Insomniac bewilderment

Something strange happened to me...

I have been having trouble sleeping. Over the past three weeks I’ve been wide awake from around 2am to 5am. This is out of character for me, I am an Olympic sleeper, the Usain Bolt of falling asleep in fact. It is my super power and I have always been grateful for that. But this odd, surprising bout of insomnia has been getting worse and then something really weird happened.

There is undoubtedly a scientific neurological explanation for this but I am putting it here because I am sure some one else has experienced this too and I’d love to hear about it.

To put my sleeplessness in context I take HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) so I know hormonal fluctuations are not related to this ‘happening’ and while perimenopause caused extreme sleep problems for me a few years ago they disappeared overnight with HRT. Also I have good ‘sleep hygiene’ ,as they say, because I’ve interviewed some excellent experts on sleep for my books and my podcast Postcards From Midlife. I am fit and healthy and on the night in question I had had no alcohol or late night caffeine and certainly no dairy, this was not a cheese dream though I frequently dream of cheese because I love it so much. And while I am open and curious about all things spiritual I don’t believe in ghosts. No Siree, I am not in any way convinced by ghosts, apart from telly’s Mr Clayppole whom I still love.

So there I was in bed after a busy Sunday. I’d been at home with the family, then taken the train to Cheltenham Literary Festival to interview Davina McCall on stage about her new book. I wasn’t worried or stressed about this, we’ve done this before so it was a lively, enjoyable evening. I was staying in a hotel, the same one I stayed in the year before for the literary festival when I was promoting my parenting book. No history of hauntings.

I went to bed after a cup of tea and some noodling on my mobile phone. I’d just finished my book Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout. In the dark and silence of the night I felt a large body climb on top of me. I sleep on my front so my face was in the pillow. I felt hands push down on my shoulders forcing me into the mattress and I froze in fear. Completely froze. I was absolutely still. It was an automatic reaction: I was paralysed and silent.

As a journalist I have covered many crime stories about women being attacked, and also interviewed women about their experiences and I know that to freeze is a common reaction, it’s a protective response. As the pushing continued I was convinced this was it, I was going to be hurt, the weight on top of me in the dark was over powering and I didn’t move because I was so frightened of escalating the situation. My eyes were open. I was not asleep, it didn’t feel like the usual sleep paralysis of not being able to move in a dream, I was deliberately trying to stay quiet and still, rather than being unable to make a sound, I was definitely (to my mind) awake in bed face down in that room.

It is the most frightened I have been in many years. It brought to mind memories of the evening I felt I was being followed along a canal tow path when I was jogging years ago and some one (a man I guess) pulled my pony tail as he ran past me - at that time I felt I was about to be attacked too, I was braced for it and this feeling was similar to that. I could physically feel some one much heavier than me on top of me and I was covered in sweat. It must have lasted a minute at the most then suddenly nothing. There was no sound, no movement, I was just lying in bed alone, no weight bearing down on me.

I turned on the light immediately and the room was empty. I checked the windows, the door - all locked. I looked in every cupboard, the bathroom and under the bed. It was around 3am, and I stayed awake, a little tearful, until it got light. I felt confused by this point, and a bit silly, because it was clearly a dream but it felt so real. I was woken at 7.30am by my alarm.

I put the experience to one side assuming the stress of no sleep for a few nights had caused it this strange phenomena. I had my breakfast, and a volunteer from the Cheltenham festival team arrived to take me to the station. This is how the festival works and I always chat to the drivers because they take interesting people, the legendary writer Stephen King had been at the festival and I wondered if the driver had met him.

She hadn’t but she had dropped author Alice Vernon at the station. Alice had written a fascinating book the driver told me: it was called “Night Terrors: Troubled sleep and the stories we tell ourselves about it” and the book explained the extraordinary phenomenon of those who wake and then do or see terrible things.

Obviously I was covered in goosebumps at the coincidence of this, the kind of goosebumps you get from reading a Stephen King novel frankly. And I wondered what all of it meant. I googled Alice’s debut book and read about her ‘parasomnias’. She has been plagued by visions and sleep walking. The book got rave reviews and it is of course on my list to read now.

My driver explained that Alice had told her that some times the brain can ‘place’ explanations for things in the spaces dreams make - so you may see what you think are people standing by the bed, for example, but it’s likely the brain has put them there to make sense of things happening in your mind. I will be researching the neurology of this and I believe from what I have read so far that what I felt was most likely due to sleep deprivation caused by stress (my dad is not well, my book deadline looms, work is busy etc etc).

But it was such a bizarre physical feeling, one that felt so real I had searched my room for an intruder. I really felt as though I was being pinned down by force. I’m not easily scared at night, I don’t believe in the paranormal and as a journalist I have interviewed many extraordinary humans who have seen and done some frightening things so I feel I have a sensible approach to this kind of odd happening. But still something about it feels inexplicable to me?

I felt some one climb on to me and I felt real hands on my shoulders. The mind is a powerful computer, it’s working on so many deeper levels than we are aware of that I guess anything is possible when it wobbles a little under the stress of things?

So many stories we tell ourselves, so many coincidences can be explained in the cold light of day with fact and a thorough unpicking of events. And of course some things are just coincidences. But I perhaps do believe the energy of something, a collective energy of interconnection which may be links us all. The experience has made me think about that more spiritual side of life.

I listened to Primatologist Jane Goodall on Elizabeth Day’s Podcast How to Fail after that strange night and Jane, 88, talked of this energy when her second husband died and he ‘came back’ to see her, she spoke of how she felt science would one day show some connection to another plane. Anyway the experience made me more curious, I want to know more.

For the following few nights I was quite disturbed by the notion of it happening again and slept fitfully. But I think my sleep will return when my low level of stress dissipates.

I did also wonder if the dire headlines, the constant stress of what may happen in the world is keeping us all in a slight state of sleep deprivation right now; certainly many of my friends seem to be encountering sleep problems where none existed before.

So has it happened to you? And what do you make of these sleep interruptions? Let me know in the comments below.