Hi,

I'm Paddy, I'm 21, male and I live in Glasgow, Scotland (although I recently lost my job and will be moving back to my Mum's in a week).

I'm new here and thought I'd start off with a few weird dream stories to introduce myself.

I have had, to my knowledge, two lucid dreams before. I only discovered a few days ago that it was possible to induce them and am very excited by this. My first LD was when I was 12 (I think).

First Lucid Dream

I was leaving school at the time and was met by a black, FBI sort of looking car to take me away somewhere. I didn't know anyone with this sort of car and that made me realise I was dreaming. My first reaction was to try and wake up but then I realised the potential of being lucid. The dream seemed to be getting further away as I was waking up and I remember it appearing like backing away from a TV screen. In the dream I grabbed the edges of the screen and with some effort pulled myself back into it.

The car was now under my control and I decided it was there to tak me to see my grandmother who had passed away a few years before. So I went to an old folks home where I decided she had been staying instead of dying. We raced some remote controlled speedboats for some reason and had lunch. I forget what happened immediately after but eventually ended up walking along a country road near where I used to live with my Mum and little sister. I was quite bored so willed a flying saucer into existance. I then lost lucidity and the UFO shot lasers at my sister turning her into a can of IRN-BRU. Then I woke up.

A Non-Lucid Dream

I can't remember what lead up to this but I do remember I was being chased. I fled to an underground station hoping to catch the train as it is the fastest way round Glasgow. When I got there the platform was only about a foot wide and it was a steep drop on either side. When the train came I suddenly became extremely dizzy and unable to focus my vision. I started shouting for someone to help me onto the train and was frantically trying to focus my eyes. Then when I did I saw my bedroom and thought it very strange. Then some generic 80s poodle haired woman grabbed me and got me into the train. Then I woke up.

I would have forgotten this dream had it not been for a cushion shaped like a pair of breasts that I was given for my 21st. I distinctly remembered seeing them when I was trying to focus in the dream. They are usually in my cupboard but I had brought them out to show my flatmate the night before and had been dumped by the door. In my panic to see I must have really opened my eyes and looked about my room.

As a side note, I've just realised that every dream I've ever had involving trains, I've been chased, hmm...

Last Night

I've been reading up on lucid dreaming and things relating to it pretty heavily over the last few days and was intending trying to HILD for the first time. I self hypnotise to deal with anxiety and think I understand how to go from a trance into a hypnagogic state. But by the time I'd watched an episode of Dexter, seen a thing on youtube about terrifying sleep paralysis incidents and read the thread on here about Dream Walkers and Night Stalkers (not a believer but it got my imagination going) I was in too dark a mood and didn't think I'd be able to steer the dream to something positive even if I did achieve lucidity.

So I went to bed with the intention of simply falling asleep. But armed with knowledge from the last couple of nights intensive reading I was aware of when I was going into a hypnagogic state and what my hallucinations are. I've felt/seen these before but never really given them too much thought. The first was the sensation that my feet where a very long way away from my upper body and that my bed was a vast landscape. The next has evolved over a few years, originally it was just a texture that was extremely rough and extremely smooth at the same time. Nowadays it still has the texture but now is egg shaped and extremely big and extremely small at the same time. I always see it from above and occassionally I see fairy like people flying around it. I feel that if I could figure out what it is I'd have worked out the greatest philosophical question of all time. These are both quite common when I'm awaiting sleep.

But last night I had a new one. I terminator style robotic skull with neon colouring. It made me feel really uneasy so I pushed it out of my mind. But it came back, so I pushed it out of my mind again and tried to think of something else. And then it came back again except directly in front of my face looking me directly in the eyes. I was really freaked out. I had shivers down my spine so I opened my eyes for a while but couldn't shake that creepy feeling. Then I started to see flashes of light on my bookcase... oh my god I've just realised what it was, my phone was on the bookcase and the centre button pulses when your not using it. Ha! I thought I was hallucinating. Anyway, kept getting shivers so turned on the light and read until I couldn't keep my eyes open. Never been so freaked out in my life.

The End