This troper has night terrors that cause her to wake up screaming and flailing, as mentioned on the trope page. One time, she LEAPT across the entire room in her sleep, in one jump, landing in her sister's bed screaming, before waking up. In general, there's no nightmare associated, but she DOES often remember the bolting upright and screaming. Once she remembers the sense of a great scary face gazing down upon her as she woke up screaming. As with everyone, she also experiences the hypnic/hypnagogic jerks/sleep starts.

This trooper was once down for the count after an accident. As she regained conciousness, but before she actually woke up, she registered a loud, terrible noise. Then she opened her eyes, and realized that the sound was was herself, screaming in agony. Not a good day.

In another sense, this trooper has lately been afflicted with sleep starts, like the above trooper, and will sometimes rewaken with a convulsion and loud exclimation of ''"Wah!?"''

This troper wakes up not only sitting up, but standing over her twin brothers bed, staring at him. Every week she wakes up screaming and throwing herself out of bed at least once.

This troper tends to sleep on her side, so she doesn't catapult... However, sometimes when on the verge of sleep and half-dreaming vague things (for instance, I am running), I will stumble... 'waking' with a sickening and very abrupt jerk.

Man, I HATE that! It doesn't even need to have a dream related to running anymore (it always used to), it just happens randomly. When I'm not deeply asleep. It's mostly in my legs, but one assumes that if I was lying on my back when it occurred(which has yet to happen) I would rise at least slightly due to abs tensing/

That's actually an exaggerated part of the sleep cycle. My husband does the same thing, but he won't often jerk awake; just twitch and kick, until he falls deeper asleep.

This troper has the same problem, only it's -every damn time- I'm almost asleep and somehow imagine myself slipping, either walking, running, or otherwise. If I slip in an almost-dream, even completely asleep sometimes, I jerk about and am very much completely awake.

This troper is the same way too. It always seems to happen when she dreams about walking and then tripping... Thankfully, it hasn't happened very often, but when it does, it is annoying.

This Troper also. When she's falling asleep on her back, she often starts to half-dream a blue staircase and her feet running down from it. Then, all of a sudden her arms and legs jump up, making the stairs disappear. It's freaky, but pretty cool.

This troper is prone to very vivid dreams. When I wake, I sometimes sit bolt right up in bed with my eyes wide open; and I'll still see the dream in my room before it fades. Talk about nightmare!

A mix of this and hypnotic jerk (below), I guess. When I'd taken a short nap yesterday, I'd dreamt(dreamed? is that how you spell it?) that the apartment building right across from our balcony had caught fire, then the tree next to it. I swore aloud, called for mom, then startled awake.

This troper rarely does this after nightmares...but very frequently does it after "hypnotic jerks", flinging herself upright in bed as a reaction to the sudden falling sensation. (Google it if you're unfamiliar with the term--you've probably had the experience too.)

Now, [[strike:ForScience]] For Art Reference In A Way Which Borders On Creepy, this troper is going to try even harder to sleep on her back, so she can catapult. Just because it's an exerience. I guess it'll be a hwile till I get another one of those, though. *sigh* waiting, waiting, waiting.

This troper has done this numerous times when falling asleep in class. Rather embarrassing. Most of the dreams I have wth this are just recurring my last day of school, falling into the cement.

This troper had a fairly fucked up dream (only once) at the age of...he thinks it was 6? Its hard to remember, but it was before he lost his hearing to spinal meningitus. He was... some sort of cyborg (again, he was young, so its difficult to remember and his memory has never exactly been the sharpest spoon in the shed) and he was in a firefight with another cyborg who was quite clearly evil. He had ducked down behind cover to reload and he was just stepping out to begin shooting again when his entire torso was turned hollow by a goddamn Guyver-esque Megasmasher blast from the other cyborg, he shits you not. This troper fell to his knees in the dream, managed to 'survive' a few minutes more to plug the other cyborg in the head multiple times (the other being amazed he wasn't vaporized outright) before expiring and waking up. The single most simultaneously disturbing and epic dream he has ever had...

This troper once had a nightmare that finished with an Alien-esque thing charging up a flight of stairs at his 10-year old dream self. Despite the dream happening over 20 years ago the troper clearly remembers shouting, "Mommy! Mommy!" in the dream, and then, as the thing grabbed him, shouting "Mommy!" as he woke up and jerked upright in the bed. His girlfriend made things better, though....

This troper also experienced one of these... although it wasn't a nightmare so much as a dream with a violent ending (getting hit in the face with a tetherball).

This troper once catapulted himself OUT of a dream. A train was going backwards in the subway and in the dream he came to the deduction that trains don't move backwards, and catapulted himself out. Strangely enough, since this troper sleeps facedown, he ended up doing a pushup as he awakened.

Yes! This troper thought he was the only one who woke up from dreams after deducing that the ''"TheMatrix isn't real"''. This troper forced himself to wake up from a dream in which he and his faceless enemy were in a shootout. After emptying his P-90 into the enemy (this troper likes ''StargateSG1'') and seeing him/her/it still advance, said troper realized this couldn't be real and promptly woke up as the enemy was preparing to shoot said troper in the face. Unfortunately the LogicBomb doesn't always kick in when you need it to and said troper has suffered some grisly fates in his dreams (nightmares).

