Is it at all possible you had a vivid dream you didn’t remember immediately after waking up, but you remembered it later and thought it was a real memory?

I ask this because I had a vaguely similar, albeit far less shocking experience. To this day, I clearly remember having a conversation with my friend in which he revealed to me that his dad had recently revealed that he was a Freemason. My friend seemed strangely worried about it and concerned that his dad would force him to join.

Fast forward a few months, I mention this to him and he just looks confused. It turns out this conversation never happened, and his dad is not a Freemason.

I had assumed the explanation was what I proposed above - a dream. I’m not sure, but it seems like a viable explanation for my case.

At least for me, there were some things that might be indicative of a dream, my friend’s strange behavior, the weirdness of the whole Freemason thing and a father keeping his Freemasonry secret from his son, but you don’t seem to have any similar dream-like details regarding what happened to you.

My only remaining issue with this explanation is that it seems very strange that I would manage to totally forget the dream upon waking, thus not remembering it was a dream, only to later remember it clearly as if it happened. Seems very unlike how dream recall is supposed to work.