There are tell-tale signs that giveaway whether you’re awake or dreaming. Some people say if you look in a mirror while dreaming, your reflection will display garbled. Others say if you try to read while dreaming- whether it be a book, a sentence, or a one word sign- it will appear ineligible. Or when you look at your hands, they will come into view warped with extra fingers, swirly and distorted, or even fail to show altogether. Ever try to read a clock while dreaming? It’s impossible!… But the most common indicator I’ve heard is that something about your environment- whether it be your house, school, work, or childhood neighborhood- something about it will be off.
Unfortunately, while these signs may be apparent for most people, none of them are ever definite. What’s worse- you may visually perceive these signs, but you don’t always mentally register them. It’s all fine and well until you have a bad dream; a nightmare that you’re unable to distinguish from reality. That’s when it becomes dangerous. The more real it feels, the more fearful you are. The more powerless you become… the more power you give him.
I’ll get to him in due time. That is- if he doesn’t get to me first.
I used to have dreams with detail slip-ups, and I trained myself to recognize them so as to discern whether I was awake or dreaming. Once I identified it was a dream, I was safe. You can’t fall for a trap if you know it’s a trap.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed my dreams have become increasingly more vivid and, at this point, near perfect in their mimicry of reality. It’s not safe anymore. I can’t identify if I’m asleep if there’s nothing to differentiate my dreams from reality… How will I know if he’s there? Stalking? Manipulating? Closing in while I’m blindsided by a frightful false reality of his creation?
He’s something like the devil, I’d say- that is, if I was religious. But I’m not. How could I believe in a benevolent God that would allow that thing to exist? Allow it to infiltrate the safety of your mindspace and corrupt it with terrifyingly convincing fabrications? Allow it to make your nightmares so believable that you can’t even trust the credibility of reality anymore?
That’s the whole point; you can’t trust reality. Yes, you’re awake; but your sense of safety was abandoned in your sleep. There’s no safety in being awake if the terrors of your dreams are so vivid you can still feel them once you’ve woken up. Have you ever awoken from a nightmare so scary that you still felt the monsters of your dreams lurking somewhere in the dark of your room?
That’s him- that’s the Sleep Thief.
He funnels disturbing deceptions into your mind and centers them on you.
You see, he knows you. He knows how to orchestrate nightmare scenarios that employ and exploit your personal fears, guilts, traumas, and regrets. He cleverly steers your dreams down a narrowing dark path leading to the most dreadful outcome that he knows will leave you trembling and completely vulnerable upon your awakening. He then uses this vulnerability, fear, and uncertainty to find passage into our reality; following down the same narrowing dark path of your mindscape to penetrate the real-world. Then, in your state of utter defenselessness, he steals you away. For what purpose? I don’t know. Only his victims will ever know what comes next.
That’s why I can’t go to sleep.
—
After years of research, I’ve come to learn that most of the Sleep Thief’s victims are children. My hypothesis is that when we are children, our brains are easily tricked. We don’t have enough experience in the real world to decipher what’s real and what isn’t. So it doesn’t matter how true to life our dreams or nightmares are in our youth; we will still fall for the beasts, demons, and ghosts that chase after and prey upon us. And those dreams can be so powerful in inducing fear that even after we wake up, especially in the night, we still feel those monsters- the Sleep Thief- hiding somewhere close and watching us.
Thankfully, most children have loving parents, siblings, or other family members nearby that they receive comfort from and help rationalizing their safety after an intense nightmare. I was lucky enough to be one of those kids, but not every child is.
My first suspicions of the Sleep Thief’s existence arose in elementary school when my friend Josephine was having a series of nightmares every night for two weeks, and each one worse than the last. I remember the last day I saw her at school, she was a wreck. Her dark, poofy hair was unkempt. Josephine’s two-day old buns had become disheveled and frizzy. Her face was drained and had the look of someone who had been crying for hours. Even compared to her dark complexion, the shadows of her heavy, sleepless eye bags shone prominently. We sat on the playground swings- myself swinging and Josephine hunched over in hers. She loosely held the chains on her swing and stared at the ground defeatedly.
“I’m scared, Hughie.” Her voice quivered. She had told me about the monster under her bed, and I told her we were too old to believe that. Then she told me she didn’t want to believe it either, but it moved last night. When Josephine woke up from an awful nightmare about her dad getting eaten by a demon, she saw the dark, lengthy outline of its figure standing behind her bedroom curtain, unmoving… like it was waiting for her to move first- but she was frozen in fear. She lay there for hours, first staring at it, and then she closed her eyes and tried to convince herself it wasn’t real. Eventually, her dad came into her room to wake her up for school. She didn’t particularly like her dad, and I didn’t find out why until later, but she said that night he saved her. Since he turned on the light and Josephine heard his voice, she felt reassured that the nightmare was just a nightmare… but still believed the monster in her room was real.
