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

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Night Terrors is an in-depth examination of the complicated relationship that we have with our sleep, how we try to understand it, and even try to "cure" it of some of its unwanted traits. Night Terrors aims to shine a light on the darkest parts of our sleeping lives, and to reassure sufferers from bad dreams that they are not alone. A fascinating look at the different form s of parasomnia and the ways they have been recorded and interpreted in history. I particularly found the parts about dreams in remote tribes and the affect of the emergence of colour TV on dreams interesting. I think reading about them will certainly help. Before I started to conduct research for the book, I had so many misconceptions of my own—I had no idea that when I saw spiders all over my bed, for example, it was something called a hypnopompic hallucination. The more we learn about and understand what is really happening when we experience these strange sleep states, the less weird or embarrassed we’ll feel for having them in the first place. You explain that some parasomnias (such as sleepwalking and lucid dreaming) are romanticized, while others (hallucinations, sleep paralysis, night terrors) are more stigmatized. Could you elaborate on this? What do you think fuels this difference? Now a lecturer in Creative Writing, Vernon set out to understand the history, science and culture of these strange and haunting experiences. NIGHT TERRORS, her startling and vivid debut, examines the history of our relationship with bad dreams: how we’ve tried to make sense of and treat them, from some decidedly odd ‘cures’ like magical ‘mare-stones’, to research on how video games might help people rewrite their dreams. Along the way she explores the Salem Witch Trials and sleep paralysis, Victorian ghost stories, and soldiers’ experiences of PTSD. By directly confronting her own strange and frightening nights for the first time, Vernon encourages us to think about the way troubled sleep has impacted our imaginations.

Alice Vernon has been plagued by "parasomnias" ever since she was a child. These can vary from nightmares, sleepwalking, hallucinations, sleep paralysis and even lucid dreaming - just to name a few. They're more common than you think and will affect around 70% of us at some point during our lives. All in all, I think this book did exactly what it sought out to do - offer the reassurance that we are not alone. If you're interested in the darkers parts of our sleep, I would highly recommend this book. When I saw this book at my local bookstore, I knew I had to get it. I was instantly drawn to the cover, and if you're not familiar with the image, it's the The Nightmare by Swedish painter Henry Fuseli. Ever since Alice Vernon was a child, her nights have been haunted by nightmares of a figure from her adolescence, sinister hallucinations, and episodes of sleepwalking. These are known as ‘parasomnias’– and they’re surprisingly common.Icon Books is an independent publisher of thought-provoking non-fiction. We publish science, history, politics, philosophy, psychology, humour and much else besides

Night Terrors, her startling and vivid debut, examines the history of our relationship with bad dreams: how we've tried to make sense of and treat them, from some decidedly odd 'cures' like magical 'mare-stones', to research on how video games might help people rewrite their dreams. This is a paradoxical and terrifying situation. In response, the brain can conjure up images of sinister figures looming over the sleeper and weighing them down, to explain the sensation of being pinned to the bed and the feeling of pressure on one’s chest and limbs. While Meredith’s oppressive hold on teenage Vernon is linked to a number of Vernon’s experiences of parasomnias, it is most clearly reflected in the sleep paralysis “demons” that populate her nights later on in her life. Vernon describes how, during sleep paralysis, she feels “crushed under the intense stare of Meredith, under her hands and her sharp nails”. Sleep paralysis, nightmares and dreams

Senior commissioning editor Kiera Jamison bought world English rights for both books from Donald Winchester. Icon will publish both titles in autumn 2022.