I, also, frequently realize I dream. This is sometimes useful, as in 'Okay, a creepy, menacing scarred guy with a katana and a uniform just showed up at the door and will probably kill us,... I've had enough of this. I'm getting out of here.' kind of useful, but most of the time it's a dream where I'm in a place I left long ago, or with a friend I see only once a year... and then I'll think back to why I'm there, and I can't remember the past... and then I am sad. Sometimes, though an effort of will, I can force myself to forget. And occasionally, she'll realize she's dreaming during a fun dream but it either won't matter or only results in her trying bemusedly to mess with reality (it doesn't work).

Inverted by this troper, who loves lucid dreams. Normally, whenever he gets a lucid dream, he wakes up. Naturally, it was a huge breakthrough when he figured out that he could catapult back into his dreams if he focused hard enough and was aware that it was, indeed, a dream.

This troper has had a few nightmares (mostly involving the same shadowy humanoids, but others with a giant plastic lizard coming through the wall, Shelob from LOTR trying to force her way through his window, and J-horror icon Tomie's head floating above his bed) where he woke up screaming, leapt out of bed and ran out of the room before he realized the dream was over. It didn't help that the aforementioned nightmares took place in his room, and it ''especially'' didn't help that in one "shadow people" dream, the shadows actually ''told him'' that it wasn't a dream and they would be there when he woke up.

This troper wakes from dreams like this quite regularly, most memorably in a dream where she was stuck in an elevator with the Melted Face Nazi Guy from the first IndianaJones film. Who was being perfectly civil, until the rickety old elevator decided to plummet and she shot out of bed screaming.

This troper recently awoke from a nightmare - the last image he had before waking up was a slimy claw touching his head while he laid on his bed and turning his head towards it, complete, apparently, with the body movement. He jerked sideways and lunged fist-first towards where the owner of the claw would have been if it actually existed before he even actually ''woke up'', and even after his brain functions kicked in he had enough adrenaline rushing through his body to keep him awake for the whole night.

This troper once woke up from being attacked by a large number of hamburger-sized spiders, and he not only was catapulted up, but literally ran out of bed and into the hallway. The next hour or so consisted of trying to calm down, eventually going to sleep on the couch in the living room. Did I mention that I do not like spiders?

This troper has done this at least three times.

Although it wasn't a nightmare, this troper was becoming extremely frustrated with the actions of his younger son's dream persona, and decided to spank the litt- er, child. After trying twice and finding himself unable to even lift his arm, this troper focused the entirety of his will into his right hand and swung. His real-world hand ended up hitting his wife on the shoulder (and hard!). The troper's wife was understandably upset until the situation was explained, at which point she said, "Oh, okay," and went back to sleep.

Quite literally inverted by this troper about 15 minutes ago. She sleeps face down. After a very unpleasant MindScrew of a nightmare involving a giant closed slide and live chihuahuas doing the Aliens thing, this troper, who had fallen asleep in an odd position, flung her legs over the edge of the bed behind her and ended up landing on her back with her legs upright for a moment before realizing what the Ford just happened.

This troper's mother has a tendency to suddenly sit upright in the middle of the night, shouting things like "where's my purse?" or "Are the lights off?", before my dad tells her nothings wrong and to go back to sleep.

It's happened to this troper exactly once, when a sentient Speak 'n' Spell informed him "''The Tall Man will come to kill you while you sleep''".

Most of this troper's nightmares involve spiders, and has had at least three cases where she has done this. One of the times she actually jumped out of the bed while still half-asleep, convinced there was a spider in the bed, and another time she bolted upright, panted for a few moments, then promptly burst into tears.

This troper once awoke from a dream to find that he'd not only launched himself out of his bed, but rolled halfway across his bedroom while keeping a death-grip on the blinds he'd yanked from his window. He only wishes he could remember what he'd been dreaming.

This troper has awoken in this fashion several times, most embarrassing was when it happened after falling asleep during a boring class lecture. Fortunately he was at the back of a big lecture hall and nobody seemed to have noticed.

This troper had one when he was 8. He was being chased by a skeletal faun through a dark forest. I remember in my dream screaming "HELP!!!! HELP!!!!!!!". Then that ghastly faun pounced on me, lifted me up, leaving me asphyxiated where we both made eye contact, and the faun started screaming "HELP???? YOU WANT HELP????" This troper was having trouble screaming (as he was being strangled by a faun). 3 guesses at what the whole house heard when he woke up.

This troper once dreamed she was awake in bed but she could feel her room being sucked into something, and she looked out the window and saw the world flying past. And then she heard a report on the radio that the Large Hadron Collider had finally made a black hole, and we were all doomed. At first she seemed to accept it... but then she realized it couldn't be real, could it? So she jolted awake shouting "NOOOOO!".

This troper had a nightmare that some drunken jackass hit my wife with a tire iron. I awoke in bed sitting up with my hands around his fictional neck.

It has happened to this troper occasionally. In the most extreme example, he was dreaming about a snake in the bed. In one fluid motion he woke up, ripped the sheets off the bed, and turned on the lights before he realized what had happened.

This troper gets all the way out of bed. I've done it twice. (And the way I stubbed my toe the second time '''hurt'''.)

