Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It

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Fascinating and entertaining, I feel like this book nails unpicking the complexity of humans' relationship with sleep in a way that feels relevant and easy to read. Now a lecturer in Creative Writing, Vernon set out to understand the history, science and culture of these strange and haunting experiences. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Historical accounts also reveal some particularly odd cures, such as magical ‘mare-stanes’ which were circular eroded rocks occasionally embedded with human teeth, said to prevent sleep paralysis. As someone who dreams every time I shut my eyes, this was incredibly enlightening, resonated, and is a must read for dreamers.AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK IN DECEMBER 2022 **'Curious, lively, humble, utterly genuine . In a discourse fired by lively inquiry and vivid personal anecdote, she looks to art, literature and science to demonstrate the profound effect these eerie and surprisingly common nocturnal states have had on the human imagination. Dr Vernon said: “Over the centuries, parasomnias have had a profound effect on the human imagination, shaping both art and literature.

Dr Alice Vernon is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, where she teaches students the fundamentals of storytelling. The passion in which Vernon pursues discussion to be normalised surrounding our sleeping patterns is something that I think we can all take away from with a sense of positivity, as after all, we all have sleep. Her anecdotes range from funny (while sleepwalking as a teenager, she told her mother that she needed to take a cake to Gwen Stefani) to terrifying (feeling phantom hands on her neck or dragging her out of bed by her ankles). Dr Vernon said: “In finding examples and case studies from history, as well as being rather brutally honest about my own troubled sleep, I’m hoping to encourage conversations about parasomnias—and for us all to realise that our strange sleep experiences aren’t quite so strange after all. The style is eclectic, ranging from science journalism, to literary analysis of victorian novels, back to autobiographical writing.She is now a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Creative Writing in the department, teaching students the fundamentals of storytelling.

The book encourages us all to change the way that we talk about sleep, arguing that there are many benefits to exchanging sleep stories – socially, culturally and in terms of our wellbeing. She liked to say that her only qualification was curiosity, but as this timely reissue of her bestselling 1941 memoir proves, she also had courage, tenacity and a flair for observation. Vernon expertly blends history with science, interweaving her own personal experiences with that of the terrible events of the Salem Witch Trials and the Victorian love affair with the macabre among others. Dr Alice Vernon completed her PhD, investigating representations of insomnia in fiction, in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University under the supervision of Dr Jacqueline Yallop. Along the way we explore the Salem Witch Trials and sleep paralysis, Victorian ghost stories, and soldiers’ experiences of PTSD.This was exactly the type of book I wish I had access to when I first started getting sleep paralysis. Such stories have their own practical uses, too, as with healing trauma and improving waking-hour skills in sports and video games. All in all, I think this book did exactly what it sought out to do - offer the reassurance that we are not alone. Like Alice I’ve seen ghost like people standing over me when I’m in that barely awake moment and experienced the weight of something holding me down when I was in bed by myself one time.