Lucid Nightmare Dream within a dream within a dream...

I always lucid dream. However, it's not often that I have nightmares. Being consciously aware in my dreams, I can usually overcome everything that my subconscious throws at me...but not last night.

My dream started out waking up in a cheap Motel room with a three friends. We had been on a Road-Trip and were somewhere in Northern Arizona. We got ready and headed out to get some coffee before getting back on the road. While we were approaching the coffee shop we heard sirens everywhere. When we got to the counter to order our coffee the cashier told us that the bank across the street just got robbed. Not giving it another thought, we got our coffees, hit the road, only to be stuck in traffic because there were Police road-blocks at every exit of the town. They were searching every car that was leaving. At some point we started hearing screaming coming up the road from us that kept getting nearer and nearer. Eventually National Guard trucks show up and National Guardsmen start running up the road with their guns telling everyone to remain in their cars and keep their windows rolled up. At this point there is yet more screaming coming from ahead of us, and one of the Guardsmen near our car falls to the ground vomiting blood. Terrified, my friends and I are remaining in our car and overhear on the radio that a terrorist attack has occurred in a town in Northern Arizona that has left the entire population dead. Just as that plays on the radio we hear the sound of jets flying overhead. There is suddenly an intense bright flash light and I wake up. It was just a dream.

I sat up in bed, thinking about the dream, only to realize I'm in the same cheap Motel room. We go through the whole scenario again, just like before, but this time I keep having Deja Vu the entire time. It ends with the sudden intense bright flash after the jets fly over and a I wake up again.

Of course, I'm in the same Motel room. This time, I decide to take action and change events so that I don't have to go through this dream another time. I rush to the Bank to be able to observe the Robbery. The Bank Robber drives off in an Ice Cream truck. I try to follow it on foot, but although I lose sight of it initially, I catch up to it on the road out of town at the Road Blocks. It is just about to pass through the Police Road Block and I notice the Police casually open the back of the Ice Cream truck, but then wave it through. They approach the next vehicle and the two Police Officers who opened the back of the Ice Cream truck start to look in the back seat of the next car, they start convulsing and vomiting blood. I try to tell the other Police at the Road Block that the Bank Robber they are looking for was in the Ice Cream truck they just let pass, but they were too busy fixated on their officers who were down. So, same things happen as before, and it ends with the sudden intense bright flash after the jets fly over and I wake up, same as before.

Fourth time, I try to stop the Bank Robbery to no avail.

Fifth time, I try to get me and my friends out of town before the Bank Robbery to no avail.

Sixth time, I somehow get a Sniper Rifle and I shot the Bank Robber driving the Ice Cream truck as he is pulling up to the Police Road Block, all this did was get the Police to chase after me until the same outcome.

Seventh time, I tried evacuating the town before the Bank Robbery. All that did was create an even bigger Traffic Jam and a lot of panic. Same outcome.

Eighth time, I was about to blow up the Bank Robber's Ice Cream Truck while he was in the bank robbing it, when I finally woke up out of this repeating lucid nightmare!

I've only had repeating Lucid Nightmares twice before in my life. They are rather disconcerting. I woke up and my throat is swollen and sore from it, and I'm beyond exhausted.

I told my roommate about the repeating Nightmare and all she could come up with was that I shouldn't read ATS right before going to bed!

Anyone else want to take a gander at what causes repeating Nightmares such as this?

[edit on 4-8-2009 by fraterormus]

Don't know what causes it, although my dreams are particularly vivid around the full moon.

Actually, I froze at my desk when I began reading your post. Cheap motel. Trip. Other people involved. I was hand to mouth for a moment, thinking you were going to describe the dream I had last night (about which I told family members, who said, 'Gee, why don't you just sleep when you're asleep, like other people'.

But yours was different to mine, so I've relaxed again now.

Bit the same though. My adult daughter and I had been on a tour bus trip. The bus was parked on a gravel road surrounded by bus. All of us from the bush got out to stretch our legs on the nearby beach. It was going on dusk.

