the socket wrench at the wall. With a thump it embeds about half an inch into the cinder block. I grab it, prying it back out and throw it toward a nearby mirror. Crack! The mirror cracks rather than breaks, but I'm delighted by how realistic the sights and sounds of this are.

There's a door at the end of the hall that leads outside. I step out into the sunlight, seeing a pavilion with long, wooden eating tables to my left. I remember to hook myself into the scene before continuing further, so I kneel down and run my hands over the small stone squares that make up the flooring. As I run my fingers over the cracks, I see that a tiny river of brown water runs through the separation between each stone. Somehow I can dip my fingers into this tiny stream and it feels cool to the touch.

As I make my way through the lunch pavilion, I lock eyes with a blonde woman in her early 30s. I'm stunned by how realistic she looks. Something about me seems to surprise her as well. For a moment I wonder what she's reacting to, but in the end figure she's just mirroring my reaction. I hop over some tables, reach the other side, and look back at the crowd of people calmly eating lunch. This is why I work so hard at lucid dreaming, I think. I wish that there was some way to permanently capture this experience, but I know there's nothing that can completely pierce the veil between waking and sleep to bring this experience back to me.

As I leave the pavilion, I see an ampitheater up ahead of me. I'm contemplating how to work this to my advantage when the dream ends.

The second of two LDs from the morning of 05/18/2013. This was a big, big dream, and this dream and I did not always get along. This was my first serious attempt at meeting NewArtemis for a dream sharing attempt.

I also got into a big fight with a powerful DC that escalated into a me against the world situation. I could have handled this a lot better. My self-control wasn't what it should be... but it was still kinda awesome.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #96: Clash at the Alamo

I'm Marty McFly from Back to the Future, driving my DeLorean on a set of rails that stand hundreds of feet over a bay. The DeLorean starts to shake as it picks up speed and before I can make a time jump, the rails end and the car goes plummeting toward the sparkling water.

I brace for impact and the DeLorean flies to pieces as it strikes the bay. Miraculously, I'm unharmed, and I thrash about for something to hold on to so that I can get my bearings and figure out what to do. One long, fin-like piece of metal from the car bobs to the surface and I grab onto it. The moment that I do, an unseen engine roars to life and takes off like a jet ski.

As I'm racing across the bay, I realize that this has to be a dream. After riding for a moment, I'm perhaps a hundred feet from shore. I leap off the impromptu "jet ski" and fly the remaining distance, landing in a stone plaza that stands at the water's edge.

I remember that I'm planning to meet NewArtemis at the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I turn toward the water, raise my hands up in the air, and make an announcement to all of the DCs. Most of the passerby stop and turn to look at me. "The Alamo is right behind me! That's right -- Alamo right behind me!" I imagine it in detail, rebuilding my mental map, forgetting and scrubbing out the buildings that were there before and replacing it with my image of everything that I remember about the Alamo. I continue this until I can think of nothing of what's behind me except for this image of the Alamo.



I turn around, expecting to see the Alamo... and there it is! The stone's a little darker and the construction looks a little too new to be quite right, but it's more than close enough of a lookalike for me. I walk around past the front entrance to a courtyard. The geography is different in this dream from that of the real Alamo, and I come to a stone wall with a little alcove and a bench. There's a woman sitting on the bench and we look at each other immediately.

She gets up and approaches me right away. She doesn't look like NewArtemis' DC has in the past, but I'm not sure of anything yet. She speaks first: "I'm here to meet someone. How about you?"

"So am I," I say, studying her. She's roughly the same height as Art's DC but her skin is paler, her hair curlier, her build heavier, and her face is different -- broader, different nose, different shape... just different. "But you're not her, are you? I don't think you're [NewArtemis]."

She smiles noncommitally, but I continue. "That's okay," I continue. "Let's still do the passphrases and gestures." I speak my chosen word to the DC and perform my chosen gesture. She doesn't bother speaking a passphrase in return but she does perform a gesture. (These have been reported to a 3rd party who is not NewArtemis just in case she's able to guess them.)

"Well, I need to go!" the woman says. She walks out of the alcove and passes me. As she goes, she becomes a much older lady, blonde, mid-50s. She grows to an enormous height, probably close to 8 feet tall. She's wearing shorts and I see that her legs are covered with a crisscrossing patchwork of scars.

I contemplate following, but I'm distracted by a man who's sitting at the top of a stone wall nearby, staring at me with a malicious grin on his face. He's in his late 30s with close-cropped reddish-blonde hair. The guy keeps staring at me with that joyless grin and I know that he's looking for trouble with me. I want no part of it, so I turn and walk away.



