nightmare

Disclaimer: This dream journal is about sleep paralysis/demon encounters. I want to clarify that sleep paralysis and intense nightmares like mine aren't normal, nothing about this is normal. I don't recommend that anyone attempt to do this. I've been dealing with SP and demon encounters for over 20 years. It's not something to take lightly or recommend, this is just my own very personal dream life that I'm sharing.

I also want to point out that there's a lot of misinformation in the LD community about LDs causing sleep paralysis, despite how useful LDs are at combatting SP. lucid dreaming didn't cause my SP. Rather, lucidity is the way I've learned how to get out of SP/nightmares and this dream shows how.

Anywho.

As I fell asleep consciously, I felt a demon's claws sinking into my back. Its nails brought an uncanny electrical sensation through my spine, as if a poison was being injected into my spinal cord directly, shooting straight through my nervous system to the rest of my body. This caused waves of pain with occassionally intense spikes, growing more and more intense by the moment. It was dreadful.

The demon was standing behind me (I normally sleep on my side). I don't know if I was paralyzed because I didn't try to move. My goal was to combat this mentally through calm meditation, not physical struggling.

I already know how to break SP with physical movement, and that's not what I wanted to do here. This was a planned encounter. I invited a demon to induce SP.

"This is fine. Keep going." I thought in my mind, wanting the demon to continue as I practiced my mental fortitude to combat the feeling, mentally wrestling with it and pushing it out of my mind. It was overwhelming, but I kept going.

The demon cranked the pain up a tenfold. I started getting severe spikes of pain going through my nervous system every few seconds, increasing in frequency. I stayed calm and still didn't react despite the pain.

I've been inviting this demon to come visit me in my sleep for a few weeks now. Why? Because I'm stagnating, I've exhausted my the resources of my personal dreamwork and I can't figure out how to push myself any other way... I need to grow, I have to keep going. My life is a mess right now and I'm desperate to become stronger so I can deal with it.

The demon stopped after a while, since it wasn't breaking me. I felt its energy fade, and I too was fading into a dreamed version of my bedroom. The color of the walls, lighting, and layout of the house slowly changed in the emergence of the dreamscape. I was still technically my house, just an altered version of it.

I felt an uneasy presence in the room and knew the demon was still standing somewhere nearbby watching me, invisible and waiting.

I decided to walk out into the livingroom. This part I'm not going to share because it's too personal, but one of my insecurities manifested in the next dream scene of loved ones yelling at me, and it quickly snowballed. My calm demeanor slipped as I felt my mind spiral out of control from the insecurities. I was upset. In that moment of clouded thinking, I actually lost my lucidity.

This was not normal. It's rare for me to lose lucidity when I'm upset. This went on for a few minutes before I regained my lucidity. Being upset normally triggers lucidity for me, so I got it back pretty quickly.

I felt the demon laughing at me, though, and realized it did that on purpose. Impressive, I thought, but I was still freaked out. I realized that this demon had found one of my weakness. It couldn't get me with sleep paralysis and pain, so it had (successfully) targeted a psychological weakness instead.

Challenge accepted.

I quickly walked into another room, intending to change the dream scene to get myself out of that negative emotional state. If I could calm down, I could regain control and prevent the demon from weakening me any further.
This was kind of thrilling, I have to admit. I like playing these mental games, and learning from my mistakes.

I suddenly woke up for seemingly no reason, which is unusual for me. I typically always have a reason for waking up, whether because of an alarm, the natural end of a dream, a nightmare, or my own intention to awake... I don't just 'randomly' wake up from my dreams.

So I sat up in bed, unaware that this was a false awakening, which is AGAIN unusual for me. I haven't fallen for an FA in a while, yet this time, I really thought I was awake.

Now nonlucid dreaming, I walked back out into the livingroom and ANOTHER one of my insecurities manifested. Some of my personal embarrassing text messages were revealed to people I didn't want to share them with! Thinking it was really happening, I was mortified. But then I became lucid again (since negative emotions normally trigger lucidity for me) and was incredibly relieved that this embarrassing moment wasn't actually happening.

The demon was laughing at me pretty hard though. I knew it had tricked me into having an FA and being nonlucid.
I suddenly woke up again. The demon was trying it's trick a second time.
"No. Not this time~" I told myself, laughing maniacally.
Fooled me once, shame on me...

