Creepiest Facts About Dreaming That Will Keep You Up At Night

Dreaming causes paralysis

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The majority of your dreams occur during the rapid eye movement (REM) part of your sleep. Although a lot of people already knew that dreams were most prevalent then, what you may not know is that when your brain becomes more active, your muscles relax and your voluntary muscles become paralyzed.

We're usually the victims in nightmares

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Research has proven that both men and women are more often victims than aggressors in the scary interactions in their dreams. They face the same attackers though, often unknown men or animals. Although, the study indicated that males and females have similar odds of making friends with other dream figures. An encouraging thought!

Just sleep paralysis in general...

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Those who suffer from sleep paralysis often describe it as terrifying. People with sleep paralysis are conscious of their atonia (muscle paralysis) yet can't physically move. When a person has sleep paralysis, something goes wrong throughout this process of waking up, and they enter a state of confused awareness.

Over 100 people have died during sleep paralysis

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Many Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese refugees arrived in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. After arriving, a lot of people started having episodes of sleep paralysis, which they attributed to the supernatural. Perhaps they were correct; overnight, over a hundred otherwise healthy refugees died.

Dreams are rarely positive

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This is a downer, nevertheless, fear and other negative emotions are by far the most prevalent feelings experienced in dreams. A study by researcher Calvin S. Hall who compiled over 50,000 dream descriptions from college students proved these results.

Sleep eating is a real disorder

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While sleep eating isn't as frequent as sleep walking or talking, it is a true disorder characterized by repeated episodes of uncontrollable eating and drinking while asleep. Some people are utterly unaware of their actions, while others can recall every detail.

You should never look someone in the eyes while dreaming

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According to Reddit threads, you should never look a person in the eyes while dreaming. Apparently, there have been instances where the people in your dreams have become hyper-aware and tell you "You shouldn't be here" or "You need to leave, right now."

Our brain turns off during our dreams

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There's usually not much logic to a dream, and that's okay. While we sleep, our brain's various regions stop talking to one another. The frontal lobe, which controls essential functions including awareness and rational decision making, is one of the most significantly dormant parts.

Night terrors are not for the light-hearted

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Night terrors are episodes of acute panic that can include shouting and even acting aggressively or running around while the person is asleep. If you've ever seen someone, or experienced night terrors yourself, you know just how scary and frightening these can be!

Nobody hears you scream for help in your dreams

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Atonia during sleep prevents us from moving about when we're unconscious. While dreaming, only the muscles used to keep the eyes open and the airway open remain active. It's unlikely that someone will wake you up if you're having a particularly terrifying dream; you'll just have to ride out the nightmare until you do.

Women's dreams are more emotional than men's

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According to various studies, it was proven that women are more likely to experience emotionally-driven dreams than men are. These can be dreams from losing a loved one to experiencing some heavy-hitting emotional trauma. Not good news for women is it!

All the faces you see in your dreams are real

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According to Stanford University, you will never dream a face that you haven't seen before. Your brain simply won't make one up. Instead, each and every face you see in your dreams will be one you've seen before, either in person, on a poster or TV.

12% of people dream in black and white

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One study published in 2008 found that 1 in 4 persons had at least one dream in black and white, and that 12% of people report having only black and white dreams. It could be useful to revisit this research in light of the advancements of today's technologies.

Nightmare disorder is a real thing you can develop

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Nightmares might be a common experience for some people. Nightmare Disorder (also known as dream anxiety disorder) is a parasomnia characterized by recurrent nightmares. Around 4% of adults are affected by this disease, which is determined by prolonged, upsetting, and vivid dreams.

Eating late can cause wacky dreams

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According to many studies, eating a lot of food right before bed can encourage more nightmares than you would like to have! You remember the old tale about how not to eat cheese before bed? Well, that can be said for just about any type of food to be honest!

You will never have a perfect sleep again

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According to Psychology Today, the optimal years for a good night's sleep are between the ages of 8 and 10. After that, sleep quality steadily declines. This is because of the severe decline in sleep quality that comes with getting older. A youngster under the age of eight is only around 20% as likely as an adult to awake from R.E.M. with a dream recollection.

The position you sleep in will have an effect on your nightmares

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Everyone has a preferred sleeping position but this could be the deciding factor in whether or not they experience recurring nightmares. According to the results of these analyses, those who sleep on their left side are significantly more likely to have nightmares than those who sleep on their right.

