5 second nightmare ending.

Does anybody else have these? What I am talking about is a last minute, out-of-he-blue nightmare ending to a perfectly good dream. A normal nightmare, where there is lots of suspense and lead-up before the part where you freak yourself awake is bad enough.
But these are worse in my opinion. Suddenly there is a five second nightmare stuck onto the end, nd you wake up.When you wake up suddenly in nightmare state, the dream is so fresh in your mind that you can remeber the last hour of the dream, and the nightmare part had nothing to do with anything.
Like for example last night. my dream was: I’m trying to get to mile-high stadium for a game. I take a shortcut through a huge tunnel that should go to to the stadium, but instead I end up in the middle of a top secret research center. They tell me that if I was able to find their lab I must be a genius, so they want to test me, they test me and yes I am a genius. He is leading me down the hall to the hanger where the secret jet that only I am smart enough to fly is. So I turn around the corner into the hanger, and it’s just a tiny little room, I turn around, and it’s other wall of the tiny room but the walls are covered in blood in some strange language. I turn around again and big–ugly guy in coveralls is standing there swinging a sword at my head, and just before it hits I wake up in full nighmare, heart pounding mode.

Just like that, a five-second at best nightmare.It’s like somone spliced in the wrong reel. I’m used to things that don’t make sence, and absolutely no continuity, but a huge genre change like that sucks.

only thought i have is that something in the “waking world” is affecting you right before you wake up.

There are a couple of things to think about.

When you wake up from one of these dreams/nightmares - is it at the time you would normally wake in the morning after a full night’s sleep, or do you usually wake up inthe middle of the night with one of these episodes?

Then you should ask yourself, what’s waking you up?

One thing that comes to mind is a sleep disorder called Sleep Apnea - one of the symptoms of which is sometimes people waking up suddenly, heart racing, sweating etc… what’s acutally happening, is while the person is asleep (or is asleep and dreaming) they actually stop breathing - this causes oxygen depreivation and the resulting racing heart, sweating etc as the body struggles harder to get air.

The reason I am wondering if this might be happening in your case is because it’s not at all uncommon for things going on “outside” to influence our dreams… so…as you’re pleasantly dreaming, you suddenly stop breathing in the “real world” and as your body is struggling to survive, your brain reinterprets your dream to reflect your physical struggle

Other symptoms of sleep apnea include

Snoring (but not everybody with apnea snores!)
Dry mouth in morning]
Morning headaches
Daytime tiredness/fatigue
Cognative difficulties/memory problems
Getting up through the night to pee

If you have these symptoms, you need to see a sleep specialist