Thread: I don't know what happened in my dream but I want to know if anyone has experienced a similar thing

Not sure if this was "WILD"(A term I found while googling answers to my dream) "Sleep paralysis" or a "Lucid Dream" but I do know that I had a very strange dream last night.

I'm not very good at explaining things so this is going to be fun.

I woke up around 3 AM and couldn't fall back asleep. After laying around for 30 minutes I decided to go downstairs and try my luck on a couch. Sure enough it worked and I slowly descended into sleep. The strange thing was I could feel my body fall asleep instead of just... well going to sleep.

I feel a warmness encompass my body as I descend into sleep. I wake up in the same place I fell asleep except all the lights are on and I can't move. I test for a dream and confirm it by being able to stop breathing. As soon as I do this all of the lights shut off and I can feel something watching me. I then go into another dream.

This time I am lucid and am in my local town walking around. I lift myself off the ground and begin to fly around. All of a sudden I think of spiders and the world is covered in spiders and spider webs. I start thinking as to how I can wake up and I do. Except I don't

I wake up back in the place I went to after I initially fell asleep. I still can't move and since I think I am awake, I am scared. I then think that my pillow isn't very comfortable and I see one appear out of nowhere and fly over to me. I am so amazed and literally paralyzed that I don't even think of the fact that I'm dreaming or looking to see who summoned it.

The lights then go out again and I go back into a dream. This time I can feel my body in the first dream world, but my mind is in the second dream world. I can still move around and I am lucid yet again. I run around into my favorite restaurant and I get my favorite meal. As I take the first bite it crumbles under my hand and I blink.

When I open my eyes back up I'm in the first dream world and the lights are flashing. They all of a sudden stop and I feel a large amount of well... I don't know what I felt. All I could hear was a louder version of that noise you hear when you stretch. Except it was deeper in pitch and louder. I couldn't detect where it was coming from as it felt omnipresent(It was that loud) and I feel a darkness replacing my previous feeling. This goes on for what felt like hours until I finally wake up.

I then feel the same sensation of sleep paralysis and I am experiencing pure fear. I can see the light of day out of my peripherals but then it vanishes into a darkness. I can see myself fine however nothing else is visible. All of a sudden, it all just ends.

It was as if someone snapped their fingers and it just shut off. There was no fade into light or waking up feeling. As I stayed in the exact same position all throughout. I then am still paralyzed, but the world has gone back to normal. It feels like I'm in a gel-like substance as I being to attempt movement again. I am able to successfully move and I get up.

It is almost 8 AM and I get up to make cereal. I move into the kitchen and everything is fine until I see the microwave. The clock needs to be reset. The strange thing is that was the only thing with an issue. Even the oven connected to it was fine. Literally everything else worked completely fine besides the microwave's clock. I then hear loud three loud thumps coming from upstairs. I sit down and call my friend on skype and tell him about the experience. It is now 8:47 AM on the day I experienced this.

Still shaking.

Hello CousCous

All the things you describe are quite common and normal although I must admit you got quite a handful of experiences for one night.
I will try to break it down so that you can see what happened.

First of all I think you started the process of going into a WILD but then fell asleep. I would guess that since you had awaken briefly (kind of WBTB) you then remembered that you are dreaming
but the strange atmosphere of the dream and the lights going off (maybe you remembered that they should be off and the dream translated your expectation) scared you and then
you felt the sensation of something watching you (fear translated into an element of the dream).

In the city again fear took hold. Remember that in a dream the phrase "the only think to fear is fear itself" is particularly true. My interpretation is that the rest of
your experience of these very interesting nested dreams were triggered by fearful expectations.

I had a few experiences like that when I started lucid dreaming. Being in the dream but couldn't move. Something coming towards me. Feeling trapped in a dream for a long time.
I have since managed to control my fear in these kind of situations and everything has settled. For example a few weeks ago I was in a quite low level lucid dream and i saw a mantis insect.
I got scared so it became larger. But I remembered that I was dreaming and stayed there to explore my fear. The horse-sized mantis started walking towards me and I called it in a friendly tone to
come to me as if talking to a dog. As it came closer it reduced in size and turned into a little doggy to pet.

After you woke up I guess you experienced sleep paralysis. I find the sensation quite pleasurable as long I remind myself that the characteristics of sleep paralysis are hallucinations
(auditory are very common) and in many cases a sense of presence in the room. It could be any dream element though.

Finally, your morning experience. I have felt it myself. This momentary doubt of wether you are still dreaming. In my opinion this is something to explore in a more philosophical way.
Why can you doubt? What is the function of perception that can confuse us in this way? What are the similarities and what are the differences between waking life perceptions and dreams.

The more understanding you get in these subjects the more you will be able to rationally understand experiences like the ones you had.

Hope that helps

Hi, CousCous, thanks for sharing your story, and welcome to DV! I agree with Erfeyah's interpretation: you began the process of WILD (most likely due to your earlier inability to sleep/wakefulness). After that, probably due to the relative novelty of the situation, you began to feel fear. Fear in a dream has the power to change the scenery, create new dream characters, and so forth: so when you thought of spiders, spiders appeared! As you become more proficient with lucid dreaming, this fear of the dream state will subside and you will enjoy the freedom. The paralysis is also something that will go away on its own.

As a side note, the feeling of "waking up" but only entering another dream scene is known as a "false awakening." Once again, none of these phenomena are dangerous, or need to be feared in any way. Once you become more comfortable, you will see why we all do this

What I am interested in is that you tested to see if you were in a dream--are you currently practicing lucid dreaming? If not, what made you think to do a reality test?