I was kind of unsure though, so I did a reality check and it failed. My hands were solid.
Whatever. I don't trust reality checks anyway, so I wasn't nonlucid just yet.
I tried to use dream control next, going to fly upwards towards the wall. Normally my dream control works, but this failed too.

"Huh... " I thought, starting to believe I might actually be awake...
Reality checks and dream control can fail, though, I thought, so I still wasn't fully sold on this being waking reality. I was really thinking hard on this one.
Could still be a dream.
I was determined to not be tricked again and I was pretty sure that my uncertainty meant this was for sure a dream.
What a puzzle.
I normally ALWAYS know when I'm dreaming, so this was... really weird.
The weirdness of it alone made me even more suspicious.

I proceeded to have several more false awakenings, over and over again. Sometimes I knew it was a dream, and other times I wasn't sure, but I felt like the demon was flipping a light switch back and fourth repeatedly trying to break my lucidity.

"Mother-" I cursed and laughed.

Normally I'd be fine continuing this game, it was fun, but I knew I had to get up early in the morning and didn't want my sleep quality to be obliterated tonight (lucidity doesn't affect my sleep quality, but nightmares like this can when they go on for too long).

So I decided I was going to end this by waking myself up.

First, I found an alter for the demon in the dreamscape (which had offerings on it). "Thank you, that was impressive. No hard feelings~" I said to the demon as I destroyed the alter, shoving the whole thing off the table and breaking the artifacts.

Then I woke myself up (for real). I checked the physical reality clock and realized... That whole thing only lasted an hour?!

It felt like 4+ hours had gone by, so I was shocked. This is also unusual of for me, since I've specifically trained myself to not experience time dilation (I don't like when my time perception in dreams doesn't match waking reality).

I reached for the protective pendant I keep on my desk (which keeps demons away, but I had intentionally taken it off before bed as an invitation). It was shoved under my photography lightbox for some reason, kind of wedged under there (not where I put it, but ok). I was going to put it on when I realized the chain was torn off.

This was in waking reality. I searched high and low for the necklace chain. I found the chain on the floor and put my pendant on, did some other protection stuff in the room, and went back to sleep.
Had normal dreams for the rest of the night.

Final note: this dream happened the night before last.

This dream was from 3 nights ago.

I boarded a subway with sectioned rooms big enough for one or two people. Each room was empty with just a handrail.

I stood inside, waited for the doors to close, and felt the train move. Stood there for what felt like a few minutes, thinking it was a bit odd that my dream wasn’t changing. I can normally sense the motion of my dreams and things change around me.

Something felt off.

Then I felt something wash over my spine (the sensation I get with SP). I noticed a presence in the room and looked up. There was something nonhuman hanging on the handrail above me. I didn’t want to see it, so I blocked it from my mind with a blur effect as soon as I realized it was there.

it’s been a while since I’ve been scared like this, normally these don't get under my skin. I attempted to wake myself up, but did an FA into a room that looked nothing like my bedroom. I recognized it as a dream, but played along with it until I started feeling the sensation again of SP again and saw the creature coming back for more.

Woke myself up for real that time.

I kept accidentally DEILDing back in several times after that, though, and having waking hallucinations.

So eventually, I got up and walked around to wake myself up enough to stop the DEILDs.

I’m so glad this isn’t common for me any more. I used to go into SP multiple times per week and the experiences were a lot worse (this wasn't too bad). Once it would start, I would get stuck in endless DEILD chains.

The dream control skills I’ve picked up from this community make a world of difference. I didn’t lose sleep or experience any panic like I used to. Pretty great improvement.

Dreamed about having sleep paralysis last night. My dog climbed onto my chest in the dream and started staring and growing at the window where something black started phasing into existence.
I turned to my significant other and realized it was just a dream my SO suddenly spoke in an amused demonic voice.
"I can't help you now~"

I immediately woke myself up from the nightmare, did some emotional grounding, then went back to sleep.

In the next dream, I took an alternate form and was at an outdoor training facility featuring a round pie-shaped field. Each section had a door to the next, but to reach it, one had to cross that section of the field.

There were various obstacles in each section and cheats like flight, teleportation etc. were prohibited.
You had to face what was in the field.

