I just wanted to share this incase anybody hasn't tried it yet.
My dad wakes up from scary dreams that he thinks are real. I used to try and convince him that they were just dreams but he got even more agitated and would be up and down all night.
One night he was complaining about all the people partying in his bedroom so I just turned round and said ' ok all of you , party over, you can all get out and go home now my Dad is tired and wants to sleep' I was surprised to find that Dad accepted it readily and went straight back to sleep and didn't wake again that night. One night he was frightened of a big hole in the middle of his floor so I told him to go back to sleep and I'd get my husband Marc to fill it in. Again it worked perfectly. Since then it has never failed to calm him as he trusts us to sort the problem out for him.

That reminds me of the time my husband was bothered by the presence of 'someone' in the corner of the living room. I jumped up, excitedly, which always gets the dog to bark, and told him that the dog had chased him away. It worked.

This is kind of a funny story but one day my husband insisted there were bugs on the walls and he started to panic and I was ioning and I always keep a water bottle near when I iron just in case of a tough wrinkle, well I started spraying the walls with this water bottle and I was saying "look they are going" He actually calmed down and of course I felt like a total nut but hey it worked !!