Seriuosly, I have no idea. I just couldn't resist!
What I really remember is thinking was why did the government make my drive around with people like this to get a license?
[This message has been edited by GZ (edited August 01, 2004).]
For stories like that, my personal resource is the Occult section at a good (cheap) used bookstore. Yes, I've gotten strange looks for checking out with titles like "A Psychologist Looks At Demonic Possession" and "Ghosts I Have Known." But the stories are wonderful. Great source material. And since they're published as non-fiction, the stuff in them is available for fictional adaptation. (I go used because, well, not only are the titles a buck each, but I really prefer the books published back in the sixties for some reason. But I'm sure Borders would have something neat as well.)
The UFO researchers are a really hard core lot, and I've been a little surprised at some of what I'm reading.
One afternoon my mother was riding with her father-in-law in the old farm truck on the way to a store. This was in a fairly isolated part of Arizona, near Tempe I believe, around 1948. A glowing object shot past overhead, slowed, then shot off at an angle at a great rate of speed. It was nothing like she had ever seen before or since.
My personal theory is that there is no longer any reason for halfway intelligent aliens to actually enter our atmosphere to carry out research, since we broadcast everything they could reasonably want to know (and a lot more they probably don't want to know) into space now. Back in the fifties they were probably just trying to figure out how we could reproduce when married couples slept in separate beds 
...
"Sometimes, I think that the surest sign of intelligent life on other planets is that none of it has tried to contact us." -- Calvin, CALVIN AND HOBBES
CVG
I watched it for maybe thirty seconds before it was gone from my view. I looked very hard to see a rear fuselage, because I knew that wasn't the right shape for a plane, but I could not see anything there.
It's been almost thirty years, and I still remember seeing it.
Basically, your body goes to sleep, but your mind doesn't. Then you hear noises. Some people become terrified at this point, because they believe they hear footsteps, and that someone is in the room. I don't hear footsteps very often. Usually I hear an old fashioned wooden screen door opening and slamming shut. Screech, Slam, tap, tap, tap. Over and over until I finally get to sleep. The kicker is that you can't move because your body is asleep. That's what terrifies most people, they're awake, hearing noises in the dark, and can't move to defend themselves. Some people who have it real bad begin to have nighmares at this point.
Steve
I was, maybe eleven or twelve. My family was at Lake Powell and stargazing as we often did before going to bed.
I saw a triangular object move slowly across the sky. It was high. At least a mile up, I'd say. It had a dim source of light, orangish in color, but that could have been the atmosphere. I could also see, distinctly, a dark spot in each corner of the triangle. It slowed and hovered, then sped up, changed direction, and was gone in a heartbeat. Moments later we heard the sounds of aircraft and watched as two military jets followed the objects trajectory.
I've wondered often since if perhaps it was some experimental aircraft.
No, I don't have any odd disorders that might cause me to hallucinate. No drugs. No alcohol. No mental diseases.
[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited August 02, 2004).]
The state where your body is asleep (and can't move) but you are still awake, or at least you feel that you are aware of your surroundings, is called the "hypnogogic state." And when you think you are seeing or hearing or feeling something that isn't there, it's called "hypnogogic hallucinations."
Most of us experience a kind of paralysis when we sleep--so we can run and make other kinds of movements in our dreams without actually moving our limbs in our sleep. Those who don't experience the paralysis can end up sleepwalking.
A website with some information on the alien abduction thing:
http://www.geocities.com/jorgeconesa/Paralysis/sleepnew.html
Which is funny, because my actual dreams are very real. Sometimes I go for days before realizing that something I remember only happened in a dream.
In grade 5 the librarian was reading a book to our class, one chapter or so at a time. It was a mystery/adventure and I really enjoyed it. It included a treasure hunt. I talked to my teacher and designed my own treasure hunt for the class, leaving clues in various places. The funny thing is I don't remember finishing the book or actually doing the treasure hunt. I remember placing the clues but not having people find them.
