Dreaming Message Board

I've been discussing this dream with a colleague lately and was interested in some opinions. I had this dream maybe 7 or 8 years ago in my mid to late teenage years.

I dreamed I was laying in bed and heard my cat pawing at the balcony door to come inside. (He would climb a lattice structure and always come in at night through my room). I got up to let him in. As he entered he had red bat wings and began talking to me in a language I couldn't understand. It seemed at the time to be Latin, maybe? He held eye contact with me as he walked across my room, speaking this language. When he was towards the center of the room, heading for the door to the hallway, my attention was drawn to a figure in the middle of the room. The figure was all black, hooded and had no discernible features. It raised a hand, pointed at me and said "I'm inside you now." The dream ended and I woke up, sat bolt upright and was terrified. To this day it's still the scariest dream I've ever had. Thoughts on this would be great, thank you.

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-C.

Was the figure like a Death or Grim Reaper type thing?

I'm not sure. There was no scythe in hand. In retrospect, it looked like the "Hooded Figure" image on Wikipedia's Shadow People article. It wasn't ethereal though. No distortion of light or 'smokey' appearance. I didn't wake up and automatically think "Oh, that was a grim reaper.", however it did have a very menacing and evil feeling associated with it.

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-C.

Sorry I didn't mean like a traditional grim reaper with scythe and everything, I mean was it/he menacing like a death figure come to take you away or claim your soul or something? I was actually asking because I get this from time to time, in ultra realistic dreams that appear as if I'm awake in the same room I'm asleep in with this deathly shadow thing floating near, or towards me. It used to be terrifying, like it was the end of me and it had come to take me away. Recently though, the last two times, I actually told it to get lost, go away, and it did!

Oddly though my friend Carl started telling me about the exact same kind of thing happening to him, without knowing about my experiences, and how overwhelmingly frightening it can be, still leaving you 'spooked' after you wake up.

I wondered if you might be a third person whose seen this similar image, or if yours was something a bit different to that?

It didn't really have the feeling of taking my life in the aspect of death, but more like a possession. I'm not Catholic but was raised with a religious\spiritual Christian background, so I was familiar with the idea of demon possession, although I am\was skeptical. The dream was very life like, however I've had many bouts of sleep paralysis and those are just as real but in a very different way, if you have any scope of comparison between them. I'm actually surprised it wasn't an SP incident. It certainly left me spooked afterwards and still does when I think about it sometimes, although it was the only dream with that figure or something like it I've had, so I've never had the opportunity to confront it like you have.
I'm curious: You say in your dream you're awake in the room you're asleep in with that figure there. Is that like a classic out-of-body experience episode, where you can watch yourself sleep or look over and see the figure? I mean, are there 3 figures there - you, you and it?

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-C.

I do have OBEs sometimes, but the ones with this figure involved aren't ever OBEs. It feels more like I'm still awake in bed, looking around at the room, where really I'm asleep, or half asleep - somewhere in between. There might even be sleep paralysis involved, I'm not sure though because I never tried moving but the more I think of it I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't have been able to move.

I used to get another type of shadowy presence where there definitely was sleep paralysis, which either ended in an out of body experience or by talking to (well sort of thinking thoughts to) the presence as it turned out to be friendly. I'm not at all sure what that was about, but it lasted for years and I haven't seen if now for a long time.

Lucky you. I've never had a friendly sleep paralysis episode. They've all been menacing. I'm wondering if this is a Jungian collective unconscious thing or some sort of demonic interruption. The figure, I mean. What sort of details did your friend Carl give you on his experiences?

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-C.

He just said that every now and again he gets a 'visit' from this dark presence and that he feels relieved to have escaped its clutches each time, like it was there to get him.

Are you familiar with John Keel? There's a very strange story that accompanies this dream a few years after it happened.

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-C.

I'm only vaguely aware of him, after looking him up on wikipedia I do know some of the names around him though in the UFO bit.