This troper got an extra physics lesson this way: After having a dream he got hit in the face with a dodgeball, he threw himself back into the bed and literally got thrown back up to a 90 degree angle by the impact.

This troper was waking his completely still roommate (can't remember what for) one morning by tapping him gently on the shoulder and calling his name. What he expected was a cracked eye and a mumbled "what?"; what his roommate did was fling his torso upright with enough violence to shame mousetraps and yelling "Jesus!" It was a tense couple of seconds before he explained to me he was dreaming about being in a shootout...

This troper has discovered that certain sleep medicines cause this reaction in her, to the point that she actually flings herself out of bed, hits the ground, and starts running. THEN the sleep paralysis seems to kick in, as she falls flat on her face halfway across the room. At which point she finally wakes up. She takes no more sleep medicines.

This troper has done it several times as well, the first when she was merely eighteen months old. She dreamed she was standing in her crib, wanting to be let out, yelling, "Mommy! Mommy!" when suddenly the window came off the wall, curtains and all and announced in a deep, scary voice, "Mommy's not here!" She catapulted upright and started to cry, then clung to the side of her crib and started yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" because she believed the window. Considering she still clearly remembers this incident over 20 years later (indeed, it's the first dream she remembers having) the nightmare was deeply traumatizing.

I'm 26 and I'm creeped out reading that. I can only imagine what it'd be like to have that dream as an infant.

This troper, when having a "falling" dream, will instantaneously jerk backwards in an attempt to reduce the impact of the fall. Interestingly, this also happens when he randomly gets the sensation of falling while still awake. It's very annoying.

This troper dreamed that CampLazlo was UnCancelled, and now the characters were IN SCHOOL! She was watching a commercial for it when she heard her mom say, "Alice, wake up", and realized she was dreaming. She then, for no reason other than to freak out her mother, purposely woke up this way, complete with a breathless "It was OnlyADream!"

This Tropette does this a LOT. Rarely after bad dreams, though. If I remember something important during a dream (Exams, forgotten chores, Pizza for lunch tomorrow) I jerk awake, presumably to prepare. InstantWakingSkills

This troper doesn't bolt up like in movies, but he often awakens from a nightmare by raising his head up and snapping his eyes wide open.

This troper is known to wake up by launching himself across the room at the waker, screaming "DIE" or a swearword.

This troper has been known to get up, walk across a spacious room without treading on anything, switch off the alarm, and walk back to bed to get back to sleep, entirely on reflex.

I thought it was just me who did that!

I have done this amazingly cinematically, launching myself upwards with a gasp. Funny thing being, it wasn't a nightmare. I just remember the part of the dream that woke me up out of shock, which was one of my best friends telling me that she wanted to be with me more than she wanted to be with her boyfriend. Turned out it was true too.

I get a lot of headcrab-related nightmares, that usually end up like this. Sometimes I find a crowbar, though.

Usually for this troper it's legs and lower body that jerk up out of bed. Recently I had a dream about riding a high speed sledcar on a rail that was designed to fold over to create a ramp to a higher set of tracks. I was strapped in well, but the back hatch suddenly popped open and dumped me right out, and suddenly the track started to fold as I sat there dumbfounded in the crease. It could easily have crushed me to a pulp from the waist down, but it was moving in omminous jerks, so I'm wondering, "Do I have time to get out? Does this thing have a safety catch? Would there be a safety with such a crappy restraint design?" I was frozen in the dream, but my feet hit the floor before I even woke up, catapulting me into a standing position.

This troper did this once... and promptly smacked his head against the ceiling. The downside of sleeping in a loft bed.

I thought I was the only that did that! Sleeping on a loft bed is indeed dangerous

This troper was on a trip when this happened, and he kicked a girl in the face, making her cry. CrowningMomentOfFunny to him, although other people were less amused.

This troper remembers this happening in an oddly fortuitous manner once as a child. He cannot remember what woke him, but he suddenly bolted upright... right before a large number of books on the shelves at the head of his bed fell and landed on his pillow. Of course, the bolting upright might have been the reason they were jarred loose. Then again, he's also had the experience of bolting upright in the lower bed of a bunkbed... ouch.

This troper was in university and having a dream about something chasing me, leaping...when the poster over the bed fell on top of me. My roommate, who was awake reading at the time, said I sat bolt upright, eyes wide open, screamed, closed my eyes, and collapsed back down, asleep.

Although this humble contributor moves about a lot when he sleeps, this has only happened once. A few years ago, while staying in a friend's guest bedroom I had an especially nasty nightmare about some dead...''thing'' underneath the bed trying to pull me down there with it. I popped up like I'd been sleeping on a spring, screaming bloody murder. I was so freaked out I didn't even know where I was or how I'd gotten there. Oddly enough, my friend and his wife to this day claim they never heard a thing, despite the rooms being only feet apart.

This Troper was once woken up at a sleepover and sat bolt upright, before launching herself at her friend and screaming 'DO NOT OPEN THE BOX! HE WILL HEAR US!' I have ''no'' idea what I was dreaming about.

This troper used to do this after really, REALLY bad nightmares. She trained herself out of this, along with out of the flail effect when began sleeping in a bed three feet from the ceiling. Ouch.

