I'm kind of a skeptic of OOBEs occuring without influence of drugs but I usually keep an open mind even though I'm an advocate of science. Last night after reading magical_mike's topic on scientist's inducing them I finished my day normally and did my daily RCs every 2ish hours like normal...

I'm a skeptic myself and am not claiming I had an OOBE or anything but just wanted to know if you guys agree that this was just likely a lucid dream false awakening since I've had them multiple times without this part:

So I went to bed thinking, "Wow, even if OOBEs are NOT true and are just forms of lucid dreams I should set my mind in that direction so I can have one in a dream at the very least. That would still be amazing." So, I fall asleep, didn't perform WILD or WBTB even though I had taken a nap earlier in the day which could have caused this. Anyways, even though I didn't go for a WILD I woke up either without doing RCs (or without remembering performing them maybe). I'm lying in my bed and everything is extremely dark (this may have triggered it) even though I always have light creeping in through my window so I'm guessing this triggered me. I tried to imagine the most logical way to "leave my body" and kind of created this buzz and energy going through it and tried to I guess LIFT myself out and imagine my consciousness looking back as I was lifting myself?

So I'm kind of moving around and I just assumed it was a false awakening. Was extremely realistic so I performed a reality check. The first one just made it more vivid (poking hand) but failed and the second one (holding breath) allowed me to breath and made me extremely lucid (was already to a degree). I was walking around and trying to scream but there was just this quiet shrill wheezing noise that came out which always happens when I try to scream in lucids. I tried to imagine and come up with something really cool to do and get some cool looking stuff to enter the room. Nothing happened and I started knocking on the doors of my house and ran into a couple random people who I thought I honestly spoke with (even though I was lucid and even realized this obviously through the RCs/lighting).

This dark creature that was just an outline started floating around the room and even though I was asleep I could feel my heart pounding really hard and fast and walked "into me"; it felt like it was sucking something out of my body. Rubbed my hands together to make it even more vivid (nothing happened) and tried to change the dreamscape by spinning around and nothing happened (usually does). I started freaking out and yelled WAKE THE FUCK UP like 5 times. Floated away from that black thing and walked toward my bed and said it a couple more times. I did finally, then I flipped the light switch and then went back to bed in kind of a dreamy state. Woke up to another lucid and performed 2 more RCs (I had another one after this too (3 tonight) but I won't explain it cause it'll take too long. The general themes were the same and even though I could walk and do whatever I wanted I couldn't seem to control any of the people or presences or what they were doing to me which pissed me off.

Anyways, there were all the signs of a lucid dream but some of the things that happened were totally uncharacteristic and freaked me out and matched all the accounts of OOBEs I had heard on atleast 2 of the "dreams". Then again, I could also see these VERY much just being vivid lucid dreams where I imagined myself performing a "lucid OOBE" and that's what I think happened. I'm thinking your brain creates these experiences, the RCs would make sense then too; I may have just not had that much control cause it was a new experience and I was nervous.

Would like to hear both sides if possible since I'm a big skeptic.