So I had an interesting experience the other morning, and I thought I would see if any of you guys could shed some light on what exactly happened.

I was at my grandparent's house (in dream), looking for my car (which I thought was parked outside) but being unable to find it. This happens quite a bit in my dreams. Anyway, it hit me that I was probably dreaming, so I levitated a rock in the driveway to check.. and it worked. I was lucid.

However, as I stood in the driveway, stabilizing and deciding what to do with my lucidity, everything went pitch black. I had about 5 seconds of dream time in complete darkness in which I was thinking "Crap, I bet my alarm is about to go off.." And then my alarm sounded.

This is the second time this has happened. What's odd is that everything went black several seconds BEFORE my alarm actually went off. The first time was an afternoon nap, and this time it was Sunday morning after spending the night at my GF's house. I went to bed late and woke up several times, and my alarm was set at a random morning time because I wasn't sure exactly when we needed to get up (but I knew it would be sometime around 9-10).

I give these details because I don't think this was one of those things where your body just *knows* it's time to get up. I didn't specifically think to myself "I need to get up in X hours," and in fact I wasn't sure exactly how long I wanted/needed to sleep in either case.

So what happened? Do you think my subconscious detected some "precursor" to the alarm actually going off (like maybe it makes some small sound or vibration before it actually starts beeping)? I'm curious as to whether any of you have similar experiences.