A sleepwalker camper reportedly stepped off a 60-foot cliff without waking.
Twenty-seven-year-old Ryan Campbell was camping in Kentucky with friends when he fell asleep in a hammock, ABC News reports. But in the early morning, his friends saw him get up and sleepwalk off a cliff.
Fortunately, a rhododendron bush broke his fall, and the man had no life-threatening injuries, according to a report on the case on the
LiveScience Website.
Although Campbell did not know that he was a sleepwalker, "most sleepwalkers know that they sleepwalk," said Sheila Tsai, M.D., of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at National Jewish Health
hospital in Denver.
About 4 percent of people who sleepwalk in childhood will continue to sleepwalk into adulthood, Dr. Tsai said. A recent study found that about 3.6 percent of U.S. adults said they had sleepwalked in the last year.
Certain things may trigger sleepwalking, including stress, sleep deprivation, drug or alcohol use, and use of certain medications, such as antidepressants, D. Tsai said. Sleeping in a new and unfamiliar environment can also trigger sleepwalking, she added.