Escaping my lucid nightmares

So when I was a kid I had nightmares where I would suddenly become conscious that I was dreaming. It wasn't weird at all to me at all, I guess i was so barely conscious that I didn't think it was strange that I was dreaming.
Anyway in more than one situation I had to go on a long adventure to wake myself up. Most of the time I got sidetracked and completely forgot I had to escape. Sometimes I could wake myself up by head banging, but if it failed the nightmare got worse. Here are two examples of the nightmares.

I was in some house with people I didn't know and I knew I was going to have a nightmare. The tv in the room turned on to show some creature that resembled Marvin the Martian. He said he was going to send people to find me and kill me before I could wake up. The people in the room decided to help me. They led me to another room with people in it. One of the guys helping me said " he's asleep, we gotta wake him up." Everyone gasped dramatically. Then the scene cut to later that night. People were gonna stay in the same room as me to protect me. This kid in a sleeping bag next to me said "look over there." I looked at where he was pointing and saw a stereotypical ghost flying around. I told him it was a ghost and he responded by saying "No, it's fine, it's just hard air". Then i saw a shot of the room diagonally and heard a narrators voice creepily say "Actually he is correct, because there is no such thing as hard air". Then the ghost proceeded to fly around the room dramatically. The scene changed to me alone in the hallway of that house. It was night time and suddenly a demon thing came out of nowhere. It raised its claw thing above it's head like when it's about to cut someone. Then slashed me and I woke up the second the claw hit me. So I guess Marvin the Martian won.




I was on some rock on an island place. There were some kids around me showing me around the island. On the rock was a giant purple long concave thing with oversized bongos next to it. It also had eyes near the middle of the top of it. I asked the kids what it was and they said it was a carnival ride. It did not look ridable at all. It was basically just a stretched out purple piece of plastic with drums next to it. Anyway The next like 20 minutes consisted of them showing me houses and stuff that was very boring and hard to remember. But I got back and noticed the kids were gone. I looked around but couldn't find them. Then the purple thing was there and was less wide. He now had arms and legs and could move around. Then I heard the kids, they turned into a pieces of dust and one paper clip. They told me the purple guy killed them, except he had some really weird name I can't remember. They told me this was a dream and I had to kill the monster. The monster got closer to me and I started to headbang to wake myself up. The dust and paper clip told me to stop. They wanted me to avenge them and not just leave them there with the purple guy. They gave me a golden spear thing. Then the purple guy got out a cyan spear thing. The kids gasped and said that was the best version of the spears. The purple guy finally got to me ( he was very slow ) and we started to duel. Halfway through the fight his sword hit me and The dream ended. The purple guy had won. I was cast out of the dream and into the void of darkness, unconsciousness, and loneliness (also known as non REM) until morning.


I've had lots of these types of dreams before. Does anyone else have stuff like this?

Hmm. I don't have them now, but I'm sure I've also experienced something like this a few times (although I can't remember as much detail as you've shared here.) Those dreams sound really interesting, if unsettling. Do you ever still have them now that you know more about lucid dreaming? Also, out of curiosity, how did these dreams feel for you: were you scared the whole way through, or ever interested, or apathetic, or something else entirely?

The first of mine that comes to mind was a dream where I was inside some kind of ship with corridors and compartments like a train's that never seemed to end. I don't remember much of it because it was so long ago and I didn't make much effort to remember at the time, but I think that I was trying to find a way off the ship, and in doing so I kept walking into all sorts of different rooms and usually having to escape from some danger within them. I realised that I was dreaming partway through, but barely, as I didn't try to change anything. Instead I became afraid that something awful would happen because it was a dream and that meant that all possibilities were open; sure enough, within the next few moments a giant eel or sea monster or some kind had broken through the walls of the ship and I had to run along the corridor to try and escape it as it slithered after me. Before long it had devoured me and I also slipped into the void of darkness :P

The other was a false awakening. I got out of bed knowing that things were different, and I walked to my mum in the living room. I knew from her expression that I had to be dreaming, and I told her so. I asked her to help me wake up, but she just mumbled something under her breath about waiting. The dream went to all sorts of strange places after that (I remember going to other worlds of sorts, visiting somebody who lived on top of a cliff and having to walk along the narrow edge of it, and so on) but I did retain some awareness of being in a dream throughout and the thing that strikes me about this one is that it seemed subjectively really long - I kept trying to wake up but it never worked, and by the end of it I felt that I'd been dreaming for days.

I wonder if these dreams would have been different if we'd known more about lucid dreaming at the time...or if it's a different level of lucidity to the kind where you can change and control things, in which you don't have much of an option but to get swept passively along by the dream despite the awareness.

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Originally Posted by vasiona

Hmm. I don't have them now, but I'm sure I've also experienced something like this a few times (although I can't remember as much detail as you've shared here.) Those dreams sound really interesting, if unsettling. Do you ever still have them now that you know more about lucid dreaming? Also, out of curiosity, how did these dreams feel for you: were you scared the whole way through, or ever interested, or apathetic, or something.

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I mostly felt paranoid that there was going to be a monster that would kill me through the entire dream. It never felt like it was cool that I was aware in a dream. I don't really get these kind of dreams anymore. If I have lucid dreams now I usually know better than to follow the story and get lost. But I haven't had any dreams like these since I was 6 or 7.