I’ve been fascinated by the idea
of weird sleep disorders for a very long time. Even as a little girl I was a
prodigious dreamer and can still remember every detail of the baroque and scary
nightmares I had then. I was so fearful of the dark that I created a literal
barrier around myself with teddies and toys in bed. It was mainly so that
Dracula wouldn’t ‘get me’ in the night. The Hammer Horror films of the
seventies have a lot to answer for.
But it wasn’t until I was at
university that I had my first experience of a terrifying phenomenon known as
Sleep Paralysis. Years later, this provided inspiration for my new crime novel,
SLEEP TIGHT, where a serial killer prays on people via their nightmares.
For me, an episode of sleep
paralysis happens like this. You become aware of ‘waking up’ in your bed. Then
you realise someone’s there in the bedroom – someone who means you harm. That’s
when you try to leap out of bed but find your body completely immobilised. You
try to scream but all that happens is a desperate raw croaking coming from your
mouth. It seems to go on for ever until you crash back to wakefulness. Some people have a crushing feeling on their
chest and there are stories of creatures that squat on top of sleeping forms
from many different cultures. It has been said that stories of alien abduction
and many ghostly visitations were really episodes of sleep paralysis.
All that’s really happening is a
misfire in your brain’s waking processes. When we sleep, our muscles relax in a
way that stops most of us getting out of bed and re-enacting our dreams. With
sleep paralysis, our bodies are still in sleep mode but our brain has got
caught somewhere in between the two states. It’s incredibly scary when it
happens, which thankfully is relatively rare.
More commonly, I get something
called hypnagogic nightmares, where I have a few seconds of nocturnal
hallucinations in vivid detail. It’s usually a person who has broken into the
room and is standing over the bed. I begin to ‘wake’ and think, ‘It’s okay,
it’s just a dream’. But then the face comes into high-definition detail and I
can see every feature. I think, ‘No! This time it’s real!’ That’s when I wake
up screaming. My poor husband has had so many nights of this over the years.
When my son on the floor below hears it, he just tells himself it’s Mum being
weird again before going back to sleep. (Heaven help us if we really do get an
intruder.)
I’d wanted to write about this
for years and started off with a children’s book idea about a ‘Sleep Witch’ who
stole into people’s bedrooms when they had nightmares. Yep, it was probably too
scary for kids and it didn’t really work, so ended up being dumped.
But I firmly believe no idea is
ever wasted and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I would return to this
subject one day.
When I came to the end of my book
contract for psychological thrillers, I decided I wanted to be brave and write
something really ‘out there’ that would get my imagination firing on all
cylinders. I settled on the idea of a killer who targets people with sleep
disorders. I discussed it with a friend who said, ‘Great, but how will you get
the supernatural bit to work?’ Supernatural? Huh, that wasn’t what I meant! But
that night as I was climbing into bed, the thought came to me: What if there was
an element of the supernatural to it? And even better, what if there was a
secret division of the Met Police who dealt with crimes of this nature? That night I didn’t sleep much either, but it
was from pure excitement this time. I knew I wanted to write that book even if
no publisher wanted it. I’m happy to say that Harper Collins did, and SLEEP
TIGHT is the first of the series featuring the Uncharted Crimes Investigation
team and DC Rose Gifford.
I did wonder, while I was writing
it, whether my brain would be so immersed in sleep-related scares that I would
experience at best bad dreams and at worst, episodes of sleep paralysis. But it
was the strangest thing: for the entire period of writing this book, I didn’t
even have one hypnagogic nightmare.
I’d love to report that I was
cured for ever, but as soon as I’d handed the book in, things went back to
normal.
Still, it was nice while it
lasted.
Sleep Tight by C S Green.
Published by Harper Collins (Out Now)
Even in your dreams you're not
safe... The nightmare is only just
beginning... When DC Rose Gifford is
called to investigate the death of a young woman suffocated in her bed, she
can't shake the feeling that there's more to the crime than meets the eye. It looks like a straightforward crime scene -
but the police can't find the killer. Enter DS Moony - an eccentric older
detective who runs UCIT, a secret department of the Met set up to solve
supernatural crimes. Moony wants Rose to help her out - but Rose doesn't
believe in any of that. Does she? As
the killer prepares to strike again, Rose must pick a side - before a second
woman dies.
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