5 yo waking every night terrified of monsters - not nightmares - help

[Sabriel]

For the past 2 weeks or so (can't remember when it started) DD has been sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and screaming "what's that", pointing to random things in the room. I get her to lay down and she bobs up again saying it's just moved. This goes on for anything up to 30 mins before she finally goes back to sleep.

It doesn't seem to be nightmares because she isn't thrashing/ moaning in her sleep; and not night terrors because she is definitely awake. She is clearly terrified because she shakes and her voice sounds really panicky.

AFAAIA she hasn't read anything, or seen anything frightening, and there have been no traumatic events either at home or at school, except a very minor RTA when she was in DH's car about the time it all started. He said the airbags didn't go off and the seatbelts didn't lock and she seemed fine, so he can't see it's that. She sleeps with me, so she isn't waking up alone in the night.

I started off sympathetic but as it goes on I'm just getting more and more fed up (and tired). I don't put the light on, because my mum used to do that to reassure me when I was little, but it makes it so much darker when the light goes back off.

I've googled and there was no help. How do we resolve it?

I remember this as a kid - shadows in the room used to terrify me and my mum would just laugh about it. I can remember it vividly.

Has she got a nightlight?

No - wouldn't that increase the shadows?

Not if its a muted one. DS has the Ikea spoka and it is quite dim but doesnt cast shadows

When my dd was having nightmares at a similar age, my mum got her a dream catcher-those string things with feathers on. You could tell her that it will catch her monsters for her. Worth a try.

Our ds1 has episodes of this. He's six now.

He has a night light and we've given him a torch to use if he wants.

Reassurance that monsters aren't real. We've told ds that if monsters were real we would keep him in our room. But monsters are not real. And mummy and daddy are there and can hear ds if there's any problems-we're only in the room next door.

We have, at times, gone around the room with the torch and ds and looked in all the nooks and crannies showing ds there is nothing there.

Just a phase un/fortunately.

And if course, if a monster was to come in ds room daddy would do a huge smelly fart making the monster pass out! (Always raises a smile from ds)