Lucid dreaming/Night terrors

As a young boy from the age of 3 to around 7 i was afflicted by severe "night terrors" almost every single night. I would find myself wide awake in a horrible nightmare surrounded by horrific thoughts and images ,feelings and emotions ,sensations and overpowering fear. I would see in vivid clear detail the most grotesque fear inducing creatures all around me, these manifestations were of things that i was never exposed to, some were humanoid and others were and still are unexplainably abstract. And it only got worse as i got older.

I only have memory of about half of the incidents, and what i cant remember my mother doesn't like to talk about to this day. I lived in a 4 bedroom home with 5 of my siblings and i was the youngest, my mother told me when i was 19 that when i was 5 years old she heard what she thought was me throwing up in the hall way near her bedroom and when she went to see she found me naked covered in dirt and growling like a dog. I was sitting cross legged facing the corner holding a dead decaying cardinal. Somehow i managed to climb out my second story window down a tree into my neighbors yard took off all my clothes folded then neatly and placed them in a bird bath. It was at this point that my mother took me to see "specialists" who put me through a barrage of testing, the only ones that stand out in my head are the blood tests and the hundreds of wires they stuck on me, but apparently there were many more. After is was all said and done doctors decided to try a medication at night to help me sleep through any episode i may have. The medication only heightened the severity of my problems, i went from being scared and timid to being violent and unresponsive to anything(oddly enough in the end it was only my brother that could reach me in this state)

After the medication fiasco i was sent to see a hypno therapist who turned it all around, on my first visit i slipped into what i now know to be a lucid state. On that couch i had a dream/vision that lasted days and while i can remember most details of this dream the only part that stands out from all the rest was the cellar door at my grandfathers house and etched into it was a burning cardinal. It was this cardinal that made me aware that i was in fact dreaming (as i now know as a visual que) This visit did not entirely stop my night terror episodes but it changed my life forever when i woke up i didn't feel like i was 5 years old any more, i felt older and wiser then anyone knew
I was no longer afraid of these horrific images that haunted me, instead i felt pity for them cause i thought that they needed help and perhaps there intention was not to frighten me but beckon me to assist them.

And ever since the visit with the hypno therapist i have been able to have lucid dreams whenever i choose, I have had 3 hour dreams that have lasted a lifetime. Ive grown up in my dreams as other people to adult hood and had children , experienced tragedy and loss, joy and love. But through all my life ive never met anyone who has had similar experiences to me.

And now im sick of typing,

Lucid dreams are one of my favorite things. It's so hard for me to stay within in a lucid dream without "ruining" it and waking back up. How do you do it any tricks to realising your dreaming?
When it comes to nightmares grotesque creatures and all that don't bother me. My worst nightmares are actualy mundane sounding, I keep dreaming about winding up back in highschool and swamped with homework and constantly trying to figure out a way to ditch. These highschool dreams bother me more than ones where I die.

Thank you for your wonderfull post. I wish I would've known about hypnotherapy when my oldest son was experiencing night terrors. It was a horrible time. For him and for us. He was so scared but we couldn't touch him or hold him during an episode because he would think we were monster too.

To any one not knowing night terrors I'd like to explain a bit. It's a bit like sleepwalking. Your eyes will usually be open and you will be able to see your inviroment and act upon it but mixed with the normal stuff there can be all sort of things in there. Monsters, killers etc.

Because you're in a half awake state you assume these things are really there. It's horrible. If you look in someone's eyes when they have a night terror than you see fear at it's worst. You know right there and than that you've never seen so much fear in someones eyes before.

Although this wont help with the OP, it may help some parents.

My son used to have night terrors, screaming, waking up convinced something was in the room. I tried everything from convincing him there was nothing there to trying to play along and dragging them out. I eventually hit on the idea, he needed to sort this out himself and 'Dad' wouldn't be able to do that. I bought him a toy sword, completely plastic, wrapped it in fabric (to make it look magical for him to unwrap) and passed it to him telling him that I had bought it from a magic shop and it would kill only monsters
For over a week, he slept soundly, the sword in his bed like his favourite teddy.
The he hung it on the side of his bed, just in case.
After a month, he placed it on the end of his bed, eventually moving it to the top of his toy box.

That was 3 years ago and he hasn't had a bad dream like those since.

Fun isnt it?

I've dealt with sleep paralysis and night terrors my whole life. The majority of the BAD ones stopped when we moved out of our old house, where I would experience my bed shaking at night - and had my father confirm this - to this day we cannot explain it.. I've had toy firetrucks shoot across the room infront of me and my sister, and what reminded me of your post was the most grotesque looking face at the edge of my bed.

Me, my brother, and my sister all slept in the same room as my parents up until we moved out of that house and i've always had a burning desire to go back there and see if any of the current residents have experienced anything so profound. Its in the same town so it would certinley be feasible. But anyway..