He hops down from the wall and grips my right forearm with his right hand, twisting my arm around so that my hand is near my head. I try to pull my arm out of his grip but when I yank, it doesn't budge. He laughs, shaking his head as if he can't believe that I would bother trying to defy him. "You're never leaving here," he says. "I mean it. You are never leaving here." I yank my arm again but I feel as weak as a kitten.

I know I have to turn this around fast. I grab him by the back of the head with my left hand and begin to imagine my adversary as frail and lethargic. "You're so weak and tired," I tell him, trying to sound compassionate, even though I'm boiling with rage. "There's just no strength left in you at all." And I gently move to lay him down on a nearby table. I think of him as totally weak and barely able to move. His grip slips from my arm and he flops backward onto the table.

"And small," I say, pressing on his head with one hand and his feet with the other. He begins to shrink. His hair has turned jet black now, and his eyes close. I squeeze him together, thinking of him as so tiny, and soon he shrinks to the size of a child, then to the size of a baby, then disappears into his clothes entirely. My self-control cracks and I ball up his clothes, throw the bundle on the ground, and give it a vicious stomp. I wonder for a moment whether I've gone too far and hope for a moment that the bundle was empty. I walk through a nearby archway, not sticking around to find out more.

I emerge in a cafeteria. A table of 6 or 7 teenagers immediately looks up from their meals at me. "It's him," one of them says, and they all get to their feet and come after me. I fly through a nearby doorway and emerge in a large, empty room with a skylight. I fly up to the skylight, intending to phase through it, but something seems to restrain me from getting high enough. I run through a doorway into a drugstore that dead-ends in a frosted glass window. I vault toward it, phasing through onto a street scene.

There are police everywhere on the street. I know that they're looking for me. There are strange little ball-shaped hoverbots scanning the streets with cameras, also trying to track me down. I sprint up to one and kick it against a nearby wall. With a pop, it breaks into two smoking, fizzling halves.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to control. I run down the street, looking for some way out of this fear. I want to buy time to calm down, so I phase through the door of a nearby house. Cops are turning the place over while the family, a husband and wife and their little girl of about 8 are glued to the TV. One cop notices me as I walk in, but I swoop in on him, grab him from behind, and choke him unconscious. The other two cops don't seem to notice any of this, and the little family stares obliviously into their TV sets.

I watch the TV for a moment. It's some sort of political propaganda which claims that the moral code of their "great society" is built upon a foundation of classic arcade games like Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. I'm torn -- on one hand, I find top-down, statist morality codes repugnant. On the other hand, I sure do love classic arcade games.

I phase out through the back of the house into the yard. The cops yell at me as I pass and I hear them calling for backup. The back yard is peaceful for a moment before the wail of what sounds like an air raid siren fills the air. I look up at the sky, feeling helpless, trying to find peace for a moment. But all I can think is They're coming for me. The dream ends...

This was the third of my LDs from early Christmas morning. This WILD was rather nightmarish, but in the end pretty amazing. Hands down, the most hostile DCs that I've encountered.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #50: The Gauntlet of Greed

The WILD drops me into a wood-paneled room. There's a door in front of me, and behind me is a frosted glass window through which sunlight illuminates the room. In the middle of the room is a huge, square pile of $100 bills. It has to be, at minimum, something like $30 million. Probably more.

Someone starts shouting and hammering on the door. I feel grasping and suspicious that it's someone who is after my money. They slip a note under the door that simply reads, "You're broke, bitch." I should find this funny, but instead I feel insulted, entitled and petty. Not in my LD, not when I'm sitting on this much cash. There's a chorus of angry voices outside of the door now and fists and feet are slamming into the door. It's about to rattle off the hinges.

I throw the door open and I'm stunned to see a broad hallway filled with literally hundreds of hostile dream characters. The enraged mob (all male) is armed to the teeth, aggressive and bristling with guns. Somebody punches me in the face just as a mobster aims a lupara-style sawed-off shotgun at me. The crowd howls, and I see AKs, handguns, machine pistols, and every other manner of gun pointing my way.

They open fire and I feel a spray of bullets trace across my body. Buckshot rakes the left side of my face. Everything is chaos as stray bullets rip into DCs, who fall to the floor and are trampled by the others as they run toward me. I know that nothing can hurt me but I'm still gripped with aggression, fear and nervous energy. A man in a trench coat is unlucky to get close and I punch him as hard as I can. He goes flying, crashes into the wall, and lies still.

