Nover - Nightmareland: travels at the borders of sleep, dreams, and wakefulness

The mind is a curious cocktail. Though our consciousness is cordoned off into three basic statesdeep sleep, REM (rapid eye movement), and wakingthese locations have porous borders, inviting bleed-throughs and mixtures. Odd chimeras of experience during or adjacent to sleep and dreams hint at wider and hidden aspects of ourselves and the strange territory we may traverse, from the savage and frightening to the astounding and sublime.

The sleeping mind is a mysterious backdrop that science is just beginning to shed light on. Consider that it was only sixty-some years ago that researchers discovered REM, the rapid eye movement cycle thats correlated with dreams. More recently still, the state of sleep paralysis, known since antiquity and often associated with the supernatural, has been legitimized by scientific and medical researchers.

Before it became associated with disturbing dreams, the word nightmare was actually used to denote sleep paralysis, the uniquely petrifying combination of REM and wakefulness that is the launchpad for this book. Sleep paralysis, with one tentacle in the surreality of the dreamworld and the other in a frozen, yet wide-awake awareness of ones actual surroundings, rockets to a place where the paranormal, folklore, and science overlap, and then diverge. The incubus, the Old Hag, and vampiric demons are some of the friends well meet.

Our journey continues with the panoply of aberrant activity called parasomnias. These include relatively benign behavior such as sleep talking, diet-busting sleep eating, and more potentially dangerous activities such as did I or didnt I? sexsomnia, as well as sleepwalking and sleep driving that can take the somnambulant out into the world. Theres also REM sleep disorder, in which people seem to be acting out their dreams, thrashing their limbs, or sometimes punching the air or their unlucky bed partner. Even more alarming are the Ambien zombies, who act out bizarre actions and sometimes crimes they have no memory of later.

Its estimated that in the United States around 8.4 million people sleepwalk each year. On rare occasions, something goes horribly wrong. Worldwide, around seventy people have been murdered by those claiming to be sleepwalking. Well take an unflinching look at what happens when someone commits murder in their sleep. Even when a killer is able to show evidence they were sleepwalking, is their subconscious somehow liable?

Afraid of what you might do in your sleep? On the reverse end, if you try to go without it for long periods, your brain will insert REM hallucinations and microsleep intervals that can turn into waking nightmares for those behind the wheel on a long drive. Encompassing radio DJ stunts, consciousness explorers, torture victims, and people with the rare, fatal familial insomnia disorder, stretches of sleep deprivation delineate a remarkable if mostly harrowing road map of what happens when our shut-eye is shut down.

Beyond sleep paralysis, even normal nightmares can shake a person to the core. Who hasnt woken up in a sweat, relieved that yes, it was only a dream, yet still imprinted by the disturbing experience or even feeling a physical residue? Once, when my teeth turned inside out in a nightmare, my mouth hurt upon waking. Research has found what separates a nightmare from a mere bad dream is that a nightmare will wake you up either out of fear or to escape the scene. Steel yourself for a deep dive into extreme dreams and recurring nightmares, and, if we dare, facing our subconscious monsters head-on.

Ill introduce you to a slippery borderland where phantom images, faces, and phosphenes float unbidden through the minds eye. In the hypnagogic state, tenuously perched between waking and sleep, a person may have heightened sensitivities to PSI and mediumistic communications with spirits and the dead. Synesthetic glimpses defy translation. Shamans enter this liminal realm like a gateway or portal, while artists such as Salvador Dali have culled some of their unforgettable surrealistic images from it.

Well navigate the mental minefield, where it can be difficult to distinguish between REM-fed phantasms and external apparitions of torment. Some contend that behind the curtain of sleep and dreams, its open season for attacks and interference by a grab bag of ghosts, poltergeists, and astral entities. But its not only the spirit realm that can put its spectral hooks in uspeople with strong psychic skills are said to be able to mentally attack others, particularly in the susceptible sleep state, sending out havoc-inducing thought-forms.

Do aliens represent other-dimensional beings, similar to astral entities that can occasionally intersect with our reality? A number of researchers have declared in a sort of case closed mind-set that most reports of alien abduction are simply misunderstood episodes of sleep paralysis. Yet the typical pattern of similar-looking Greys conducting repetitive examinations and experiments aboard UFOs doesnt really jibe with the unique entities or presences conjured during sleep paralysis. Peering into bedroom abductions and their proximity to sleep, well look for explanations of aliens in the shifting sands of consciousness and in the context of other paranormal phenomena.