I know there are many other posts like this around here, I just want to introduce myself. All of this is actually quite new to me... I was searching the web for information on sleep and dreaming, it is so fascinating and makes me enjoy my sleeping hours a lot more. It was a coincidence really, that I stumbled over a Lucid Dreaming "how to" FAQ. I had never heard of it before and became interested, so I read all I could find and finally found "Dream Views", so I went back today and registered.

Tonight I tried having a lucid dream (even though it is a bit early), I tried first the WILD method, it started out allright. First I saw the hypnotising patterns and then my body felt paralysed and that was fine, but then my body started to vibrate, and I felt like I was leaving my body. It was quite creepy, so I forced myself to wake up. The secound time the same thing happened, so I gave up and fell asleep instead. I woke up after 5-6 hours and tried again. Closing my eyes this time I started remembering the dreams I had through the night, so I tried to go back to one them. I did not feel any vibrations, but I fell occasionally into dreams without really being aware of it. The moment I became aware of it the dream dissapeared.

I have had "unplanned" lucid dreams a few times before, without knowing it was something I could train myself to. But I have never changed the environment of the dream, usually I just knew I was in one, and sometimes decided how the dream ended.
The first time this happened I was quite young (5 or 6 years old) and I dreamed that my mother was chasing me with an axe through the supermarket. Dramatic as it sounds, it was really amusing, because I kept saying out loud that there was nothing to worry about: "it is only a dream"... I remember smiling to myself before I woke up. I thought about it a lot at the time and told others about it, which is probably why I still remember it many years later.
A couple of years ago I had another lucid dream, but I don't remember it as vividly. It was set as an old western movie, and I changed the dream to prevent someone from being shot. I am not sure, but I don't recall actually being in the dream myself, I was sort of watching and controlling it from the outside. I don't know if that is even possible...
Freud thought we are all the characters in our own dreams......