What did I experience last night?

Last night I had a strange LD (I think?) experience. Let me preface this by saying I've been lucid dreaming for a while now and have become quite accustom to my usual experiences.

This happened directly after falling asleep (this is usually what happens to me). I was at some sort of a party outside, talking to people and such, and something strange happened that made me think "Hey! You're in a dream! Time to have some fun." I put off my will to explore for a while because I was enjoying my conversation with someone. Finally, I decided to "go" (it made sense in my mind then but now I can't discern what I meant by it).

The party, the people, it all vanished. I saw nothing (it wasn't black or white or any colour, a sea of... not anything?). I held my hands in front of me to see if "I" was still there, and I was, but my hands were sparking with mini-fireworks. They were warm-coloured, reds and oranges and yellows. Then I looked upward, as if I knew I was supposed to ascend somewhere. I've flown before in dreams, so I assumed I'd just do that to get where I was supposed to go.

I looked up to where I was supposed to go and a face appeared in the nothingness, it was glowing a blue-ish colour. In that moment I thought it might be me or someone I knew, but the facial features didn't seem to resonate as anyone I could convince myself it was. Needless to say I got frightened and woke myself up after looking at the face for a few seconds.

Has anyone experienced something like this or know what was happening?

I think what you experienced was what some of us call "the void". This is what happens when you don't have a dream schema ready. You can just wait it out, or try to focus on whatever you do have (such as your hands in your example) to create a knew scene. The face you saw was the beginning of a scene, and if you had stayed in the dream, a proper dream scene would have developed from it. Don't worry about it - perhaps think of it as a waiting room where you hang out between dreams.

There are some people on DV who have really explored the void. Perhaps some of them will show up on this thread and tell you more. If not, try doing a search for the term.

I've had a similar and rather strange experience:

Twice so far, I would get properly lost in my own thoughts during a lucid dream that I would lose focus of the dreamworld. The dream would rapidly fade but I wouldnt wake up--I'd go to this "void" (I think) that Sibyline talked about. I'd still be in the dream, but there'd simply be nothing there. The moment I'd realize this (quite quickly of course) I would try to get the dream back by re-imagining the dream scene, resulting in "snapping" back into the dreamworld, in the same dream as before, though sometimes in a slightly different location.

It's quite an interesting experience, I think.