This Troper had such a nightmare after she dreamt she was kidnapped by Edward Cullen. (No Twilight fans, it was not sexy, AT. ALL.)

This uni-student troper has a recurring dream in which I discover I have an assignment due in the morning that I didn't even know about until then. The last time this happened I threw back the covers and was halfway to my laptop on the desk muttering "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" before I realised it was the dream again.

I recently had a dream that wasn't particularily scary, but at one point I tripped on something and fell over. It felt like the movement of falling over in the dream and the movement of sitting up after waking were the same movement. It's hard to describe.

Zombie Fantastic Four. That is all.

This Troper has never sat bolt upright in bed, but he does wake up with a mighty full-body twitch with depressing frequency, especially from falling dreams.

This troper has been told that she sits straight up to talk in her sleep...to the great fear of everyone around. It normally happens on camping trips or the like.

This troper had a dream where he was attacked by a snake. In the dream, he flipped over to avoid it and promptly smacked his head and woke up to find that he had flung himself into his bedframe.

This troper's girlfriend had a dream that she murdered her brother, during which something woke her up. Imagine my surprise to roll over in the middle of the night and see her suddenly sit bolt upright and burst into tears.

This troper dreamt that he was playing an RPG with a CatGirl protagonist, and one of the dungeon bosses was a green, tentacled, EldritchAbomination. The sight of the monster was so horrifying that it jolted him bolt upright in bed, along with flailing legs.

Another one of my catapult nightmares, I was in the garage of my house, and a rat jumped out of a box and into my face. I had yet another one where my cat morphed into a bat and attacked me.

This troper can't remember any of the exact dreams, but there will be points where she'll get the typical hypnic jerks. Other times, she'll wake from a nightmare before realizing it. Example, she isn't quite sure what the dream was originally about, but suddenly she was imagining a bee/wasp/hornet (all of which she's terrified of, preceeded by spiders; she can't remember which one it was though) buzzing around the head of her bed as she slept. In her dream, she watched it land on her hand and almost stung her before she woke with a jolt and leapt to the other end of the bed. Unfortunately, due to the fact it was still dark out (the only light was from her DS charger dock) and she got rampant paranoia from it, she kept seeing the thing actually there but not, and she ended up curled up at the other end of the bed for the rest of the night.

New story; it wasn't really a nightmare, and it didn't necessarily involve any launching out of bed, but above troper once awoke from a late-morning dream that ended with an impromptu CrowdSong, and then suddenly had "Go the Distance" from ''Disney's Hercules'' playing in her head. She sat up with a confused look on her face and mentally said "WTF subconcious."

This troper once had a dream where she was falling 90 degrees down some absurdly long and steep stairs, facing towards the inevitable ground. She woke up while falling to face her ceiling, then catapulted straight up to face the wall. The sudden and rapid changes in perspective made her disoriented enough to fall off of her top bunk and hit the floor for real.

This troper still remembers one of his early repetitive nightmares that had this. Or at least the vague details. Specifically that the 'Terrible' part consisted of a large whale jumping into a tower and biting a very nice hardwood table. Yeah, I've yet to find out why this was terrifying enough to cause me to wake up screaming frequently for more than a year.

This troper had a slight instance of this this very night. A moment before I had totally fallen asleep, I heard an electric current(like from a power line, I guess), then felt as if something literally went ''through'' my head. WTF moment.

I've had that experience a couple of times too. Once I got stuck in sleep paralysis after that happened.

This troper was really, really young when she had this one. She dreamt that she had a talking walking GameBoy buddy, but she went and tossed it over the bed. He was not happy, and he promptly sent ''chimpanzees'' to beat me up. Only a leap into the air and back into my bed woke her up.

I had a nightmare about an hand-sized spider with freaky giant beetle mandibles crawling on my pillow. Naturally, I was awake and upright in record time

This troper has had it happen once followed a really weird dream. In it, I was a girl (For some reason), as I punched a floating question mark box and collected the mushroom inside; resulting in the dream turning into a total acid trip. Suddently, my breasts where the size of my head, the sky and the building I was outside of where rainbow-colored (Almost like I was wearing the glasses from that one episode of {{Warehouse 13}}), and InspectorGadget was breakdancing in midair to Purple Haze...and it only got weirder when I went inside the building, as I was blasting through the room in a go-kart shaped like Yoshi that runs on happy faces while shooting down a Yellow Submarine with a laser. After the Yellow Submarine exploded, I suddently woke up from falling off my bed onto the floor; holding my head as I though to myself "What kind of dream was ''that''!?" (Much like Kyon).

Just a note, this troper while usually sleeps quite peacefully, has had on 2 occasions of waking up suddenly pouncing up (involving getting tired of fake waking up and trying to wake for real), and literally taking wacks at the air to the point that I almost went off the bed.

This troper had it happen once. I no longer recall the dream, but I remember the Catapult - at the time I was sleeping in a loft bed in a room with a ceiling that was a little too low for it. Spent the next twenty minutes picking plaster out of my hair and staring at the cracks in the ceiling while my guy alternated between "awww, poor thing," and laughing hysterically.