If you sleep face down, you might just wake up drowning

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Sleeping face down can trigger a number of reactions during your sleep, one of which is swimming/being unable to breathe! Other experiences you might have when sleeping in this position are being locked up, being naked and sex dreams too! So think about that the next time you're falling to sleep like this.

Women are more prone to nightmares

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Researchers have proven that more women than males experience recurring nightmares. Nineteen percent of males experienced a nightmare, compared to thirty percent of women, from a survey of people aged 18 to 25 who were asked to record their most recent dream in their personal dream diary.

60% of people will forget what they have dreamed

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It's common to meet someone who claims they never dream. That’s simply not true. Everyone has dreams, but only about 40% of people can recall their dreams later. A study found that dream recallers had significantly higher activity in the hypothalamus, the brain region responsible for information processing.

90% of your dreams disappear after ten minutes

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Studies have reported that there are several elements at play in our relatively poor dream recall. The lack of norepinephrine in the cerebral cortex, a brain region important for memory, cognition, language, and consciousness, is the main cause of our forgetfulness. Freud also proposed the theory that people forget their dreams because they contain repressed thoughts and feelings that they would rather not unearth.

The reason we forget is to keep a grasp on reality

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If we acutely remembered every detail of every dream, we may lose our grasp on what is genuinely real. Chemicals in our brains prevent us from remembering. One of these is noradrenaline; this chemical readies our bodies for action, and because of atonia, our noradrenaline levels are lower while we sleep.

Nightmares prepare us for real life

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According to a study, nightmares can help people be better prepared to deal with traumatic events in real life. Our emotional control center keeps working even when we're asleep, explaining why we feel so effected by dreams. Researchers theorize that feeling these emotions will better set us up for trauma.

Nightmares occur at a similar time every night

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Apparently, recurrent nightmares can actually usually happen around the same time at night. No doubt, this is because we are in a similar sleeping schedule each night, meaning that we enter REM sleep around the same time daily. Don't be too scared if you keep waking up at the same time.

We all had the same shared childhood dreaming experience

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It's common for children to share their traumatic, nightmare experiences. While being chased is one of the major ones that a lot of people experienced as a child, there's also confrontations with animals, aggression and, everyone's favorite, falling too.

Your dreams can represent your feelings

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Dreams can be a reflection of the feelings we're currently experiencing. For instance, if you are suffering from post-traumatic symptoms, guilt, or blame over a deceased loved one's passing, you have a greater chance of having terrible nightmares about that loved one who has passed away.

Men have way more sex dreams than women

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No surprise there! Yep, it's definitely true, men apparently have more sexual dreams than what women do. While there's not actually much substance behind why this is the case, it's an interesting fact nonetheless and explains quite a lot about men.

Sleep sex is scarily real

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Sleep sex, also known as sexsomnia, is a sleep disorder that is very similar to sleep walking. However, rather than walking during sleep, a person who has sleep sex engages in sexual conduct such as masturbation or intercourse while they are asleep. Wow!

Children dream more than adults

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It's really normal for children to be prone to nightmares. In fact, the onset of nightmares usually occurs between the ages of three and six, and the frequency typically begins to drop after the age of ten. Obviously, this doesn't mean nightmares are eradicated altogether!

The age old question: why do we dream?

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Dreams remain a mystery to scientists. They can be simply defined as mental images and narratives that occur to us while we sleep. People's scientific, religious, and/or spiritual beliefs can all have an impact on what you're dreaming and how you're dreaming it.

The length of dreams changes all the time

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When you wake up in the morning - if you're someone who actually does remember their dreams - you can feel like you've had at least one huge dream, maybe two. But dream length actually varies, and they can be anything from a few seconds for up to 20 or 30 minutes!

You can actually have up to 5 dreams per night

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And because dreams can be so short rather than just one long 8 hour ride, you can actually have a lot of dreams in one night. The average is between 3 to 5, but you could have more or less than that depending on how many hours of deep sleep you get!

Dreaming is a valid mental activity

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Just because you're asleep doesn't mean you're not doing any sort of exercise - brain exercise, that is. Dreaming is a valid mental activity, and it's because your brain is in more of an 'awake' state during a REM cycle - so much so that it's being used in the same way it would be if you were awake.

'False awakening' is a weird thing

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Is there anything more scary than thinking that you've woken up from a dream when you actually haven't? This can get so intense that people can do things like go to the bathroom or start cooking because they think they're awake, but actually they're still asleep - and false awakening can happen more than once!

