If you’ve ever stared at the ceiling at 3 a.m., convinced every creak in the house sounds a little too deliberate, you are not alone. The middle of the night has a strange way of turning ordinary sounds into mysteries, and for those of us who deal with insomnia, sleep can feel as elusive as Bigfoot. Every once in a while, we catch a glimpse of a solid night’s rest, but most of the time we’re left wondering where it disappeared to.
There may actually be a reason sleep and the paranormal seem to cross paths so often. Now we all know that Freddy Krueger rules this domain but we have a feeling the folks who conducted these studies considered him…we hope.
A study published in the Journal of Sleep Research examined the relationship between sleep and paranormal beliefs using survey data from 8,853 people. The research, led by Betul Rauf and a team of researchers, looked at several different aspects of sleep, including sleep duration, sleep efficiency, how long it took participants to fall asleep, and symptoms of insomnia. It also asked participants about a variety of paranormal beliefs.
The researchers found that poorer subjective sleep quality was associated with stronger beliefs in several paranormal ideas. Those included the belief that the soul continues after death, the existence of ghosts and demons, the possibility of communicating with the dead, the idea that near-death experiences provide evidence of an afterlife, and the belief that extraterrestrials have visited Earth. We thought we focused on these things because of all the horror movies, but what these scientists have put together makes a ton of sense.
And then things get particularly interesting for anyone who has ever experienced something bizarre while trying to sleep.
The study found an association between isolated sleep paralysis and the belief that aliens have visited Earth. The same paranormal belief was also associated with exploding head syndrome, a sleep phenomenon in which someone can experience the sensation of a sudden loud noise despite there being no corresponding external sound. Isolated sleep paralysis was also associated with stronger belief that near death experiences are evidence of life after death.
For the unfamiliar, sleep paralysis is that particularly unpleasant state where your brain is awake but your body has not quite gotten the memo. We’ve never personally experienced this phenomenon but have heard many stories regarding it. The INSIDIOUS franchise alone dives deep into sleep paralysis and astral projection, but when this happens, a person is conscious and unable to move, sometimes accompanied by vivid visual or auditory experiences. When you are lying there unable to move while hearing or seeing something that seemingly should not be there, it is not difficult to understand why someone might interpret the experience as something supernatural.
The researchers themselves pointed to that possibility, noting that experiences involving sounds or images during sleep could potentially be interpreted as evidence of aliens or other supernatural phenomena. They also stressed that more research is needed to understand what is actually happening.
That distinction is important because the study did not prove that insomnia makes people believe in ghosts, aliens or demons.
It found an association, so let’s call it a link, if you will.
There are several possible explanations, and the researchers noted that the relationship could be complicated. Poor sleep might influence how someone interprets unusual experiences, but paranormal beliefs could also potentially affect sleep. Someone who is already frightened by ghosts, demons or other supernatural ideas may have a harder time settling down at night. The study cannot establish which direction the relationship runs.
The researchers also found that stronger paranormal beliefs were generally associated with several markers of poorer subjective sleep, including lower sleep efficiency, longer time spent trying to fall asleep, shorter sleep duration and more symptoms of insomnia. In a separate dataset examined by the researchers, stronger belief in the existence of the devil was also associated with increased insomnia symptoms.
Interestingly, the study was not a tiny experiment involving a handful of people sleeping in a laboratory while researchers waited for someone to yell about a ghost. The primary analysis included thousands of participants, making it considerably larger than many earlier investigations into the relationship between sleep and paranormal experiences.
As of 2026, the 2023 study remains the relevant published research on this particular relationship. There has not been a newer study identified that replaces its findings or establishes that the researchers were wrong. The original paper remains published in the Journal of Sleep Research, and its authors continue to describe the underlying mechanisms as something that requires additional research.
For those of us who already spend too much time awake at night, that leaves us with an entertaining question: when something goes bump in the night, are we hearing something unusual, or are we simply very, very tired? We worked graveyard shift for over seven years, and getting sleep mattered more than most things during that time, so we can see why these studies give us a better understanding of what our minds process and how.
Considering how many horror stories begin with someone awake in a dark room at an unreasonable hour, maybe we should all try getting some sleep before investigating that noise in the hallway.