Top 5 Facts About Sleepwalking

Top 5 Facts About Sleepwalking

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Have you ever woken up to discover that you’ve taken off your pyjamas, or that moved from your bed to the couch, or that you’re wearing shoes and covered in blood? Well unless you’re being set up then you may be a sleep walker. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 Facts. In this installment we’re counting down the 5 most interesting facts we could learn about sleepwalking.

#5: Sleepwalking Is in Your Genes

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Much like heart disease or being ugly, sleepwalking is a genetic condition. If one of your parents slept walked (that sounds right) then you are 3 times more likely to do the same, compared to kids whose parents are normal. If both your parents were sleepwalkers then there’s a 60% percent chance you’re going to get up to all kinds of night time somnambulism yourself. If you’re the only sibling of an identical twin and therefore an identical twin yourself then you are 5 times more likely to sleepwalk if they sleepwalk. That may not sound like it makes sense but it does. All these fancy statistics come down to the fact that sleepwalking sleepruns in the family. Why? Well a lot of disorders have a genetic component, but realistically it's probably that one of your ancestors stole talismans from a magical gypsy lady.

Imagine being a werewolf, but instead of the full moon, your trigger is sleep, and instead of becoming a wolf, you have sex. That’s sexsomnia. The condition is extremely rare though, occurring in only 1 percent of the population, most of whom are, you guessed it, dudes. While this might sound hilarious to you with your totally normal sleep habits, it’s a real problem for people suffering from it. Some individuals have reported bruising from furiously masturbating and they don’t even remember the fun part. In certain instances people have groped their partners, or have done even worse to random people who happen to be in the vicinity. Research on the connection between sexsomnia and the full moon is inconclusive… by virtue of being non-existent.

As if kids weren’t creepy enough, now they’re walking around in their sleep causing all kinds of mayhem. Lest you think this is the product of some ancient curse there’s science behind the phenomenon. Waking up isn’t as easy as we always assumed and doing it properly actually comes from the brain’s maturation. Because kids’ brains are so small they haven’t developed the knack of transitioning from sleep to wakefulness and this can sometimes result in some real Children of the Corn type stuff. Like a mutant gene, when a child hits puberty they usually drop the habit of sleepwalking and develop the ability to wake up like a normal person. For 25 percent of the population though, the problem persists beyond puberty and can only be helped with some heavy meds or maybe an exorcism.

You’ve probably heard from dubious sources like TV or your parents never to wake up a sleepwalker. When you ask them why they’ll hem and haw and hint at apocalyptic consequences but really it’s all poppycock they just made up because you were asking too many questions. Waking up a sleepwalker is not dangerous and will only cause them to be frightened or disoriented which is pretty funny. In reality, long bouts of sleepwalking can resort in the person performing dangerous activities like driving a car or flipping off a biker gang. For the most hilarious results, you should wait and see what happens but if you actually do care about the person you should probably wake them up. So really, waking up a sleepwalker can be a good thing, especially after our next fact.

Most of the time, there’s not enough evidence to support the claim, and the supposed sleepwalkers are found guilty. But not always– consider the sad case of Canadian man Kenneth James Parks in 1987. Parks rose from his bed, hopped in his truck and drove 23 kilometers to murder his step-mother and nearly kill his step-father. Sounds like just another day in the backwoods of Canada, right? Well, Parks claimed he was sleepwalking, and was acquitted on the strength of his highly irregular EEG results; when doctors monitored his brain activity, it proved that he had a sleep disorder. The science behind sleep murder isn’t 100 percent conclusive but as far as experts can tell it’s caused by a subject’s brain trying to trying to wake up during the third stage of sleep, slow wave sleep, instead of the fourth wave of sleep, REM sleep. When this last step is skipped, the subject is caught in a state of sleepwalking and are liable to start performing routine tasks like making breakfast or massacring their loved ones. So, are you afraid that if you fall asleep you’ll murder someone? Relax! Statistically, you’ll more likely to die in your sleep. Sweet dreams! For more eye-opening top 10s and top 5s you could write in your sleep, be sure to subscribe to Watchmojo.com.