27 Insane Facts About Dreams You Never Knew

27 Insane Facts About Dreams You Never Knew

Insane Facts About Dreams: Can dreams actually kill you? Has anyone ever dreamed exactly what will happen in the future? Or, did you hear about the guy who brutally axe-murdered his wife and mother-in-law and blamed ostriches and dreams? These are just some of the fantastic things we’ll talk about today in a video that will cover every facet of the wonderful and often wacky world of sleep.

1. Insane Facts About Dreams

Unlike many of the dreams we’ll discuss today, people who’ve had so-called “wet dreams” don’t usually complain about them when they wake up from their never-world sexual adventure. Wet dreams are actually very common. The Journal of Sexual Medicine said about 83% of males will have one in their lives, that is, one ending with what’s called nocturnal emission.

Men of all ages have them, but puberty is a common time since a boy’s sexual hormones are raging. Studies show in some countries, boys have them more, such as in Indonesia, where 97% of guys in the study said they’d had at least one mission emission dream before they were 24.

In another study titled “Frequency of nocturnal emissions and masturbation habits among virgin male religious teenagers,” it was shown that some boys refrained from spanking the monkey due to religious concerns. Still, of those boys that said they were against such DIY, about 70% of them had a wet dream. Like it or not, at some point in a male’s life, nature will likely run its course during the night. Why? Your brain and body want it to happen.

What about women? 49. Women, too, will feel the delights of imagined sex during slumber. It was reported in the Journal of Sex Research that 85% of women had had a nocturnal orgasm by the age of 21.

While women don’t produce semen, there can still be discharge, so it’s still a wet dream – just not as messy. Around 8% of male and female dreams at any age have a sexual theme in them. A study showed that 4% of sex dreams for men and women ended with an orgasm. Still, research shows males tend to have wet dreams more than females. It’s been happening since history was first recorded.

2.Insane Facts About Dreams

In the Book of Deuteronomy, there’s a passage about soldiers having wet dreams. It says, “When you are encamped against your enemies, then you shall keep yourself from every evil thing. If any man among you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he shall go outside the camp.” Poor guy.

He was told he’d have to go outside and clean himself and not come back until morning. In many religions back in the day, wet dreams were seen as a kind of impurity. Ancient Buddhist scripture talks about how “demons who either suck your energy or make love to you in your dreams.” In the medieval bestseller on witches and all things evil, Malleus Maleficarum, the author issued grave warnings to the people of the 15th century.

He talked about “succubi,” female demons that liked to collect the semen of men they’d seduced while the guys were sleeping. The male equivalent is incubi, which the author said could make women pregnant. As some of you probably know, during the European witch trials between the 14th and 17th centuries, many thousands of women were tortured for allegedly being witches. It’s thought between 200,000 and 500,000 were executed.

In some cases, the women became pregnant and were accused of having sex with an incubus. That happened in Ireland in the 14th century to a woman named Dame Alice Kyteler. The records show she was accused of mixing up rooster’s blood and mixing the intestines with “spiders and other black worms like scorpions.” The text says, “She had boiled this mixture in a pot with the brains and clothes of a boy who had died without baptism and with the head of a robber who had been decapitated.”

It says she summoned demons, with whom, says the text, “she permitted herself to be known carnally and that he appeared to her either as a cat, a shaggy black dog or as a black man.” She escaped to England, but her servant, Petronilla de Meath, who could also apparently fly and summon up demons, was tortured and burned at the stake. To sum up, at certain times in history, sleeping and what happens during sleep have been related to all things evil. More dark stories later, but here are a few fast facts.

3.Insane Facts About Dreams

The average person has about three to five dreams per night. Even if you think you never dream, you do, but you don’t remember them.

4.Insane Facts About Dreams

One of the annoying things with dreams is even if they are action-packed and we wake up with some parts of them in our heads, we forget them very easily. This is all about brain chemicals. Studies have said that when we’re dreaming, there’s a lack of the hormone norepinephrine in the cerebral cortex part of the brain, and this might be why we forget our dreams so fast. Other studies showed it might also have something to do with the density of the medial prefrontal cortex.

It’s all a bit complicated, and the science isn’t set, but basically, chemical changes during sleep matter. There’s also the fact that the hippocampus, a part of the brain crucial for making long-term memories, is not fully switched on when we wake up. But, if you try really hard to remember the dream as soon as you awake, the hippocampus might spring into action, and you’ll remember the dream for a long time to come. In those first few seconds, you have to recount the dream to yourself. Otherwise, it might just drift from your memory.

5.Insane Facts About Dreams

We have our deepest dreams during a period of sleep called REM, which means rapid eye movement. When we sleep, we start with light sleep. We then move on to deep sleep and, after that, to full deep sleep. Stage 4 is REM sleep. Your eyes start to move rapidly. Your breathing becomes irregular, and your heart rate rises. A full cycle is between 90 to 120 minutes.