I'm now twenty three years old and have lucid dreams atleast once a month, sometimes once a week, other times twice a night - very variable. The sleep paralysis I dont think will ever go away.. but I dont want it to. I enjoy it... I dont know why, but its almost like a test to me - if I can overcome such a immense fear, then to me its like winning the battle. I've never actually saw anything other then when I was younger, say five or six years old, but I have heard plenty and just felt what im sure you already know of. All I can say is embrace it.. learn to control it.. when it happens, ask questions, confront, and see where it takes you.

I vaguely remember them but I experienced bad night terrors as a child. So has one of my younger brothers.

About once a year I'll have a very similar nightmare, almost as if my mind is rehashing those old dreams.
The nightmares don't usually involve anything of any form. No light, shapes or any stimulation of my senses. I'm basically just existing in a void and am only aware of my emotions.
At first, everything will be fine and I will be content. But after some time, I will begin to detect or 'feel' another presence with me. Sometimes it's more than one. Anyways, eventually the mood will change drastically and quickly. I will be aware of the fact that things have gone VERY wrong. Nothing in particular per say but things feel quite unharmonious all of a sudden and it's very disturbing. I usually have a hard time waking up from these experiences which almost always take place the night before I have something stressful to do.

There was one thing about these nightmares that always puzzled me though. After having them I would wake up and it would only be about two hours after I settled into bed for the night. Yet they had seemed to last all night.
I was always under the impression that the deepest and most intense dreams came within the final hours of a sleep cycle.

Anyways, that's my night terror story.

As for lucid dreaming, well fortunately that happens a lot more often. Although recently I've been having trouble making them last.

Wow, reading this post has made me remember that I had dreams as a child (5ish I think) that I couldn't put into words, they were really strange and sometimes involved numbers and colours but I'm not even certain of that now. I think there was an emotion but I've never felt it whilst awake. I remember trying to recall the emotion later on in life but never felt it. It was like trying to remember a word that was on the tip of my tongue but never quite managed it.

I also dreamt of nuclear war a few times as a child and sometimes woke up crying.

Thanks for the thought provoking post

Hi guys,

Finally a home to share without people thinking I'm insane when I tell them my own experiences with dreams. I've had night terrors since I was a kid and I can recall all off them because they all have the same pattern and I can feel it coming. But this usually happens when I wake up in the middle of the night and try to fall back into sleep.....I'm always sleeping facing the ceiling, but I get a funny electric feeling thru my body and it is then that I know it will happen, I try to will myself into changing sleeping patterns but the "attack" happens so fast I have no time to respond to what's coming or at least what my mind believes in real.....althou I have been willing myself into having lucid dreams, but there are times when I loose concentration or sense of realism and I get lost in the lucid dreams.

My most recent "attack" felt different to the rest in that the figure that appeares in my room was much bigger and I was watching the whole thing and I was not paralised was I was kneeling on my bed in a fit of rage, which also shows a change.....prior I'd just lie there and hope the fear goes away....but the battle would seem endless and all night.

Lucid dreaming has been helping me in so many ways, I just need to figure out how to make them last longer, I have a dream journal besides my bed to recall the nights when I loose control and put the pieces together to train myself to looking for signs that I'm asleep. The experience has helped me look forward to sleeping cause the terrors were highly irregular but constant. It's been a year and I've only had one terror since I started tapping into lucid dreaming.

I have one question thou......why is it I took on to lucid dreaming more faster? I began tapping into lucid dreaming with a friend and they eventually gave up whilst with me I had a small amount of control on my first night of attempt, it was broken short by something as silly as a tennis ball......yes lucid dreaming is fun and I get to be someone or anyone I wanna be!!

I have really passed most of my night terrors as just bad dreams, the worse ive had but bad. Recently I saw a doc on ufos and terrors were an explaination of abductions, and it sparked so many memories. I started to research these and have been surprised many have had my experienses.

Mine start as a young boy, probably 20 yrs ago. I would be awoken by some noise or touch, then i see the shadow figures. these were not figures on a wall but humanlike bodies. i could only was able to see a face once, otherwise the figures moved just before my eyes focused. i would be pinned down and when i screamed nothing would come out. i could hear voices as if someone was saying something, but stopped, although i sensed all the figures knew what was said. i experienced shaking once, which was also when i saw a face. i was also given a name once, valentin.

i havent really had one in about 4 yrs, but strangely have an urge for them to come back. these were the most frightened i have ever been, but want to control it.

Hmm, when I was younger dreams generally centered around things that scared me, like Gremlins, or death. I never experienced night frights and such like but I've heard how terrifying they are to those that have them (even if they don't always remember them) and also for those watching a sufferer.
One of my art teachers at college told me that he used to have terrible night firghts/terrors about these little black slug/spider creatures that crawled up along the walls around him until they turned the room black, before swarming all over him. He then went on to say that all three of his kids have had the exact same vision in their sleep, which was intriguing.
But as for myself I just have dreams now, though, every night, they seem more vivid and longer, so maybe I'm in for a fun, but bumpy, ride with dreams?