The chaos is getting to be too much for me and I feel lucidity slipping. I hate that I'm fighting and the madness of the whole situation dawns on me. Am I even sure that this is my money? Do I really want to go to war with some unknown element of my subconscious over this worthless pile of dream cash? I decide to just walk forward, leave the money behind, and separate myself from the riot going on all around me.

DCs continue to run past, firing at me and occasionally striking me with fists and feet, but as more and more of them run into the room behind me, the hallway ahead clears out. I hear some kind of frantic melee going on in the money room but I ignore it. The few remaining DCs that run past now ignore me and as I continue forward through the hall, I soon find myself alone. I feel calm again, and the thought of the Pyramid refocuses me on my goals.

I pass a large window on my right that gives me a view into a busy newsroom. Reporters run excitedly from desk to desk but I don't investigate further. The exit is up ahead, and I find that it is the same set of automatic doors from the last dream. I again imagine that the Great Pyramid lies just beyond the door, but this time the dream fades just as I approach the doors.

This was the second of my galantamine dreams from last night. The beginning and middle were fun. The end? Not too good.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #47: Lost in America

The wind is loud outside but the noise suddenly settles into a murmur. I know that I'm close to a WILD, and soon... I'm in a light rail station, holding hands with my son E. The floor is red brick and the sky above us is clear. Tall buildings surround us on all sides. I don't recognize the buildings, but for some reason I believe that this is New York.

I tell E, "Well, buddy, we're in New York. This is... well, this isn't real, but it's a train station." He hops around, pointing gleefully at the train. I walk with him to the opposite end of the station.

The train starts to move, and E suddenly breaks away from my grip and runs toward it! I'm panicked at the site of him running carelessly toward that train and I run after him. He stops short of actual danger and I grab onto his hand, making sure I've got a good grip this time. "E, you can't do things like that! If you're going to run off, we can't be here."

I take him with me out to a parking lot and our family car is waiting there. There's a small memory gap here, but I'm pretty sure that the car didn't have child seats, but I just ignored this. We're driving in the neighborhood where I grew up. E is there at first but after a few blocks I look back and he's gone.

I pass a set of kids that look like they're fighting. I can't tell what's going on but it looks like someone might be taking a beating. I jump out of the car, forgetting that it's still moving. To my dismay, the car keeps going, turns the corner by itself and drives out of sight. The kids disperse, and nobody seems upset anymore. There's another memory gap before I find myself being shown a house by a real estate agent who looks kind of like CSI's Marg Helgenberger. She calls herself "Madge" and the house has a beautiful, open interior. I'm impressed with the place and wonder if it's similar to any other houses I've seen IWL.

When she takes me into the back of the house, though, things take a horrible turn. The rooms in the back are dark and smoky with makeshift drapes blocking out the sunlight. Drug addicts are passed out all around the place, laying on beds, floors and furniture. Some of them twitch occasionally and I see one man whose leg is streaked with blood. Madge seems mildly embarrassed and says, "It does need a little fixing up."

When we get to the bathroom, I see a clearly dead man lying in the tub. I panic, probably lose lucidity, and run back down the hall. Madge is running too, but the hallways have all changed. I can't find my way back to the sane part of the house and my panic collapses the dream.

This was the second of two lucid dreams that came out of an experiment with green tea during WBTB. In retrospect, I might have liked to take more time talking to this angry dream character to see whether I could learn more about what he was about. These sorts of things can be hard to remember in the moment, but I'll keep trying.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #45: Crowbar Clint

I'm in a mall clothing store and a crazed young man in a baseball cap is wrecking the place with a crowbar. Frightened dream characters give him a wide berth as he screams, curses, and knocks over racks of clothing. He shouts threats and abusive profanity, swinging that crowbar like a baseball bat. I'm frantically planning the best way to get out of here without taking a crowbar to the face when I realize that I'm dreaming. Somehow I also know that the young man's name is Clint.

I get a rush of positive emotion once I realize that I'm perfectly safe. I notice that I know one DC in the store -- T, a coworker of mine, is standing by the cash register making his purchases.

I speak urgently to Clint, like he's neglected some important task: "Clint! Buddy, you've got to get going. T is over there waiting for you to help him change out his hubcaps with that crowbar of yours." Clint looks at me, his anger turning into confusion. I keep repeating this new story to him over and over, placing a hand on his shoulder and leading him toward T. Clint, now docile, walks silently beside me.

