A lucid dream is a dream where the person who is dreaming has the ability to consciously control what is happening to them in their dream. Their dreams, in turn, feel almost like a ‘real life’ experience with authentic sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, and even smells. The following AskReddit thread asked lucid dreamers to share some of the coolest things they’ve done/experienced while in a dream and these were their answers.
Source list available at the end.
“I was talking to my mother in a dream. I tried to convince her that it was a dream, but she didn’t believe me. So, I opened a window, flew out of it, and then I returned back into the room. Then I said, ‘See? You can’t do that in real life!'”
oz1cz
“I lucid dream maybe only once or twice a year, but while I was in prison one night, I became aware of my dream state. I was at a hobby store with my oldest daughter (who was 9) at the time. As soon as I realized what was happening, I hugged her for as long as I could. It was so vivid, I could actually smell the shampoo she had used. I told her that ‘I loved her’ and that ‘I’d never leave her like this again.’ I woke up in tears.”
oldfashionedguy
“I don’t know if this counts, but when I was 18 (now 27) my grandmother passed away. We were close, and I was very upset when she died. However, I never had a good cry over it. Well, one night (a few years later), I dreamt that I was 8-years-old again. I felt like a kid, and I was in our old apartment. I ran downstairs into the kitchen where I saw my mom talking to my grandma. I ran over and gave her a hug and told her that ‘… It felt like you where gone forever.’ She replied, ‘Even if I’m not here, you know everything will be alright?’ I woke up, cried for a good while, and even had to call my mom so that I could talk to her.”
ACuddlyVizzerdrix
“It was during my sophomore year of college, I was taking Calculus. This particular course had a heavy workload, and I put off doing an assignment until the day it was due. There was this one problem that I just couldn’t figure out. Now, looking at the glow from the screen of my online MyMathLab homework only made me feel more tired. As a result, I ended up falling asleep. In my slumber, I was able to work through the problem and found a solution. I woke up, tried it again in real life, and the solution was correct.”
slave1throwaway
“I got into a fight with a cheetah. I was in Brazil exploring the Amazon. Then, all of a suddenly, I found myself being hunting by a cheetah. After trying to outrun it and failing to do so, I decided I wanted to hunt him down instead. It was epic, and I ended up waking up right as we clashed in the air.”
badtiger2117
“I’ve enjoyed the ability to string together several lucid dreams and daydreams over the course of weeks and even months. I’ve fought wars and built societies from scratch. I’ve traveled through space and time. I’ve been the hunter and the hunted. I’ve risen and fallen. I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes in mere moments due to my overactive imagination which, even in unconsciousness, refuses to decelerate.”
Downleft_Bass
“I’ve flown to the moon, sat on it, and watched the earth. I’ve also created a small galaxy around my house as if the Milky Way was floating in my garden.”
mutantBaguette
“One time, after I had realized that I was dreaming, I went up to a character in my dreams and told them that ‘I was dreaming’ and that ‘They weren’t real.’ She had a blank expression and then my whole dream vision flashed black. It was like someone had turned the light off and back on, and she had disappeared. I did this to a few other characters and got the same result.”
MadTeaParticipant
“The only time I’ve ever been able to lucid dream is when I called my boyfriend in my dream, and he was being really mean and not himself at all. It was what made me realize that I was dreaming, and for some reason, my dream had this weird background noise of TV static. After I realized that I was dreaming, this man in a suit showed up and made me get into his car and drove me to the middle of nowhere. Then I woke up. It was like I wasn’t allowed to be in my dream anymore because I knew that I was dreaming.”
hufflepoofs
“I love camping, but bugs (especially spiders) scare me. I was camping one night in my tiny tent and had this realistic dream. When I ‘woke up,’ there were moths, spiders, centipedes, and beetles everywhere- all inside of my tent, covering my sleeping bag. I couldn’t breathe and initially panicked, but then I realized that I was dreaming. Instead of waking myself up, I covered up in my sleeping bag and faced my fear by calming myself down and laying there in the bug infested tent. I was so proud of myself the next morning.”
chapst1k
“I’ve had the ability to fly in almost every single one of my dreams. I’ve flown across major cities and into space.”
bakedwafer
“I was on a plain once, and it was just grass and dirt. I knew that I was there and that I was dreaming. I looked up at the night sky, blinked, and willed it to be a kaleidoscope of colors. I felt so giddy. I lifted my hands and began creating sky-high trees, mountains, fields of flowers, and deep ravines. I blinked and could be wherever I wanted to be.
