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Sleep Walking / Sleepwalking & Unconscious Activity While Sleeping

JurekB

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Just noticed this story in the breaking news section on the front page.

Man finds himself naked on street
Friday, 04 July , 2003, 04:13

Berlin: A German man woke up to find himself stark naked in the middle of a street after sleepwalking from home, police said on Thursday.
The 37-year-old man called police in the southern town of Buchen at around 6 a.m. after discovering he had left his housekeys at home.

"The man waited naked for police at the phone booth, who gave him a raincoat to wear," said a police spokesman.

Source

A couple of years ago my partner told me, one Saturday morning, how she had had this very odd dream where she had been sitting in my car messing with the radio and getting quite annoyed by it.

Very odd but what are you going to do? About half an hour later I decided to nip to the shops. I step into the street and hear an almighty racket coming from across the street where my car is parked. I get over to it and discover the radio is on full blast and the car is locked and very secure.

A little worrying as it appears that herself had sleepwalked in the middle of the night, found my car keys, let herself out of the front door, wandered across the street, opened the car, fiddled with the radio a bit, got bored and came back to bed, remembering to lock the car after her. Thank God she didn't decide to go for a drive!

Interestingly her father had a habit of sleepwalking although all he ever did was go around the house unscrewing lightbulbs.
 
I used to live in a student house with one guy who regularly got into bed with other people and who seemed genuinely confused when he was sent out to go and find his own bed. He was always starkers and was not the type to 'try it on'. He could never remember doing it the next morning and found it hugely embarrassing that all his mates girlfriends had all seen his bits and pieces (bless!).

Another friend I had was a sleepwalker along with the rest of her family and because they were all so used to each other jumping up and marching around the house at all hours each of them who were awake would always shout the others back to bed again! Must have been bedlam in that house!

Presumably these people never have the Sleep Paralysis problems?
 
I used to really look forward to sleep overs at my friends house when I was a kid because he was the most active sleepwalker I've ever heard of.

One night I was awoken by him leaping all over his bed emitting cheering noises, apparently he said he had dreamt he was Liverpool's goalkeeper in the FA cup final. How he managed to stay asleep during this I'll never know. He never fell off his bed during all this either, quite impressive really.
 
My brother once came into my bedroom to throw his pillow out of the window because it had attacked him, apparently. Why he couldn't throw it out of his own window is anyone's guess.

Jane.
 
I was once woken at 1am by my husband apparently walking our 1-year-old daughter round the bedroom, leaning over her from behind and supporting her by the hands as you do with toddlers and chatting happily to her.

I said, 'Fer chrissakes, don't be so stupid! Put her back to bed!'

So he said, 'OK' and THREW the baby across the room onto the bed!! :eek:

Luckily it wasn't really the baby- it was the silly sod's pillow.

He didn't remember a thing about it next morning.
 
For one fleeting moment there Escargot, my heart was in my mouth.:eek:

I used to sleepwalk when I was younger, and my brother sleep-talks.

No interesting anecdotes though.
 
Caroline, your heart was in your mouth just hearing about it?
It was scary- I nearly cr*pped the bed! :eek:
 
When I was a kid I used to get up and go out into the back garden in my sleep. I woke up a couple of times on the lawn because the cold wet dew had seeped through my pyjamas. My parents managed to stop me by locking the door and hiding the key somewhere when before they had locked the door and left the key in the lock.

I once woke up with my sister standing over me, staring at me as if she was awake. I screamed the place down which woke her up and she screamed the place down a second time...

I don't sleepwalk now but I have had sleep paralysis both as a kid and as a grown up...
 
When I was a teenager a load of us were staying at a mate's flat on his living room floor,in the night one of the girls who was already asleep got up,went to the corner of the room,pulled her knickers down,peed in the corner,pulled her knickers up and got back into bed! The bloke who lived in the flat thought it was so cool he wasn't cross about the pee on his carpet!
 
I was seriously going to begin this post with 'Sleepwalkers run in my family..', but thought better of it :)

Anyway, they do, :) my cousin being the best example.

He used to do it all the time, once getting up in the night, putting on his mums fur coat, opened the front door into the close, and naked apart from the coat (he was 9 or so), started pissing all over the close while doing a dance and singing.

An aunt, as a child, was found one night sitting cross-legged in the middle of the kitchen floor, furiously wiping a bowl with her hands, with stacks of bowls around her. She had emptied every cupboard and left the doors open. she said she was washing the bowls because the lady next door needed them for her party.

I remember a story about another cousin (can't remember which one), where at age 5 he was having a sleep on he couch during a warm summer's day. My aunt had all the windows and doors open to let the sunlight in, and it was really warm. Apparently, he suddenly sat up, walked over to the doorway, sniffed the air, and exclaimed 'I'm too old for this nonsense!' in front of a roomful of relatives, before walking back to the couch, sitting down, and falling back asleep while sitting upright.