“It’s all just nightmares,” I said, my tone confident and lacking any concern.
“Yeah,” Josephine’s voice lowered, “…just nightmares.”
It sounded to me like she was trying to convince herself.
Like I said, that was the last time I saw her. Josephine didn’t show up to school the next day- or ever again. The principal pulled me out of class and brought me to her front office after Josephine’s disappearance. My parents were in there along with two officers that questioned me about my friendship with Josephine and asked if she ever told me anything bad about her dad. I didn’t understand why that mattered, and I tried to tell them about the monster from her nightmares that came into her room at night last week. I guess they assumed “the monster” was her dad, and next thing I know, he’s locked up and charged for her disappearance along with a slew of other accusations. At first, I felt guilty that they locked up the wrong guy because of me, but then I came to find out some of those other accusations were true. I didn’t feel guilty after that.
After that experience, I learned that the people who are most vulnerable to the Sleep Thief’s manipulation are those who have no real tangible source of comfort or relief in their life. Josephine’s abusive home life brought no source of relief from her bad dreams. She never felt safe in her house, and she never felt safe when awake. So when she woke up trembling, the Sleep Thief followed her into her already nightmarish reality, and got to her.
That was over forty years ago. Since Josephine’s disappearance, I can recount numerous instances where people I knew that had no source of comfort or relief in their lives faced dreadfully realistic nightmares and then disappeared. Some sick, some elderly, some young, some healthy, some addicts, some homeless; all fighting demons and alone in this world.
—
My name is Hughie Morgan, I’m 56 years old, and I’ve been afraid to sleep nearly my entire life. I’m a librarian by day, sleep fighter by night, and full-time insomniac. Voluntary insomniac, that is. I’ve developed a system where I set an alarm to go off every 90 minutes every night. This allows me to sleep for that period of time, then wake up, and effectively avoid entering REM sleep where I’m most likely to dream. This system has worked for me thus far.
—
Today, I’m at home. It’s evening- maybe 6’clock. I’m thinking the sun might set soon.
Knock!
Knock!
Shit. Who’s that at the door? I fight to stand up from the comfort of my living room sofa, mildly annoyed that someone has the audacity to interrupt my evening T.V. time. This better be important…
I open the front door, and am met with a tall man I’ve never seen before.
“My dog’s gotten loose. Please, can you help me find him?” The man asks. His tone was off… the way he said. Something about it felt ingenuine. It was all too matter-of-factly and emotionless; it almost sounded rehearsed. I look him up and down, he’s wearing a black turtleneck and long dark pants. His hair is thinning, but the few strands that are there are black. It’s weird. His hair doesn’t match the age on his face. Maybe this guy got botox or just bad genetics, but he looks way too young to have hair like that. I don’t know why, but something inside me tells me not to look at his eyes. Maybe I’m just paranoid in my old age; but something about this man… this interaction… feels like trouble.
My anxiety wills me to strengthen my grip on the edge of the open door. My throat’s dry from nerves, and it feels like there’s been too long of a silence since he spoke so unnaturally. I have to force myself to respond.
“I haven’t seen your dog, but I’ll keep a look out for him.” I say. I take a step back, never looking in the man’s eyes and close the door, immediately locking it behind me.
Even though the door’s locked, my sense of paranoia increases. Something was seriously off about that guy… His energy… It was sinister.
My thoughts start to cycle through the interaction. I’ve never seen him in this neighborhood… He doesn’t belong here! Why did he come to my door?…
Then I think about what the man said: my dog’s gotten loose.
My heart sinks. I realize I haven’t heard my own dog barking in the backyard in quite a while. I really don’t want to check… something inside me knows I’m not going to like what’s out there.
I reluctantly head to the back door, my anxiety creeping and worsening with each step. I press my hand against the sliding glass and try to peer out, knowing fully well I won’t be able to survey the whole yard from inside here. I exhale and raise my shaky hand to open the door, while a strong sense that I’m no longer safe in the confinement of my own home overcomes me.
My instincts were right; the dog is nowhere to be found.
GURRRAAAR…HIIIISSSS!
I quickly turn, and see an unfamiliar black cat in the backyard, glaring at me and expelling a deep, guttural, beastial growl.
It doesn’t sound like a cat.I back up, retreat inside, and lock the glass door behind me. I’m not safe.
Knock!
Knock!
