Terrifying Fever Dream Experience

[F3ver]

Hello all, I'm new to the forums and am completely new to the world of lucid dreaming and, in fact only found out about it by accidentally achieving lucidity a couple of nights ago. I thought I would share my first experience with this phenomenon to hear if any of you guys have had similar experiences. For the past few days I have had quite a high fever which I think may have been an attributing factor in this experience but anyway; I fell asleep at about 4pm for a nap to rest and recover a bit from my fever and fell into a lucid dream. I was in my old school but something about it was different, the walls and everything were grey and when I looked out any of the windows I could not see anything as it was obscured by some thick fog, I started to wander around amazed at how I was able to control my actions and how I was conscious whilst dreaming. Every now and then out of the corner of my eye I would spot something move,long black hair blowing in the wind just out of my peripheral vision. This freaked me out quite a bit and I began to feel extremely anxious about the entire situation and started to go into a panic, luckily I could sort of feel myself waking up out of the dream, but when I woke up it was much, much worse. I woke up already in a state of panic with an extremely bad feeling in my stomach, that something was very wrong but I didn't know what it was yet. I tried to sit up in bed but found myself almost "strapped" down to my bed, unable to move anything other than my eyes - which is when I spotted the same black hair blowing in my peripheral vision. I shifted my eyes to my right and facing me, standing over my bed staring at me was the woman from the film the grudge. When I was quite young I watched the film The Grudge, and something about the film and the woman in it unnerved me, and still makes me feel uneasy to this day (which is probably why my fear chose to manifest itself in this way). I was completely overwhelmed with fear and could not move, I tried and tried to move my feet in an attempt to knock over my television which is positioned at the bottom of my bed in order to alert my parents who were in the house at the time. The way she simply stood there, un-blinking, watching me as I lay there unable to move completely terrified me, it also seemed like she was moving extremely, extremely slowly towards me. The thing that was really shocking was how real it was I was AWAKE as far as I was concerned everything was completely clear and vivid. Luckily at this point, my friend showed up at my house to see if I was up for doing something and my dad let him straight into my room which woke me up out of the dream/paralysis or whatever it was that I was experiencing. I just sat there, bolt upright in my bed shaking, my friend thought I had seen a ghost! Well anyway, sorry for the extremely long post but I've been wanting to get this story out to someone who may have experienced similar, or knows someone who has and I thought here would be the best place to do it. I've been losing some sleep over this as I've been too scared to sleep in fear that it might happen again, but so far it hasn't. Thanks in advance guys ~N

[HoldOrFold]

Hi F3ver, What you experienced was sleep paralysis. Your body secretes a paralysing hormone to stop you acting out your dreams. When you woke up, you were awake, but your body was still paralysed. Bear in mind during sleep paralysis it's common for your mind to experience hypnagogic imagery. It's common to sense or even see an entity in this state, and usually it's accompanied by fear. I've had sleep paralysis probably about 50 times, so I know how it can be. Now when I get it I just relax because the fear just makes it worse. Actually, it's a great starting point to be able to have an astral projection if you can control your emotions. What you had was typical "Dweller on the Threshold" phenomenon. A quote from someone citing Robert Bruce: "Sometimes new out-of-body experiencers encounter an unpleasant manifestation known as the "Dweller on the Threshold," Robert Bruce writes in Astral Dynamics(1). The dweller can appear as a "shadowy, menacing humanoid shape" and may call a person by name, warning them to back off from their astral projection. Bruce advises ignoring these "dwellers" which may be illusory formations generated by "low-level astral wildlife" attracted by the emotion of fear. " The key is to realize that the image is an illusion and you can break the whole thing by feeling positive, laughing at it or ignoring it. The entity, or subconscious projection or whatever it is, is sustained by fear. If you stop feeding it fear, it doesn't exist.