This troper is an extremely vivid dreamer, and according to her parents, friends, etc, she often physically acts out part or all of dreams. Two extreme examples: I dreamed I was late for my bus, but was missing a project that involved bedsheets, so I grabbed some sheets and ran for the bus. In the waking world, I jumped up on my feet, ripped all the sheets off my bed, and ran into the stairwell screaming "WAIT!!!!" I didn't wake up until my dad grabbed the back of my shirt to keep me from falling down the stairs. Another incident happened on a mission trip, where all 25 of us were packed into two tiny rooms with three levels to one bunk, where the bunks in my room were set up so that mine opened into a friend's. In this dream, somebody (who looked suspiciously like Dracula) was nailing me into a wooden box. There was one part where they hadn't nailed it shut yet, so I crawled out of that as fast as I could... and woke up trying to jump off my friend's bunk, which was seven feet off the floor. Also, when she grabbed me and threw me to the back corner of the bunk so I wouldn't fall, I apparently screamed loud enough to wake up THE ENTIRE TWO-STORY DUPLEX we were staying in. In addition to things like this (which happen pretty often), this troper has also had entire conversations in her sleep.

I once had a dream I was on a roadtrip to Canada with my parents, and we stopped at this cute little Chinese Food place to fuel up and grab a bite. When we got inside the place was run-down with cobwebs, dust, rust, apparent blood-stains everywhere, and all these burnt out lightbulbs. My dad got in line behind the filthy counter and began to order some dinner from the grimy looking fat lady, and my mum and I went to the back of the building to wash up in the bathroom. To get to the bathroom we had to pass down this ridiculously long hallway with plain white walls and a concrete floor. After walking for like, a half hour we reached the bathroom and began washing our hands. Suddenly my mother paused, nudged me and pointed to something reflecting in the corner of here mirror, and asked what it was. I stopped as well to turn and stare at the lump of bloody flesh curled up in the corner of the room shifting and wheezing. The lump reared up and revealed itself to be Pyramid Head, of Silent Hill fame. Long story short, P.Head chased Mommy and I all over the hallway and back to Run-Down Cafe, which turned out to be well-lit, cozy and full of people eating noodles. I tried to explain to the lady that P.H was in her bathroom, but she wouldn't believe me, nor would my parents, even though my mom was friggin /there./ Apparently I was so upset at being deemed insane and something to be feared/ignored, I woke up thrashing in bed, with my pillow and stuffed Hello Kitty on the other side of the room, my blanket wrapped around me like a straitjacket, and my perplexed mother standing over me while I bellowed 'Remember me'....

This troper sometimes jolts out of sleep with the sensation that there's an earthquake.

This troper once had this happen in school (College) when his alarm went off - with his lofted bed far to close to the ceiling. I took a little nap after that...

Ooh yeah, this happened to me too when I thought I was late for class... ouch.

The CatapultNightmare is this troper's ''breakfast''... '''''literally'''''... she often wakes up ready to go with one, knowing that going back to sleep ''is not an option.''

This certain person does have the catapult, but not the nightmares. He has the catapults from nosebleeds and very sexual dreams. But {{Catapult Nightmare}}s are averted every time by him.

This troper has ''never'' woken up this way from a nightmare, but in a way it's almost worse... I merely open my eyes in the same position, a position in which the remains of the nightmare are still internalized. At least jolting upright would be a quicker way of realizing what was going on. However, she does talk in her sleep ''a lot''.

I rarely have dreams that wake me up, but when I do I don't sit up (though I usually am able to figure out what's going on quickly). Most of my scary dreams are in REM sleep (which is when almost all your unhappy dreams happen), where a person will rarely wake up upon dream-death or danger (which only happens in Stage 2). See, you learned something just now.

This troper has had this happen only once, following the worst nightmare I ever had. I had a dream about spending the day with an ex girlfriend I had just had a terrible breakup with. After a few minutes the dream turned black and white and I became extremely angry for some reason. I started screaming at her, then all of a sudden grabbed her by the throat and started choking her. I kept holding and once she went limp, I grabbed her head and snapped her neck. Then I let her drop to the floor, dead. Next thing I know I'm bolt upright in my bed screaming. It was straight out of a movie, only thing missing was a cold sweat. Definitely the most disturbing dream I've ever had.

This troper has very, VERY vivid dreams. Once, when she was nine, she had a dream where an evil goat man was chasing her with a halberd and i woke up and rolled onto the floor. Another time, in school, I had a dream where there was a giant cloud of bats flying at my face. I jumped up, banged my desk on the floor, and gasped. The teacher was not happy.

This troper has woken up standing upright and shrieking, or even halfway across the next room over. They weren't even ''bad'' dreams - just silly scary ones.

Had one recently myself; it was one of those ones where you don't even ''realize'' you're dreaming until the very moment you wake up: I'd stepped into the garage to get some pet food, which we keep right by the door, and since I knew exactly where it was, didn't bother flipping the lights on. As I headed back inside, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye... and turned to see a complete stranger with a knife charging at me. Jumping back, I slammed the door shut -- but he got his arm through before it could close completely. The one with the knife. Pinned against the door trying to bar it closed, this blade flailing right next to me, I opened my mouth to scream -- and jolted up in bed. My nerves were utterly ''shot'' for the rest of the night; no sleep for me...

