An Introduction to Sleep Stories
I was seven or eight when I woke up one Christmas morning to a boxed set of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. I remember sitting down to read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe straight away, surrounded by torn wrapping paper in the twinkling glow of our giant plastic tree.
It was the first time I finished a “grown up” book in one day. I couldn’t put it down. I was transported by my imagination to a world I hadn’t even realized I’d been longing for. A way to leave this reality and walk into a magical forest full of animals, myth, and magic. Even better, it was a magical world that needed the explorer’s intervention.
I think those books were the first time I realized a girl can choose a magical life, even if it only exists in her head. That was enough for me. Enough to try and find my own portal to a snowy forest with a lamppost, just past the fur coats.
Stories have guided me through my life. They’ve lead me to Narnia and back again. They have eased fears and fueled dreams. And occasionally, stories put me to sleep. Because a few years ago I learned there are people crafting little spells in the form of short descriptive fiction. These short stories lull the listener into a peaceful sleep.
It’s basically a magic trick. When you can’t stop thinking about bills, arguments, and that stupid out-of-pocket thing you said last week in the checkout line… That same mind can’t focus on stress while a calm narrator explains something in great detail with zero consequence. It just works.
For example, you can’t worry about the mortgage at 11PM when someone is explaining how shagbark on a hickory lifts like feathers in a light spring wind. Not if you have the kind of brain that is very good at visualizing. It’s a kind of drifting hypnosis, a mental diversion.
I’d like to share one of my favorite stories that has helped me fall asleep for well over a decade now. It’s about a miserable autumn night in a hard rain, in some unspecified time in history that feels more like a medieval realm than a modern city. If I did my job, it works in minutes.
Sleep stories are like D&D setups, plots you are thrown into like a dream. But instead of puzzles and combat, it’s a bath of descriptions. Did you know writers can whip up comfort for you on demand like a batch of warm cookies? And if you’re into a life of farming, nature, and long walks - you’re going to love not hearing the end of this story.
How to Use Sleep Stories
The way you use a Sleep Story is to press play right at the moment you close your eyes. Your teeth are brushed, your skincare routine complete, your eye mask positioned and you’re ready to pass out. If you’re sleeping alone, I find that a phone speaker on a nightstand is ideal. If you have a partner that doesn't want any disruption, use well-fitting earbuds.
Listen and imagine—with as much richness and detail as possible—the experience I am reading aloud. Feel the ache in your muscles from the long journey. See the giant maple tree light up in a flash during a thunderstorm, it's two lanterns swaying in the wind suspended on long ropes. Feel the biting wind, see the wood grain in the thick plank floors, smell the sour mud, reach out and feel the wet flank of your horse. The better you are at imagining the more enjoyable this portal will be.
And if you are horrible at visualizing things mentally, then I suggest listening to my bedroom voice and accept that whatever you are worried about isn’t being solved in the minutes between laying in bed and falling asleep. Give yourself permission to release those fears for a few hours rest to better tackle them in the morning.
Note: I have recorded this audio so it starts with just the story. The reason being that if you want to listen to it again, you don’t need five minutes of this exposition beforehand.
(Audio File Starts Here)
The Barn
It’s been a hard day of walking and you’re cold and wet. It’s the end of autumn and the trees are barren, save for the last holdouts. Those few remaining leaves wave above you like flapping pennants as you trudge along the muddy forest road.
It’s been five hours since sunset on this blustery October night. Steady rain has been falling since noon. You’ve long since unmounted your horse. Instead of riding you lead, to both spare his energy and limit the discomfort from wet leather chaffing against his tired hide.
He’s a good companion, a 12-year-old black gelding you’ve traversed hundreds of miles with since you won him in a card game 4 years ago. Only 14 hands, but most of that leg and reach. You’ve ridden him 50 miles in one day without him so much as breaking a sweat, but that was on good flat roads in fair weather. This day has been 15 miles of steep, exhausting, uphill and both of you are silent, weary in ways you never thought possible.
The only spry member of your small party is the black dog that trots past both your slow feet. His size, long black coat, and prick ears made some people in the last town think he was a wolf, but he’s a large collie with only a few white hairs on the very tip of his tail. He’s been lapping from puddles and could go another fifteen miles, easy. Even through the rain you smile at his moxie, water splashing beneath his paws.
Your eyes follow his muddy prints, barely visible in the dim light of the lantern you carry. You realize he’s trotted so far ahead you’ve lost track and look up, eyes squinting through the sideways rain. Your horse shakes his coat so hard it sprays the entire road, a million reflections from the lantern light in the ruckus of raindrops. For a quarter second, all around you the droplets glow like fireflies, lighting the whole path. In the burst of stolen light you can see the outline of the black dog at the end of the road. He’s framed by an opening in the trees leading to vast field.
Your dog waits for you. You walk up to the clearing. And from your shared vantage point, just over the rise of a distant slope, you can see two glowing lights dancing in the rain like ghosts. Lightning flashes the outline of a circular barn built into the hillside. There is smoke rising from several small chimneys and a soft yellow glow behind windows.
Thunder rumbles. You made it here before the worst of it. Another flash illuminates a massive maple tree outside the barn. The naked giant is hoisting two heavy iron lanterns, that creak and sway together in the wind. They hang from a thick branch on long ropes. That was the light you first saw moving. A mountain lighthouse. You strain to listen past the wind and growling skies. You can almost make out notes of music? You catch the scent of baking bread. Your knees nearly buckle from the joy of relief.
This is the barn you were told about. You were told if you were crossing these mountains as an upright and decent traveler, you were welcome to stable your horse, get a hot meal, and sleep in the loft for a few coins.
