Strange Woods Podcast > Episode > Episode 4 – The Sleepytime Special featuring Tooth Mouse

2022-12-01Episode

Episode 4 – The Sleepytime Special featuring Tooth Mouse

On this episode we talk about sleep and dreaming. We discuss visitors in your dreams, sleep paralysis, premonition, and, of course, tooth mice. So everybody get to the limousine motorcycle and get ready to run from some sleep demons!

STOP! INSIDE JOKES AHEAD! If you haven’t gotten to listen to the episode yet, spoiler alert! This post contains lots of stuff that will make waaay more sense if you listen to the episode before or while reading. So if you haven’t already, pump the brakes and listen to the episode or just click above to play so that you can be in on all the shenanigans to follow!

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Produced by Peter Woodward

Peter's human flea...or Jeremy's very specific dream flight move...or just the mummy guy from Decap Attack like Jonathan said...?

Taking “flight” at 48:36!

Sleep paralysis

Few things are more terrifying than not being in control of your body. This week, we talked about the terrifying phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. Jeremy gave some insight into what it’s like to experience the complete inability to move or react as well as auditory hallucinations. Here are some interesting facts about this scary shit.

Sleep paralysis (SP) affects about 87% of the population.
75% of SP involves hallucinations.
Formerly called “night palsy”, documentation of SP has been recorded in Chinese texts as early as 400 BCE.
Author J.M. Barrie suffered from SP and his experiences inspired him to write Peter Pan.
SP really is all over the world and every country seems to have a mythical or spiritual representation of it as part of folklore and history. Often the description is of an incubus (as in the above painting) or more often a succubus or vampire-like she-demon that steals a person’s breath as they sleep. Newfoundland folklore boasts the “Old Hag”, St. Lucia has “Kokma”, and Southeast Asia has “dab tsong”, the nightmare spirit.

Jonathan discussed the SUNDS phenomenon in this week’s podcast. In 1977, over 100 otherwise healthy Southeast Asian men, mostly of Laotian Hmong descent, died inexplicably of what has been referred to as SUNDS (Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome). The only clear connection among these men was SP and the strongly held belief that the dab tsong or nightmare spirit was directly responsible for the SP and eventually their deaths.

This event and the idea that something can kill you in your dreams was the direct inspiration for the classic horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street!

Sources:

discovermagazine.com/health/5-mysterious-facts-about-sleep-paralysis

eachnight.com/sleep/sleep-paralysis-history

pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2018/october/the-worlds-older-nightmare

Jeremy's sleep paralysis hack

That time a demon stopped chasing Jeremy to get a burger at a local restaurant...

Tooth Fairy...no...no...Tooth Mouse

Dreams

This episode, Jeremy and Jonathan shared some very personal and touching dreams about their loved ones that have passed away. Dreams have long been a topic of discussion and fascination: what do they mean? Are they a way for those of us still on this mortal plane to reach or be reached from somewhere beyond? Is this perhaps why some people have premonitions?

Here are some cool facts you may not know about dreams:

The first known dream dictionary dates back to 4000 BCE.
Approximately 12% of people only dream in black and white.
Blind people who were not born blind can often see in their dreams.
60-75% of people experience recurring dreams. These are largely thought to represent an unresolved issue in a person’s life.

MANY inventions have been the result of ideas that came to the inventor while sleeping:

In a dream, Larry Page invented Google.
In a dream, Dimitri Mendeleyev invented the periodic table of elements.
In a dream, Nikola Tesla invented the alternating current generator.
In a dream, James Watson invented the DNA double helix spiral form.
In a dream, Elias Howe invented the sewing machine.

Here are some premonitions from some well-known names and events:

Author Mark Twain dreamed of his brother’s death.
Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his assassination.
There are no less than 19 verified precognitive dreams about the sinking of the Titanic.
Multiple victims of the attacks on 9/11 had dreams warning them of the coming disaster.

Sources:
valleysleepcenter.com/11-fun-facts-about-dreams

disturbmenot.co/dreams-facts

lifehack.org/articles/productivity/20-amazing-facts-about-dreams-that-you-might-not-know-about.html

Did somebody call for a stretch limosine...motorcycle?

Ley Lines

Ley lines are lines of intersecting ancient sites across the world that are thought to carry supernatural energy. Powerful rivers of energy are thought to flow along these lines that connect places like Stonehenge and The Great Pyramids of Giza.

The Jinn

Made from smokeless fire, jinn are creatures from Middle Eastern folklore that have the power to shape-shift, influence human behavior, and exist in a parallel shadow world known as al-Ghaib, or the Unseen. The name “jinn” comes from the Arabic word ja-na-na meaning “to hide or conceal”. This is fitting because they are often not visible to humans.

When you ask yourself, "Who would ever want to live in one of those small states?"...

Hey, pilots. If you see something, say something.

Thanks for stopping by!

If you have an experience you’d like to share, please email us! You can share your story as a typed email or use the voice memo app on your phone.