I have not lucid dreamed but I have been keeping a dream journal and I had a strange dream where I recognized I was dreaming.

I was visiting a child (who I don't know in real life) and when I walked into her room I had the thought "this dream is just like a dream I had years ago." However, I didn't seem to become lucid. The clarity and feeling of the dream didn't change. It just seemed and felt like any other dream. Weird eh?

Then while I was talking with this child I had this realization that I was dead and I was a ghost. This little girl suddenly seemed like the child from The Sixth Sense and I was one of the visiting ghosts in the house. Her mother walked in then and just talked to her and ignored me, confirming to me that I was dead. Then I was riding a train around, thinking "shouldn't I see my dead relatives or something?"

It's weird, it was a very vivid dream, but it didn't feel like real life at all. Aren't lucid dreams supposed to be so clear and vivid that it feels like reality? This felt like a normal dream. Or can lucid dreams feel more dream-like than life-like? Are there different levels of intensity? Honestly, if this was a lucid dream, it's kind of disappointing.

Last year I was doing lots of reality checks, but I gave up as I could never achieve a lucid dream. (the only thing I have continued is my dream journal) Then this strange dream out of nowhere.