As I stood at the gate of the first section, I saw a tall black figure standing in the field, motionless, waiting.
Despite me being in plain sight behind the gate, it didn't see me. It didn't navigate with the usual senses.
As I stepped past the threshhold of the gate, it noticed and turned towards me (with fluid movement, no walking despite having the appearance of legs).
So I stepped back out, and it seemed to lose sight of me again.

Recognizing that it navigated reality through pure consciousness and not perception, I cleared my mind. No emotions, no thoughts, as if I didn't exist, so it wouldn't detect me.
I re-entered the field with my mind empty and began to move towards the door at the opposite end of the field, just as fluidly as the being. No walking, just floating above the ground in stillness.

I found more of the same figures in the next chambers, and continued on with the same strategy until it stopped working a few chambers in.
Maybe it was my inability to hold that state for long enough, or maybe it was that they were getting smarter, I don't know.
But one of them noticed as I was halfway through the field, unable to make a quick exit no matter which direction I went in.
As it moved closer, I could feel something warping, pulling, idk how to describe it. This uncomfortable sensation, as if all the blood in my body was being sucked towards the figure.
I decided to give up the stealth and just sprinted towards the next door in a quick burst. It worked.
That strategy continued to work in the next room.

I never made it to the end because I was eventually caught in a field with multiples of the figure. The blood-pulling sensation intensified uncomfortably and I woke myself up before they could touch me.

I always loved going back to old memories through dreams. To recreate my childhood home and the white-painted window sill with the little chips of wood in it. How it opened horizontally. To remember the shape of the bathroom rug, and that heater lamp in the corner by the floor. To use one of those old bulky televisions from the 1990s, hooked up to Broadband satellite with Nickelodeon on channel 300.

It's incredible the things we consciously forgot. We have a treasure trove of seemingly forgotten memories inside of us. As a dreamer, I take full advantage of my access to them. One of my favorite pastimes is to eat food I used to enjoy in the past that can no longer be bought. The spring rolls from my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in 2014, the sweetened condensed coffee and chicken saute from another, saag and rice from the first Indian takeout I ever went to. It was amazing. I've never had anything like it since, and may never again—except literally any night I please.

Ah, but last night wasn't pleasant. I dreamed I found an old family album. It's one I've never seen before, and it occured to me that this dream album contained all my missing photos (any that I want it to contain). That's why it looked new. It was just for this.
There's a lot of family memories I'll never be able to relive—old photos that are gone, copies of my mom's songs...
So I thought now's the opportunity. I can get back some of those memories.
I'll never lose them. I may never again hear the recordings of her voice or see her smiling face during waking, but I'll always have this album in my dream home to look at any time I want to remember her again.

I couldn't...
Just sat there sobbing in my miserable dream.
My SO woke me up, says I was acting distressed in my sleep.

Well, this entry took a turn for the sad. Whoops.

Just had a lucid nightmare. I’m currently waking myself up fully to avoid DEILD.

It would have been much worse if it wasn’t lucid. I dreamed that myself, my spouse, and an ex friend were driving through the hills. We hung out, caught up on old times, stopped at a café, and drove for a bit.

I bought the ex friend some food and thought things were going okay, though she seemed cold. Then, suddenly, she swerved and intentionally drove us off the side of a cliff.

I was lucid, so I made us land gentry and then snapped time back a few seconds to put us back on the road.

But she immediately did it again and again… and again. She grinned and I realized that she was lucid. She knew I was rewinding time.

She had every intention of driving us off a cliff. It wasn’t a misunderstanding or an accident.

I got fed up and pulled her off the steering wheel, then shoved her out the window. After she was gone, I sat back down with my spouse and had a breather.

I woke up with the next natural WBTB.

I still feel uneasy. It’s that uncanny sense you get about a person. It feels like they’ll kill you if they’re bored and can get away with it, but that’s so extreme, you tell yourself there’s no way…

But this feeling didn’t originate in dreams. I’m more aware now. It’s real.

I was a young boy in this dream, sleeping on a couch in a room with the lights off.

A black ghost-like entity crept up from behind me and I felt a tingling sensation on my back, then an electric sensation in my spine.

Whatever this thing was, I felt a malicious femininity from it and got the impression that it normally targets children (it didn’t know that I’m not actually a child).

I wasn’t scared or intimidated, and don’t like giving into these things, so I sat there for a moment.

But the electric sensation in my back continued, so I woke myself up. The sensation persisted for a little bit after I woke.