'Sleep Violence' Sufferer Attacked Wife Nightly

ByABC News via logo
April 29, 2006, 1:18 PM

April 30, 2006 — -- When Ann Voegtli married her husband Ron 30 years ago, she thought he was the man of her dreams -- until his dreams began to put her in danger.

"It's strange that during the day he's this kind of fun, caring person, and by night he's like this monster," Ann said.

Ron, whose condition is now under control, has a 30-year history of sleep violence, acting out his night terrors without restraint.

"Many times I thought I was crazy," Ron said. "Every night I went to bed, I knew I was going into some kind of a hell."

Ron would usually jump out of bed in a rage about one hour after he fell asleep.

"His eyes are glassy, he's running around frantically; he's screaming," Ann said.

"I would just be running, running up, jumping up, going through the rooms of the house," he said, "just looking in a closet, and maybe grabbing a knife or a bat. I was mostly running from somebody -- somebody's in the house -- looking for a weapon to protect us."

"I would stand back in the room," Ann said. "I don't want him to hurt me."

But Ann did get hurt several times when Ron hit her in bed.

"The worst had to be the night he was strangling me," she said. "He thought someone was in our apartment strangling me. But actually in reality he had his hands around my neck."

Ann screamed so loudly that Ron finally snapped out of it.

He sometimes remembered his aggression the next morning, but that didn't help him stop it at night. So he tried to get help.

"I went to a psychologist," he said. "I went to a hypnotist. I went to two sleep disorder centers. I went to a sociologist. Nobody was able to help me."

Finally, Ron was introduced to Dr. Carlos Schenck at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorder Center. Schenck prescribed anti-convulsant drugs, which helped get Ron's condition under control.

"He may have been running around the house like a wild maniac, but he's not a mental patient at all," Schenck said. "In the sleep lab he demonstrated violent behavior during the delta stage of non-REM sleep. That is the stage where there is an alarm ringing in the nervous system of spontaneous, precipitous arousal that sets you off."