20 Wild and Crazy Sleepwalk Stories

Sleepwalking is often dismissed as nothing serious and seen as something funny that happens to a handful of people. Waking up and not remembering how you got somewhere is treated lightly by most. Anyone who has seen Step Brothers understands that sleepwalking is often the butt of jokes. And while there are many funny sleepwalk stories, it is in fact a very serious disorder impacting thousands of people around the world.

Sleepwalking is a type of sleep disorder known as parasomnia. There are several different types of parasomnia (including night terrors), but most people who suffer from this condition find that when they are in a deep sleep, they will get up and move around their bedroom or home. For most, it only lasts a few minutes and might involve the sleepwalker sitting up in bed before laying back down, but others can be sleepwalking for up to 30 minutes, which is when trouble can occur. Sleepwalk stories tell of people acting out normal activities while asleep, such as getting dressed or moving furniture. Worse stories include people engaging in sexual behavior or urinating in their homes. 

While there are preventative measures, such as putting alarms on doors and not living in high-rise apartments, for the most part, there’s no actual cure for sleepwalking. Many people who suffer from this condition jump on the internet to share their stories and get support from fellow sleepwalkers. Because of this, there are lots of sleepwalking stories floating around the web, especially on platforms such as Reddit where there are subreddits dedicated to sleepwalking stories. To give you an idea of just how insane some of the things people get up to when in a deep sleep, below is a collection of crazy sleepwalk stories that will make you realize sleepwalking isn’t as funny as it sounds. 

1. Pissing in the Garage

“One time, I was in the kitchen for a late-night snack, and I heard my brother coming up the stairs… He always squints really hard when he’s sleepwalking, so I knew what was going on.” But then his brother went into the garage, pulled down his pants, and took a piss on the hood of their dad’s car.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Merry-go-round,” my brother replied. Then, without pulling up his pajama bottoms, he walked back to bed.” – u/JiveTurk3y

2. Found Naked

“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

3. Spring Cleaning

“My mom woke up to find me in my underwear with the vacuum cleaner, steering it back and forth over the carpet, not even on, electrical cord still wound tight,” – u/WhatTheTruck

4. Washing Day

“I woke up late one night with all my sheets balled up in my arms and repeatedly crashing into my bedroom door. Apparently, I was trying to take the sheets to the laundry room.” – u/_NW_

5. Bloody Foot

“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.

6. Heading To CVS

“My girlfriend stopped me early one morning as I was heading out the door, car keys in one hand, my dog’s bed in the other, wearing just a t-shirt and underwear. Apparently, I was on my way to CVS because our dog told me she needed some snacks.” – ajhpants2

7. Tinfoil Problems

My wife woke up in the middle of the night to find me slowly walking out of our bedroom.

Wife: “Are you OK? What are you doing?”

Me: ‘There’s somebody downstairs in the kitchen, unrolling the tinfoil.'”

Wife: “Ooooo-Kay. What’s your plan?”

Me: “I’m going to stop them.”

Wife: “Shall we get a bit more sleep, then both go down together?”

Me: “OK.”

And I went back to bed. Subsequent investigations found a small plastic bag on the floor, near my head, being rustled by the movement of the curtain, the window being open. – u/BetamaxTheory

8. Apples

“I don’t really like apples. So, for about a week my husband keeps finding half-eaten apples and telling my daughter to stop leaving half-eaten apples around. She denied it was her the whole time and we just kept on her. One night my husband took a pretty damning video. I come wandering out of our room and make a beeline to the fridge. I grab an apple and sit on the couch and DEVOUR it, then drop it in his lap and fall back on the couch, still out cold. It’s an extremely unflattering video and has provided us and a ton of friends hours of laughter.” – brookelulehaus 

9. Video Games

“I fell asleep on the couch while my boyfriend was playing video games. Apparently, I walked into the bathroom turned on the hot water in the sink and filled a cup, then walked into the bedroom and asked how his game was going. He said he was getting slaughtered. I laughed and said ‘it’s about to get worse’ and threw the water at my boyfriend.” – u/labeille87

10. Fingers in Mouth

“My boyfriend woke me up the other day by gently putting his fingers in my mouth, and I kept moving my head out of the way until eventually, I was like, ‘Can you stop that?’ He then sounded genuinely upset and asked why I woke him up as he was having a really nice dream about feeding a deer. Brilliant.” – u/hoeka

11. Postcodes and Dogs

“Sigh; my boyfriend either recites postcodes (delivery driver) or calls the dog in his sleep. So either he is mad no one is responding to his postcode nonsense, or I get a flying 30-kilogram dog to my body.” – u/quackcurls

12. Sexy Time

“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 this 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.

13. Grocery Store Exit

“My wife started screaming one night that she was lost in the local grocery store and that no matter where she went she couldn’t find her way out. I asked her, has she tried checking out at the cash registers. She then looked at me and said in her most sincere voice, ‘That’s why you are the smartest person I know.’ And she rolled over and fell back asleep.” – u/thud4444-1

14. Lesbians

“My girlfriend once yelled in her sleep, ‘no No NO you SPUNKY LESBIAN.’ I’m a dude, still tease her about it.” – u/TerryTheOctopuss

15. Donkey Kick

“My wife was mumbling a lot and suddenly shouted, ‘DONKEY KICK!’ as she kicked me in my shin, so that was fun.” – u/Mike-RO-pannis

16. Poo Shoe

“I pooped in the hallway closet in a shoe. I’m not sure how much time passed before my dad opened the closet door and found my little present.” – nowmaddiesays

17. Pecan Pie

“He got up, went into the kitchen, and ate one bite of a mini pecan pie – no fork, just a straight bite – then apparently remembered he hates pecan pie and left it stacked neatly on the little box. Another time, he sat up and stared straight ahead at the wall, and didn’t respond to me asking what was wrong. He stood up, walked into the wall, then stood there like he was contemplating the barrier. He just backed up exactly as he came, sat down, and swung back into bed as if nothing happened. That was creepy.” – u/Metal___Barbie

18. Sandwich Lover

“When I sleep walk I commonly do the same thing, make a really nice sandwich then leave it on the floor and go back to bed. But here are some of the strangest I’ve had over the past few years.

• Had a bed headboard screwed to the wall, ripped it off, and severely injured my wrist.
• Put all of my furniture on my bed because I was convinced the room was flooding and slept on top of my mirror.
• Thought there was a rotting, decayed corpse laying in bed beside me, so I screamed at it for a while telling it to leave.”  – u/Yaxax

19. Leprechauns

“My boyfriend had his tonsils removed awhile back, so he was on some pain-reducing drugs that kept him sedated and, in his words, made him ‘a fucking dumbass.’ He had a conversation in his sleep with me about how I shouldn’t trust leprechauns because they conned him out of gold coins by giving him foil-wrapped chocolate coins instead. Also, he said not to trust Irish people, because they were honorary leprechauns.” – u/Anterobang

20. Lost Arm

“He started shouting that he couldn’t feel his left arm. I pointed out he was pinching his pillow, not his arm. He then freaked out that he had lost his arm. I pointed out his arm was UNDER his pillow. He said OK and started snoring. It took me another hour to get back to sleep. He didn’t wake up at all.” – u/roc-and-soxs