Humdinger of a Nightmare

I sleep a pretty un-troubled sleep, but sometimes.....

The scenario: I'm in a theatre, watching a really, really bad 1950's vintage horror movie, and people are starting to walk out of the theatre. But the people walking out are the people who were in the movie. I start talking to them. One of them is Soupy Sales. I ask the man how he got to be in such a stinker, and he tells me, hey, it's a living. The main character though was Frank Sinatra, but I couldn't get to him to give him the business. Somehow, the atmosphere started getting darker and more menacing. By this time, I'm back in my own bedroom, and I'm really freaked. There is a dark presence in my room, and I'm petrified. And I'm not sure whether I'm dreaming or not. I'm fighting to scream, as the dark presence gets closer. It has a head, of sorts, but it's a ghostly thing, greyish white, sometimes looking like Frank from the movie, sometimes like Fran Hatch, one of my fraternity brothers who died at 20. I'm trying to scream "Who ARE You!", but the sound coming from my throat is like that of someone with Cerebral Palsy, deep, thoaty, and essentially un-intelligible. I can pass my hand clear through this presence. I wake at the same time I'm finally able to scream.

My son, in the room next door, slept through the whole thing, my moaning, screaming, etc.

None of the normal dream interpretations I can think of make any sense of this farrago of images. I checked my sleeping angel, peed, went back to bed, and slept for another 5-1/2 hours.

Go figure...