Somnambulism in the Internet Age

Woman emailed party invites in her sleep

By David Sutton

A new form of somnambul­ism for the Internet age has been identified by doctors and reported in the latest edition of the medical journal Sleep Medicine. Sleep researchers from the University of Toledo, Ohio, reported the first ever case of someone using the Internet while asleep, even sending emails inviting people over for drinks and caviar.

The 44-year-old woman had gone to bed at about 10pm, but rose a couple of hours later, walked to the next room and sat down at her computer. She turned the machine on, conn­ected to the Internet and success­fully logged on with her user name and password, before composing three emails and sending them to friends. She only found out what she had done when one of them telephoned the next day to reply to the email and accept the invitation.

The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman's waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: "Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only." Another said simply: "What the…"

The writers of the report have dubbed this new variation of sleepwalking 'zzz-mailing'. They say: "We believe writing an email after turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet and remembering the password displayed by our patient is novel. To our knowledge this type of complex behaviour requiring coordinated movements has not been reported before in sleepwalking. She was shocked when she saw these emails, as she did not recall writing them. She did not have any history of night terr­ors or sleepwalking as a child."

Unlike simple sleepwalking, they argue, the activities the woman engaged in required complex behaviour and coordinated movement, as well being able to remember her login details. She had no memory of the events next day.

http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/misc/1543/somnambulism-in-the-internet-age.html