Another knock on the door. I reluctantly and quietly approach. This time, I look out the peephole. It’s a woman.
“Hello?” she says.
I don’t answer.
Knock!
Knock!
“Is that your dog loose on the street?” She calls with a motherly concern.
My paranoia subsides. Finding my dog is what’s most important.
I unlock the front door and am met face to face with the woman. She is small, has short blonde hair, and an innocent look of worry on her face. What’s more eye-catching is the fact that she’s pregnant. Very pregnant.
She points down the street, “The dog’s over there!”
The woman begins to pacily hobble down the street, and I follow. I’m surprised at how quick this woman can move on her tiny legs with such a bulbous baby in her stomach.
I am away from my house. We pass one house. No dog. A couple more houses. No dog. The sun is starting to set. We are nearing the end of the street now. Still, no dog. My paranoia begins to set back in, as well as my anxious thoughts.
Who is this woman? I don’t recognize her from this neighborhood either…
My paranoia grows.
I’m not safe. I’m not home.
I realize I shouldn’t have let my guard down. The woman has an unnatural energy, similar to the man from before. I realize that the monotonous tone that the man had contrasts with her’s being overly concerned. While they were completely opposite in appearance and tone, there was something perverted about both… meant to deceive me.
The woman is exuding the same sinister energy that the man from before did. I don’t want to look at her, I just feel it. And I know that she knows I can feel it too.
I book it back to my house! I run as fast as I can on my worn knees and legs that don’t work the same way they used to. I’m slower than ever before, but I leave the woman behind me, and refuse to look back.
I reach my house. I reach the front door… It’s cracked open.
I know I closed the door.
I’m scared. I feel a sinister energy coming from behind the door in the dark of my house. But it’s not safe out here, not with that woman close behind. I’m shaking and my heart is thumping out of my chest. I reach forward and lightly push the door. It creaks open.
There he is. The man from before.
Behind him, the cat, still sounding the unnatural guttural growl. The man is smiling an unnerving, unnatural smile. I turn, and the woman is behind me, displaying the same sinister smile as the man. I’m not safe.
—
I wake up in bed sweating and shaking. My wife is still sleeping next to me. I wake her up, still incredibly frightened from the paranoid nightmare that I just narrowly escaped. I need physical comfort and reassurance to bring me back to reality!
When my wife turns over to listen I begin to tell her about the nightmare. How real it felt. How paranoid I was. I tell her the sequence and the progression of it… About the emotionless, fake man with the thinning black hair and the unnatural, guttural cry coming from the strange cat… and then I get to the part with the woman at the door… and freeze. Paranoia overcomes me. The knowledge is inserted into my brain. I don’t know how, but I know.
I’m still dreaming.
—
I wake up again, shaking and startled from the false sense of security that I just experienced. I sit up and quickly shake awake my wife to tell her of the horrors!
“It was so real!” I cry to her, “I thought I was really awake telling you what happened!” I start to sob this time as I tell my wife the sequence and progression of my dream. She rubs my back comforting me while I speak.
Something about retelling it was like reliving it.With no escape.
As my wife rubs my back, chills run down my spine. The darkness of our bedroom is unfamiliar. Something about it doesn’t feel right. Something about it feels sinister…
A sudden realization with the touch of her hand overcomes me.
I’m not married. I’m still dreaming.
—
I wake up again. There he is.
The Sleep Thief.
At the foot of my bed. A tall, dark and menacing shadow creature. His bodily barriers are fuzzy, like a dream. The Sleep Thief begins a slow step by step stride towards me in the darkness. With each creeping step he tilts his head side to side unnaturally. I’m frozen in place, frozen in fear.
NO! I can’t bring the word to life, but it screams inside of my head. The Sleep Thief slides his fuzzy hand across my bedspread and the closer he gets, the more real he becomes. Less like a dream and more like a reality as my fear of him grows each second. Now, he’s right next to me. His once fuzzy hand has weight. I can physically feel the blanket shift as he lifts it from the bed and reaches out for my face…
BEEEP!
BEEEP!
BEEEP!
With the sound of the loud beeping, the Sleep Thief disappears. I immediately sit up and flip the switch for my side table lamp. He’s really gone.
—
I sit here, sixteen minutes later and still haven’t dared to turn off the beeping. That’s one thing I’ve come to learn; loud noises ground you in reality. I guess this was one of those rare instances where dreaming occurred before entering REM sleep. I think I’m going to have to change my alarm and set it to go off every 45 minutes if I want to be safe. And while I am sitting here, slightly traumatized by my experience learning that all of this speculation is actually real- I know I was lucky. I narrowly escaped him.
This time.