Hi all,

This is my first post - nice to find a place like this after my experience. I thought I would try lucid dreaming before researching it. Kind of like the cart before the horse! But I thought I would share what happened on my first attempt to see what more experienced lucid dreamers think.

I woke up just after 4am and was starting to drift back to sleep and I decided to try keep lucid while drifting off to sleep. Seemed like a good idea at the time! I was aware that I was in front of the house I grew up in but a lady who lived next door got my attention and asked me in to her house. I don't recognise her as anyone I know from my life, but in my dream she was a neighbour that I know.

A lot of stuff goes on, like chatting to people who are passing by, looking at the weather and the other houses, etc. However, I decide to go into her house where I discover she is a "psychic" and she leads me to her attic where she holds her seances. This is where my curiosity got the better of me and I asked to have a seance with her, and she agreed. We sat at a small round table with a lace cloth over it and she placed her hands on the table. This is where it got weird for me though...

I sat opposite her and placed my hands in front of hers and we touched fingertips... and then bang. My head snapped back and something entered into me and took almost absolute control of me. I am still aware that I am dreaming but I am almost completely paralysed and unable to wake myself out of it. The strangest part though is that I can feel massive activity in the back of my brain near the base of my skull and I have never felt anything like that before in my life. Its like I have become invaded and possessed by a "spirit"... I don't know if its good or bad though as I can't relate the sensation to anything accept something taking away my control.

In my bed, I am pretty scared and completely tensed with my back arched and struggling to gain control by shaking my body, trying to wake my wife up. The sensation in my head is like mild electricity. At that point I wake up because I can feel my wife's hand on my arm, which "grounds" me back to where I really am, in bed. Funnily enough, she thought I was having a "fun" dream (if you know what I mean ; ))

So I woke up terrified by the experience. The whole time I knew I was dreaming and I made a lot of the choices and decisions in the dream. What I can't explain is that "possession". I'm not making any judgement about it now because I am both scared and curious about the experience. That lead me to the internet to check lucid dreaming out and found this forum.

I realise it sounds a little fantastic, but I am wondering if there is anything more to it. Has anybody else had anything like this in their dreams? I think I want to try again. I have no idea where the seance thing came from, as I am not really into that sort of thing, but I am very curious now! If I can try the seance again in my dream, what tips would you have to keep me "grounded".

Thanks.
Francis X.