I swept my hands in an arc and rivers began to flow. Left, right, up and down. It didn’t’t matter. I looked up at the trees and demanded they merge with the multicolored stars in the sky, and they did.
I was pleased, until I found a snake. No matter what I did, I couldn’t control it. It laughed at me as it slithered close before biting. I knew that it was just a dream and that everything was under my control, but to this day, I don’t know why that snake wasn’t.”
Nebu-Den
“Im old now (in my 40s), but I used to be a pretty good ballerina back in the day. When I realized that I was dreaming, I started dancing beyond what I could do (doing leaps that went on and on and spins that could last forever). But the one weird thing was that I couldn’t get my feet to land solidly on the ground. That was part of how I knew that I was dreaming.”
Alpha_lemming
“Something I’ve been working on for a while (I’ve only been trying to do this because it happened to me before by accident) is flying through space. I recently ‘fell into the sky.’ It was like I was falling but away from the planet. Then, it just felt like I was falling while I whizzed through space passing stars and planets.”
MyFirstOtherAccount
“Flying in your dreams is a very cool experience, but it’s tricky even while lucid. Through trial and error, I’ve learned that my ability to maneuver is inversely proportional to my altitude. If I’m hovering a few feet off the ground, then I have complete control over my speed and bank/turns. The higher up I go, the more likely I am to start flying off in random directions and go faster/slower than intended. I’m not precisely sure why this is, but my best guess is that I have no practical experience operating with that kind of three-dimensional mobility. Also, when I’m lucid, I can almost always conjure up a lightsaber on command.”
dionysus_disciple
“I’ve jumped from a moving train onto a moving truck (like how they do it in the movies). I couldnt quite fly, but I’ve had amazing jumping powers and felt invincible.”
WoodsWanderer
“Winning the lottery dreams are the worst. I had one where I won 10 million dollars, and I spend the entire dream writing up a shopping list of things that I was going to spend it on. The list included a yacht, vacation home, plush penthouse in the city, etc. Then I had to wake up and realized that I was getting none of that.”
mosotaiyo
“I usually spawned invisible shields between my enemies and myself which would make it impossible for them to reach me.
Tonight, I walked towards 4 or 5 armed men with their weapons all pointed towards me. It was terrifying- even though I knew that my shield would protect me. But if I started to run (or tried to escape) then I would panic, and the lucidity in my dream would disappear.
Then again, I’ve never felt pain in a lucid dream except for the pain that would reach me from my real body (from like a bad headache for example).”
DuckWithBrokenWings
“The ability to teleport and walk through walls.”
ljahb
“My dad died 6 years ago. When he appears in my dreams, I become lucid. It felt so real. It was like I was being given a second chance to spend time with him. We never really talked, I just hugged him and weep.”
whiterabbittxz
“I was a little kid, and I once had a nightmare where this T-Rex was trying to eat my whole family. Luckily, I realized it was a dream. Since I was so young at the time, I didn’t know you could control your dreams, and the only way I knew to wake up was to die in my dream. So, I thought ‘I might as well get this dream over with’ and basically killed myself by throwing a rock at the T-Rex.”
CoolBeagle
“I could phase through solid walls, change the weather, and manipulate the size of things/people. I’ve always been bad at flying. Telekinesis of various forms either moving things or disassembling them with mind bullets, etc. All of things can make you feel like you have super powers or something.”
cadwellingtonsfinest
“When I don’t like how something is going, for example, someone dies or I miss a train, I can turn back time and have a do-over.”
Arkazex
“I once sang with four voices all at the same time, while music welled up from the small volcanic island that I stood on.”
Siiw
“When I drift off to sleep, I’m suddenly able to remember countless dreams that I’ve had over the years. I can literally flip through them like a card catalog.”
lorum_ipsum_dolor
“I felt accomplished after this set of dreams. See, in my first lucid dreams, I always did a ‘reality check’ by hoovering/flying in midair, but I could only use the windows to leave a room. The walls were just too sturdy in my imagination. For the next 5 or 6 dreams, I tried to break them down or at least shift through them. While they were still too solid at the beginning, after another 2 or 3 more dreams, they began to feel like pudding. Now I can proudly walk through them in dreams.”
Duosnacrapus
“I once was a Jedi on a quest. There were lightsabers, I could use the force, do triple backflips, and all kinds of other stuff.”
jreeman
Posts are edited for clarity.