Lucid Dreams and Nightmares - Why do they sometimes cling to your mind all night?

[Zakar]

Is there a reason why when I have a lucid dream or nightmare, I will repeatedly wake up every 15-30 mins, and then fall back asleep and continue where I left off? This is very frustrating when trying to get sleep for work and being awoken by a random nightmare over and over again. This happens with nightmares mostly, like last night for instance (I usually forget what they are even about but usually involves bizarre looking beings or sounds). I wake up and SWEAR I see something staring at my face at the foot of the bed. They (the nightmares) seem to "cling" to me no matter what I do I can't shake them off for the whole night or even during the day. The nightmares are extremely short lived, usually around 3 seconds, but enough to startle me into waking up. These totally random nightmares will wake me up with sleep paralysis. Then it continues on and on! Sometimes I even get up and walk around and they will still start again. Imagine a horror movie where they flash an ugly monster and play a loud sound for about 1-3 seconds, these are how most of my nightmares are. This fortunately happens with good lucid dreams as well, but the phenomenon is rarer with good dreams. I guess that's what they mean when you have a "bad night"? heh I hope it's okay to post it here I did delve into nightmare topics a lot, but the nightmare forum seemed dead.