This happened over the course of three or four years when I was a kid.

I can't remember exactly when I got the first one, but I started having this recurring, half-lucid nightmare maybe once every couple of months.

From what I can remember, here's how it would go.

I'd be lying down in bed, only the view wasn't from my first-person perspective.

Instead, I'd be looking down at myself from the ceiling, like I was viewing my own bedroom

through a security camera feed.

The out-of-body dissociation always freaked me out.

I tried to float or swim towards my body, but I was never able to move beyond swiveling

my head to look around the room.

I was half lucid, so I knew it was a dream, but that didn't make me any less scared. After calming myself down,

I'd start noticing strange things about my bedroom. For one, the digital clock on my nightstand

would always be counting in reverse. That was typically the first strange detail I'd notice.

And once I noticed that, I'd start seeing other weird stuff. There were these drawings

taped to random spots on the walls and dresser, like crayon drawings you'd expect from a kid my age,

but I had no memory of ever making them. I wasn't the type of kid who ever drew much, so it wasn't

like I had just forgotten about them. They always showed the same

thing, a row of people holding hands, all smiling, with one smaller figure who I can only imagine

was me. They were always standing in front of a house with a blue roof, but I can't remember

much more about the drawings than that. The other detail about the dreams that still sticks out to me is an old toy train of mine

that was always sitting in a different spot on my bedroom floor, which was significant

because I had lost that particular toy years prior.

Anyway, after analyzing my room for a bit, I'd get this unexplainable urge to look out

...