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

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. :oops:

Hey, perfectly fine to post it here :)

Maybe try putting the radio on quietly or a fan for a change in the background noise in your room. Trying to change the environment in which you are sleeping could help :)

Yea I do use a fan, hear people cutting grass outside, hear the TV, my environment is pretty noisy. Maybe that is why?

Edit : I work the night shift if you are wondering.

Yeh i experience this aswell, i have a bad dream and then when i go back to sleep it continues and this happens practically all night. But also this happens with ld's which happened to me last night, i had 5 ld's in 6 dreams and the only one that wasn't was a fa. (i keep forgetting to remind myself that i could have a fa) Also when i awoke from one of my ld's i found my self in sp i think because i woke up and this woman was sort of hugging me in a scary sort of way so i tryed to get out of sp but it didn't work so i then i just layed there and then all of a sudden wahawhahhwhwhwhwhah!!!!!!!!!!!!!! was the noise i heared in my head and i jumped a mile out of my bed.

But i don't know why they cling to ur mind though.