Clint appears to be the only person who believes this story. Other DCs shuffle away nervously as we walk by. T seems to get what's going on as well but he plays along, saying, "Yeah, Clint, let's go have a look at my truck." They walk off into the mall and I follow a few feet behind them.

I step outside to find myself on a second story walkway near an escalator. T and Clint have disappeared into the crowds of shoppers. The sun shines through a large, arching skylight that spans most of the mall's ceiling.



It looks like a beautiful day outside, so I decide that I'll fly to the top and phase through the skylight. The sunlight becomes brighter and brighter as I ascend, but before I reach the ceiling, I wake up.

I tried to achieve the "Trinity" Task of the Year item, where you witness the world's first atomic detonation. I got nowhere near the Trinity site, but having the atomic age on my mind had lots of interesting side effects.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #40: Tibetan Nuclear Winter

I'm on a Final Fantasy-style quest with Wife and my son E. I even have "4245/4245" hitpoints, so I'm feeling pretty impressed with myself as we knock on the door to ask some character in the game for help.

Things suddenly turn nightmarish as we walk inside the house. The house's owner steps out of the shadows and his face is gaunt and drawn, the skin tight and shriveled like a corpse. His eyes are pure white. As he advances toward us, he tells us in this droning zombie voice that "I'm not an American. I've never been a human." His gaunt, zombified wife steps out of the shadows and starts droning the same thing. This is absolutely terrifying to me and now I'm lucid.

I hustle Wife and E out of there back into the daylight and fortunately the corpse-things don't follow. The three of us follow a stone path past a well-kept grassy lawn until the path turns into a smoothly ascending slope. Soon Wife and E have disappeared, and I'm climbing higher up this slope by myself. I continue, badly wanting to know where it leads.

After climbing for a while, the wind picks up and a light snowfall starts all around me. I see that the stone path (barely six feet wide), stretches hundreds of feet over a vast, snow-filled valley. When I look at the surrounding mountains, I see a number of Tibetan monasteries and beautiful pagodas nestled among the peaks.



I think about the task of witnessing the Trinity explosion and almost immediately a mushroom cloud erupts over the distant mountains. The sky goes dark and the wind increases to a howl, the snowfall growing heavier at the same time. Strangely, I don't feel any colder.

More mushroom clouds spring up silently over the horizon. There are maybe half a dozen or more blasts. Suddenly, one of the pagodas explodes like it was packed with TNT. The path that I'm standing on starts to crumble away in front of me and I can't walk any further.



I take to the air and try to fly toward where the nuclear explosions are thickest, hoping that I'll still come up with some way to pull off my goal. I imagine a wind swelling up behind me to carry me over the mountains but in an instant all of the remaining monasteries explode and the stone path crumbles into the valley. This time I feel the blast and I wobble in flight. The last thing that I see is a swirl of snow before I'm awake.

I nearly had the chance to ask a nightmare figure what they represent but somehow the opportunity slipped away from me. I'm still not sure why this happened, but I'll surely try it again. Also got a little phasing in but failed to roll with the punches when the dream threw in a surprise for me there.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #38: The One Who Knocks

I'm walking through a house in the middle of the night. It's a house I've never seen before but I believe it's mine and that my wife and kids are asleep. The front door is mostly composed of a big glass panel and through it, I see a huge ogre of a man stagger up and stare in at me.

The man's in his early 50s, disheveled, filthy, and at least seven feet tall. His eyes look enormous through his thick glasses and he's staring right at me. I'm terrified of him, and I hide behind a corner, hoping he'll just leave. He starts hammering the glass with his fists and as my fear jumps to the next level, I become lucid.

I'm relieved that it's all a dream and I take a moment to wring the fear out of my mind. I decide that I'm going to talk to the DC and ask him what he represents. I step out from behind the corner to find that both the man and the front door have vanished! Now there's nothing but a blank wall.

I'm having trouble walking now, so I try floating. I can float in the direction that I want, but it's unusually slow. I want out of the house, so I float toward one of the windows so that I can phase through it. It's a long, slow grind to get there but at least I'm moving. As I get close, I see that the window has a screen over it, but I go for the phase anyway.

