On 20 June 2003 an HCD agent was approached by a man, Medira Norton, requesting help regarding a cryptid. The agent insisted that he was not who the man thought he was.

Medira stated that he'd learnt about HCD in his search for answers. The man was pale and sickly, indicative of insomnia. He asked and insisted that he speak with, “whoever is in charge," offering information and requesting help.

We complied, and he met with the then public-agent.

Medira had named the cryptid The Coma Nightmare; emphasising, “The,” as he was certain that it was the only one.

At age 6, Medira had entered a coma while sleeping. The coma lasted 30 days. During that time he had been repeating a nightmare.

He would wake up standing in a room. A humanoid shadow opened the door to the room. The shadow took him in its hands. Instead of waking from the fear, he died.

He'd eventually become aware that he was in a nightmare and aware of the room – it was his parents' bedroom. This awareness allowed him to control the nightmare slightly on each cycle. Medira explained that, using his lucid awareness and by slightly changing the nightmare through thoughts, he eventually manifested fireflies, which killed the shadow.

When waking from the coma, he saw The Coma Nightmare standing in the corner of the hospital room.

After saying this, Medira became quiet and anxiously looked to the corners of the room. He stated that the nightmare had desensitised him to the experience of death, and that there’s a part of him that believes he’s still in a coma, and if he killed himself he would wake up in hospital. Medira threw his chair at the agent, saying that the agent wasn’t real, then proceeded to attack the agent. Staff came in to defuse the situation.

Medira apologised and stated that he sometimes feels the presence of, and sees, The Coma Nightmare.

Suspecting a Shadow Person variant, the public agent gave Medira standard advice for handling Shadow People before he was escorted out of the building.

As we understand it as of this meeting, The Coma Nightmare is a cryptid that induces a coma in its victims. The victims are then trapped in a looping nightmare. This may go on for many cycles before the victim can achieve a lucid state and be aware of what is going on.

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Once the victim has achieved lucidity, they will experience constant fear on each cycle of the nightmare, forcing the victim to surrender their consciousness, escaping the fear by retreating from the body – giving up their life and dying.

Medira’s description of the cryptid in his nightmare resembles that of shadow people. This suggests a new type of the Shadow Person entity, validated by the fact that The Coma Nightmare attacked Medira while he was sleeping – it may have entered through a REM pathway.

We have reviewed medical reports from the coma, which indicate that Medira’s heart-rate had a noticeable spike 1054 times throughout the coma. We are assuming that these spikes are when the nightmares took place. Until we can gather more data, we are assuming that it takes 1000 nightmare cycles for a victim to achieve lucidity.

Unclear what this cryptid hopes to achieve, but considering its possible relation to shadow people, we believe that it may be trying to experience a body by taking place of the original consciousness. If this is the case, victims who do give up their lives while in the coma may not actually die; The Coma Nightmare inhabits their body.

The man stated that since the incident, he often refuses to sleep – to blame for his sickly look – out of fear that he may fall into the nightmare again as he can still feel the cryptid’s presence.

Despite being unable to possess Medira’s body, it continues to haunt him – it’s trying to torture him. The Coma Nightmare is capable of holding a grudge, showing signs of cognitive ability slightly beyond that of Shadow People.

It is unknown how many people may have been victim of this cryptid or if there is more than one. There is no mention of those waking from a coma and having the same story.

We are hoping to gather more coma related medical reports from local hospitals. Those who have experienced similar spikes will be investigated. Survivors will be contacted - they either experienced the Coma Nightmare and kept quiet, or they themselves are currently possessed by a Coma Nightmare.

An agent will reach out to Medira with regards to the effectiveness of our advice.

This meeting has led to new theories.

Medira did not know that fireflies could kill the shadow, nor had he known about shadows at all, so it would have been impossible for him to have dreamt of fireflies to kill the shadow. The Coma Nightmare would have known, but it wasn’t the one dreaming and it would have no influence over the fireflies’ behaviour. The only entities in the nightmare to have known that fireflies could kill The Coma Nightmare was the fireflies itself.

The fireflies were not just dreamt; they were themselves sentient and they were actually there in the nightmare. The nightmare wasn’t in Medira’s head.

Medira noted that before entering the cycle of nightmares, he remembers dreaming of a place he had dreamt of many times before.

We believe this “Recurring Dream” may be a place in The Other Side. Knowing already that The Other Side is a shared mindscape, this led to the theories of the Two-Way REM Pathway, the Recurring Dream and speculation on Firefly ethology.