Wow, this question exploded when I went off to classes for the day!! I think I’ll continue my line of thought and ignore the rest.
@KeithWilson It is a little difficult for me to talk about different dream states, because I don’t generally dream. I may have 2–3 per year that I remember in the morning. I had an experience about a month back where I woke from a particularly deep sleep, and was unable to move. This is caused by the cognitive part of the brain waking, but the part that inhibits movement during sleep (so you don’t act out your dreams) remained ‘asleep’. The same can happen with other parts of the brain. You could have been asleep, but the part of the brain that changes the way dreams are recorded in your memory was not.
One of the hardest concepts to grasp in my limited knowledge of the philosophy of mind is that a person cannot be fully trusted to be reporting the truth when you ask them about events, but only their memory of events. When dealing with memory and perception, it is important to view reports under the framework of heterophenomenology.
Were you thinking about aliens, or similar humanoid beings before these events?