Handling nightmares in a lucid dream
Some time ago, I had a relatively scary dream. It kinda begun with me discussing some political stuff with another man and woman in my real life apartment (apparently I was someone very important, possible the Earth president, and it was the future... that dream was, I suspect, heavily influenced by the show Babylon 5). We were discussing how most of our fleet of spaceships is severely damaged because of the recent civil war that just ended, when the two of them became alarmed. They opened the door of my apartment and took a careful look at the stair-room, I in the meanwhile was sitting on a sofa in plain view of anyone who could have been standing in the stair-room, so I moved a little just in case.
So I took a look too and I don't think I really saw anything in there (but it was night-time, and just so you know, in my dreams going to the stair-room when its dark is almost a guaranteed encounter with a nightmare, it's as if that place represents the corner of my mind when I keep all my subconscious fears). But then the two of them kind of pushed the door closed (it remained open though but only by a tiny bit) and kinda panicking started to run away from the door real fast.
At that point I remembered that it all sorta happened before (do you get the "dual dreams" thing, when you dream the same dream several times at the same night, sometimes with a slightly different outcome and details? I get that alot). There was supposed to be something real scary coming out of there. So I naturally ran away from there too. I either saw or remembered these black tentacles coming through the crack of the slightly open door... and there was the "evil presence" thing many people feel sometimes in the dreams, I think... At least, the atmosphere of the whole thing was darn frightening and dark, it wasn't amusing at all. Just like a horror movie, in fact.
I remember thinking to myself that these thing(s) are members of an alien race which was pretty minor and were no match for humanity, but because our fleets were in very bad condition after the civil war they managed to slip in to Earth. Sorry if the scifi stuff bores you, but that's how the dream went :P
Anyway I escaped to the tiny balcony thingie where there are ropes to hang the laundry, I entered it and ducked out of sight, figuring out that the things walking right now through my house won't find me. But that wasn't enough, I was too worried. So I kinda jumped outside to the identical balcony of the floor below me, and then to the ground. Then I ran away from the building to a park some distance away. I was safe.
After awhile, the woman that was with me came there (or was it some other "familiar" dream character?) at first we just talked. Then I got suspicious. I kinda slipped away some information into the conversation (something like, "remember when we met at the..."). She answered it wrongly, from which I deduced the woman wasn't who she appeared at all, but in fact was one of those things in disguise. I think I ran away, not too sure.
Now, the entire above description is kind of irrelevant to the thread, but I figured it's interesting, and I also thought it would be good to describe it to really get across the entire atmosphere of the dream for what I want to describe next.
Now, the on-topic part. I went to my building again, I think I wanted to check out what happened to my friends. At that point, when I was outside near the building, I became lucid. I was like "OK, it's just a dream... It's all a dream, it's cool..." and breathed out.
At that point... *CRASH!* from the window of my apartment comes crashing down this huge, monstrous black dog thing and instantly comes galloping towards me making scary noises. At that point I was like "it's a dream! Don't forget, a dream!" I was fighting the panic in me and reminding myself that it's all merely a dream, I could almost taste the panic, and the lucidity was slipping away. I could've actually lose the lucidity if I didn't remind myself constantly that I'm lucid.
So... the dog comes running at me but apparently misses me and dissapears from my line of sight behind me. I don't turn my head, I keep looking strictly forward, while walking forward as calmly as possibly. Now, as soon as it dissapeared from my field of view, it ACTUALLY dissapeared, meaning I didn't hear and sound from it and it never came around for round two. All thanks to my lucidity.
Well, that's the important point. For the next, oh, 10 seconds or so (might be half a minute at most) I enjoyed fliying above the cityscape before waking up.
The point of this thread is, have you ever encountered something scary in you dream too WHILE lucid, that frightened you dispite your lucidity because its sheer psychological effect (or maybe insufficient lucidity)? And how did you deal with it?
