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STEPHEN KING (b. 1947)

There is some evidence that the American horror writer experiences the phenomenon of lucid dreaming – for example, it is the major theme of his novel, Insomnia (1997), an extraordinary tale about an insomniac who begins to see brilliant auras, and then more disturbing hallucinations, as his condition deteriorates.

Another clue that Stephen King may be a lucid dreamer is how he finds inspiration for his novels. In an interview with UK reporter Stan Nicholls on the inspiration for Misery (1987), King said:

"Like the ideas for some of my other novels, that came to me in a dream. In fact, it happened when I was on Concord, flying over here, to Brown's. I fell asleep on the plane, and dreamt about a woman who held a writer prisoner and killed him, skinned him, fed the remains to her pig and bound his novel in human skin. His skin, the writer's skin. I said to myself, 'I have to write this story.' Of course, the plot changed quite a bit in the telling. But I wrote the first forty or fifty pages right on the landing here, between the ground floor and the first floor of the hotel."

And in an interview with Naomi Epel, King said:

"I've always used dreams the way you'd use mirrors to look at something you couldn't see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that's what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people's minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language."

Dreams were also said to inspire King’s novel, Dreamcatcher (2001). In 1999 a minivan smashed into King as he walked down a country road near his home in North Lovell, Maine. Thrown 14 feet, King suffered a shattered leg and collapsed lung. He endured three operations and spent months recuperating. That's when the dreams really started coming. Speaking on how his dreams transfer into storylines for his novels, King stated:

"They don't always translate well...But when it's good, it's like your eyeballs turned right around 180 degrees and you're touring your own head."