Advanced Sleep Walking: Zzz-mailing?
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We’ve all heard about people running into walls while they were sleepwalking, but that’s old school. Researchers at the University of Toledo in the latest edition of the medical journal Sleep Medicine, report a case about a woman who sent emails while she was sleeping!
The 44 year ol’ woman is reported to have gone to bed around 10 PM, but got up two hours later and walked to the next room.
She then turned on the monitor, managed to connect to the internet, and even logged on to her email by typing in the correct username and password. She then dispatched three emails, all of them weirdly formatted, a mix of upper and lower case characters and odd content.
One of them read, “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm,. Bring wine and caviar only.”
Another just read, “What the…….”
The woman was completely unaware of her late-night email doodling till the supposed-guest called her the next day to confirm the invitation. She did not have any history of sleep walking or sleep-related disorders as a child, and was completely shocked when she was shown the mails.
The research wrote that this set of complex coordinated behavior was possibly a first reported case of its type.
The neurologists say that the behavior displayed by the woman was unlike common sleep walking; it involved complex movements and coordinated behavior like turning on the computer, typing in the correct login information and composing the emails.
Although the exact cause of the phenomenon is not completely comprehended, it is thought that the woman’s bizarre sleep walking incident could have been triggered by prescription medication.
Though simple sleep walking usually involves activities like sitting up on the bed while asleep, dressing up or even just dazedly walking around, cases of sleepwalkers playing musical instruments, painting, cooking and even driving a car have been reported.
It can also include strange and unusual behaviors which can be an annoyance to fellow tenants. A case was documented by researchers at the University of Minnesota where a husband would suddenly grab the buttocks of his wife, almost every night, for no apparent reason.
The writer would personally quote Sleep Medicine for every email he ‘accidentally’ sent, but it’s probably better to get fired for having rage-issues, rather than consistent sleep-insanity.
22 Comments
This is just bizarre. I hope I never send e-mails in my sleep.
a bit strange but very interesting
Wow, fascinating piece for you Amit.
This sleep walker must be a computer addict. Cool piece.
I have a small history of ‘waking sleep’. When I lived in NY state, in the country in a ground-level dwelling, a few times I woke normally in the morning and to my horror, -my bare feet had dried mud and leaves on them and there would be dried muddy footprints on the carpet in rooms throughout the place. -Apparently I was waking in the night and roaming around my front yard (in undershorts and T-shirt, I’d imagine) and at some point, I had came back inside closed the door and went back to bed.
This was over 10 years ago. Just this last summer my wife wanted to stay up late and read a book so she decided to sleep on the sofa, and I went to bed in the bedroom. She told me the next day that about a half-hour after I’d gone in and she was settled, reading her novel, I had came back out through the living room and walked past her mumbling something about ‘…you still reading?’ and kept walking right on past her to the balcony (on the 4th storie of this building) and there I lingered for about 10 or 15 minutes, came back in and walked right on past her again, and went back to bed! She assumed that I ‘couldn’t sleep’ and just ‘needed some fresh air’ and left me be.
I have NO memory of this or maybe, -just a twinge of familiarity to it like I had read it somewhere perhaps and had forgotten, but clearly I was sleep-walking again!
I like the comment about the husband “grabbing his wife’s buttocks” in the night. Don’t all men do that??? Kidding lol.
It’s amazing what people get up to when they’re sleep walking. I’m so glad that my home is free of this affliction. Great article!
Hi, Amit, how are you?
Boy, I’m glad I don’t have that problem. It certainly sounds weird, though, managing to type out letters and send them while sleeping. Thanks for sharing.
It´s a modern-fashion way to sleep-walking.
That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Inna
Very interesting. There are all sorts of fascinating things in the world, that just makes you wonder about what you don’t know… Good work!
Blessings.
Sincerely,
-Liane Schmidt.
Very interesting.
Very well done…loved it..
Hmm..i heard a man claimed on the news that he was just sleepwalking & was dreaming of something. He thought there was an intruder coming in so he attacked & stabbed that person..
Turns out..he had killed his own wife…
Really ..i don’t know..but, he must be using sleepwalking as an excuse… you think?
interesting and enjoyable read
Lol! I’ve had issues with sleepwalking since I was a kid. I thought I out grew it, but my husband has caught me on many occasions. He thinks it’s hilarious, with the exception of when he caught me lighting candles. Freaked him out. BUt a person writing emails while sleepwalking is bizarre. Pretty cool article.
Interestingly bizarre.
Cool article Amit. If we could do something to control this so as to not have people sleep walking into traffic or falling off the edge of something like a device that would detect bipedal motion during those eight or so hours of sleep and serve as an alarm of sorts. This could lead to some way of, not only controlling this condition but, finding a way towards cure? In any case, it does happen and can be frightening to the victim of this condition like, you wake up one day and the police are outside asking about where you were last night, blah, blah, see where I am going? Not a good feeling to not remember what you did when. Great stuff, more of this information please:)
Sincerely,
Tim
Wow. Sleepwalking is one thing, but sleep emiling? That’s crazy!
superb article………sleep emailing! really weird phenomenon.
I actually dated a guy who would sleep sex. I didn’t know he was asleep till one day he wanted to have a talk about how we weren’t having sex anymore. (I’m a bartender so he’d be asleep when I got home.) Obviously I was shocked I had been Very satisfied. He went to a sleep clinic and was caught masturbating in his sleep!
Serendipity! My husband just last night was “’sleep emailing and he came across this article. He never actually emailed anything to anyone, though. It was 7 full pages of complete gibberish in an open email addressed to “kflpiurjshau” . I guess he though he was writing but was just mindlessly typing.
Wow, that’s really something. I know a person who brushed his teeth in his sleep, it was wierd