I recall doing this once or twice from nightmares. I don't remember what the dreams were about though. I do remember waking up crying a few times from sad dreams. This is a frequent thing for me though if someone waking me up scares me. If someone opens my door really hard and it's loud, or if someone talks too loud, it frightens me enough to make me jump right up. And since I get really pissed when someone scares me, they should really be careful waking me up.

When I was about 12 years old at summer camp, I allegedly (I don't remember this at all, and only know about it because one of my friends was an insomniac), sat bolt upright in bed at about one in the morning--either half-awake or still completely asleep--and shouted "THE CAPITAL OF MONGOLIA IS ULAANBATAAR!" before falling back asleep. I to this day have no idea why I was dreaming about geography. Or why it was a nightmare.

I did this a few days ago, as the result of a rather inane nightmare. Let's start with a short explanation: The school I go to is a "digital academy", so we learn with computers instead of textbooks. In the dream, I was on a computer in the classroom I used to sit in... looking at porn on Pixiv, while checking out something about Chris-chan on another tab (me looking at risque pictures and then trying to hide them because someone else is with me is something of a recurring dream theme). Then, I hear one of the other students talking to a teacher (who moved away a few weeks ago, I should add), saying something along the lines of "someone's looking at {{hentai}}" (though how that kid or the teacher knew what that was, I have no idea). For some reason I hope that it isn't me the student is talking about, but of course the teacher comes up and leads me to the principal's room. Right as we enter, however, I spring right up, relieved that it's only a dream!

This troper remembers having done this only once, when she was around...six, seven perhaps, maybe ten?. It was...odd in a way, but she can remember the nightmare very clearly. She was with her father at a swimming tournament (she doesn't know why, she's not very athletic), and very worried about drowning, but her father had given her goggles, a snorkel and an oxygen tank. (Yes, both.) The swimming began, and she dived in, taking a few strokes fairly swiftly...and then sinking. She tried to go up, but couldn't. Her view zoomed out outside her eyes (this, however, happens a lot in her dreams -- she's named it 'sitcom-o-vision' or 'camera-view') to the back of her head, where an orange-ish exclamation point appeared above her head (with the MetalGearSolid sound effect -- oddly enough, she hadn't played it at the time, and still hasn't, so she doesn't know where it came from) and she screamed -- she could hear herself screaming even underwater, somehow -- translated: "What? Can't...swim. Can't get up." She started trying to swim in a more controlled fashion, pushing for strength. The view went out to a 2D old-fashioned video-game sort of thing, and she saw her little pixelly hands starting to flap frantically to get up. "Someone? Anyone?" She was sinking further down, now, and her breath became scarce, and with the last air she had, she screamed, through bubbles and water and oxygen deprivation: "Daddy? ''Daddy, come and save me!''" Then she gasped, breathing in deeply, waking up and catapulting up, her nostrils feeling oddly stuffy so she couldn't breathe quite properly. She was coated in sweat, too, so that would help for the liquid element. Then she took a few deep breaths again, kind of relieved, before lying down again. She still remembers her last thought before sleeping again: A simple "Odd."

This troper has had this happen to him a couple of times after sleep jerks or rather mundane nightmares (for some reason, the weirder the dream, the less likely he is to wake up). Regarding the sleep jerks, this troper once "jumped" out of one so hard, that he actually somehow hit his head with his knee, then with his bed, before falling by the side of it.

Another time he remembers was when he dreamed that a friend of his had died... In the dream, He was frequently told that they were going to pray for his friend and that he should be strong, before finding out ''what'' was wrong with his friend. But at a given moment in the dream, he saw the dead body of his friend: he had had his limbs tore off, and bled to death- In front of a church, no less. At the sight of the blood, this troper sat right up in his bed, wondering what the hell had happened.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I sometimes have lucid dreams, and I also sleep walk a lot. Once, I dreamed of ... something that required me to escape, though I don't remember what it was. I woke up after having ran away from my bed, ran downstairs, and gotten almost to the front door. when I'm having bad dreams, I try to figure out that it is, in fact, a dream... it doesn't always work.

I have only done this when I was a little girl (around two or three). I would wake up screaming 'PAPAAAAAA!!' in my little bed with my Dad's cot right besides mine (we were living at my grandmother's house at the time). The sad thing is that I've had the same 'nightmare' for years: a yellow DUCK. yes, I know it's quite ridiculous but god, I freaked out. Thankfully, I've learned to force myself awake when I know that bastard's going to show up. Mostly, when I hear creepy lullaby music or when something is just not quite right.

Has anyone ever had a dream where they were walking or running and then all of the sudden, you either just trip or fall down? Got a sudden shock/jerk from the back or side? Raise your hand. *Raises hand*

Everyone has had that. Hell, it's a plot point in {{Inception}}.

This troper used to have recurring nightmares involving either being covered in, or digging through bugs, spiders (and once, fish). These all ways ended in not only catapulting awake, but shoving off the covers and checking under the pillows in case they really were there.

Admittedly, I don't think I've done this when I was dreaming, but when the fire alarm in our dorm goes off, I usually wind up doing this.