It got weird at that point, because within the dream, I though, 'Oh no, not this place again'. Because there's a 'place' I go sometimes when I dream these vivid dreams and it's recognisable first from the atmosphere and second from the light. I've posted lots about this place under my previous account. I've never been there in real life. It has a strange atmosphere. It unnerves me, but at the same time I have a sort of 'homesick' feeling for it sometimes when I'm awake.

Ok. The start of the dream. We're on the beach and the water (the sea) is flat, no waves. Yet the sign says 'Burleigh Heads'. And the real life Burleigh Heads is on the ocean and there are always waves. So within the dream itself, I knew something was wrong, but to 'make it right', I told my daughter that the reason there were no waves was because we were on the other side of the continent. She looked dubious and said nothing. I knew my explanation was wrong, but I was having to make-do.

We then made our way back up the beach to where a motel was. It was two storey, square and stood between us and the tour bus which remained further back on the dirt road.

Most people got back into the bus, but I felt that would be unwise and told my daughter we'd stay in the motel for the night. Other people were staying at the motel too. Then, the bus reversed backwards and was gone.

As it got dark, people began going to their rooms. The motel was brightly lit. It felt wrong, somehow .. bad. I viewed the motel from outside in the darkness. It was very exposed and smaller than it had seemed earlier on. I knew staying there was a mistake.

Then I saw the men in the bushes surrounding the motel. They were armed, organised. And I realised it was a set-up.

Got back to the motel just as the men began killing everyone. Nowhere to hide inside the room, so I stuffed our beds with pillows and at the last moment, my daughter and I pressed ourselves up against the wall, just as the door opened and two men entered. They spoke and one began bashing down on our beds.

But then I 're-wound' my dream, because I realised he'd be able to tell the difference between pounding a pillow and smashing skulls .. the sound would be different.

So next version, I shoved my daughter up a conveniently located man-hole in the ceiling, just as the door burst open. But as our room was on the first floor, there would obviously be no crawl space for us to hide in.

Rewound again, this time locating us on the second-floor, and again my daughter and I escaped up the man-hole just as the door burst open. But there were rats up there and my daughter began screaming.

Rewound again. This time got us down to the beach in the dark. Began dragging my daughter along the sand. But that would leave footprints for them to follow.

Rewound again. This time, we ran into the water to escape as our door burst open. But, sharks. And it was a very isolated location so we wouldn't know in which direction to swim.

All the time I was rewinding and revising the dream, the feeling of menace and the murderous gang on a killing spree continued in the background.

Next version of dream within dream had my daughter and I escaping through the window as the men burst in, then climbing up a tree to see if we could see lights in the distance to show us which way to run. But I realised that when dawn came, the men would see us, or might camp beneath that tree.

Finally, I 'solved' the situation by making the bus return before the men attacked, after which it took us around a corner and there .. happy ending assured now .. was the normal world, bright, happy, safe. I knew (within the dream) that I was cheating by ending it that way and had to work hard (in the dream) to get that version to 'set' long enough for me to wake up (in real life) and escape the whole thing. Woke up exhausted.

My daughter revises her dreams while they're occurring too, often waking herself up when she can't fix the situation. Don't know if they're lucid dreams or not, but they're tiring and leave you feeling you should go back (to sleep, or into the dream, whatever) and do a better job of fixing things up so they will have a 'better' conclusion before deserting them.

Had to edit some spelling mistakes. Weird you never see them until after you've posted

[edit on 4-8-2009 by St Vaast]

This reminds me of the Carlos Castaneda books, you should check those out. Also sounds a little like Yoga Dream Nidras...I can't remember the authors but its based on the Bon traditions.

