I’m sorry if my screams woke you up, my friend!

A prolific dreamer, I head off to the other realm up to four times a night. Many are exciting, filled with adventure while some are plain daft, inexplicable beyond my own cod psychology, unworthy of further analysis.

Even in sleep nature requires a pay-off, so in exchange for all my enjoyable nocturnal excursions, I also suffer nightmares.

Oh yeh. I’m horribly good at them.

My creativity works overtime to come up with obscure and wonderful ways to scare the life out of me, Sometimes it happens quickly, simply and effectively; others drag out the horror through long slow torture.

Having enjoyed and endured so many dreams, I’ve learned that the movie running on my brain-screen is fairly irrelevant, compared to the feelings that accompany the action, which might bear no relation whatsoever to the narrative.

For example, once I dreamed I was lying on my back on the floor. Up above me on a small table was a cotton reel. My eyes were fixed on that cotton reel. My heart was filled with terror. My breathing was short and sharp, as I existed only to fear the cotton reel.

Thankfully over the years I’ve also developed some pretty good lucid dreaming skills, so I’m aware that I’m dreaming. Once you know that, you can make changes to what’s going on in your dream. My conscious self makes my dreaming self close his eyes, and when he/me opens them again, I’m dreaming a different scene.

As if to counteract my ability to lucid dream, my subconscious mind designs my darkest dreams, so that they start off with me sleeping exactly wherever I’m sleeping.

Confused as the action unfolds, it’s impossible for me to distinguish between what’s happening in the dream and what might actually be occurring in real life.

My simplest nightmare was undoubtedly the most terrifying of all: the essence of precision and purity.

I was sleeping in my own bed in my Golders Green flat, in 1988. Life was good and I was happy, with nothing to fear, but when I opened my eyes, I saw my bedroom door swing open a little. Around it floated a nebulous black cloud that made its way to my bedside. As it neared me it grew in size and darkness, so that by the time it was leaning over me it was a man-sized hooded cloak with no man in it. The left sleeve reached inside the cloak, produced a shiny steel 18 inch stiletto blade, raised it high with both empty sleeves above its headless hood and plunged the knife, with great speed and force, directly into my chest.

Waking, screaming, so true had it all seemed that it took several minutes to understand that it had not happened.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.