The 7 Most Insane Things People Have Done While Sleepwalking

7 Climb a 13-Story Crane

One night, London police were called about a possible suicide attempt on the counterweight of a crane at a construction project, where a young girl was perched precariously 130 feet in the air. So while helpful passersby probably shouted words of encouragement or took bets on how big the splat would be, a fireman climbed the crane to try to talk her down, only to find her sleeping.

That's right, the 15-year-old girl was sleepwalking so hard she climbed a fucking crane. Anyone who's ever had a flying dream knows that your unconscious mind sometimes gets sick of being trapped on this shithole your waking mind calls the ground. Her mind just decided to do something about it. Unfortunately, when the firefighter found her, she'd sleepwalked out onto a narrow beam and was in danger of having history's most realistic "falling dream" followed immediately by the much less common "having your body collected with a huge cartoon spatula dream."

Not wanting to alarm her and make her fall, the fireman did what any responsible public servant would and went through her personal belongings. He found her cell phone and gave her folks a call. Together, they hatched a plan to get the girl to safety. The fire fighter hung up and the parents called back, waking her up.

Apparently the girl was unlike most teenagers, and did not have an indignation-seizure at the sight of a call from her parents. Two and a half hours later, she'd safely ridden a hydraulic lift back to the ground. Her parents noted to the press that she had a long history of sleepwalking and in their dry British wit wondered aloud what she'd climb up next. At which point some crude public servant nearby probably quipped, "Probably up some strange gentleman's dick, old chap!"

He of course would be referring to actual cases where sleepwalkers...

6 Have Sex With Strangers

In Australia, a middle-aged woman had a quirky habit. She would wake up in the middle of the night, leave her house and fuck various strangers. This proved once again that a woman doesn't even have to be conscious to pick up dudes.

After months of her husband waking up to find their home littered with used condoms (and once finding his snoring spouse being actively nailed by a stranger) the wife and the world's most trusting spouse decided to get medical help.

Doctors were no doubt reluctant to believe the story, most likely thinking instead that the husband was suffering from one of the world's worst cases of gullible retardation. But the couple's anxiety over the incidents paired with a detailed examination proved that, sure enough, her actions were completely involuntary and a strange mixture of hot and creepy.

The condition, called Sleep Sex because doctors aren't the most creative people in the world, is caused by an REM behavioral disorder. The part of your mind that is supposed to stop you from moving when you're dreaming doesn't kick in, thus allowing you to actually act out your dreams.

Why that seems to only manifest itself in the form of porking strangers is anyone's guess. Though it presumably is easier to act out that kind of dream as opposed to the one where you and Urkel team up for a kung fu battle with Satan.

5 Get a DUI, Pee on the Road and Assault a Cop

On a frigid Denver night in 2003, a quiet and unassuming nurse took an Ambien and went to bed. And then, shit got real.

Because traffic rules are different when you're both drunk and asleep, she wrecked her car at an intersection, figured this was now the bathroom and popped a squat on the road. Two fully awake police officers, unaware of the finer points of drunken sleep pissing, came to arrest her, so she assaulted them because fuck those guys.

Prosecutors let her plead to just a reckless driving charge, though even that seems unfair if she was unconscious the whole time. It's almost like they were unclear as to exactly what parts of the ordeal the woman was asleep for, versus the parts where she was awake and just decided to go with the flow.

Less pissy but equally angry at the waking world was British house painter Sean Joyce, who, by the way, also took an Ambien before snoozing on a flight from Charlotte, NC to London.

Drowning his sorrows for being British, Joyce then drank two glasses of wine before falling asleep. This is the point in the story where you can assume things turned out poorly. Joyce jumped out of his seat, tore off his shirt like The Hulk and stormed around the plane cabin threatening to kill himself and other passengers. Joyce claimed he remembered none of it, and got off with five days time served.

4 Gorge Oneself

When Anna Ryan inexplicably gained 60 pounds, she sought medical help. Her doctor presumably checked to make sure she hadn't taken up competitive eating--or had maybe been substituting bacon for water in most of her recipes--before finally getting the idea to set up a sleep study.

Ryan was surprised to learn she was eating while asleep, but not in the midnight snack sort of way. She actually got up in the middle of the night, grabbed a box of Little Debbies and, one by one, ate every single chocolaty, cream-filled snack cake right there in her bed, all while still asleep. If her dreams involved hot dogs on a conveyor belt we'll never know.

