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

IN HEADSPACE: HOW THE SEVENTIES LOST ITS MIND, FOUND ITSELF AND TAUGHT US TO BE WELL, by Dr James Riley, tells the story of the New Age Health movements of the 1970s, and how they formed the basis for today’s contemporary wellness industry. From coastal meditation retreats to the paranoias of darkened flotation tanks, he tells the often-bizarre tale of what happened when the psychedelic generation met the psychiatric profession. Riley’s previous book, THE BAD TRIP: DARK OMENS, NEW WORLDS AND THE END OF THE SIXTIES , was published by Icon in 2018 .

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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. In my immediate future, I’m really hoping that my book gets people talking about their experiences of troubled sleep. I’ve already done a couple of events, and it has been wonderful to hear people come up and tell me about the things they’ve also suffered with at night. More broadly, though, I think there will be much more research undertaken in terms of lucid dreaming and the ways it could benefit people’s mental health. In fiction, I think parasomnias will always be a trope of the horror genre, but I also think we’ll start to see some of these “spooky” conditions appear in literary fiction, affecting the lives of everyday people who aren’t being chased by monsters or ghosts! 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. At the moment, lucid dreaming can be used to help with nightmares associated with PTSD in that the phenomena can essentially “rewrite” the course of recurring, traumatic dreams. If other mental illnesses such as depression or OCD cause nightmares (and indeed, sometimes the medication for these conditions can affect a person’s dreams) then learning to lucid dream could help any symptoms manifesting through sleep. Where do you see the study of parasomnias going in the near future?

This was exactly the type of book I wish I had access to when I first started getting sleep paralysis. Night Terrors is Alice Vernon's attempt in demystifying and normalising the terrors around sleep, analysing how they've been interpreted and misinterpreted throughout history, while encouraging us to tell our own stories. Vernon's own testimony and experience with parasomnias is sprinkled throughout the book, and I want to applaud her bravery for being so open about such a vulnerable topic. Reviewer Carolina Ciucci Interviews Alice Vernon, Author of Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell about It Ever since she 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. 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.I'm not much of a nonfiction reader, and if you are the same, don't be put off. This book reads like fiction, and doesn't have that dry, clinical feel that puts you to sleep. I found this book to be incredibly fascinating and yet, incredibly relatable.

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? This week, we’re here with Alice Vernon, a woman long fascinated by what happens to our brains during sleep. Taking that interest one step further led Alice to begin research for her new book, Night Terrors, and that deep dive uncovered centuries worth of literature and analysis, some of it mind boggling. In this landscape, Alice Vernon’s new book Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It offers a breath of fresh air. Vernon highlights the need to widen our conversations around sleep beyond the anxious focus on maximising the number of hours we spend doing it. Her stories of troubled sleep purposefully steer well clear of the subject of insomnia – a condition that has been the core theme of a recent boom of memoirs, such as Marina Benjamin’s Insomnia (2018) and Samantha Harvey’s The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping (2020). Sleep is a hot topic these days. Popular science books promise to uncover why we do it at all, while exploring its importance for a healthy life. Self-help manuals seek to teach the art of sleeping well amidst the stresses of modern life. Wearable devices and mobile apps monitor quality and quantity, nudging users to make adjustments to their bedtime routines. Meanwhile, last summer’s heatwave produced endless variations of top tips for ensuring the right amount of sleep in sweltering temperatures.Alice Vernon’s “Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It” is published by Icon. 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. Over the next few years she would report from Paris as it fell to the Nazis, London on the first day of the blitz, and Berlin on the day Germany invaded Poland. She liked to say that her only qualification was curiosity, but as this timely reissue of her bestselling 1941 memoir proves, she also had courage, tenacity and a flair for observation. A penchant for name-dropping only makes it more irresistible. Vernon expertly blends history with science, interweaving her own personal experiences with that of the terrible events of the Salem Witch Trials and the Victorian love affair with the macabre among others. The reader’s journey starts with the very first parasomnia that Vernon experienced as a child: sleepwalking. We then move on to hypnopompic hallucinations – primarily visual hallucinations that manifest moments after waking up; think spiders scuttling on your pillow. Later on, we explore sleep paralysis, night terrors and, finally, dreams and nightmares. We are mysterious creatures, to others and ourselves. How to explain the creative brainstorms, harebrained schemes, and shudder-causing evil thoughts that suddenly appear in our normally quite sane brains? Why did evolution provide us with consciousness? And, pray tell, WTF are dreams?

Ever since she 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. 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. 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. 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

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Alice Vernon often wakes up to find strangers in her bedroom. Ever since she 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. 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. 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. Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It by Alice Vernon – eBook Details