Ramadwarf on dreams and Gremlins

*funnily enough there was a gremlin in a dream last night. Scared the hell out of me!

You know, the funny thing is that only recently have I begun to realize that perhaps others HAVE experienced what I've experienced. So I began to search on the internet for some kind of commonality. Just in the last week, I have found two people who have either had similar dreams or experiences.
I am amazed to have found this forum. In the past, it never occurred to me that some people would have the same experiences as myself. It's not that I thought I was different from everyone else, but that there was something not right about me. I felt a great shame for being who I was. So thank you, all of you, for sharing your stories.



reply to post by Retikx


Retikx, I have had similar experiences as yourself. The only difference is that because I grew up in an environment mostly without adult supervision, I had to work through some of those things you suggest on my own.

I experienced the bird, but I did not experience it in a waking state. I carried his body with me everywhere in my dreams. At the point when he died, I grieved very strongly and felt something beautiful was no more. As an adult, I now think he was a symbol of something. I suppose I should add that while the bird was red as you stated, when he died he turned brown. So there is a difference there. And I most definitely got a feeling of maleness from this bird.
I had night terrors as you suggested every night as a little girl. At a point, I was terrified to go anywhere that wasn't out in the open, even in waking. I experienced the inability to move. After a while, I just couldn't take it anymore, I didn't want to be afraid. So I started making explanations for everything. After a while, I told myself that the people I was terrified of had a complex laboratory that could be accessed under my bed. Their labyrinth confused me because it was not all light like doctors offices, but I persevered that it was a medical facility. That was the most logical explanation to a five year old. I told myself that they did what they had to do because they were replacing my body parts, one part at a time, through time because I needed them to grow. I didn't know why I specifically need that kind of help when everyone else around me had no problems growing, but I told myself some things I just could not know.
Whatever silliness this rationale was, it reduced my fear of it all and eventually I stopped being afraid of "the doctors." By the way, I am a sibling in a family of multiple children as well (6). I have never been on medication for such things. In fact, something tells me such medication are bad for all of us, that it keeps us from growing. Of course, I say that for those who can handle the craziness of life, I grieve those who are so torn that they NEED medication.

As for the lucid dreaming, I hope we all have those because in those, doesn't it all seem like we're in the right place? In our natural state? I don't know what this means, but it seems to me waking is a state of confusion, but in these lucid dreams there is clarity and a feeling of connectedness-my only thought is to help others in distress, or against something that is obscuring the truth or about to oppress others. In fact, I sometimes come out of these states calling someone a liar. And it angers me that the human solution is to sedate.

I have also had lucid dreams in which whole lifetimes have passed for "someone else." It is almost like my goal was to document other peoples' lives. I was a watcher, and giver of love. If that makes any sense. I'm curious to know if you've felt that as well. Some of my dreams have been completely NOT about me, but about someone out there who needed love to get past a tragedy, while it was occurring.

There are some of out there with similar experiences to your own.

When I was five years old – about a week before starting Kindergarten I asked my mom what school was like. She said that is was a place where a nice lady read stories to children. That night I had a dream where I was sitting outside the local school’s door (I had never been inside) as a gray haired old lady read a story about children and wild bears. She sat on a step directly in front of the school door. The door slowly opened – we the children could see it but could not move or speak – something dark and shapeless with claws slowly extended from the opening door - snatched the lady and dragged her in to the dark as the door snapped shut. I heard screams and bumping noises. The other children leapt up and ran away. I was frozen in place unable to speak. The door began to open and something shapeless and dark extended out. I awoke to a bright August morning.

I found my mom in the kitchen refinishing some old cabinets. The odor of the varnish still fresh in my memory 58 years later. I told her of the dream. She told me that next time I dreamed a bad dream I should just tell myself that it was a dream and then change it into a nice dream. “Flowers and butterflies and the good parts of Bambi.” We had seen the movie the week before and I was obsessed. Hey, I was 5.

That night I dreamed of being in the kitchen with my dad. It was night and something bad was outside the backdoor. The door slowly opened and a dark swirling cloud slid into the room. It circled the table moving to my left. It circled the table counter clockwise with my dad and me running ahead of it. There were no doors out of the kitchen. The shape slashed out with claws and made loud growly noises. I stopped running and said to my father, “This is just a dream – don’t be scared”. I turned and looked back and nothing was there. Where no backdoor had been a moment earlier there was an open door with sunshine coming in. We walked through the door to find a rainbow over the meadow behind the house. I woke up laughing.

Last night I dreamed I was trapped in a place with hallways leading away from the open room I was in. Screams and noises coming in from all the hallways so no escape from the room. I realized it was a dream – found a TV – flipped through channels until I found a “program” I liked. Shifted my dream consciousness into that story and forgot I was dreaming again. I have what should be nightmares or night terrors almost every night but use the lucid dreaming to control them and find I look forward to them.