My first run in with a sleep walker was my very own sister, one night she was banging the windows screaming, “Open! Open!” while she was asleep. My parents woke up and tucked her into bed. Sleepwalking is a parasomnia or sleep disorder where the sufferer engages in activities that are normally associated with wakefulness while he or she is asleep or in a sleep-like state.

History has been made for the Sleepwalking community as a 44-year-old woman, has sent out a couple of emails inviting guests over with wine and caviar. She had gone to bed at around 10pm, but woke up two hours later, walked into the next room, turned on the computer, went online and signed in by typing her username and password in her email account, composed and sent three emails.

Sounds pretty awesome, each of her mails were in a random mix of upper and lower cases, they were not well formatted and written in a strange language. “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm,. Bring wine and caviar only.” So that’s kind of freaky, if you can do that in your sleep.

According to the researchers from the University of Toledo quoted in the medical journal Sleep Medicine, “We believe writing an email after turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet and remembering the password displayed by our patient is novel. To our knowledge this type of complex behaviour requiring coordinated movements has not been reported before in sleepwalking.”

Unfortunately these researchers seem to have not looked up Sleepwalking on wikipedia as there’s a case on sleepwalking that puts this sleeping emailer to shame. Kenneth Parks, a 23-year-old, drove his car 15 miles to his in-laws’ house in May 1987. There, he attacked his father-in-law, leaving him unconscious, and stabbed his mother-in-law, killing her. He then went to the police station saying, “I think I have killed some people.” He was bloody, and his hand was badly injured. Parks was unable to recount anything about the murder, and he had no motives for committing them.

He was unemployed and stressed. He went to sleep that night thinking about how he was going to visit his in-laws the next day with his wife to tell them about his financial and gambling problems. After a year, he was found not guilty of murder or attempted murder. There was an appeal, but his acquittal was upheld. He did not serve time in a mental ward because “noninsane automatism” (i.e., sleepwalking) is not legally viewed as a mental disorder.

Here’s a cute video I pulled up from youtube

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Tags: Odd Stuff, Sleepwalking