My sister (when we both lived at home, and I had to share her room because mine was being re-decorated), once stood up in the middle of the night, started letting out a quiet moan which turned into a loud wail, walked over to my bed, stared at me for about two minutes without blinking, asked for some crisps, lay at my feet and went back to sleep.

A couple of years ago, my wife woke suddenly when we were both in bed (I'm a notoriously bad sleeper, and sometimes have to make do with 40 minutes to an hour of sleep), turned round to face me, and with the most ranquil expression on her face, emitted in a gutteral growl "I... am going... to kill you.....", giggled, and *zonk* out like a light again. I was terrified, absolutely terrified. She turned round, and just as i was drifting off, she giggled in her sleep.

I couldn't sleep for days - I ironed like no man has ironed before ;0
 
Woo - that's scary! :eek!!!!:
 
Ahem. I've never sleepwalked as such, but when I was 15 or so I had a particularly nasty bout of 'flu and was made a "daybed" on the sofa so my mum could keep an eye on me.

Anyway, sometime after lunch, apparently, I disappeared from the house - my frantic mum found me 15 minutes later, still in my PJs and dressing gown and with a raging fever, in the pine forest behind our house -- attempting to buy cigarettes from a tree. I was led, babbling, home.

I have no memory of this whatsoever, but it's how my parents discovered that I smoked....
 
sleepwalking

i sleep walk like you wouldn't believe. i've heard it called night terrors before...but as i understand it night terrors are kind of thrashing around and shouting etc?

anyway, i get up to all sorts of crazy stuff while i am sleeping. sometimes i am even aware that what i am doing is sleep walking, but i cant stop myself flicking the light switches/checking for snakes behind the stereo/fighting people etc etc....believe me, it's pretty funny. :eek:

i saw a thread somewhere on here the other night, but now i can't find it.

anyone know of some good reading i an do? i've been to a psychiatrist who told me to get more sleep and exercise:hmph:

anyone else get up to crazy stuff like this?

i might even be prepared to conduct some experiments...but my workmates tell me i have to bring the videos in so they can laugh.
 
Hi Guttersnipe. Sorry to hear about your problems - you sound a bit stressed to me.
First of all, as you correctly state, night terrors are not the same thing as sleepwalking. I suffered terribly from the former when I was a kid, and still get them occasionally, but I do not sleepwalk, thank goodness. :)
I think your psychiatrist gives good advice, but I would take it a little bit further. Are you consuming too much alcohol? (be honest) . If so, cut down, and have some evenings with none at all. Are you drinking coffee? If so, better to cut it out, and drink green tea instead. Are you eating red meat? If so, cut it out, and eat oily fish instead (mackerel or herring best). Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, such as broccoli, tomatoes, apples, bananas - also some brazil nuts for the selenium. This should make you a bit calmer and less stressed generally, and could help.
Let us know how it goes! Best wishes.

Big Bill Robinson
 
hi bill,


yeah, it deffinately is stress related...in the process of buying a flat here in london...ARG!!!! :)

yeah the bloke suggested most of that, even the bananas! but he didnt mention the fish or the nuts, so i will give that a go too.

i remember an article in FT (ahaha...i am always screwing this up at work...we advertise in the financial times...and on several occaisions i have said to customers that we advertise in fortean times!!:p ) about 'waking dreaming' or something like that....kid of astral travelling.

perhaps i could be able to enter this state easily? i will dig out the article and see what it has to say.

i did go and see a hypnotherapist...who was a young guy mainly treating people to stop smoking. he seemed quite excited...but made it out that we could modify my behaviour into something 'positive'...he made out that i could clean the flat (which i have done before in my sleep!!), go back to bed and still wake up refreshed.

somehow, i don't really have the confidence in him!

he did mention that there was a journalist that trained himself to write articles in his sleep for a newspaper...anyone heard of this?

right, i've dribbled on enough.
 
I sometimes suffer from night terrors. (nasty, but at least I know what it is and that it cant hurt me.)

I have sleepwalked...in my case it can be connected to going to bed in a state of excitement. No late night movies for me!
 
Thought you might like to know about a bizarre and hilarious new CD of spoken dreams by legendary sleeptalker Dion McGregor (The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor -- More Outrageous Recordings of the World's Most Renowned Sleeptalker). Audio excerpts and liner notes can be found on my Torpor Vigil Industries website:

http://www.torporvigil.com/soundworksindex4.htm#dion

If you're curious, I'll be pleased to offer some background on this unique 'somniloquist'.
 