6.Insane Facts About Dreams

In studies, when people have been awoken during REM sleep, they usually say they have been dreaming in color, but in one study, 12% of people stated all their dreams were in black and white. People over the age of 55 seem to dream in black and white more often. The researchers said this might be because they watched black-and-white TV as kids.

7.Insane Facts About Dreams

Blind people dream. This was put to the test when a study featuring 15 blind adults and their 372 dreams over a two-month period was recorded. They dreamed a lot about animals, especially their service dogs. They also dreamed a lot about eating. A bad dream for them was often about movement or travel, which is not surprising, given how difficult getting around can be. Blind folks’ dreams are normally less visual. If they’ve been blind all their lives, they only dream about taste, smell, sound, and touch.

A blind film critic named Tommy Edison explained, “If I were to meet you in a dream, what I would know is your voice, maybe what perfume you’re wearing.” He said he might dream about someone by how they felt when he touched them.

8.Insane Facts About Dreams

Animals also dream, or at least many of them do. A recent scientific study scanned the brains of rats while they were asleep and also while they were awake, enjoying a spin on the rat wheel. The researchers noted how the same brain patterns on the wheel were sometimes present in dreams. Another rat study revealed, “Rats dream about their tasks during slow wave sleep.” One of the best studies done on dreams was with cats.

As you might know, when we dream, we are basically paralyzed. That’s to protect us, as you really don’t want to act out your dream of, say, having a fight or making love. Your brain switches off the receptors that make your muscles kick into action to stop you from doing anything stupid. Scientists in the cat study removed part of the cats’ brain that switches off muscles in their sleep. When the cats were asleep, instead of lying there paralyzed, they started fighting whatever enemy they were up against in the dream. They also made movements as if they were jumping, hunting, and grooming. Talking about sleep paralysis, this next story is scary.

9.Insane Facts About Dreams

One of the Infographics Show researchers said he often thinks he’s woken up. He can hear the fan go woosh, woosh, woosh. He can sense his girlfriend. He knows he’s awake, but he can’t move at all. He panics, shouts, and tries to grab his girlfriend, and nothing happens. That’s sleep paralysis. The worse thing is since your frontal lobes, the so-called executive suite, isn’t working, you tend to panic. You think it’s real. Between eight and fifty percent of people will experience this in their lives. Maybe five percent will have it often.

It can happen because of medications, anxiety, or stress, although it’s not always certain why people have it. As you’ll see soon, not long ago, people were blaming sleep paralysis for killing people who had no obvious health problems. In short, it happens when REM sleep and waking up cross over, so you’re dreaming and awake at the same time. What’s even more trippy is it can come with sounds, like screaming, talking, or roaring sounds. But the worst is when people feel like someone is in the room with them, sometimes sitting on their chest.

They can’t move, can’t shout, and some horrible incubus or succubus is on top of them. People have been having such experiences for centuries. They’re well reported, and while scientists don’t believe in entities coming to sit on people at night, 500 years ago, things were different. Sleep paralysis entities were called demons, or in some cultures, the night hag or old hag. In just about every nation on Earth, there are stories about these things that come in the night.

Scientists say it’s just your brain acting up. Since you’re partly awake, your motor cortex fires off signals to move. Obviously, you can’t move because you’re still paralyzed in sleep. But other parts of your brain are expecting movement, so, say the scientists, your brain fills in the blanks and creates a movement. Hence, you see someone else in the room. That someone else is you. That’s one theory, anyway. Many people still believe those entities are real.

10.Insane Facts About Dreams

In the US, 2-6% of people live with nightmare disorders of some type, women more so than men. Between 8 and 30% of adults have nightmares, compared to 20 and 30% of children aged 5 to 12. But fewer people have the frightening experiences we’ll talk about next.

11.Insane Facts About Dreams

People with PTSD can have violent night terrors. They don’t want to hurt anyone, but they might by accident. Here are a few night terror testimonies we found online: “Typically, Cas will toss and turn, sometimes curling up/becoming very tense, but recently they've become rougher and more verbal, even occasionally pushing/pulling me.” “I punched my husband in my sleep and screamed, ‘I'm going to BLEEPING kill you…I have been violent on more than one occasion.”

“I just remove myself from being in bed with anyone I don’t want to kill by accident if I’m sleeping with someone.” And the BBC in 2017, “When Liz's husband, John, attacked her in his sleep and drew blood, she finally realized she could no longer share a bed with him.” Ok, but why do these things happen?

12.Insane Facts About Dreams

The BBC’s story about John and Liz described John as a gentle giant, but at some point, he kept going to bed and having violent dreams. John had no idea he was moving around when he was having dreams of fighting off tigers or, in some cases, snakes biting onto his leg. Fighting was the natural thing to do, of course, but the problem for John is he, like many others in the world, has a disorder that means his brain stem doesn’t fully make his body paralyzed in sleep. Now for some more fast facts.

13.Insane Facts About Dreams

You can dream in absolutely any position, but if you don’t want sleep paralysis, perhaps don’t sleep on your back.

