My experience with sleepwalking - Guilty as charged

This is not a didactic research paper on the phenomenon of sleepwalking. Though, I have had several episodes when I was about seven or eight years old that are maybe interesting, perhaps even creepy. My scant research into the causes of sleepwalking taught me that I should sooner blame it on an undigested bit of beef, a crock of mustard, or crumb of cheese. Better yet, blame the somnambulist stroll on a lower backache.

While we have traced the source of the aurora borealis, we still have not cured the common cold or shredded to the root cause of the somnambulist — may we be blessed.

I was finished sleepwalking by the time I was 10 or 11 years old. I only have a fair recollection of two of my sleepwalking episodes; that is to say, I have complete recollection of my actions while I drove on with my senseless acts and adventures.

Episode One (as recounted by my mother, as I have no recollection of the event)

Ladies and gentlemen, for my first act I must tell you it was one of which I have zero remembrance. It was rather brief and uneventful, though it did awaken several family members as I ran my short course.

“OHHH-NOOO, OH-NO — I GOTTA GET THAT… I GOTTA GO GET THAT, GET THAT…!!

a sleepwalker rises — The sleepwalker rises. (PsyPost)

That is what my slumbering mother heard from where she slept. She jumped up and threw on her blue terry cloth robe. “What by the distant shores of Aidenn is going on in here?” she croaked as she stood in my now lighted room. Below me, in the bottom bunk, snoozed my dear little brother fast asleep. He was only just a REM-shot away from waking to the tumult.

“I GOTTA GET THAT, GET THAT… REALLY GOTTA GET THAT!! DON’T YOU SEE??”

“Ok, what is it you need to get, hon?” My mother kindly and patiently fenced with my delicate phase of sleep. She had always been told to not wake a sleepwalker, which is just crap!

I had begun to calm down; my voice went lower as I spoke with less frequency. To her further dismay, my poor little brother had finally awakened. Not seeing that the time was only about 10 p.m. in the maturing evening, got up from bed. Sleepy headed he stood by his dresser and began to change his clothes for school.

My mother soothed him back to sleep while my tired eyelids quickly hammered themselves to sleep.

Episode Two (as told from my own recollection)

Sleepwalkers can indeed walk themselves into precarious positions. Stereotypical sleepwalker’s posture; I can attest to the fact that sleepwalking is also done with the eyes open, as was the case with my experiences.

In a flash, I sat up in bed enshrouded in worry for my big sister who was gone from the house in spite of the senescent nature of the hour. As I flung myself from my bed I mentally cross-haired the neighbor’s house immediately across the street and down one house over. At the time, and for no cogent reason, my pajamas and skivvies I did strangely mistrust, so I left them to their own devices lying on the bed.

Again awoke my mother, who yet again threw on her blue Terry cloth bathrobe and advanced. I exploded from the front door of our house as if I had just been shot out of a bushmaster canon. I closed with the target house with a speed fathomable by only those well-experienced in star travel. Once there, I commenced to bang on the neighbor’s door with the ferocity of Mike Tyson — all without the ponderance of man-made textiles to restrict and weigh me down.

I banged and banged on the door until I was weary. Then I turned and took to sprinting back to my house’s front door, where my mother stood donned in her blue Terry cloth bathrobe. She wore the most disapproving of expressions — a snarl if anything; a snarl if nothing at all.

“What by Night’s Plutonian shore are you doing??”

“Mom, I went to find and bring back my dear older sister?”

“Oh yeah? Well… your dear sister is in bed sleeping — where are your clothes??”

I slumped a little with embarrassment. Let the official medical research reports show that it is possible to feel emotion while you are sleepwalking.

Episode Three: (as told from mine and my dear young brother’s perspectives)

I found myself out at sea, underwater in an early WWII diesel submarine. I was immediately both impressed and horrified by the complication of the mechanical innards and the lack of space. I was moving back toward the tail of the vessel where free space decreased even more abruptly. It was getting darker and darker as the space grew smaller and smaller.

I finally felt clothes of all types on hangers brushing up against my body. I thought I must have pushed back into the ship’s crew’s quarters and stumbled into a space-challenged walk-in closet. I became aware that I was holding my pillow in one hand and my bed’s blanket in the other.

After nearly half an hour of feeling around, I had very slowly and finally awaken to realize that I was in fact standing in my brother’s close with the door closed. It was a sliding door, one that at every attempt I made to crack open made an awful creaking noise.

“This is fruitless,” I gathered, “It’s like slowly pulling off a bandaid. I need to rip it off quickly and get it over with.”

After an episode of this, I deemed it more prudent to just pull the door open wide and jump up on the low flat play table that lead to my top bunk bed.

And a one, and a two, and a THREE!”— I yanked open the door, jumped onto and ran across the play table, then bounced into bed all the while holding my blanket and pillow high over my head so they would not snag onto things. During the transition from closet to bed, my dear young brother shrieked out every prayer he had ever known in four seconds flat as slumber found me once again.

From my Brother’s perspective of the nightmare

A sleepwalker holds his pillow — Note in the photo above and from my own accounts that it is not at all unusual for a sleepwalker to take their pillow with them on a night’s escapade. Perhaps it helps them stay in touch with the real world from whence they came with the hope to return.

Speaking of the event at length the day after the sleepwalking episode, my brother reports:

“As I slumbered hardly napping suddenly there came a rapping, as if someone gently rapping, rapping at my closet door. There was a bustle of sorts coming from my closet. I thought sure there was a monster rooting about. Then the door started to creak from the monster inside slowly trying to ease open my door so it could get out and get me. Suddenly the monster threw open the door, flew across the play table, and landed in your bunk, his cape fluttering and flowing in the wind behind him.”

“I was afraid he ate you… but then I fell asleep.”

So I was chopped liver… My dear young brother thought I was being devoured by a monster yet act he did not. I saw indubitably that I was not worth a night’s sleep.

And to cap the stories I should mention that the entire third episode transpired in full while my mother lay blissfully supine, sawing logs while clad in her blue Terry cloth bathrobe.

By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends