Hi,

My name is Victor and this is my first post. I am a fan of Steely Dan, Wes Anderson movies, Richard Feynman books, green tea, meditation and assorted other weird things. But that is obviously not why I signed up for this forum.

For about fifteen years or so I have been suffering from a strange dream condition. Essentially I am dreaming with my eyes open; I see a combination of the real world and dream elements. Hallucinations, if you will. These dreams happen perhaps twice a week on average, and they seem to be more common when I am under a lot of stress.

One recurring dream of this nature is that I open my eyes to find people from my college class in my apartment. I start talking to them, asking them what they are doing here when I am in bed, et cetera. I can interact with real, physical objects; I can move furniture around, for instance. Eventually I go back to sleep, and when I finally wake up in the morning I always remember these dreams very vividly. I find that any objects I might have moved during the dream are in their new positions.

Maybe this sounds like a really cool thing, but I find it anything ranging from mildly troubling (as in the classmate example mentioned above) to terrifying (I tend to see snakes and other things I am afraid of). I am not used to writing about this, which gives me a feeling I have failed to describe what these dreams are like. Let me just clarify that I am -not- lucid and stress that I see a combinatin of the real world and dream objects, which - I believe - is not the case for most sleepwalkers.

Can anybody relate? Is this common? Is there a name for it? Can you do anything about it?

Thanks for reading,

Victor.