The phase works very well, my arm, shoulder, and finally head sinking into the window. But when my eyes reach the screen, I feel the screen scratching at my eyeballs. The feeling is nasty, like a brillo pad lightly passing over the entire front half of my eyeballs. It's so unexpected that I wig out and collapse the dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #30: Fire Escape

I'm leading a group of perhaps a dozen small children down a fire escape. We're on the third floor, there's no railing (!), and the kids are wandering everywhere. I'm holding hands with two of them and trying desperately to corral the others with my feet. My anxiety level is out of sight and I don't know how to get them down safely. To my horror, a pair of the kids wander off of the unrailed fire escape, falling to the ground below. One of the fallen kids seems to hurt his ankle and the other gets a huge gash on his arm. I scoop the rest of the kids up under my arms and run down to the bottom, grateful that they're not more badly hurt.

Later, Wife and I are standing on a viewing platform at the top of a skyscraper. It's night and I'm leaning against the railing, recounting to her what happened, still feeling really rotten. I tell her, "It was like some kind of nightmare..." I get suspicious, perform a nose pinch RC and now I have it all figured out.

I'm overjoyed not only to be lucid but also that nobody actually got hurt and none of that earlier stuff even happened. I float up and then fly off into the night, forgetting entirely to say goodbye to Wife. I fly over the city, circling around another skyscraper before banking left. Ahead of me is an empty bridge that crosses a bay. I fly under it, performing a high-speed barrel roll as I go. It feels amazing, but as I emerge from under the bridge, my vision goes completely dark.

I'm still flying, though. I can feel cool air rushing past my body, so I just go with it, flying blind for a while. I don't want to lose my lucidity so I start belting out songs that talk about flying. I think that I may have mostly performed Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" but I sometimes suffer from musical confusion in lucid dreams. Whatever song it was, I was really going for it and I became vaguely worried that my sleeping body might be singing too.

I suddenly find myself standing in our master bedroom, no longer in flight. The room's dark and Wife is asleep on her side of the bed, but I'm not fooled. Still dreaming. For some reason, I drag our bookcase out into the middle of the room to see how realistic it feels. (Very.) But then I worry that Wife will get up to go the bathroom and run into it, so I shove it back into place.

I float downstairs and head to the back door. I know that it's deadbolted shut, so I phase through, the glass pane chilling my skin like cool water. I remember that I want to find Purgatory for the Task of the Month. I imagine as Dante described it -- as a terraced mountain located somewhere in the seas of the southern hemisphere. I take flight again and start looking for it. I realize now that I flew north instead of south... oops! Somehow I wind up flying into a huge cavern that takes me downward into a sewer, where I'm soon lost.

Rather than flowing with things, I become alarmed and want to find my way out of this "mess" to get back on track. The ceilings are low so I'm forced to run through the (fortunately quite pristine) sewer water. There's daylight somewhere up ahead and I race through twisting, turning passageways to find it.

I finally spot a hole in the ceiling up ahead with daylight streaming through it (is it daytime now?) Unfortunately, along with the daylight, a steady stream of enormous, squealing rats is pouring in through the hole as well. They come right for me, and I'm not thinking clearly enough to come up with a clever plan. I punch the rats in the head or their potato-like bodies when they draw near, and each time I do the rat flops limply onto its back, not moving.

I'm almost to the hole when Erik Estrada himself steps in front of me, telling me to stop. I've unfortunately gotten swept up into caveman mode and I summon a weapon with which to fight Erik Estrada. Fortunately, I look at my right hand and discover that the "weapon" I summoned is just a modest zucchini squash. As the dream fades, I tell Erik Estrada that I am "really sorry about that", but he doesn't seem to hear.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #28: REBMEVON rejected

I'm watching as Breaking Bad's Walter White (dressed as Heisenberg) plans to set fire to a Jeep full of laughing teenagers. He pours gasoline all over the kids in the car but they don't react, somehow not understanding what's going on. I'm panicked and horrified and feel like I can't let him get away with this. The intense emotion makes me lucid and the scene vanishes.

Now I'm sitting in what looks like a log cabin, staring at a simple television that's no longer switched on. I see daylight through a nearby doorway so I run outside, passing through a short alleyway before I emerge in a grassland with mountains on the distant horizon. It's a beautiful scene and I'm so relieved to be free of the nightmare that I start flying.

I've been in the air for only a couple of seconds when the Task of the Month occurs to me -- I need to write "November" backwards. I've created a mnemonic device that instantly brings the correct word ("REBMEVON") to mind. (My chosen mnemonic device is my friend Von introducing himself to Reba McIntyre.)