I don't have any insight into your dream, other than to say it reminds me a lot of an episode of X-Files that involved a Groundhog Day-esque repeating of events that revolved around a bank robbery.
But just seeing this thread is a bit trippy for me, as I had my own dream-within-a-dream experience this morning.
Ever since my mom died in late 2002, I've dreamed from time to time that she just suddenly came back into my life, that she wasn't dead after all. In some dreams, she had willfully left and wouldn't say why or where she had been. In other dreams, she didn't know where she'd been either.
In my dream this morning, I was talking to her, and she was explaining that she had woken up in a motel room with no recollection of the last several years. It was the usual dream, but this time it seemed to become lucid, and I started telling her she wasn't real, that I remembered seeing her body in the coffin, remembered the cold stiffness of her arm. She continued to try to tell me that wasn't really her body in the coffin, but by this point I was aware this was some type of illusion, that it was probably a dream. I "channeled" my denial and anger into a yell and pushed my finger against her forehead (not sure why) which caused her to disappear. At that point I woke with a jolt (or so I thought) and told my wife all about it, and how I felt like I had defeated something that had been tormenting me for a long time now. Of course, this conversation was still a dream, and I woke up for real shortly afterwards.

I'm not sure what to make of it all, but I found your thread title interesting after such an experience!

Originally posted by St Vaast
Don't know what causes it, although my dreams are particularly vivid around the full moon.

I totally forgot that it was the first night of the Full Moon when I had that dream! I think you may be on to something there.

Now that we have 3 of us...

Maybe it's more than coincidental.

Originally posted by tombanjo
I don't have any insight into your dream, other than to say it reminds me a lot of an episode of X-Files that involved a Groundhog Day-esque repeating of events that revolved around a bank robbery.

Man, I totally forgot about that episode until you mentioned it. I haven't watched X-Files for years even though there was a time I lived and breathed that show.

So now, not only do I have to sort through a messed up repeating dream, but I have to accept the fact that my subconscious was feeding me an unoriginal plotline on top of it!

Doh!

Bad cheese......................here read my crazy dream story...its true...for real

you can see them often?...you are the first to describe the black orbs as i saw ...eclipse like black holes. My exp involves leaving my body during a disturbing dream. The thing is I tried pulling my girlfriend into the dream prior to leaving my physical body and by her reaction was successful. I saw this movie from the 80's called dreamscape a few nights before the incident...in the movie people could get into each others dreams. i was falling to sleep and started having a very scary dream(lightining thunder..raining cats and dogs and then the rain turned into scary ghost like sirens...I thought to myself hey this would be funny to pull my girlfriend into this dream have her watch the rain and it will scare the heck out of her. That's how it all started. I left the dream and was laying in bed next to her and started saying with my mind "Stephanie! Stephanie!" I could hear her reply in my mind sounding sleepy and grumpy...the next thing i know we are both in the same dream together. Same lightining thunder etc. but different location. She was a cocktail waitress at this oyster bar across from the huntington beach pier at the time and we were at that location. She was in the long white shirt of mine she wore to bed. She was pouring a pitcher of bear into my glass mug but was so sleepy that it was missing the glass and spilling allover the counter. I stood up and walked towards the back sort of upset with the wasting of the beer and started walking down a hallway towards the restrooms. The hallway was lit with red chinese lanterns and the red glow started to humm and scared me right out of the dream. I left my body lying in the bed next to Stephanie. I floated above the two of us in kinetic physical form. I was looking at my kinetic arms and noticed i had 360 degree vision. I was in shock. After 15 seconds or so I look to the left and can see through the bedroom wall an orb as you described. It communicated to me thru my mind telling me I was doing great and it seemed to be excited and happy for me. It left and came back with a second one. They asked me to follow them. They moved off and I chickened out. Shot into my body woke up as if under water for minute or so. Stephanie woke and asked frantically "what just happened!" I replied where were you? She described our dream. I asked if I was there. She confirmed I was and that I had left. Her dream was nightmare like. I did not get the feeling the orbs had anything to do with that. They seemed helpful and peaceful and I think wanted to share more insight with me. I was frustrated that my fear forced me back into my physical body. Bought a book trying to train myself to do it again (the possible human) but for many years could not do it until getting into my sons dream 10 years later. Him and his crazy power ranger dreams riding megasaurs thru the air on some crazy other word with a turquise and orange sky(another story) but that is my only exp. I would have been a fade to black atheist if not for that first experiance...please write to share stories or ideas how to train to do this at will......thanx for your input and time...... [email protected]