Speaking personally, I have had at least two. The first was over ten years ago, when I was dreaming that I was lying in my bed, that the roof had vanished, and that I saw a giant skull floating above the house, leering down at me. I woke up and almost screamed. This was even before I had read ''HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', which is why the Dark Mark creeped me out so much. The second was last night. I was at home, and heard on the radio that a large comet had been spotted heading toward Earth. "The comet has entered the atmosphere and will impact in a few moments." I looked outside and saw the comet, a great dark rock trailing smoke through the sky, coming ever closer. The comet roared overhead and toward the horizon. Then it hit. There was a flash of white light. The earth shook, and the dull roar of the explosion was carried on the burning blast wave. I hoped against hope the wave would dissipate, but no--it rolled on toward us, toward my family and me, and we hugged. My last thought was of a girl whom I like, and I said to myself, "I wish I could have told you I love you!" Then, the blast struck us, and we were thrown into the fire and the chaos and the storm, and I woke. And almost wet my pants.

This nightmare plagued troper used to do this until he learned through Pavlov not to or I will end up smashing my face into my knees. Averted inversion?

I'm prone to flinging myself out of my bed after particularly jarring dreams. Rather than just sit up, I throw myself to the side. It was a problem when I had a bunk bed as a kid.

This troper's mom apparently had one of these yesterday. (I'm going to talk in first-person, because it's easier) She said her ex-husband set our house on fire, and that she was screaming because me and my brother were trapped in the burning house. She kept trying to reach us, but the CompleteMonster wouldn't let her. She also said she woke up by falling off the bed. She looks back at it now and says that was the upsetting part, but the weird parts were that 1)The house is a house we've never been in, and 2)Somehow mine and my brother's age difference was only 3 years instead of 7 (I was about 3 years old in the dream and my brother was about 6), and my oldest brother that lives across the state wasn't even in the dream.

A pretty vivid nightmare last night. I was in the upper rows of a large auditorium and, at will, I began floating up, until I was at the very top of the room. Then, I fell, plummeting headfirst, screaming. Nobody seemed to pay attention to me as I crashed into the floor and died. I woke up, and my mother said she heard my screaming.

This troper once had a bout of sleep paralysis where he thought that his bedsheet was crawling with wasps. Cue this troper launching out of bed screaming at the top of his lungs, knocking over a lamp in the process, and tearing every single sheet from his bed in desperate fury. Needless to say, his parents were rather shocked.

The worst nightmare I've ever had took this one step further. I sprang up, then jumped out of the bed so frantically I bang my shin on my dresser and left a four inch bruise. It was a dream about being forced to eat my own sister while my teeth fell out, if you were wondering.

This tropette often sleeps on her parents' floor (for no good reason; it's just kind of fun) on a little camp mattress. She did this once... only there was a spin on it and she smashed her face into her dad's dresser.

This troper once had a rather creepy dream involving walking around a darkened house with strange lights flickering outside. I must have been lucid dreaming, because I decided that whatever happened, this wouldn't end well, and devised a plan to wake myself up...which, for some reason, involved going to the kitchen, opening a jar of pinto beans, and diving in. The assumption was that I'd "trip" and wake up. Dream logic; what can I say? Well, it worked: I found myself falling into a bottomless pit surrounded by beans, and woke up yelling and fell out of my bed. Undeniably bizarre, but effective!

This troper used to sleep on the top part of a metal bunkbed that could move a little. During a strange HauntedHouse dream, I was being surrounded by a lot of creatures. My bed shifted a bit as one of the things shoved his eyes against my neck... in a rather cartoony way. It was that coincidence that got me up.

At some point in my childhood, I apparently learned how to turn this trope into a sort of superpower. Whenever I was in the middle of a dream that I didn't like, I would lie down on my back in the dream, bend my knees and sit up. Next thing I knew, I was sitting up in my own bed, awake. It wasn't completely reliable, though. One time I stayed asleep, but the entire setting switched when I sat up, like I had changed the channel to a different dream. I gave it another shot, though, and it worked the second time.

A few years ago, I once had variation on one of these. All I remember of it is the last five minutes, in which I was in my basement. I was having a normal conversation in it, but all of a sudden the person I was talking to shouted "Look out behind you!" At which point, I twisted my body around to see what was behind me, and got a face full of pillow.

This troper can remember doing this at least once as a small child due to a series of recurring nightmares in which her parents were devoured by a giant spider.

This troper has night terrors, and tends to sleepwalk, a very bad combination that leads to his having to be strapped down at night.

One of these made me realize my arachnophobia. I was about to go on an expedition into a jungle (my dreams never make sense, play along) when I noticed the two people I had been paired with were hanging behind like they had something to tell me, but couldn't spit it out. I turned around and asked them what was wrong, and one of them pointed to my right shoulder, where a black widow, about a foot long, had been resting. I jerked awake. Half a second later, I noticed that there was a lump of sheets sitting exactly where the spider had been in the dream. That's when the catapulting happened.

This Troper doesn't recall ever doing this (he usually just wakes up in a very tense state), but he will sometimes catapult if he realizes he has overslept, usually accompanied by a PrecisionFStrike launched along with the catapult.

This Troper invoked this once. He had noticed that it happened every now and again in fiction, so I decided to try it myself. It didn;t work very well, and I haven't done it since.

My dad did a textbook version of this, complete with scream. Minutes later, he was vomiting into a bucket. Turns out it was a subversion; the christmas tree he was sleeping next to was giving him lead poisoning.