TorVig said:
If you're curious, I'll be pleased to offer some background on this unique 'somniloquist'.
Then do! I'm eager to hear the story.
 
Dion McGregor was known to talk in his sleep for some time before he began sharing a New York apartment in 1961 with his new songwriting partner Michael Barr (Barbra Streisand and a number of lesser celebrities ended up recording their songs, but they never quite hit it big). Unlike at least one previous roommate, Barr found the sleeptalking to be fascinating rather than annoying -- especially as McGregor's crystal clear somnolent speech was rich in strange and compelling -- and usually uproarious -- narrative.

An amateur recordist, Barr went to work rising early each morning to turn on a tape recorder so that he could capture, via a microphone placed near the sleeper's head, these outlandish monologues. McGregor himself seemed only mildly interested in his peculiar talent and often considered the audience intrusion (sometimes other friends joined Barr) to be a bit of a nuisance.

In 1964 Decca Records released an l.p. called The Dream World of Dion McGregor. Bernard Geis Associates released an eponymous book that same year. Both flopped but gradually became cult favourites. In 1999, Phil Milstein released a new compilation CD of McGregor somniloquies on the Tzadik label. Shortly thereafter, Michael Barr (to whom I'd been introduced by Phil Milstein), unearthed boxes of dream-tapes which hadn't been heard in years. It was from these recordings -- now in the Torpor Vigil Industries archive -- that I compiled the present album. As I mentioned, audio excerpts and liner notes can be found on the TVI website:

http://www.torporvigil.com/soundworksindex4.htm#dion

To give you a further hint of the type of material you'll find on The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor, here are the back cover notes:

The selections on this CD are among the most hilarious, bizarre and compelling recordings ever made: the incredible spoken dreams of Dion McGregor.
Over a period of several years, McGregor’s roommate Michael Barr recorded hundreds of these extraordinary monologues, all while the speaker lay fast asleep.
This collection offers up two dozen of McGregor’s most riotously outlandish dreams, including a scavenger hunt in which participants are given fory-five minutes to come up with everything from a yellow robin’s egg to Valentino’s automobile hubcap, a visit to the home of the lascivious Mrs. Dangerfield and her perverse butler, a game of ‘food roulette’ with a spinning tray of poisoned chocolate eclairs, and an encounter with a frightened little alien whose rocketship has ‘mislanded’ in an Indiana back yard.
If you listen to just one CD this year by an eloquently deranged sleeptalker who’s got a thing for mangoes, make sure you listen to The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor!

I'd love to hear of other cases of sleeptalking. So far I haven't heard of any that are as lucid and highly developed as McGregor's. But then, the Fortean world is full of surprises!
 
my boyfriend is a prolific sleeptalker. if you get him during a particularly good session he will even draw and write if you give him a pen and paper. he has very nerdy dreams, we have notepads full of his sleep-diagrams of this physics experiment he kept dreaming about: using the principle of quantum tunnelling to get beer out of an unopened can.
 
i have been a sleeptalker at various points, and i've never gotten any detailed reports of what i've said except for once that i remember, where i got a little info.
my roomate told me i was singing in my sleep. i asked him what i had been singing, and he said i'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was a ballad (LOL). i have a feeling it was the jazz classic "you dont know what love is", as i had been practicing it a lot ( i was in music school)
:rolleyes:
 
fluffle said:
my boyfriend is a prolific sleeptalker. if you get him during a particularly good session he will even draw and write if you give him a pen and paper. he has very nerdy dreams, we have notepads full of his sleep-diagrams of this physics experiment he kept dreaming about: using the principle of quantum tunnelling to get beer out of an unopened can.

Wow! Keep us posted... you never know, he might actually do that experiment.
Seriously, there have been cases of scientists solving complex problems in their sleep, and writing it all down when they wake up.
My own experience of sleep talkers: many years ago, my sister used to talk maths equations in her sleep when she was doing 'A' level maths.
 
my roomate told me i was singing in my sleep.

McGregor also sang in his sleep. One of his songs -- Snail Time -- is on the Further Somniloquies CD. It's about a dance called The Snail: "Time to do The Snail, Time to do the Snail/ Hold your little baby, hold your little baby, hold your little baby till she turns pale," etcetera. In waking life, he was a lyricist and claimed to have dreamt at least some of the lyrics to songs such as Where Is the Wonder (which Barbra Streisand, presumably awake, later recorded).
 
I don't speak or sing (thank God) in my sleep, but a few years ago I created radio jingles in my dreams. One I recall was:

"Prime service: prime service:
we're working on the Marshall Plan.
Just ask for Willy Window;
If he can't help you, no one can"

This had something to do with an early morning radio show called the Willy Window Show. Totally imaginary, as far as I know.
 
