Waking up screaming after nightmares - common?

This happened to me for the first time last night. I do usually have vivid dreams anyway, they're not usually nightmares and completely random but this one felt very different.

In real life I'm 22 years old, still live with my mother at home in a two bedroom terrace property and I am an only child so I have my own bedroom that no one shares with me. My bedroom is at the front of the house looking down onto the road at the front of the property.

My dream was that I was in my bedroom (can't exactly remember what I was doing at the time but it was dark outside so it must have been late) and I heard what was either a knock on the door or my mother answer the door. Turns out that the 'police' were at the door and wanted to take my laptop but wouldn't tell me why. My mother must have let them in and at this point there were about 20 of them walking around downstairs in my house even after the laptop was taken and I had no idea where my mum was. I will say here that although they were wearing black they were not wearing uniform and there were about three cars and two black vans lined up on my street outside.

I discovered that the 'boss' was the one who actually took my laptop back outside and I went to ask what their purpose was, why they needed my laptop and when I would get it back. He said that I would get it soon enough, but at that point I just knew that I wouldn't see it again. He was British himself, and from what I remember he looked a bit like Ray Winstone after he has had a shave. He drove off in the van with the laptop presumably in the back.

After that I went back inside my property and everyone was gone except my mother, except something just seemed different. She was sat on the settee in the living room just having a casual chat with me afterwards about the events that had just unfolded, she seemed totally natural about it like it happens all the time and I was very confused as to why.

Anyway just before I woke up I was sat right next to her talking and her face changed completely (a bit like a shapeshifter?). Her eyes changed, she started to grow a moustache and her skin colour went darker. She's white but took on the looks of an Indian man for about ten or twenty seconds. After this she (he) started to notice what was happening she shook her face right in front of me and it went back to normal. It was only normal for about five seconds and then she took on the mans appearance straight away again. I stood up, started to walk away, slowly, backwards out of the room...

That was the end of the dream. Afterwards I woke up and was looking at the end of my bed and there was something stood there, right at the bottom of my bed staring at me – like a shadow but a 3D figure of a man watching me. It was at that point I screamed for about ten seconds in absolute terror. I probably hadn't woken up fully yet and was lucid dreaming at that point but my mother (who was in the next bedroom) asked if I was okay - so I was definitely awake.

After that I was fine, like nothing happened, went to the bathroom and got back into bed. It was like I completely forgotten about the dream I just had until this morning when I got up and realised my laptop wasn't where it usually is. Don't worry it hadn't actually gone it was in a different room because my mother was using it. Even though I say that the laptop is mine, it's only mine because I bought it, I never use it and it may as well be hers.

It was very vivid and I must have had about three or four dreams last night, one involving me winning £50 off a real-life game of battlefield, another involving me falling down a four feet deep pothole in the road and the final one was my ex-girlfriend asking me who was better at playing guitar, her brother or Slash - clearly slash in my opinion
These dreams as far as I know were all after the original, scary one and they are all my *usual* type of dream.

Anyway, that was, as far as I can remember the only dream I have ever had that has caused me to wake up screaming (I’ve been told I laugh in my sleep a lot but never scream) – does this happen to any of you regularly and is it quite common? It's just never happened to me before and I know it's quite common to happen to children (night terrors) but I have never heard of it happening to any adults I know, and I'm 22.

Or does the content of the dream prove that I have just been lurking this website a little too much?

I would like to hear your thoughts.

All things in moderation including ATS. Too many reptilian threads! Try not to read those type of threads just before you try to sleep, otherwise your sleeping mind will try to make sense of it all.

P

reply to post by pheonix358


Yeah that wouldn't surprise me to be honest the last thread I think I was reading last night was the one about the batman killer looking like Jared Lee Loughner - which would explain the face chenging element in the dream - it was just strange to wake up screaming, that's never happened before, to me anyway,

I've been told that since I was a child,I shout out in my sleep,like I'm fighting with someone.when I wake I'm totally unaware that I've even been dreaming.rarely do I remember my dreams.I wouldn't worry about it.

Yeah, just take ATS in moderation.

I've been dreaming about Instagram lately.