14.Insane Facts About Dreams

If you play video games or eat or watch TV right before bed, you’re more likely to have an intense dream.

15.Insane Facts About Dreams

People have actually murdered other people in their dreams. We’ll take more about this later.

16.Insane Facts About Dreams

If you’ve ever woken up and felt really content for some reason, and you know it’s the dream you just had that made you feel that way, there’s a name for it: Euneirophrenia. The term was coined by an American psychologist named Dr. Mark Blechner.

17.Insane Facts About Dreams

If you want better dreams that make you feel good, try and lose the stress. Stress is one of the main factors behind crappy dreams.

18.Insane Facts About Dreams

It probably won’t come as a surprise that men tend to have more violent dreams than women. Men also dream more about other men, while women tend to have just as many dreams about both sexes. Men have more confrontations in their dreams, while women tend to have more dreams about relationships and interpersonal interactions.

19.Insane Facts About Dreams

Studies have shown that 65% of men and 70% of women report they’ve had recurring dreams.

20.Insane Facts About Dreams

We often incorporate the sounds around us into our dreams. We’re sure you’ve all dreamed your alarm clock was a different noise in your dream. Being hot or cold can also influence what kind of dream you have.

21.Insane Facts About Dreams

You don’t invent people in your dreams. All the folks that appear in your dreams are people you know or have seen before, maybe on TV, in the train station, or people you know.

22.Insane Facts About Dreams

Scientists say there’s a substance that can make you dream while you’re awake: DMT. The longer word is Dimethyltryptamine. As a part of a brew called ayahuasca, Amazonian tribes have been using DMT during ceremonies for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Only in the past few decades have Westerners, including techy people wanting inspiration and soldiers with PTSD, been going to the Amazon to take part in those sessions. The results are remarkable. But why?

23.Insane Facts About Dreams

Scientists who’ve worked with DMT explained, “We found that the states of deep immersion induced by DMT—often described by users as a 'breakthrough experience'—were paralleled by decreases in alpha brain waves as well as increases in delta and theta brain waves. This is very intriguing because we find similar changes in brain waves when people are dreaming.”

If you’ve ever taken DMT, you’ll know that even though you’re awake, you can blast off to space, or you might find yourself surrounded by cartoon animals. You can talk to toadstools or tunnel down to a hell that will scare the life out of you. These are of your own making, as are your dreams.

24.Insane Facts About Dreams

People who’ve taken ayahuasca trips have talked about overcoming years of depression or anxiety. Some of them have seen the light, even though they’ve had scary experiences. They’ve been cured. It’s hard to say how this happened. Still, it’s probably related to the same reason why researchers at Johns Hopkins said another psychedelic substance, psilocybin (magic mushrooms), also helped people to overcome chronic depression.

The same thing has happened in UK studies when chronically depressed study participants talked about having “spiritually significant experiences.” A researcher in the UK said it seems as if during these trips, the brain rewires. Depression is often like going around and around, having the same negative fears and thoughts. So, if these ‘waking’ dream states can help people, does it mean our dreams can unhook us from negative thoughts? It seems so.

A professor in the US said dreams can take a “painful sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional episodes experienced during the day.” The New Scientist wrote in 2018, “For the first time, researchers have got evidence that dreams help soothe the impact of emotional events in our lives, acting like overnight therapy.” It might not feel like it at times, but your dreams are your friend.

25.Insane Facts About Dreams

In yet another study, this time in the US, people’s nightmares were recorded. The most common nightmare in the group of 2,000 people was falling. Next up was being chased. Then came death, feeling lost, feeling trapped, being attacked, missing an important event, waking up late, someone dying, getting injured, teeth falling out, and natural disasters.

26.Insane Facts About Dreams

We don’t know exactly what these dreams mean, but we do know they’re universal. People from New Zealand to Nigeria, from Italy to India, dream about their teeth falling out. All we can do is guess regarding the meaning, but the answer is very likely insecurity. It might not sound like therapy, but at least when you wake up, you know there is something you need to resolve. You should always try to examine weird dreams. As you’ll see later, Ted Bundy’s best friend once learned a lot from a highly symbolic dream.

27.Insane Facts About Dreams

55% of people at one point in their lives will have what is called a lucid dream, and around 20 percent of people have them quite often. These happen during REM sleep when you suddenly become aware you’re dreaming. That’s very different from sleep paralysis since, in sleep paralysis, you think you’ve woken up. In lucid dreams, you’re not awake, and you know it. In a lucid dream, you could be being chased by a gorilla with 12-inch fangs that looks strangely like your grandmother.

You’re scared, but then just say to yourself, “Wait a minute, why am I running? This is a dream?” And then you wake up. Sometimes you allow the dream to continue, but you won’t be scared anymore since you have control of the story. Why lucid dreams happen is another uncertainty. Scientists have talked about brain chemical changes, brain wave activity changes, and the possibility of hybrid sleep. you can read more about it here. you can watch more this regard: