The Strangeness Of Sleepwalkers

People that sleepwalk sometimes can complete tasks in the middle of the night, without even knowing they did it. An astounding amount of people sleepwalk in their lives. One study shows that around 3.6 percent of people sleepwalk often. Comparably, this is higher than the 0.4 percent of people who suffer from narcolepsy.

The eyes wide shut syndrome is a strange one indeed. Sleepwalkers are looked upon through a veil of mysticism. Those people who live alone and who sleepwalk can seemingly do the unthinkable. People have even cooked food and cleaned their homes while they sleepwalk before they return to bed. Why the human mind works like this, still remains a mystery.

Perhaps one if not the most remarkable things to have ever happened (while someone was sleepwalking) was when a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks drove 14 miles from his home to his in-laws back in 1987.

After he arrived, he broke into their home and bludgeoning his mother-in-law with a crowbar found from his car. Shortly after this, he stabbed her repeatedly and she later died. His next victim was his father-in-law, who did miraculously survive after he choked and stabbed him. Remarkably, Parks later drove himself to the police station and then turned himself in.

When Kenneth Parks went to trial for what he did, he was later released. There was no motive established. He couldn’t consistently explain things. Electroencephalography (EEG) is an electrophysiological monitoring method used to record electrical activity of the brain. From his testing, it was determined that he had been sleepwalking. Essentially, he had no memory of ever doing this. This case remains one of the most remarkable cases of homicidal sleepwalking in history.

While science hasn’t come to a complete conclusion about sleepwalking, many have conjured up their own theories about it. No doubt, they looked into spirituality, pseudo-science, and folklore. Those who sleepwalk, seem to be trapped between both this world and another. Sleepwalking remains a phenomena that scientists are trying to make sense of. The complexities of a semi-waking mindset, seems to be fascinating for them.

Another statistic says that an estimated 30 percent of people will at some point sleepwalk in their life. While this number seems high, the actual figure might be even higher. Sleepwalking is difficult to track, since it happens during the night – while most of the time, others are actually sleeping. The human mind, remains a mysterious thing.

The human brain weighs about 3 pounds and contains around 100 billion neurons, the cells that carry information. A study was conducted in 2013, the conclusion was 65 percent of Americans believe that we only use 10 percent of our brain. It makes one wonder, what else we could do if we utilized the rest of it. What a different world it would be.

(Source: Vice and Medical News Today)