I subvert this. When I wake up from a nightmare, I cower under the covers until I work up the courage to lunge out of bed to the light (if my husband didn't hear me and wake up or come in to check on me).

This troper leapt straight up, off of the floor, where he was peacefully sleeping, and ran into the bathroom. It turned out there was a cockroach on his face, and it died when it was thrown into the wall unsuspectingly by this troper.

I've had a few nasty catapult night terrors where I wake up with my heart pounding/palpitating and sweaty.

I've had a music-induced variation. I once fell asleep listening to some of the most peaceful tracks in the ''{{Dexter}}'' soundtrack. I had some very nice dreams thanks to it. Unfortunately for me, my iPod, thanks to some rolling around on my part, lapsed into "Line and Sinker" by BillyTalent -- a song starting with some wild, high-pitched, ''horrifying'' screams of the line "WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET!!!". I woke up catapulting (it should be noted that I laughed at myself a few seconds afterward).

I've had an instance that after I got a nightmare, I would always end up feeling the aftermath of it after waking up. Any suggestions as to what this is, and advice on how to make it stop? I tell myself "Hey, girl, it's just a dream", but I would always feel a stone in my stomach that feels like the aftermath.

You mean residual feelings of being upset/frightened after waking? I get that too, and it's normal, and usually goes away soon after waking. If it doesn't, there may be some underlying anxiety problem that's causing your nightmares.

Not a nightmare, but a weird dream somehow reminded me that I had to work that morning. I went from lying on my side to sitting up, looked at the clock, then lay back down because I still had time to sleep.

Had a dream where two faceless things that looks sort of like redeads were circling around me in the dark. I woke up and could have sworn I saw a tall black figure standing over my bed, causing me to immediately jump up, only to realize my room was still empty. Friggin dreams.

One of my recent fever-induced-fucked-up dreams made me catapult myself awake and look under my pillows; I dreamt there were disgusting, huge, ant-type creatures making a nest underneath.

This Troper only had it happen once, several years ago. She doesn't remember any of the details, only that her first thought after calming down was something along the lines of "Hey, I sat up after a bad dream like they do in the movies! ''That's'' never happened before!"

This Troper had an odd one. Not only a dream within a dream, but I was lying face down so that when I woke, BOTH times, I did so into a push up. Really, really weird.

Once happened to this troper's friend. It always takes me a few hours to fall asleep compared to her, so one night I slept over her house I was lying on the floor next to her trying to fall asleep, when suddenly she sits up from being previously fast asleep, mumbles something in a kind of panicked voice, then goes back to sleep immediately.

This one is particularly famous for a confusing mindset and often expects Catapult Nightmares. The only time this one ever catapulted (not screaming, mind you) to reassessing the dream was one of the rare "visible dreams" that this one has. The dream was that of a 2d shooter, and in monochrome for creepy effect. Noiamnotavortigaunt.

This Troper once had a non-nightmare experience, when his cats decided that 2:00 AM would be a perfect time for a literal catfight. First, a screeching and clawing wad rolled under the table, awakening everyone but me, than the older cat beat the younger one and gave him chase all around the house. Finally, they both pounced on me and continued to fight ''on my chest''. My parents later told I gave an AtomicFBomb and sat upright so abruptly that the cats were literally catapulted across the room, thus ending their fight. Oh, and I'm prone to those stupid jerks-on-the-verge-of-dream, too.

This Troper, at the tender age of 10, had a feeling of premonition and went to cuddle with my grandmother and slept with her for the night. I afterwards had a dream that went from pleasant to painfully horrifying, which climaxed when my grandmother died in the dream. During a mournful conversation with her ghost, I found myself being shaken awake by said grandmother. Turns out that I had been sobbing and crying so loudly that I had woken up the entire house. ''Both floors.'' I still remember every damned detail of the nightmare. Not a ''catapult'' per say, but...

This Troper recently had a dream where there was a new classmate in school, and he had gotten very popular and everyone loved him. Even though I had never talked to him, he decided to harass me and abuse me. In the hallways, he would grab me and pull me aside to molest me. Whenever we were alone, he would rape me. I don't remember the raping and molesting parts in the dream, but I remember that there would be a slight black out and the scene with reappear with the acquired knowledge of being sexually harassed. I distinctly remember being in a bathroom (they were Co-ed, for some reason) and I wanted to change my clothes but I was scared because he was in the bathroom too and he would rape me easily with my clothes being off. He saw me peeking my head out from over the stall, and forced me out of there. There were a bunch of girls around him, laughing at me and egging him on, saying things like "Do it...she's worthless...kill her...rape her..." I couldn't escape, because he said he would kill my friends and family. My friends didn't believe me and the teachers just dismissed it. Yes, this all went on ''during school''. By the end of the day, I had to get picked up by my parents, and I couldn't wait, because I'd be alone at the school with him. I started to walk to a nearby store so they could pick me up there, but the boy was ''stalking'' me. I was running, and running, and running, and then I couldn't cross the street to safety because there was traffic and a Neo-Nazi parade going on. As he grabbed me, the last thought I had was "I could never be safe at home, he'd be somewhere, watching." He was going to rape me, then leave me for dead I presumed. And then I sat up abruptly at 4:00 in the morning, ''crying'' my eyes out. The nightmare was too real to not get scared even to this day...