Mind you, I specialize in Dream Working, so I'm usually not this confused over a dream, but I've spend hours trying to figure it out, and I haven't come up with anything substantial, and was hoping someone else would have an idea that would help me explain it, because my dream dictionaries and books can't tell me anything.
Last night, soon after getting up and going to the restroom and had not completely fallen back asleep, at least not deep enough to hit REM state, but was still under a layer or two of subconscious, I started feeling something, but not seeing anything(if I did manage to hit REM state after all, I'm not dismissing the idea) pulling at my legs. Next to me, I was still aware of my husband sleeping, and I could feel my hands(in real life, not REM state) clutching him, while this unseen force was pulling at me. The awareness that I was clutching my husband was what initially triggered the idea that I may not have been fully asleep, it may have been a lucid dream, which I have had many of before, but usually during the day while I'm awake.
This force continued to pull at me, but I couldn't seem to pull myself out of sleep, so I attempted to scream to hopefully scream in real life and wake my husband up. Now, for some reason, and it has been this way for years, I can't seem to scream during my nightmares, not even in the dream, much less out of it. Its as if my body won't let the noise come out, so my subconscious won't let me scream in the dream either. So for several moments, though it felt like hours, I was fighting this force from pulling me out of bed. Finally, my husband woke me, because I was making, "Closed-mouth screams" as he described them.
Once awake, I didn't feel anything off in the room, none of the shadows were moving strangely, nothing could be seen in the mirrors, and I didn't feel any extra presences, but every time I started to slip under a layer of subconscious to get back to sleep, I could feel something lurking there. This is something I've never experienced, because once the dream is done, I know to push my thoughts towards happy things, mundane things, to make my mind create dreams on a more calming level. But this was very different from a normal nightmare, no matter how hard I tried to think of happy things, which I was actually succeeding in, no matter how often I told myself it wasn't real, I still slipped back into another partially awake spot in my subconscious, where this force was now standing over me, squeezing me and pushing at me. I close-mouthed screamed and my husband eventually woke me up again. This sequence of events continued for several hours last night, until nearly sunrise, when I finally fell into full REM state for several hours.
I have no seen any recent horror or possession films, I haven't even thought of them until after the dream/lucid dream last night. It didn't feel like a spell, because I have had a nightmare spell put on me before, this did not feel the same or even similar. I'm not afraid of being possessed.
Is my subconscious attacking me?
Could SOMEONE make sense of this? Because I can't seem to think of anything that would cause this.
B.