I try to produce a pen and paper from behind my back but only manage a pen at first. I try writing on my hand but can only fit "REB". That won't do, so I do another "behind the back" object creation to get a notebook. I try to write the word but end up getting sudden strings of garbage characters like "REBhjklhlhlh". I scratch it out and try again, but only get a similar string of garbage characters as soon as I get past "REB".

I can see the word perfectly in my mind so the garbage character problem starts making me feel agitated and doubtful. It's not long before I wake up.

Interesting little converted nightmare. Producing the .44 out of thin air seems sort of like lucid dreaming techniques bleeding over into my non-lucid dreams, which is interesting.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #27: Paranoia

I'm in a false awakening where I'm a kid living in my old room at my parents' house. I sense some terrifying presence in my room so I jump out of bed, crouching down in fear. I reach under the bed and pull out a long-barreled, Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum and hold it in front of me, searching wildly for whatever is after me.



I suddenly have no idea what I'm doing holding this gun and I'm afraid that I'll wind up shooting myself or my parents with it. I duck into the bathroom and close the door behind me, trying to figure out what to do. I try the light switch but it doesn't work. Something reaches out in the darkness and starts wrestling with me for the gun. My fear combined with the craziness of the scene is enough to make me lucid.

I gently pull the .44 back toward me, no longer believing that there's any lurking presence trying to pull it away from me. I try the light switch again but it doesn't do anything. I'm trying to think of some way out of here when the scene suddenly shifts to a cluttered basement. The basement is a roughly ten-foot cube and walls are gray concrete. There are no doors or windows but benches, tables, tools, and other assorted pieces of junk litter the room.

Seeing no way out, I float up and try to phase through the ceiling but the concrete stops me cold. I shut my eyes and imagine the Great Pyramid, but nothing has changed when I open them again. Next, I try some Stephen Laberge-style spinning but I move with an odd slowness when I spin and the scene won't change.

Just then I notice a tiny surveillance camera attached to the ceiling and I feel like the presence that I sensed earlier is watching me through the camera. I float to the camera, determined to phase through it and see who (or what) is watching me. I push myself through the lens but immediately find myself awake in bed.

Easily my favorite lucid dream. Ironically, began as a lucid nightmare. Very satisfying and got about 10 minutes out of it.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #6: Seaside Escape (July 24, 2012)

Wife and I are walking along a wharf late at night with a man that we believe is our friend. I begin to realize that this man is not who he says he is and I'm growing more and more agitated. Suddenly, Wife screams, "It’s a setup! We’re being ambushed! Run!" and tears off running ahead of me.

I run after her and I hear the footsteps of our pursuers behind me. There are now many of them after us and this has become a full-blown nightmare. I know that the men behind me intend to kill us both.

Wife is running along the wharf ahead of me but she's approaching its end (or at least a bend) that leads straight into the ocean. We have nowhere left to go and I become lucid.

I run forward faster and faster to catch up with her. As my speed increases, I realized that I am soaring a couple of feet above the ground. I catch her under the arms and jumped up into the sky with her, flying several hundred feet into the air. We fly together over the ocean, splashing down far away from the wharf and our pursuers. The sea is choppy but it's a beautiful night. I'm completely unafraid.

I jump several more times until we end up in shallower water by a brightly-lit, festive boardwalk. The water is crowded with swimmers. It’s still night and we swim together through the crowd. I look closely at the faces of these other swimmers as we pass by. Vivid, detailed and varied, often with literally dozens of dream characters in the scene at once. I study them all, enjoying their detail. Most of them look like realistic people but one child has a very large head with an exceptionally large chin and lips. I commit his face to memory because it is so notable. He has curly blonde hair and somewhat pale skin.

We emerge from the water into the boardwalk’s shopping area, which looks very much like a mall food court. This area, too, is bustling with dream characters. I realize that I’ve lost track of Wife now. I feel that she’s safe and has to be nearby. At this point I sense I am at risk of being drawn too much into the "dream plot" and start talking to the characters around me, telling them that I am having a lucid dream.

I stop at a coffee shop. The girl who is the cashier there presides over a display case of poppy seed muffins. I feel bold and pushy so I tell the cashier that "This is my dream and you will do what I say!" Her hands drop to her sides and she looks ahead, suddenly no longer independently animated. I tell her to leave the cash register and walk out into the food court. She does. Some other DCs are watching, seemingly unsure what to make of this. I'm deciding whether to try to turn the cashier into Wife or try to see how many dream characters I can control at once.

A feeling of frailty suddenly sweeps over me and my voice becomes a whisper. Moments later, I'm awake.

This was just a great LD. I was riding high for days from this one.