Hello. This is my first post.

I've been interested and practicing lucidity for a while now. I had a long dry spell after having my first couple of lucid dreams years ago, but have recently continued practice again. I've had a few lucid dreams as of late, but something is different about them from before. Before I didn't have many problems, and most of my trouble was in simply trying to enduce lucidity.

My lucid dreams of late have always been cut short. Usually to enduce them I will rality check by bringing up my hands and looking at them. If they blur or distort, then lucidity is gained and all is good. That is, until the Dark One comes.

When I was a kid, for a short while I had a reoccuring nightmare, that wouldn't leave me even after I would wake up. It was always the same thing. My vision was of a dark alley at night. There would be a figure at the end of this alley. He appears as a black silhouette, a shadow, usually with a hat and trenchcoat of sorts. In this reoccuring waking nightmare he is always at the end of the alley, always walking toward me, but never really getting any closer. It is hard to describe, but he is the embodyment of fear itself.

Like I said though, this didn't really last past a night or two, but had shaken me. Only recently has this figure appeared again. I've had a few lucid dreams, and in them, not too much longer after I gain lucidity, the Dark One appears. When he appears, my control over the dream world is taken by him. Usually to avoid letting him have control over the dream I wake myself up. It's almost as if he doesn't want me to be lucid. This shadow is some sort of entity outside of myself.

I was wondering if anyone else has had a simliar experience with such an archaeic black figure. And if so, who (or what) do you think he is?

I have a few theories. One being that he is in fact the one pulling the strings, and the world of dreams is his, and when the control is taken from him, he wants it back. And that maybe has something to do with the fundamental ability to be able to create the world around you.

The other theory is that the Dark One is actually my own "shadow". He is a living personification of all the unrealized dark nature within me. I think Jung proposed this theory of one's shadow side of the psyche:

"What is the shadow? While Jung finally defined the shadow as "The thing one has no wish to be," we continue to know it by many names: the alter-ego, the lower self, the other, the double, the dark twin, the disowned self, the repressed self, the id, etc. We speak of "meeting our demons," "wrestling with the devil," ("the devil made me do it"), a "descent to the underworld," a "dark night of the soul," a "midlife crisis." The shadow abounds in the classic human stories: it is a Grendl to his Beowulf, Shakespeare’s Macbeth to his more noble Hamlet, Mephistopheles in dialogue with Faust, Darth Vader (the "dark father") in battle with his ego-heroic son, Luke Skywalker."

The last time I encountered him was today. I had my first WILD. After not being able to sleep some of the night I was awake for a while, and decided to try to stay conscious after laying down for a while and encountering the first stages of the transition from reality to dream, which were sounds, very particular sounds. I have done little reading on how to do a WILD but achieved it nonetheless. the interesting thing is that when I started out, I believe I had either an OBE or a waking dream where I was in my room, despite not even being in the dream state yet. And as my real body faded and dream body and environment slowly manifested, I found myself in a lucid dream.

It didn't last long however. The Dark One appeared after I found myself walking downa dark street. It suddenly reminded me of him and the reoccuring waking nightmare I had as a kid. And thats when he appeared. I asked who he was, but then felt immense fear as the dream control slipped form my grip and into his, and once again forced myself awake.

My question is not just that of whether or not anyone has had similiar experiences, but more to the nature of what the Dark One (or Taunter as I called him) is. Also, should I encounter him in the future, would it be wise to continue to force myself awake to avoid giving his control back. Or should I confront him, despite my primal fear, as I wish to do?

I may find that he is, in fact, my own "shadow". But if he is something else, what would that mean?

Thanks
-Jonathan