I was pleasantly surprised by this Radio Netherlands special on night paralysis and night frights. It starts off fairly typical and dry, but as soon as it goes to tape and people start talking about their dream experiences, I was hooked. The sound design -- mostly scary music and sound effects -- threatened to get cheesy, but instead worked throughout.

The bulk of the 29 minute show is an interview with a dream / brain scientist who's explaining what we know about dreams, nightmares and night paralysis (not very much, lots of speculation) and he's interesting enough. But the best part are people describing their horrible dreams and what they've been through. Creepy!

Also, towards the end, the doc talks about the cultural implications of these specific types of nightmares and that's fascinating. Surprisingly, however, there's very little discussion of the spiritual aspects of these types of night terrors.

This show would be great to program around Halloween. Or, if I were a program director, I'd put it on randomly at like 3:30 am -- just to let all those lying awake in terror know that they're not alone out there.