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by Sophie Freeman for MailOnline
Thoughts of things that go ‘bump in the night’ can often cause problems for children at bedtime.
Now researchers have found that adults, too, can have sleep issues linked to a belief in the paranormal.
Psychologists studied nearly 9,000 people and found those who believed in any type of paranormal phenomena, such as ghosts or mediumship, reported taking longer to fall asleep, and sleeping for less time.
As well as poorer overall sleep, those who specifically thought that near-death experiences were evidence for life after death were also more likely to have experienced sleep paralysis, the team from Goldsmiths University of London found.
Sleep paralysis is a temporary inability to move that typically occurs when waking up, and some people who experience it may perceive it as evidence for the paranormal, the researchers said.
Professor Chris French, one of the authors of the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Sleep Research, said: 'The correlation between the belief that near-death experiences provide evidence in support of life after death and the experience of sleep paralysis rests upon the belief that consciousness or, if you prefer, "the soul" can become separated from the physical body.
'Sleep paralysis, in common with near-death experiences, sometimes involves out-of-body experiences.
'Anyone who has had an out-of-body experience may therefore be more inclined to believe in a soul that perhaps may survive bodily.
'Also, if an individual hallucinates what they perceive to be spiritual beings, such as ghosts or demons, during an episode of sleep paralysis, this may increase their level of belief in spirits in general, including their belief in a personal
