I had a really freaky dream experience just this past weekend that, if nothing else, has proven to me that reality and dreams can easily become interwoven.
Firstly, some info as background: I still have what has been a life-long fear of the dark. This has nothing to do with being afraid of the "boogeyman" lurking in the dark.......instead, it is actually connected to the claustrophobia I have. Being engulfed in darkness is to me very much like being confined in a tight space. Couple that with the fact that I have no night vision whatsoever, and the total darkness is just a very unpleasant thing for me.
My husband and I have been married for over 28 years and in all those years he has never known me to sleep-walk, yet, this weekend it seems I did so for the first time in my life.
Saturday night my husband and I were up late watching a movie. I had had a very long, very busy day, and at some point during the movie I fell asleep, sitting up on the couch. My husband just let me sleep and continued watching the movie until it was over. He then went off to bed.
It was after my husband had gone to bed that the weird dreaming started. In my dream....... I woke up on the couch in pitch blackness. My husband had left me asleep sitting up on the couch. He had gone through the house and turned off every single light, leaving the house completely dark (we live way out in the country, so there aren't even any street lights to shine in the windows). I had awakened (in the dream) because our cat jumped up into my lap, startling me awake. Upon opening my eyes to blackness I instantly panicked. I got up from the couch and began feeling my way through the house. I wanted to turn on the kitchen light, which would also shine into the living room, since we have an open-concept home. I had just made it to the archway between the two rooms and was reaching for the light switch, when suddenly I heard the basement door creaking open. Just as suddenly, a cloud must have moved from in front of the moon outside, because I saw a full moon out there, through the window, which shed light directly onto the basement door. Terrified I saw a shadowy figure emerge from the basement doorway. I felt an aura of evil emanating from the figure. I was so frightened that although I was trying to shout my voice was coming out as a whisper. I was trying to shout, "Go away! You're not welcome here!", over and over, and in between also calling my husband's name. Then I heard my husband answer me, "I'm here, I'm right here!". I looked all around but saw my husband nowhere. I tried to shout, "Where, where are you? I can't see you!".
It was at that point that my husband grabbed my shoulders and shook me awake. This is the reality, that shows how things that are really happening can become part of what we are dreaming:
My husband really did leave me sitting there asleep, and he really did go through the house and turn off all the lights, leaving me in total darkness (I was angry with him over that later. LOL). Our cat really did leap up onto my lap. I really did get up and walk to the doorway to the kitchen. Here is where reality differs from the dream.......whereas in the dream I was trying to shout, but my voice came out a whisper due to my fear.......in reality I was shouting all that out at the top of my lungs. My husband heard me shouting and calling his name and came to see what was wrong. He came and stood right beside me and said, "I'm here, I'm right here!". (in the dream I couldn't see him anywhere, even though he was only inches away from me) In reality, of course, there was no full moon that night. We couldn't even see the moon because it was pouring rain outside all day and all evening. In reality the basement door never creaked open and no shadowy figure came out of the basement.
It certainly was a scary, freaky dream, though, and it took a good 15 to 20 minutes I'd say for my heart to slow back down to normal after I woke up. I told my husband he had better not ever leave me in the dark like that again. (I sleep with the hall light on, shining into our bedroom) Upon thinking about it, I think I was subconciously aware, even in my sleep, that my husband had turned out all the lights, and that caused me enough anxiety to make me have that dream and to sleep-walk for the first time in my life. Not an experience I ever want to repeat.