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

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This was exactly the type of book I wish I had access to when I first started getting sleep paralysis. Night Terrors is Alice Vernon's attempt in demystifying and normalising the terrors around sleep, analysing how they've been interpreted and misinterpreted throughout history, while encouraging us to tell our own stories. Vernon's own testimony and experience with parasomnias is sprinkled throughout the book, and I want to applaud her bravery for being so open about such a vulnerable topic.

A fascinating look at the different form s of parasomnia and the ways they have been recorded and interpreted in history. I particularly found the parts about dreams in remote tribes and the affect of the emergence of colour TV on dreams interesting. Ever since Alice Vernon was a child, her nights have been haunted by nightmares of a figure from her adolescence, sinister hallucinations, and episodes of sleepwalking. These are known as ‘parasomnias’– and they’re surprisingly common.

Despite being one of those people who drift off with annoying ease, Alice Vernon does not sleep soundly, she sleeps “strangely”. Ever since childhood, she’s been prone to “parasomnias” – sleep disturbances that include nightmares, sleepwalking and ghostly hallucinations. 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. It’s a fascinating debut – just don’t read it at bedtime. Looking for Trouble The two things most of us know about nightmares, according to this fascinating book, are not true. First, they are not caused by indigestion. This pervasive folk belief, Alice Vernon says, was popularised by Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, who blamed his ghostly apparitions on “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato”. IN HEADSPACE: HOW THE SEVENTIES LOST ITS MIND, FOUND ITSELF AND TAUGHT US TO BE WELL, by Dr James Riley, tells the story of the New Age Health movements of the 1970s, and how they formed the basis for today’s contemporary wellness industry. From coastal meditation retreats to the paranoias of darkened flotation tanks, he tells the often-bizarre tale of what happened when the psychedelic generation met the psychiatric profession. Riley’s previous book, THE BAD TRIP: DARK OMENS, NEW WORLDS AND THE END OF THE SIXTIES , was published by Icon in 2018 . We are mysterious creatures, to others and ourselves. How to explain the creative brainstorms, harebrained schemes, and shudder-causing evil thoughts that suddenly appear in our normally quite sane brains? Why did evolution provide us with consciousness? And, pray tell, WTF are dreams?

Night Terrors is an in-depth examination of the complicated relationship that we have with our sleep, how we try to understand it, and even try to "cure" it of some of its unwanted traits. Senior commissioning editor Kiera Jamison bought world English rights for both books from Donald Winchester. Icon will publish both titles in autumn 2022. Night Terrors is an impactful book, relatable, fascinating yet perhaps disturbing at times. 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. I think reading about them will certainly help. Before I started to conduct research for the book, I had so many misconceptions of my own—I had no idea that when I saw spiders all over my bed, for example, it was something called a hypnopompic hallucination. The more we learn about and understand what is really happening when we experience these strange sleep states, the less weird or embarrassed we’ll feel for having them in the first place. You explain that some parasomnias (such as sleepwalking and lucid dreaming) are romanticized, while others (hallucinations, sleep paralysis, night terrors) are more stigmatized. Could you elaborate on this? What do you think fuels this difference?A thread running through the book is the story of Vernon’s claustrophobic and manipulative relationship with a former teacher, whom she calls Meredith after mara, “an Old Norse word for a witch who would lie on people’s chests and try to suffocate them”. The mara is what we now know to be sleep paralysis, a parasomnia where the body’s inability to move – preventing us from acting out our dreams and hurting ourselves or the people we sleep with – continues after waking up. The person is lying down, fully awake and conscious, and yet entirely unable to move. Even screaming is impossible.

I love diving into archives and finding things I wasn’t expecting. Sometimes I get so involved in exploring collections and gathering bits of cool stuff that I forget I actually need to write something with it! I usually start quite broadly with research, and that points me down various avenues and helps me to make connections in terms of a chapter’s structure. Working along a timeline helps, too, but I’m always happy to change my plans once I’ve found something particularly fascinating! The dreams of the British public collected in World War II was something I stumbled across while down a research rabbit hole, and it’s one of my favourite sources in the book. I was intrigued by the potential of lucid dreaming to treat PTSD. Do you think it could also help other mental illnesses, such as depression or OCD?All in all, I think this book did exactly what it sought out to do - offer the reassurance that we are not alone. If you're interested in the darkers parts of our sleep, I would highly recommend this book. I'm not much of a nonfiction reader, and if you are the same, don't be put off. This book reads like fiction, and doesn't have that dry, clinical feel that puts you to sleep. I found this book to be incredibly fascinating and yet, incredibly relatable. Night Terrors aims to shine a light on the darkest parts of our sleeping lives, and to reassure sufferers from bad dreams that they are not alone. Sleep is a hot topic these days. Popular science books promise to uncover why we do it at all, while exploring its importance for a healthy life. Self-help manuals seek to teach the art of sleeping well amidst the stresses of modern life. Wearable devices and mobile apps monitor quality and quantity, nudging users to make adjustments to their bedtime routines. Meanwhile, last summer’s heatwave produced endless variations of top tips for ensuring the right amount of sleep in sweltering temperatures.