The condition is cleverly called "sleep eating" and it's more common in women than men--presumably because if a guy subconsciously wants to eat a whole box of Little Debbies during the day, he doesn't repress it. He just shrugs and starts unwrapping that shit.

Luckily for those who unknowingly whip up a fondue at 3am and then promptly consume it while muttering about how they're at work without pants, medication is available to sleep eaters. There are also nutritional exercises which, without looking into it any further, we figure involve squat thrusts while making sandwiches.

Though it seems like all of that is a lot of trouble when a simple refrigerator alarm would do the trick.

3 Jump Out of a Window

In 2007, a German teenager threw himself out of a fourth story window--contrary to what German windows have been designed for, which is appreciating the stark and efficient view of your surroundings. When good German citizens rushed to the scene, they noticed the 17-year-old was still sleeping. Not knocked unconscious, but peacefully asleep despite his broken arm and broken leg.

Experts believe most such incidents in that country involve people reeling back in terror from viewing German porn, but that was clearly not the case here as no one can sleep after watching German porn. No, the boy had been sleepwalking and just climbed out of the damned window, possibly while dreaming of escaping German porn.

Comedian Mike Birbiglia had a similar experience where, dreaming that a guided missile was heading for him, threw himself out of a closed window in his hotel room. Not the kind of guy who gives up easily, he actually got up from the glass-covered parking lot and started running. While asleep.

At some point, Birbiglia realized what was happening and jogged to a hospital where he had to get 30 stitches to repair the damage from the window dive. Having a good sense of humor about his condition, Birbiglia started a one-man show called "Sleepwalk With Me."

He now has to take a powerful sedative and sleeps in a sleeping bag with mittens on his hands, which will probably be fine until he dreams he's being eaten by a huge slug.

2 Record an Album

Dion McGregor wanted to be a songwriter, but his biggest contribution to music was writing a song that was once recorded by Barbra Streisand, which is like wanting to be a doctor but only having the ability to treat rectal warts. Or cause them.

Anyway, he also had the habit of talking in his sleep, and not in that way you sleepily mumble some incoherent thing when you "accidentally" touch a girl's boob at a party at 4am after everyone passed out. This guy would clearly and succinctly narrate his dreams in a conversational tone.

His roommate, being a complete dick, decided to record the darkest parts of McGregor's psyche for shits and giggles. Together they released the album because it was the 60s and people just did stuff like that.

The risque stuff was recently released by Torpor Vigil Records, and you can catch some of McGregor's more eloquent somniloquy prose on his MySpace page. But be forewarned, this audio is not for those at work or the easily influenced. McGregor detailed the finer points of shoving fruit up one's ass (or other orifices depending on your gender) and swinging from boobs like Tarzan.

All judgment aside, who amongst us hasn't had dreams about jamming a mango up someone's ass?

1 Commit Many Horrible Crimes

We have previously chronicled the story of Kenneth Parks, a man who committed a brutal murder, then claimed he was asleep when he did it. This defense, already seeming pretty retarded on the surface, gets stupider when you realize the murder required him to walk to his car, start it and drive 14 miles to the victim's house. All while asleep.

Yet, when experts were brought in, they agreed with him. The man was not only acquitted, but recently ran for his local school board.

But Parks is far from the only one to use both the "I did it all in my sleep!" defense, and prove it to be true. In fact, it's a tradition that goes back more than 150 years.

There was a case back in the 1870s where a man at a hotel drew a gun, screamed "HOO-WEE!!!" over and over again, then shot a hotel employee dead. He was convicted, but got it overturned when he convinced a jury he had been asleep the whole time.

But the strangest case is also one of the first. In 1846, Albert Tirrell nearly beheaded a prostitute in Boston, set fire to the freaking brothel, then fled to New Orleans... all while asleep.

That's what he claimed, anyway. Again, at what point did he wake up? During the murder? The fire? The trip to the Big Easy? The argument that it had all been one, big, sleepy misunderstanding was strong enough that the court acquitted him.

Yeah, we're thinking courts were way more trusting back then.

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And check out some awesome things you can make your brain do while asleep, in 5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness. Or, for our criminal readership, check out some other defenses you might need in court, in The 7 Most Baffling Criminal Defenses (That Sort of Worked).

And stop by Cracked.com's Top Picks to see what Swaim does in his sleep.

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