SLEEP-WALKING

Evening Star, Issue 21811, 29 August 1934, Page 14

SLEEP-WALKING

MAID'S THEFT OF MONEY Will, doctors and psychologists ever solve the mysteries of sleep-walking? ; So far, they have not been able to give a convincing explanation of the malady which led to the experience of a nursemaid who.was acquitted by the Lymington (Hants) magistrates of a charge of theft, when it was proved that she had taken money in her sleep. The scientists say that somnambulism “ represents a dissociation of that part of tne brain which controls activity from the highest part which adapts us to our environment.” But what causes the “ dissociation ” common in highlystrung persons, often of brilliant attainments? Some trace .it to organic disorders or to. mental stress. Spiritualists say it the “poltergeist”—mischievous spirits.' .Whatever the cau.se, sleep-walkers, normal people, when awake, will do as queer things as the nursemaid who took the money. Not so long ago a Warrington motorist, driving home in the early hours of the morning, saw what looked like a ghost in the middle of the road. It turned out to be a man clad only in his shirt. The motorist got out and tried to awaken him. ■ He failed, but was able to turn the_ man in the direction of a police station. Ultimately the man collapsed. It was found he had walked several miles, sound asleep, in his bare feet. One night, the skipper of an Aberdeen trawler, while far out at sea, saw something that made his hardened skin turn goosey. In the, dim light of. a lamp ho saw a naked man, dripping wet, clamber oyer the stern of the boat and disappear into the fo’c’sle. He stalked the “merman” and found him to be a member of his own crew, who had risen from his bunk, walked to the edge of the boat, and presumably dived overboard. The shock of the cold water awoke him, and he ivas just able to seize a hawser and pull himself aboard again. . “ Ghosts ” seen in lonely roads may frequently be sleep-walkers in their night attire whom witnesses arc too nervous to approach. Some time ago a woman sleepwalker in America was shot dead by a scared villager who thought he was laying a phantom. A superstition that to waken a sleepwalker means death to him is not well founded, though disturbance before the “action dream” has run its ■ course usually means a shock to the nervous system. . A puzzling point in somnambulism is that the sense of touch is nearly always retained, and that of hearing quite often; but that it is only in the rarest cases that vision is preserved, though the sleeper’s eyes may be wide open.