Parasomnias: 6 Truly Creepy Things that Can Happen While You Sleep

In 1833 in Springfield, Massachusetts, a young servant woman named Jane began to attract attention from the foremost medical experts of the time. She was a sleepwalker. And her sleepwalking was extraordinary—she would get out of bed and complete full sets of chores like setting the table and arranging clothes. One witness even saw her thread a needle, sew a cloth bag, and use the bag to cook a piece of meat in a boiling pot of water ... all in the dark, while she was asleep.

Sadly, Jane’s strange symptoms landed her in an insane asylum. The eminent doctors tried all sorts of tinctures, medicines, and even leeching, but her sleepwalking was never cured. She eventually convinced her doctors to give up on her and she was able to go back to living a quiet life.

But Jane wasn’t the first or the last sleepwalker to capture the public's morbid curiosity. In 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks drove 14 miles to his in-laws’ home and killed his mother-in-law with a tire iron. Covered in blood, he went straight to the nearest police station to confess. He claimed that he was asleep during this whole event, and a later sleep study showed that his brain activity was indeed very abnormal. Ultimately, the jury found him to be innocent of murder. Since then, a few dozen homicide cases have hinged on the “sleepwalking” defense.

What are parasomnias?

"Parasomnias" is a term that covers a range of sleep disorders and disturbances from common occurrences to the truly bizarre.

The extreme sleepwalking events I described are very rare—you're incredibly unlikely to thread a needle or commit homicide in your sleep. In fact, sleepwalking homicides are extremely rare, and there’s still doubt as to whether sleepwalking is really what happened in those cases.

But sleepwalking to some degree is surprisingly common, and so are other parasomnias. Let's take a look at some different parasomnias and talk about what you can do about them.

Sleepwalking (somnambulism)

Sleepwalking’s medical name is “somnambulism.” If you’ve ever woken up and found yourself outside your bed, with no idea how you got there, you may have experienced it. You may even have woken up to find yourself looking at a half-eaten cake, in the middle of the phone conversation, or even driving. That’s why sleepwalking isn’t just spooky for onlookers, it can actually be dangerous!

More than half of adult sleepwalkers...

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