This isn't just a gap because I'm looking back on when I was young either. About a month after it all I talked to my friends and commented on how it was funny we never finished reading that book or the treasure hunt. They looked at me funny and told me we had. I hadn't missed any school in that time but my memory is missing about a week's worth of time.
Either I was abducted and a body double replaced me for a week, or when they wiped my memory of the experience they over did it, clearing an entire week.
(This is what I thought at the time, to this day I'm not sure what my memory is surpressing.) 
quote:.
The state where your body is asleep (and can't move) but you are still awake, or at least you feel that you are aware of your surroundings, is called the "hypnogogic state." And when you think you are seeing or hearing or feeling something that isn't there, it's called "hypnogogic hallucinations."
Thats it. Another more common name is “Night Terrors.” A couple of hundred years ago, people believed demons and spirits came at night and did things to them. After that, it was other things. My mother tells me she was terrified of “tree squeeks” as a little girl since she was (teasingly) told they were tree spirits. That is what she believed (at least for awhile) was coming to get her when these episodes took place. Once she got older, the incidents largely went away. Mine was never as serious as hers, but does seem to occur about once a year.
When one of my daughters was very small, she'd have what I was told were "Night Terrors" which appeared to me to be more or less the opposite of hynogogia (or being awake but unable to move). Her eyes would be wide open, and she was usually sitting up in bed, but she didn't seem to be conscious.
She'd be crying or screaming, but still asleep. It was very hard to get her to wake up, too.
Also, once she screamed in the night, and when I went in to help her, she was awake and crying, but she told me an arm had come through the wall (her room was in the basement, across the hall from our room, so this was a cement wall with dirt on the other side) and tried to grab her. Creeped me out completely. (Maybe that was hypnogogic though.)
Survivor, there really aren't many people who have the ability to control their dreams, or who experience these phenomenon, (either hypnogogia or Night Terrors.) I too have never had an actual experience where I felt I was in danger, but often I will have a sense of dread, fortunately, it never seems to be about anything specific.
Here is a pretty good explaination of Night Terrors.
http://www.healthscout.com/ency/43/341/main.html
Interesting.
I'm sorry, but now I'm creeped out. Thanks a lot, Kathleen.
I'm so glad that my invincibility kicks in when I'm asleep. There are occasional amusing side effects, but at least I don't get scared of things (even really icky things like zombie arms reaching out of the ground).
Done it! It is the coolest!!!
I'm out of practice. Since I started my family I've been unable to establish the sleep rhythm required to train yourself, or to keep yourself in practice. But when I was single I went to bed at a certain time, woke up at a certain time, and due to timing, was able to wake up in a dream almost every morning.
But, goatboy, it is possible to train yourself to remember and eventually control your dreams. I'm sorry I don't have the reference readily available, but an excellent article on the ability can be found in an old OMNI magazine--probably 1987 or so. And it WORKS! I'm a graduate!
As for Night Terrors--my oldest had them. The other two didn't. Turns out she's also the only one who sleepwalks.
Has anyone ever been asleep and suddenly feel like the bed's opened up and you're falling down into a bottomless pit at an incredible speed?
The sensation never lasted long because I would wake myself up from it. It was too terrifying. (When I watch people training for parachuting, I cringe.)
I told my mother about it once and she told me to try to stay asleep and see what happened. Apparently there's a myth out there that if you hold on through the sensation you can find yourself in a different plane of existence.
Now I'm curious enough that I'm going to do a Google on it.
However, as far as I can tell, this is not REM sleep, though it is closely related. During REM, it's harder to wake up.
I would post links, but there's so many...just do a Google on "hypnagogic". There's some cool stuff out there.
So, when the 20 foot tall cobra/python hybrid is about to strike, I can wake up enough to introduce an object, say a shoulder fired missle, before going back to sleep.
But, frankly, I don't often have straight out nightmares. I have the occasional bout with this disorder and otherwise, I might have an actual nightmare every couple of years.
Now, if you want to have some really good dreams, quit smoking and leave a nicotine patch on over night. Hoo boy! "Vivid" is the word they use to described them on the box. I would say that it's an accurate assessment.