I actually have never related except to friends and family a lucid dream that was absolutely terrifying and that I doubted at one point I could return to my body from!? (If that is really what's going on, and I was sure it was at the time.) Maybe I'm confusing astral travel (OBE) and lucid dreaming or maybe they are related. I'm no expert, self-professedly. I fell asleep more or less into this dream with very little lag time in between.
I knew I was sleeping and dreaming the second I came into consciousness of what was happening around me. I was being questioned by a group of angry, grisly looking men. During this dream I pleaded with those present in the dream all the details of who I am and where I live, I told them repeatedly that I was dreaming. They were virtually lynching me in this dream, probably based on my behavior (yelling, 'I'm dreaming', the whole time!), and over the course of the dream I managed to gain only what year it was, 2030, and that something horrible had occurred that was obliquely referred to by the one character in this dream that might have believed me. Their was no friendliness from this guy but he had a sober look on his face when I insisted that it was 2009. I'm sure this strikes people as fantastical, and I'm not insisting that this was more than a very vivid dream, but I woke up sure that it had been real. And the facts are as I relate them.
The group of people were all men. I didn't particularly feel like I was in my own body and they repeatedly referred to me as if I was someone they knew (but had gone crazy, maybe?). The setting was in a gutted, rundown building, realistic in all respects as was the continuity of the dream. They beat me, (I couldn't feel any pain, but was scared to death) and eventually, if I'm not mistaken, killed me. Meanwhile, I literally had my eyes closed tightly at times willing myself to wake up again and again. I normally exercise some measure of control over lucid dreams and this was a terrible exception. As I woke I went through a series of false awakenings. In one, I awoke in my childhood home walked around my room, realized I was still dreaming. One, I woke and was laying in the bed where I was really sleeping and watched myself walk into my bedroom and stare down at myself. This scared the crap out of me! I thought at that moment, "this is the first time I've ever seen myself as others see me", (not in a mirror, reflected, or on video, or in photos). I finally woke up for real, and was too afraid, considering, no lingering shakiness of a nightmare, the reality was stark but all emotion drained out the second I was sure I was "back in my body". For many moments during the dream I was afraid, terrified even, that I couldn't make it back to my body for lack of the ability to wake and I was reminding myself where I was sleeping, my room, my bed, etc. I woke concerned that I had gotten somebody murdered in the future (hopefully too much imagination) by taking over their body for a time. Or, God forbid, that I had been killed in the far off future.
I'm writing for opinions and insights. Especially as to the nature of Lucid Dreams as opposed to Out of Body Experiences, namely do people fall directly asleep at the beginning of the night into lucid dreams very often? I have had these direct into lucid dreams (I've always thought of them as LDs because I'm asleep and know it) at the outset of my night's sleep all through my twenties, but infrequently. I have also dreamed events that come to pass, but within a matter of days or weeks, and experience them when they happen as dejavu feelings but know that the dejavu comes from having dreamed it before. The most distinct episode of this kind happened with such force that I knew what was going to happen at the table I was seated at, and remembered the dream and when/where I had it. At the time of dreaming I didn't recognize the people, because I met most of them that night and it was the first time I had been to the place. Consequently, it was a Christmas Eve and I also told my friend at the time what had just happened.
I'll add that I recently saw the cormac mccarthy movie, The Road, and was more than a little creeped out by the similarily post-apocalyptic vision that was represented. It's bad science I realize to have a preconception and then start to see confirmation of it in neutral data all over the place. Especially, movies 50% of which are about an apocalypse of one kind or another.
Thanks.