# Sleep and Dreams > General Dream Discussion > Nightmares and Recurring Dreams >  >  weird scary experience: strange intense nightmare or mild night terror?

## innerspacecadet

It happened pretty early in my night's sleep last night, but I don't remember exactly when.

I was having the vaguest dreams, almost more like hypnagogic imagery really.  But one of these things just seemed too real: a person, I think it was a woman though my memory was vague, calling out to me, and it sounded like she was almost right next to me.  And it sounded so real that I was completely spooked out of my sleep.  I screamed and cowered and was wide awake within a couple seconds, only to find...nothing there.  And that I hadn't been asleep for all that long.

I've woken up screaming and cowering before, but all the previous times I remember it was because of something real, like fire or smoke alarms going off in the middle of the night, not someone speaking to me in a vague dream and it sounding real.  And it wasn't even that scary except for the seeming realness and intensity of it amidst all the rest of the obviously fake imagery that wasn't bothering me.  And it was only that voice that bothered me...nothing else spooky or scary was going on.  So it wasn't like, say, one of those nightmares where I'm being mugged.  Nightmares of being mugged are scary, but there's lots of "story" behind them, and I tend to stay asleep or wake up slowly, scared but not screaming.

It almost seemed like a hybrid of a night terror and a nightmare...maybe just a really strange and intense nightmare, or a very mild night terror.  I woke up screaming and cowering and it happened early in my sleep, like a night terror, but the screaming and cowering phase lasted only a few seconds rather than minutes like they say is typical of a night terror, and I remember part of the "dream" imagery and woke up completely from it, more like a typical nightmare.  I heard night terrors usually occur when someone's sick, stressed, or overtired...if I was any of those three, it was only the third, having not slept that well the previous night and having not gotten to bed on time that night.  And I never had night terrors as a kid, nor do they run in my family.

Has anyone else had anything like this happen?

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