That's almost worth starting a company over! (By the way, on the previous Dion McGregor album, he sang a song about Little Willy.)
 
As well as the woman who was haivng sex with strangers in her sleep (see Weird Sex) I spotted this related parasomnia while flicking over the TV channels - Nocturnal Sleep-Related Eating Disorder.

Basically you get up in the middle of the night and walk into the kitchen and wolf food down. The woman they filmed really tucked it away and wasn't aware she was going it. She reckoned hse tried to get rid of anything in her house that could be eaten fresh but she was just boiling up pasta instead and I'd imagine that is a far more serious problem.

Some links:

www.anred.com/nsred.html

www.neuronic.com/night-eating_disorder.htm

www.stanford.edu/~dement/Sleepeating.html

www.sleepfoundation.org/sleepeating.cfm
 
How sleepwalking can lead to killing
By Laura Smith-Spark
BBC News

A man in Manchester may have made legal history in the UK after being acquitted of murdering his father because he was sleepwalking at the time. He was found not guilty due to insanity and sent to a psychiatric hospital for an indefinite period of time.

Jules Lowe, 32, of Greater Manchester, told police he attacked his 82-year-old father Eddie while he was asleep and had no recollection of the incident in October 2003.
Dr Irshaad Ebrahim, director of the London Sleep Centre, was called in to establish whether what Mr Lowe claimed was true.

An expert witness for the prosecution, Dr Ebrahim and his team carried out a series of overnight sleep studies on Mr Lowe before his trial.

The tests - called a polysomnography - measure functions including brain waves, muscle activity and breathing activity.

Close relationship

Scientists also look at factors known to trigger sleepwalking episodes in people, such as alcohol and stress.

Dr Ebrahim told the BBC News website: "Mr Lowe had a history of sleepwalking and this was generally worse when he drank alcohol but he had never been violent before the night of this offence.

"However, his step-mother had just died and there were several other stressful factors occurring in his life - and he had a very violent sleepwalking incident in which his father was murdered.

"His father was very close to him and they had a close relationship."

We think this is the first sleepwalking murder in the UK
Dr Irshaad Ebrahim
London Sleep Centre

Dr Ebrahim said the tests showed Mr Lowe had indeed been sleepwalking at the time of the attack, in a state called automatism.
Automatism - defined legally as acting involuntarily - falls into two types. These are insane automatism, considered a "disease of the mind", and non-insane automatism, linked to external factors.


Mr Lowe's diagnosis of insane automatism meant he could not be held responsible for battering his father to death. He has been sent to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely.

But Mr Lowe's case is unlikely to be the first in a long line.

Dr Ebrahim said: "There have been about 68 cases worldwide of murder in sleepwalking and it's for that reason that this case has gathered so much interest.

Hit with hammer

"We think this is the first sleepwalking murder in the UK."

Dr Ebrahim said that although between 7% and 8% of children sleepwalk the proportion falls to less than 1% when people reach adulthood, most of whom are men.

Among sufferers "extreme forms of violence, of sleepwalking or automatism, are extremely rare, so we usually view them with a high index of suspicion", said Dr Ebrahim.

Nonetheless, cases with similarities to that of Mr Lowe have been seen in the UK before.

In 1998 chef Dean Sokell was jailed for life after battering his wife Eleni to death in an attack at their home in Paignton, Devon which began while he was asleep.

The 27-year-old admitted murder on the basis that he had woken up to find he was hitting Eleni with a claw hammer - but then, while awake, carried on and finally stabbed her to silence the screams.

Another high-profile case was that of REM guitarist Peter Buck, who was acquitted of attacking BA staff on a transatlantic flight to London in 2002.

The court accepted he had no recollection of the incident because he was suffering from non-insane automatism at the time, brought on by combining alcohol and a sleeping pill at the start of the flight.

But last year in Los Angeles a man who claimed he was acting out a dream that an intruder was attacking him when he murdered his girlfriend was jailed for 26 years.

The court decided Stephen Reitz, 28, had been conscious when he threw a flowerpot at girlfriend Eva Marie Weinfurtner's head and then stabbed her.

Dr Ebrahim recommended that anyone with a history of violent incidents while sleepwalking see a sleep specialist for treatment.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/4362081.stm
Published: 2005/03/18 18:35:39 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
Sleepwalking teen diverts flight to New Orleans

March 21, 2005 — An American Airlines jet from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to New Orleans was forced to divert its flight because of a sleepwalker.

Officials say the 15-year-old boy was sleepwalking aboard Flight 1185 when he apparently walked into the cockpit door. The flight crew decided to land in Memphis as a precaution.

Authorities questioned the teen. After being delayed for nearly two hours, the flight was eventually allowed to continue to New Orleans.

Source
 
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