7 of the Craziest Sleepwalking Stories You'll Ever Hear

From eating cat food to driving cars to giving BJs (Photo: Shutterstock)

Imagine waking up in the morning, surrounded by evidence of a midnight snacking session you couldn’t quite recall. Or what if you came to behind the wheel of a car with no memory of how you got there? Those scenarios may sound like movie material, but for people who sleepwalk, drifting off to dreamland opens up a whole new world of outlandish actions.

What Is Sleepwalking?
The mysterious phenomenon falls under what experts call “parasomnia,” a general category for sleep disorders. “Sleepwalking occurs in stage 3, a particular type of non-REM sleep,” says Alexandre Rocha Abreu, M.D., co-director of the UHealth Sleep Center at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. You dream during REM sleep, says Abreu, while other stages are for various restorative processes that science hasn’t fully explored. Sleepwalking’s connection to stage 3 is exactly why children are much more likely to have the habit than adults. “One of the hormones that gets produced in stage 3 is the growth hormone,” says Abreu. “The older you get, the less amount of stage 3 sleep you have.” For some people, though, sleepwalking persists no matter their age.

Although experts don’t fully understand sleepwalking, they have isolated a few factors that contribute to it. “Some things that may exacerbate sleepwalking are sleep deprivation, stress, alcohol, and sleeping in an unusual environment, even if it’s safe,” says Abreu. Sleepwalking treatment generally involves taking preventative measures like putting alarms on front doors and electing not to live in high-rise buildings, although if it’s potentially harmful, a doctor might prescribe medicine to keep it at bay.

RELATED: 7 Sneaky Things That Ruin Your Sleep—and How to Avoid Them!

Seriously Crazy Sleepwalking Stories
We got five women and men who’ve dealt with sleepwalking—some as kids and others as adults—to tell us about their experiences. Abreu has also had patients who sleepwalk, and he shared some of their more memorable stories:

“Once while sleepwalking, I got a piece of glass in my foot, pulled it out, stuck a paper towel to the bleeding wound, and went back to sleep, only to find a bloody paper towel in my bed in the morning. Another time, I woke up as I was opening my front door to a very large man yelling outside my apartment. He was yelling at someone on his phone, and when I opened the door, he was like four feet from me. He just looked at me weirdly and walked away. Thank god. That was when I realized I should start dead-bolting my door at night. ” —Rebecca S.

“I was on Ambien for about two years. After a couple months, I started realizing I was doing weird stuff after I took it that I didn’t remember. Nothing serious that I knew of, but I would wake up with food all over my bed, or there would be posts I made online that I had no recollection of. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, so I stayed on it. One night, toward the end of my time on Ambien, I woke up in my car. I was in my pajamas, driving and crying. I knew where I was, but I had no idea how I got there, and I didn’t know why I was crying, either. I pulled into a parking lot and waited until I was done crying for no apparent reason, and then I just drove back home. It had to have been like 3 o'clock in the morning. I did continue to take Ambien for a little bit after that incident because my insomnia was really bad and I didn’t know what else would work. When I saw a new doctor, I told him about it, and he took me off it immediately, saying no good can come from that drug.” —Stacie C.

“I had a patient who had a sleepwalking episode in his apartment building: He went off with his friends and had a few drinks. Later that night, he was found naked in the hallway of his building. They took him to the hospital, and his blood tests showed he wasn’t intoxicated. The building said he had to see a doctor because otherwise, they couldn’t let him live there. It became a safety measure at that point.” —Abreu

RELATED: The Strange Thing That’s Disturbing Your Sleep

“Around when I was 7 or 8, I walked to the neighbor’s house in the snow and rang the doorbell. I think it was September or October in Colorado, and I was probably only wearing a flannel nightgown. I have no recollection of whether they answered the door or how I got back home. My grandmother told me it ran in the family: My uncle sleepwalked all the way to his grandparents’ home a few miles away.” —Daphne A.

“I have sexsomnia. A few times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night going down on my partner. I first found out I do this my senior year of college, when my boyfriend at the time slept over. He texted me later in the day and apologized for not wanting to have sex in the middle of the night, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Sometimes I don’t remember at all; other times I become lucid only after I am going all out. It freaked my current boyfriend out at first, but he’s since embraced it. I think he just got worried about what could potentially happen, like what I could do to him while I was asleep without any conscious knowledge. I’ve never attempted penetrative sex of any kind, so I think he’s become more comfortable as a result of that and just knowing and trusting me, too. I have also woken up to myself vigorously masturbating. I’ve noticed that has only happened when I sleep in either my briefs or boxer briefs. I don’t wear boxers, and it doesn’t really happen from any recollection when I sleep naked.” —Bobby S. M.

“On an extremely stormy night when I was 4 years old, I sleepwalked into the pantry and ate some cat food. Just a little bit. It was the crunchy kind. As soon as I tasted it, I woke up. Another time when I was around 7 was actually scary because I sleepwalked out of a tent where my family and I were camping in northern Canada. We’d spent the entire day watching bears feasting on salmon, and we heard wolves, too. I left the tent in the middle of the night and wandered toward a lit area. I climbed over a low wooden fence, then woke up.” —Logan S.

RELATED: The Amount of Sleep You Need to Keep Your Appetite Under Control

“I have a nice lady I see regularly. She’s a very healthy lady, great person, and she comes to the office because for her, sleepwalking is normal. Her husband just had an accident and became quadriplegic, so now she had this stress factor of a family member having a major accident. One day she came in and said, ‘Hey, I think I need to up my medication. I was in the middle of the street by myself in the middle of the night.’ She could have been run over by a car.” —Abreu

More from Women’s Health:

How Having Narcolepsy Messes with My Love Life

How I Got My Husband to Finally Stop Snoring

4 Things to Do Today to Sleep Better Tonight

By Zahra Barnes