Across the course of lockdown, my team and I designed a questionnaire with the intent of exploring the common phenomenon of sleep travel. In short, whether people unintentionally embark on some form of journey in their dreams and, if so, where they travel to. The purpose of our study was wholly recreational, or so we told ourselves. In hindsight, it’s clear that we were all struggling to find our own escape in the claustrophobic clutches of our flat/makeshift laboratory. My own amended hypothesis would be along the following lines: exploring the midnight sanctuary’s of others would make our isolation more bearable. Laughable now, I know, but we were so desperate for any form of peace.

With one hundred participants completing our test over a twenty-four hour period, it didn’t take us long to collate the results. We were surprised, and foolishly filled with hope, when over 70% of our test subjects described instances of walking through dreamscapes in their sleep. When questioned about their nightly escapades, dreamers often reported having experienced unearthly feeling of complete and utter weightlessness. Participants used a variety of vivid images to describe this fascinating parallel: ranging from comparisons to a limply hanging Christmas tree ornaments, a clear indication of the individual’s vulnerability, to traumatising episodes of imagined, yet visceral impalings on sharpened spears. Few of these were as calming as we had predicted.

The most unusual of these images and, in my scientifically biased opinion, the most romantic, came from our youngest participant. Her age, seventeen, was written is blue byro on the correct dotted line, but the spontaneously doodled starfish and snails floating around her responses were indicative of a younger, more imaginative mind. She was our first sleep swimmer. Her response was as follows:

“When I close my eyes, I allow thoughtless currents to transport my consciousness to the centre of a fifty metre swimming pool buried in the Swedish Alps. My eyes are always closed, but I know I’ve arrived because I smell the same undeniable notes. A softly humming woody sensation, probably pine. An odour vibrating at the highest possible pitch in an effort not to go unnoticed, lavender. No, camomile.

Whatever it is, I know I am there. The thoughtful directions given by the passing chlorine confirm what the pool’s humming generator has already told me. Apparently, when I reach the centre of the artificial ocean, I will be able to see the surrounding mountains, the falling snow, the navy sky. They are natives here, so when they say that the stars are watching me through the pool house’s glass roof, I believe them. The say the ceiling is just opaque enough to reflect my sleeping self, placing me among the stars. With my starfish sleeping position, I could be a star.

I’ve always get the same sensation of having been there before, but I’ve never been on a plane. In another life perhaps.”