Lucid Lucy

For those of you who don’t know what lucid dreaming is I will explain it like this. When you are dreaming, if you suddenly realize you are dreaming, then you have become lucid. Once you are lucid in a dream you have the power to control every aspect of your dream. Many people practice lucid dreaming on a regular basis. In their dreams, experienced lucid dreamers can fly, jam on-stage with their favorite rock band, or even eat a tasty meal at a fancy restaurant. Your mind is your only limit once you learn to control your dreams. There are thousands of books and websites dedicated to the subject.

Lately, I have been hearing some rumblings on the message boards across the internet. It seems that someone, or something, has begun to haunt the dreams of lucid dreamers. You might think I’m talking about a simple nightmare but that would be incorrect. Remember, a lucid dreamer can control every aspect of their dreams. Whatever this thing is, it is invading the lucid dreams of people and bending their lucid dreams to its own will.

The lucid dreaming community isn’t quick to discuss this in the open. They are afraid that newcomers to the practice might be scared off. I have had the opportunity to discuss this face to face with several experienced lucid dreamers. What they’ve told me is pretty frightening.

I’ve changed some names here to protect people’s identity.

***

I met the man I’ll call “John” at South of the Border in South Carolina. I had been doing some work for a man in Florence, South Carolina. John lived in Red Springs, North Carolina, about an hour away from Florence. South of the Border seemed like the perfect in between place to meet. If you have been there then you know exactly what I mean. The place has that old roadside attraction charm that ensures a cheesey good time, even if the decorations are a little racially insensitive.

Anyways, John and I slid into a booth at Pedro’s Diner and we ordered our meals. John wasn’t what I pictured when I thought of an experienced lucid dreamer. He was a big-framed man with a powerful handshake and simple country charm. John wasn’t eloquent or particularly gifted at relating his experiences to others (he tended to start and stop his stories, then pick up in the middle after telling the end) but what he related to me on that cool and breezy November day had an impact on me.

John, who is now in his early forties, said he started lucid dreaming around the age of 15. He didn’t plan on become a lucid dreamer. He just had natural knack for realizing when he was dreaming and then taking control of those dreams. He didn’t even know it was called lucid dreaming was until he read about it in the local library one day when he was much older.

Over the last few years John had become a regular on the lucid dreaming message boards. He gave great advice on how to become, and stay, lucid in dreams. People began to take notice of what John was saying. In his own little virtual community, which was based solely around the concept of lucid dreaming, John was an expert, maybe even a celebrity.

All of that had changed about a year and a half ago when John met “her”. One muggy May night as John lay asleep in his bed he began to dream that he was outdoors at a classic car show. John walked around the car show having a great time looking at all of the cars. At some point a gentleman came up to John, in his dream, and said that he really liked John’s 1949 Ford Bueller. John realized that there is no such thing as a “1949 Ford Bueller.” He noticed the man was wearing a nametag so he leaned over to read it. Sure enough, the letters on the nametag were moving around and he couldn’t make out the name. As has happened so many times before, John realized that he was dreaming and became lucid. Now John was in complete control of this dream.

John stood around for a moment trying to decide what to do. Eventually he walked up to a red 1966 Pointiac GTO and climbed in. He started the car up and listened to the rumble of the engine. “This car is sweet!” he said to himself. John then thought of an oval track surrounding the car show and suddenly there it was! He took off in a cloud of dust and headed out to the track. The car drove wonderfully. After a few minutes John realized that he could drive any car he wants to. He exited the track, climbed out of the car, and began to look around at all of the other cars to see which one he would drive next.

At this point in John’s dream, the crowd present at the car show to started to act a little strange. He could see there was a commotion in the distance. People were starting to stop and look over in one certain direction, a few were pointing. Then a young man came running past John. Next a scared looking woman ran by. John was confused. A second man sprinted by, as he ran past John he yelled “she’s coming this way!” People started to turn and flee all around.

None of this concerned John. Losing control of a lucid dream can happen anytime. There are some tricks that experienced lucid dreamers know that will stop this process. John started off with one of the more simple methods to regain control of his dream. He looked down at his hands and began to say firmly to himself, “I wish to remain lucid, I wish to remain lucid” over and over several times. For an experienced lucid dreamer like John this is usually enough to regain complete control. However, John noticed the crowd around him was still in a paniced state and people kept running past him to get away from the commotion. As John was looking down at his hands saying the simple phrase, “I wish to remain lucid”  over and over a man ran into John and they both tumbled down.

Now, at this point, John was a little stunned. Nothing like this had ever happened in one of his lucid dreams. He still seemed to be losing control. In addition to this, the sudden fall to the ground had hurt a quite a bit. The man that knocked him over looked at John. John thought he was going to apologize. Instead, the frightened man shot John a look of desperate fear, pulled himself up off of the ground, and ran off into the crowd.

John stood up and dusted himself off. He was done playing around. John began to run in circles as fast as he possibly could. This is a bizarre trick that he learned years ago to help him stay lucid. Running in tight circles rarely failed to hand the reigns of control back over to the experienced lucid dreamer. As he was doing this several more people slammed into John at once and he was thrown back to the ground.

This time John was a little unnerved. He seemed to be in new territory as far as his lucid dreaming experiences went. As he made an attempt to stand he was knocked over again. The crowd was in a full panic. He could hear people screaming, “She’s here! She’s here!”

Finally, as the crowd thinned around him and disappeared into the distance John was able to get back on his feet. There were a few more people running in his direction but he had a much better view of the scene. That was the first time he saw “her.” Above the heads of the fleeing crowd he saw a tall, thin woman with blood red hair headed his way. She was extremely pale and had black eyes that pierced John’s soul, even from a great distance. Another man who was running past John tripped and fell just to John’s left. He looked up at John and said, “She’s coming for you, you idiot.” then the man got up and sprinted away.

John looked back toward the tall, pale woman. Again those eyes seemed to cut right through him! An older, heavy set woman who was have trouble breathing ran past John. As she did, she scolded him saying, “Don’t ever look her in the eyes!” Then the woman continued on her way.

At this point, John still wasn’t completely sure what to make of the situation. In his mind, this was still just a simple lucid dream that he had lost control of. If he couldn’t change the attitude of the crowd perhaps he could change something else. There was a black 1969 Camaro sitting nearby. John stared at the car for a moment and willed it to be red. Poof! Like magic the car was red. Then, he looked over to an old Stingray. He willed it turn into a Volkswagen Bug. Poof! The Stingray turned into a Bug.

John had a newfound feeling of power. He was in control after all! He turned toward the approaching tall woman and tried to simply wish her away. A wave of nausea and confusion swept over him in an instant. He tried again. This time he nearly blacked out. She was still walking slowly toward him. Cars were literally crumpling or melting away as she casually strode past them. She was clearing a path to John’s position.

The last few remaining people ran past John and instructed him to do the same. “You can’t fight her!” the last one yelled as he flew past. John clenched his fist. “Great idea” he thought, “That is exactly what I am going to do!”

John picked up a car with his mind and flung it at the woman. As the car hit her it simply melted into two pieces and she walked right through it unfazed. Next, John imagined he had an old Browning Automatic Rifle like the one his grandfather carried in World War II. He raised the gun, took aim, then opened fire. Boom! Boom! Boom! This was a very satisfying weapon to fire he thought to himself. He decided he would shoot this gun again in future lucid dreams. Boom! Boom! Boom, until the clip was empty. Surprisingly, the BAR had no effect whatsoever. He might as well had a squirt gun.

She was close now. John could feel the icy cold glare of her stare cutting through his very being. Now, for the first time, he was worried. He could only think about getting away from those black, life-sucking eyes. John ran around the side of a car and squatted down. Maybe she wouldn’t see him. Maybe she would pass him by. The air was quiet and still. John sat there contemplating his next move. He looked up nervously through one of the car windows. She was standing just on the other side! From his vantage point he could only see part of her lower half. She had some kind of weird tight fitting skirt with vertical red and white stripes. “What a strange being!” he thought to himself. Then he wondered why he thought of her as a “being” and not a woman. His thoughts were interrupted by something that made him “jump out of his skin,” as he put it. Her long, pale bony hand was reaching straight through the car! It was just about to close around his neck!

John startled himself awake and sat up in his bed with a scream.

As we looked over the dessert menu John told me that it took him awhile to initiate another lucid dream after that first experience. Without fail, every time he has become lucid in a dream “she” shows up. John doesn’t know what to call her. She never looks the same. Sometimes she is pale. Sometimes she is dark black. Sometimes she has green skin. Sometimes her hair is black. Sometimes it is white. She always wears the most ridiculous clothes. But, she is always tall, always skinny, and always has those solid black eyes that pierce like a silent scream. John said it really didn’t matter what she looked like. He could feel her presence. “No one else feels like her” he said cryptically. He said he has battled her time and time again. She never reacts, she just simply presses forward. The experienced lucid dreamer said he has turned the ground beneath her to a deep crevice. He has covered her with nets. He has bathed her in walls of fire. Still, she presses on toward him and grabs for his throat. He always wakes up just before her fingers touch him.

“I can’t really sleep anymore” John said with sad eyes as he stared out at one of the big rigs parked outside the window. He explained to me that when he dreams it is so easy for him to become lucid because he has practiced the art for so long. If the least little out of the ordinary thing happens in a dream he will then suddenly realize he is dreaming and he quickly becomes lucid, whether he wants to or not. Then “she” appears.

“I take lots of sleeping pills these days” he says as we finished our flawn. “I’ve lost my job, my house, my passion for life. I don’t like to dream anymore.”

Indeed.

As I drove back to Florence, I felt sorry for the man whose dreams were now his nightmares.

***

I’ve gotten similar stories from the handful of lucid dreamers I have interviewed. Always they are haunted by a tall, thin woman with solid black eyes. “Razor Black”,one woman who I’ll call “Susan” told me, if there was such a color. She assured me it was a color she knew all too well these days. Susan said Lucy looks different in every dream. But always tall, always thin, and always those solid black eyes.

Lucid Lucy. That is what people on the message boards have named her. I’ve never met her. But, Lucy has made me rethink my own experiments with lucid dreaming.

I’ll wrap the story up by saying that I recently met a woman from Massachusetts who I’ll call “Rhonda”. Rhonda is one of those New Age, psychic types. I don’t really know what to think of Rhonda’s beliefs but she has some unique ideas about Lucid Lucy. She says she met Lucy once during an Astral Projection. Rhonda said that Lucid Lucy is an entity from another reality. She explained that Lucid Lucy is looking for someone that is a “match”, whatever that means. Supposedly, when Lucid Lucy finds the right candidate, she will be able to use that person to jump to our dimension. Right now, according to Rhonda, the only people who can see Lucid Lucy are the people that are able to create their own realities, lucid dreamers being the most common. Rhonda doesn’t know if Lucid Lucy is even capable of such a jump. But, she said, the entity is bent on trying.

***

UPDATE! It’s seems this story has resonated with a lot of my readers. I never realized so many of you were lucid dreamers. It looks like Lucid Lucy isn’t just preying on the lucid anymore! Some of you have pointed out that people have been describing a being identical to Lucid Lucy on popular dream interpretation websites. These people are really beginning to get frightened. They want to know what this thing is. If you are ever in a dream and you see a tall, thin woman with jet black eyes you might want to pinch yourself to wake up. Lucid Lucy just might be looking for you!