Hello DV once again. Recently my best friend told me about a night terror he has every one or two months of his life. He is 15 and says he has been having this same dream since he was four. His mother used to come into his room at riduclulous hours in the morning to him screaming as if he was actually being attacked or something chronic. He is terrified of the dark and would freak out if he were in a pitch black room on his own, I should know. He asked me to ask somebody who might know what on Earth it is about or how he can possibly get over it. It is quite troubling to him so any advice or interpretation whatsoever will be important.

The nightmare goes as follows: he will be lying in his bedroom at the same house he lived in as a young child. It is the middle of the night and the room is almost totally dark, but he can vaguely see a few objects. There are a row of mirrors at the opposite end of the room which he can remember being there at the old house and he is completely paralysed and unable to move. I would not say this is sleep paralysis though as he has moved house many times and it always takes place in the same one. At the end of the bed will be someone he knows. Anyone, it doesn't matter if it's a close friend or rival, just generally anybody although originally as a young child it was always his mother. He can't see their face, just vague shape though he always knows who it is. They are simply stood there facing him and there will always be a black hole or chasm in their belly or chest. He says there is something crawling out of it which as far as he can tell is slimy and alien like. The terror is extremely intense and, if he even can he screams like mad and when he thinks he has woken up, the same thing happens over and over again in a long string of false awakenings and (though only at his old house) he has hallucinated the scene upon waking.

Nowadays whenever he has that dream he can't hack it and stays up the rest of the night with the light on, so it's obviously extremely distressing. I have nightmares like that extremely rarely and I can safely say that my worst one was nowhere near as terrifying as this.

My friend also told me that most of the time his dreams are very calm. He has a reoccuring dream of actually sitting on a disk and flying through space, the whole thing is very peaceful. I find this very bizzare because I had assumed that people usually dream about angst. Most of my dreams for example are about exploring new environments, being away from home or "rehearsing" the first day of sixth form over and over again (this September I start it). Spiritual dreams of freedom and contentment like this simply don't seem to come to me.

On a final note he started smoking weed a couple of years back and does now every day. I don't know what effect at all this has on dreaming but the nightmare has remained unchanged. If there is any more info I need to give please tell me, thanks for reading .