I’m writing this from my bedroom, scared and clueless about what to do next. Basically, this all started a few months ago last night when I had this weird dream. I stood in a hallway with a white floor and black walls. There were no shades of color to them, just pure black and white. I couldn’t see any corners or the end of the hallway, so I just walked forward. While I never trained how to lucid dream more frequently, it was something I naturally experienced a few times a year, and I figured this was one of these occasions.
After what felt like an eternity, I noticed a small table with a pitch-black flower in the middle of the corridor. Just like the rest of the things in here, they had no shades of color; they were just pitch black. I tried touching the flower, but the closer my fingers got to its leaves, the more I felt unease.
Suddenly, the walls and ceiling moved away from me in all directions, and the corridor turned into a white plate with a white sky. Essentially, this is what I always imagined a void would look like. I tried to change the scenery (after all, that’s something you can do as a lucid dreamer), but to no avail.
I kept walking; the only source of sound in this nothingness was the echo of my footsteps (which looking back made no sense at all since there were no walls the sound could reflect off). Then, after a while, I felt it for the first time. I had a feeling of dread, as if I were being watched. It felt like there were eyes somewhere in the very far distance of this white void, fixated on me and observing my every move. I quickened my pace and eventually started running. I didn’t even know what I was running from. I just ran by second nature.
The sound of my footsteps became louder and more distorted, similar to when a microphone clips. The noise eventually became so loud that I didn’t even realize that I was screaming from the top of my lungs. I was shouting and pleading to wake up, until eventually I did.
I jolted awake in my bed and, after calming down and making sure I was safe, looked at my phone. 4:41 AM, February 11th. Despite being thirsty for a glass of water, I remained in bed, too terrified to move through my dark apartment. Naturally, sleeping wasn’t a valid option either. Not after what I just experienced. I replayed the nightmare in my head for little over an hour before my alarm clock went off, scaring me more than it should have.
The sunlight washed away my fears, and I continued my morning routine as usual, although something about that nightmare was off. There was an image carved into my mind—an image of a room with a figure floating in the middle of it. It was way too dark to make out any more details, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I haven’t experienced anything out of the ordinary since. I graduated from college this summer and now have a 9-5 job as a software engineer for a small local business, which was just a few hundred meters away from a supermarket—convenient for breaks. That was until about half an hour ago when I was driving home from work. On my way home, I suddenly felt a feeling of dread, the same feeling of being watched I had months ago. I recognized it immediately.
At first, I shook it off. But then something else caught my eye. I was 100 percent sure that I had already driven past the local supermarket already, when I saw it coming up a second time. I drove past it, only to be met with a third one. I felt a shiver running down my spine and accelerated the car, not paying attention to potential other cars on the streets. Except there were no other cars, not even pedestrians. It was just me, with the same ~400 meters of road repeating in front of me indefinitely. All other turns or roads that would have been on the sides of the road were gone, replaced with the same repeating pattern of apartment buildings, in which all windows were closed by curtains. The streetlights were increasingly dimmed the more supermarkets I sped by.
I took my foot off the gas, but the car kept going faster and faster. 50mph. 100mph. 150mph. At this point, I was sure I was dreaming, although looking back, I’m unsure if I really thought that or if it was just a coping mechanism. The sounds of the engine became distorted and rose to a deafening volume. Then, the car took a sharp turn to the right into a wall, and I woke up screaming in my bed. I looked at my phone: 2:36 AM, February 12th. Again, the same image popped up in my mind, as if I had seen it with my own eyes. But something was different. I was able to make out what room this figure was floating in: my bedroom.
The next morning, I went out and walked to my workplace, only to find that the place where I remember it being was an abandoned warehouse that had been unused for multiple years. A bit of internet research revealed that the company I worked for never existed. The same goes for my coworkers. I only knew one or two phone numbers from the top of my head, but nobody picked up on the other end, and a visit to their respective apartments ended in me confusing the tenants of said apartments who claim to have lived there for a few months.
Just then, I got a text message from a college friend of mine asking why I wasn’t in CS class. My blood ran cold, and I almost threw up but managed to keep it in. After messaging him that I had caught something and was sick, I walked back to my apartment. I have no idea how I managed to get there without fainting. Once inside, I had one of the worst panic attacks of my life. I never experienced these since I was a child, although I had to go to therapy because they were preventing me from falling asleep when I was 12.
After throwing up twice, I managed to calm down somewhat. And this is where I’m right now. Apparently, the past nine months of my life—my graduation, my workplace, and everything else that happened between February 11th and November 23rd —were some sort of dream. Or maybe this right now is a dream? I have no clue what is real or what to believe anymore. Unsure of what to do, I started writing this post to gather my thoughts and recapture on what happened.
I have no idea what to do next and lost all sense of what is real and what is a dream. I might go to sleep today and live my life for a few months, maybe even years, only to wake up tomorrow, back where I started. I’ve thought about talking to a psychologist or a doctor since there has to be a rational, perhaps medical explanation for this (I don’t believe in the paranormal), and I’ll book an appointment the next time something like this occurs again.
I’ll keep you updated on future events, although I sincerely hope that I won’t have to.