U.S. Map Shows Nightmares by State: Murder, Falling, Personal Attacks

Nightmares, the bane of our eight hours of sleep. They cause us to wake up with racing hearts and full sweat beads running down our face. And this infographic breaks down the most common nightmares in your state — albeit, with sketchy cartography and statistics, which we’ll get into below.

The nightmares are grouped into basic categories, ranging from paralysis, teeth falling out, to being physically attacked. Looking at the map, the coastal states tend to dream of falling. This makes some sense, given that water is usually on the other end of the fall in nightmares. Oklahoma, as part of Tornado Alley, rightly fears natural disasters.

North Dakota, we’re raising our eyebrows at you. If murder is the most common nightmare in your state, is there something you all need to come clean about? It’s not like homicide is a huge issue in the Peace Garden — their murder rate in 2016 was a solid 2 percent, putting it in the bottom four of least murderous states in the US.

The survey was conducted by Eight Sleep, a mattress company. It surveyed 1,000 of its customers about their nightmares, and created this map from that data as bit of Halloween fun — the company says it’s not intended to be scientific.

State surveys like this are fun to look at but because they involve such geographically specific data, they’re prone to criticism over accuracy and methodology. Look at the now-infamous fast food map that everyone on the internet was mad about for a few hours. The Ringer called it a “dumb internet map with incendiary falsehoods is coming for all of us.” The criticisms of that map are the exact same ones about this one — lack of academic rigor, zero information about methodology, and quantified data that is impossible to replicate, given a specious sample size.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with harmless pseudoscience, as long as we recognize that this is the statistical equivalent of gummy bears. Wisconsin, we think, has the most practical nightmares of all, American politics in 2017 has become a national nightmare for many.

Here’s the most common nightmare by state map:

And here’s how the company says men and women responded differently, with women — just the 1,000 customers of Eight Sleep — reporting they have nightmares of infidelity some 38 times more than men did:

What’s worse that work keeping you up at night? That’d be actual nightmares that involve work (if this is happening to you, pleae find a different job):

Finally, the company’s survey respondents reported that anxiety is the dominant feeling (when compared to confusion and fear) that results from a nightmare: