Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It

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After Ralph’s mother kills herself in the basement, his wife Abby stays up all night scrubbing away the blood, little knowing that a far more onerous task awaits: exorcising Laura’s ghost.

When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive View image in fullscreen Looking for Trouble author Virginia Cowles (second left) and fellow war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (second right) with members of the cast of their play, Love Goes to Press, in 1946.The author grips the reader with the first page with her beautifully descriptive writing that remains engrossing until the end, and yet manages to balance with perfection emotions of humour, sadness and fear. Looking for Trouble author Virginia Cowles (second left) and fellow war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (second right) with members of the cast of their play, Love Goes to Press, in 1946. AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK IN DECEMBER 2022 **'Curious, lively, humble, utterly genuine . It is very insightful book that not only reveals the long history of the conditions and experiences mentioned but it also open your eyes to the fact that it is not as uncommon as what you may have first thought.

Dr Vernon said: “Over the centuries, parasomnias have had a profound effect on the human imagination, shaping both art and literature.These can vary from nightmares, sleepwalking, hallucinations, sleep paralysis and even lucid dreaming - just to name a few. Apart from interesting discussions about various parasomnias, Alice has a variety of annecdotes that range from hilarious, creepy, and even some that actually made me cry. It is curious, lively, humble, utterly genuine – and, if you're a sufferer too, wonderfully reassuring. I know it informs her own sleep issues at times, but it still felt a little odd that it kept coming back to that. When aspiring foreign correspondent Virginia Cowles turned up to report on the Spanish civil war in 1937, she was a 26-year-old Boston debutante in heels.

Historical accounts also reveal some particularly odd cures, such as magical ‘mare-stanes’ which were circular eroded rocks occasionally embedded with human teeth, said to prevent sleep paralysis. A wonderful deepdive into the world of dreams and the science to explain them throughout the centuries. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The passion in which Vernon pursues discussion to be normalised surrounding our sleeping patterns is something that I think we can all take away from with a sense of positivity, as after all, we all have sleep.Some film analysis is underdeveloped compared to the literary analysis : for instance, concluding that Kon's Paprika and Nolan's Inception is about "the dilemma of technology intruding in our dreams" and "the existential crisis we might face when technology helps us to control our dreams too well" is a little bit weak and doesn't offer anything interesting or new to say about the way those movies talk about dreams and the things dreams can be metaphors of. Along the way we explore the Salem Witch Trials and sleep paralysis, Victorian ghost stories, and soldiers’ experiences of PTSD. As someone who lives with a family of parasomniacs it was very informative to understand what's going on. Fascinating and entertaining, I feel like this book nails unpicking the complexity of humans' relationship with sleep in a way that feels relevant and easy to read.