Ask Robert Anything: I Have A Recurring Nightmare.
We had this recent question from @Ultimatrix in our Discord Server
I have been seeing the same tall, dark, scary figure in my dreams.
Last night was the first time it said something. Everytime I see him, I get either my mouth paralyzed in the dream so I can't scream or I wakeup with complete sleep paralysis feeling his presence around me.
Note: Everytime I see him, the dream is always exactly like I am always in my real home in the dream and in the same conditions that are actually around my real body.
What should I do...? I have had some extremely frightening experiences since Feb 2023.
Here's Robert Waggoner's answer:
Dear Ultimatrix,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I can understand that it seems quite scary, so I sympathize with you.
A long time ago, I began to have a series of recurring dreams of the Invisible Man, who was inside our family's house! At first, the dreams were kind of interesting, but as time went on they became a bit scary (and I'd go hide all of the knives in the kitchen, so the Invisible Man did not find them).
Then one night everything changed. In that dream, I could hear the Invisible Man inside one of the rooms, so I felt confident he was there. I ran to the garage, opened a can of paint and then placed it on the door where the Invisible Man was. I knew that when he stepped out of the room, the paint can would fall on him and he would be covered in paint (and no longer 'invisible'!).
After that dream, the recurring nightmare stopped.
So why am I telling you this?
I feel that you need to create a new response to the "tall, dark, scary figure" in your dreams. Instead of trying to scream or to run, you might try something new, like asking, "What do you want?" or "What do you represent?" Often when you hear the response, then you have a newer and broader understanding of what you are dealing with.
Many lucid dreamers have done this (that is, asked, "Who are you?") -- and been amazed by what they discover!
Lucid dreaming teaches us that there are more responses than just 'fight or flight'. When we engage scary dream figures in new and creative ways, then we often resolve the underlying issue, and those nightmarish dreams end for good.
Robert
P.S. Check out more of our Ask Robert Anything series on YouTube
About The Author
Past President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Robert Waggoner wrote the highly-acclaimed book, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, and more recently, Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple (co-authored with Caroline McCready). Robert frequently speaks at global conferences, universities and on radio talk shows about the subject of dreams and lucid dreaming. Robert successfully taught himself how to lucid dream in 1975, and since then, has logged more than one thousand lucid dreams. Robert's books have been translated into German, French, Finnish, Czech, Chinese and Russian.
About The Author
Rebecca Casale is a lucid dreamer and a science writer with a special interest in biology and the brain. She is the founder of World of Lucid Dreaming and Science Me.