Lucid dreaming is scarily real

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Some people can make themselves lucid dream and might even enjoy it. For others, it can be a very weird and very scary thought. Lucid dreaming is when you're very much aware that you're dreaming, and so much so that you can control what happens in your dreams.

Premonition dreams are warnings

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Some people also claim to have premonition dreams, which are dreams that are not just a mess of unconscious thoughts, but something more like a warning of things to come. Premonition dreams might tell the person what they have to watch out for or fear in the future.

Sleepwalking is a worrying disorder - but it's not a part of dreaming

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Sleepwalking is not actually a normal part of the dream cycle, like REM sleep. Not everyone sleepwalks, but for those who do, it's more a medical disorder than a genuine stage of the dreaming cycle. You're asleep when you sleepwalk, but it doesn't count as dreaming.

Falling is one of the most common types of dream

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We've all had that awful dream at least once about falling off a high ledge, and it's never pleasant. You wake up safe in your bed but jolt awake like you've actually been falling. The interesting thing about this is most people wake up when they're still falling, and never meet the bottom.

You don't ever speak, read or write in a dream

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When you think back to your dreams, you know that you have a conversation in them, or read a sign, or communicated to people. But the reality is, you never actually see words or hear speech in your dreams. You know

you've said something, or heard something, but it's never actually something you directly experience.

Alcohol and medication can have an impact

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This doesn't mean that alcohol or medication makes you have wild and wacky dreams - quite the opposite. Alcohol and medication can disrupt the REM cycle part of your sleep, which is the cycle in which you will have your dreams. You may find you haven't had a dream at all after a boozy night out!

Your alarm clock is stopping you from remembering dreams

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Just another reason why setting an alarm sucks, your alarm clock going off might actually be stopping you from remembering those good dreams you'd really like to bask in for a bit. That's because the sound of the alarm instantly wakes you up, disrupting the pattern and making dream recall harder.

Stress can result in scarier or weirder dreams

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It's no surprise that a stressed out conscious (and unconscious) mind result in some troublesome dreams. The strangest dreams can come as a result of a lot of stress, or a change of routine that can be disrupting the way you think. If you don't feel stressed at the minute, you might want to think about your dreams to see if deep down you really are!

Drinking more water before bed could mean you remember dreams

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Drinking more water in general is always advised, but a lot of people avoid it right before bed to save on those bathroom trips. But if you do want to start remembering your dreams, it's more likely if you drink a lot of water before bed - and it's precisely because it'll wake you up to make you want to pee, and make it more likely to recall what you've just been dreaming about!

People born blind are more likely to have nightmares

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People who are born blind and have never seen anything to base dream visuals on can still dream based on their experiences from day to day, but it's also more likely that their dreams will manifest as nightmares. This could be because the image they get from experiences might be inaccurate or warped.

Deja vu may actually just be dreams you couldn't remember

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You know that feeling you get when you just know you've been to a place before, or seen that person somewhere? We all try to think how that's possible when we've never actually been there before, but this feeling of deja vu could actually be because we've dreamt of something similar and we just couldn't remember it, so it feels like a weird memory instead.

Grief dreams are more common around the holidays

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If you've lost a love one, it's likely you'll dream about them from time to time - and most dreams like this, called grief dreams, will have you seeing your loved one healthy and happy again. The grief dream is actually more common around the holidays, and this can be because you're reminded of their absence.

'Hypnic jerk' is a very real thing

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Aside from being very annoying when you jerk yourself awake with your leg because you feel like you're falling into your mattress, it can also be a very scary and discomforting feeling when you're half asleep! The hypnic jerk is a valid (and very normal) thing which happens when you're drifting off.

Nightmares are more common than good dreams

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Unfortunately, you're more likely to have a very bad dream than a very good dream. So it's probably a good job we can't remember them most of the time! It's likely to feel more threatened or in danger in dreams compared to real life, and this could just be the worries of your subconscious.

Vitamin B6 might help for vivid dreams

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If you're looking to have more vivid dreams or trying to remember them, it's been thought that vitamin B6 can actually help with this - so you might want to add more of that to your diet. This is because B6 is a vitamin that can help you to fall asleep faster, which in turn can help with dream recall.

Researchers and psychologists have different opinions about dreams

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It's fascinating, and even scary, to think that nobody really knows for certain why we dream. Some people say dreams are completely meaningless - other people say they have very big meaning based on our emotions or suppressed thoughts. Even if they are meaningless, that doesn't change the fact that nightmares can be very real and very scary in the moment...