Terrorised by the night-time horrors
‘ICOULD sleep pegged in a harrow,” is a favourite rural definition of the need for repose. I count myself lucky to be among those who can nap at the drop of a hat or snaffle shut-eye as soon as my head hits the pillow.
On one occasion, many moons ago, I bedded down for the night aboard a sleeper train through Albania, top-to-tail in a poky compartment with seven other individuals. During the night, a ferocious fight broke out over a girl, with three guys beating holy hell out of each other, breaking a window and pulling down an overhead luggage bin. I woke at 8am to a scene of utter devastation and asked: “What happened here?” But not everyone sleeps like a log – far from it. In the 24/7 world we now inhabit, the capacity to kip has become a simple pleasure denied to increased multitudes across the globe.
“In today’s world, poor sleep and sleep deprivation have become common problems affecting more than a third of the world’s population due to the longer work hours and commuting times, later night activity and increased dependency on electronics,” explains Professor Jianfeng Feng, from the University of Warwick’s department of computer science. “The disorder of insomnia has become the second most prevalent mental disorder.”
A research project at the UK university found a connection between poor sleep quality and the areas of the brain associated with short-term memory and negative self-worth.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”
Far from the nocturnal journey described by Robert Frost, sleep has become a bedroom terror for many, a world of silent screaming as they experience the nightmare that is sleep paralysis. The main features of the condition are an inability to move, a perception of something in the room and a real terror of being strangled.
Research at NUI Galway chronicled the depth of horrors faced by large numbers of Irish people every night, including individual encounters with ‘the old hag’, ‘the staring child’ and ‘the intruder with no face’.
But the one that really sent shivers down my spine was ‘the red-eyed demon’.
“I hadn’t even fallen asleep when I heard scratching sounds on the ceiling,” related one sufferer. “Then it came closer, until I could see it. Big. Black. Insect-like, but also humanoid.
“It was upside down, its hands and feet attached to the ceiling. It was looking at me with its red eyes and its very many small, pointed teeth. And then it smiled.”
At this point, I’m so freaked out I’m under the duvet, under the bed in utter panic and dread. And this from a guy who yawned through most of ‘The Exorcist’.
So many of us take a good night’s sleep for granted, yet the darkness is anything but peaceful for terrified multitudes. That master of the macabre, Stephen King, put it best: “Monsters are real and ghosts are real too. They live inside us and sometimes they win.”
Pass me a sleeping pill. Actually, better make it two...