I’ve had insomnia and night terrors for years.
During my first night terror, my mum found me standing to attention by the mattress I had pulled off my own bed and propped against the wall. I was about 15 at the time, and when she asked me what I was doing, I replied, eyes wide open: “I’m taking orders.” Because, as far as I was concerned, there was a huge commanding officer screaming in my face, Private Benjamin-style, but in our Great Yarmouth council estate flat.
The night terrors came and went, depending on tiredness and stress. I alarmed and amused a roomful of women in a hostel dorm in Moscow by claiming there were giant spiders crawling through the room and up the walls. For days afterwards, when I came in, they would all make spider gestures with their fingers and laugh. I laughed along, though I found it increasingly less funny.
When I was with my first partner, she found me kneeling at the foot of the bed, completely naked. I told her: “I’m just petting this lovely pony.” And, indeed, in one of my nicer night terrors (a night blessing?), a very tiny, glowing white pony had come to visit me.
This is all to say that I do not sleep well. And I’ve really never slept well, except in the months after my baby was born, when I slept like a dead log, because my body was so sleep-deprived. But, usually, my mind and body need to be cajoled and caressed, romanced even, into easing themselves into the subconscious state. They call it “sleep hygiene”, but I think that’s too clinical a term for the sort of wooing that goes on between me and the part of myself that I would like to take to bed with me.
My night-time routine involves a lavender Epsom salt bath, Chinese skullcap and magnesium capsules, and a sleepy tea with valerian and orange blossom. Next, a pillow spray liberally applied to the very specific and expensive pillow I got for my 40th birthday, then reading until I feel my eyes become heavy, before plugging in a podcast on a 60-minute timer.
Soothing crime podcasts to fall asleep to
I have several regular bedtime podcasts now, but they all have something in common: they are mostly narrated by women with soft, soothing voices, or occasionally by a gravelly-voiced American man who sounds friendly in a sort of grandfatherly way, like he would come to fix your boiler at 2am. They are also all bloody, gory, true crime podcasts.
Perhaps my first was actually Criminal, a podcast that spans the spectrum of true crime, from political activism to serial killers. This was the ideal gateway to the harder stuff, because the host, Phoebe Judge, has a voice like a warm hug, a hot chocolate and the softest sweater someone’s ever loaned you, all in one. You don’t really realise what you’re listening to until you’re fully gripped by the narrative. As an aside, she also does one for the more squeamish called This Is Love, which is also excellent and comes with that silky, soporific voice.
New to Criminal? Start with these:
A Bump in the Night, 48 Hours, Robert Smalls, Palace of Justice, How to Sell a Haunted House, & Money Tree.
Find them all here: https://t.co/rjCusObFX6 pic.twitter.com/2sUcRpMQSO— Criminal (@CriminalShow) February 7, 2022
Another regular podcast on my rotation is RedHanded, presented by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire. It’s incongruous, and their language could make a fishwife raise an eyebrow, but it’s also like spending time with two of your smartest, funniest pals.
And I never miss an episode of either Voices for Justice or Disappearances, both hosted by Sarah Turney. In the first season of Voices for Justice, she investigates the disappearance of her own sister, and everything she produces and presents is sensitively handled, intelligent and with victims’ lives and justice, not sensationalism, as the focus.
Why is true crime comforting?
I know it doesn’t make sense but, really, true crime podcasts are the only thing that can get me to sleep. Of course, I’m not the only person who is captivated and soothed to sleep by the genre. And it doesn’t surprise me, either, that studies show around 61% of true crime podcast listeners are women.
My suspicion is that the world can be a scary place and that true crime narratives are a way of containing that fear. The cases covered are almost always a few years old, if not from the 1990s and early noughties and, no matter how unimaginable the crime is, they are neatly wrapped up by a soothing voice in around 60 minutes. Bad things packed up and consigned to the past. It is both a form of exposure therapy and a sort of containment, like Joey from Friends putting his scary book in the freezer.
I have tried to wean myself off true crime, hypothesising, not incorrectly, that perhaps someone who suffers from night terrors shouldn’t listen to murder being poured into their ears every night before they surrender to the vulnerability of subconsciousness. But nothing, not celebrity gossip nor personal development, has kept me gripped and allowed me to fall asleep.
So, it might be grisly, it might be morbid, but I’m glad to have true crime helping me to finally get some sleep. Tonight? I’m listening to The Press and Journal’s homegrown true crime podcast, Hunting Mr X. It’s got drugs, an undercurrent of violence and suspense… I’ll sleep like a dream.
Kerry Hudson is an Aberdeen-born, award-winning writer of novels, memoirs and screenplays
