Weird Recording Alert: Tales of a Sleep-Talker

I’ve been told that when I’m under extreme stress (or under the influence of serious painkillers following, say, surgery), I talk in my sleep. I don’t say anything of any great import, but my wife tells me the stuff I say is hysterical. (She talks in her sleep, too, but only during nightmares. Listening to those noises from the far side of the bed is terrifying.)

This brings to me a weird recording alert involving the nocturnal talking of one Dion McGregor, a singer-songwriter who had much to say when he was asleep. From the BBC:

“Do you know Edwina didn’t even cry when that crocodile popped off her leg? She didn’t even cry, Edwina. She was fascinated, just fascinated. Her mother fainted dead away, and her father fainted dead away. Half the attendants fainted dead away. And Edwina just stood there and watched him chew up her leg… You know what? She said she always wanted to be Long John Silver!”

Welcome to the strange dream-world of the late Dion McGregor. By day, McGregor was an aspiring songwriter, whose Where Is The Wonder was eventually recorded by Barbra Streisand; by night, the world’s most dramatic sleep-talker.

Tapes of his darkly humorous sleep monologues were even turned into a cult 60s record. Now they have caught the attention of sleep researchers, who are excited about this unprecedented view of the mind’s strange nocturnal travels.

Read more here. And thanks to Brad for the link.