‘Transformed into disturbed alien creatures’: the scary world of parasomniacs, 2003

‘Perfectly sane by day, but transformed into disturbed alien creatures by night.’ In 2003, the Observer investigated, not werewolves, but parasomniacs.

Believed in the ancient world to signal demonic possession or mental illness, parasomnia makes sufferers behave in ways they never would when awake: they ‘can wake up covered in bruises and blood, but with little or no memory of their actions or details of the terror’.

Sufferers ‘can wake up covered in bruises and blood, but with no memory of their actions or details of the terror’

Julia Chapman, a technician at Guy’s & St Thomas’s sleep lab, had seen it all: sufferers who ‘jumped out of bed screaming and shouting, looking around wildly for a way to escape their invisible demons, tearing at their bedclothes or hair, clawing and punching the air.’

Joe McQueen, 25, was an extreme case: he had entered his uncle’s room during the night and started to strangle him, claiming afterwards he remembered nothing. Charged with attempted homicide, McQueen said in his defence that he was sleepwalking. Chapman’s lab detected ‘high levels of jerks and movements and partial wakening’ leading to a diagnosis of mild parasomnia that helped secure his acquittal.

In the most violent REM-sleep behaviour disorders, ‘the subject may appear to be in the grip of a terrible fear’. Sufferers reported terrifying and strangely similar dreams: ‘A threatening, dangerous presence invades the sleeper’s room and must be fought off.’ Other parasomnia behaviours – eating, washing, sex – only happen during NREM sleep. They all sound like signs of deep psychological disturbance or paranormal activity, but researchers in the 1970s discovered a ‘prosaic, physiological cause’: rogue brain-stem activity.

Despite this, sleep disorders were not simple matters of biochemistry: stress, fatigue and trauma as well as a cocktail of brain chemicals could all play a part. Sleep scientists ‘retain a sense of awe for the shadowy power of the mind.’ Many of the mysteries of sleep – including why we sleep at all – were still not understood.‘We have to address the physical, emotional and spiritual,’ sleep specialist Dr Irshaad Ebrahim explained. ‘Our sleeping lives encompass the whole range of what makes us who we are.’