Stories about The Barn were widespread and always, always, good. It was because The Barn was a traveler’s oasis, a much-needed respite in a stretch of dense forest that’s days travel between towns. The reputation held, because at this moment of exhaustion you have never been happier to arrive at any destination in your life.
You make your way across the open field. You walk under the King Maple and the light of the swinging lanterns washes over you. You’re so close now, but walking in that open field is like walking into angry waves. Without the protection of the trees from the forest road, the wind and rain are so powerful you have to lean into the gusts as you walk. Your dog and horse lower their heads and push forward. You notice the dog’s tail is lower.
Almost there. Almost safe.
As you and your animals approach an elderly woman’s voice calls out from behind the yellow glow of thick windows in the stone barn’s wall. She comes to the door, looking less put out than most would be at this hour.
“Who travels this late and why?”
A fair question. You’re supposed to arrive at The Barn before dark, or so the stories say. And you’re supposed to pay extra if you partake in the livery and board. You explain you’re a shepherd sent over-mountain to collect a small herd of sheep you’ve arranged to buy and herd all the way back to your farm, which is why you’re with a mount and dog, but the weather made travel harder than anticipated. You explain you are very sorry for the inconvenience, but truly need the rest, all three of you do, and you have the silver to be worth the late night interruption.
The woman looks you over and tells you it’s three silver pieces for a stall, bread, and bed. You happily hand over the coin and listen intently as she explains how to enter the first floor of the barn by walking your horse around the barn and down the hillside to the large main doors. You had not realized how large this stone barn was, or that it was three? four?! stories tall. Hard to tell in the rain, which was so heavy now that in the darkness you couldn’t see the top of the barn if you tried.
While taking in the scene, almost drunk with the promise of comfort, you can only partially pay attention as she explains where the hay and oats are, where to dry your tack. The location of grooming supplies and stable mucking policies. You half listen, half stare, mouth open and in awe at the extent of this operation. This wasn’t a barn, this was a castle. Like a tower in a story book. Like Rapunzel would let down her hair…
Your dog shakes off some rain. She looks down at him and says he’s welcome inside, but has to sleep in the same station as you and can’t be unattended. You nod. You’d laugh if you had the energy. The mere notion of a border collie leaving your side for any reason is instinctually impossible. She asks if you want hot dinner or cold? You hand over two more coins. She understands the heavy tip, and says she’ll bring over a basket in half an hour or so along with extra for the collie. You smile, knowing she can tell a sheepdog from a wolf, even in the dark. These are good people.
You walk the horse around and down along the slope of the hillside. When you arrive at the heavy oak doors, you look up. They must be ten feet tall. You aren’t sure if you knock or slide or press them to enter, but before you can reach decision they begin to slide open before you. Inside is warm light flickering from a dozen sconces. Two attendants, thick men with kind smiles, are working the heavy ropes and pulley wheel that opens them like a fortress gate.
Before you is a barn you’ve never seen the likes of before, ever. The first floor, the one built into the hillside is the only section meant for livestock. The round barn has 13 large horse stalls lining the outer walls, all with stall doors that open to the outside fields for grazing. The circle of stalls are like large pie pieces, and all meeting at the center point feeding station. This is where loose hay is dropped by the pitchfork-load from the floor above. You watch as one teenage boy feeds the entire stable in one minute, filling the center area with hay. The horses all collecting to the middle of the barn like bees drawn to the center of a flower.
You look up into the stories above, you can see now it is four. The massive stone foundation is only the first story, above is all thick planking, and it feels more like a massive ship in this weather than a barn.
The wooden stories above you also converge in a center. Since each floor of the barn mimics the layout of the stables, each new story has a wooden railing to stop farm workers from falling into the hay drop. In harvest season you know those floors are used for drying tobacco and tea, storing firewood, housing weaving and mending equipment and like that. But right now, in late fall, most of the sale crops have been sent by rail to the cities, so the empty stories are used by the road-weary instead.
Human voices, laughter, and mandolin strings pluck above you. You can see four small potbelly iron stoves up on the third floor. They are set up against the center railings on big river stones. They must be used to help dry the tobacco, but on a night like this they are used to dry travelers, their warm fires surrounded by banners of wet socks and sweaters on clotheslines to dry. In fact, looking up at stories above, It feels like you’re not in a barn, but in a side alley of some cobblestone city. But you’re not. You are in a field, hidden in a dark forest, 15 miles up a treacherous road, in the middle of a storm. You can’t wait to get your horse settled so you can head upstairs and rest.
The attendants that opened the doors see your gelding and gesture to the fourth stall around the western side of the barn. You walk the horse around and enter. It takes a few minutes to remove the wet kit and curry out the mud and grime. You take the clean wool blanket on the stall door and fit it over your boy, already happily eating out of his gravity-fed trough in the glow of the lanterns in a very clean stall. Once he’s got a full bucket of well water - you and your sheepdog head back outside to walk around the hill to the upper floor entrance where you met the keeper.
You enter the main lodging area. There are a dozen other people in their own little camps above the hay floors of the barn. The mood is like a tavern, so is the lighting. Folks rest on the wide plank floors, spread out on horse blankets like beach towels, their gear and possessions set against feed sacks, wet clothes strung and bowls of stew steaming in their thick hands.
This barn was better kept than most taverns, actually, and within a few minutes you have found a quiet corner behind a pile of hay to change out of your wet clothes and into some simple dry cotton pieces you’d kept in an oiled hide deep in your pack. The change from wet to dry is salubrious. As you walk out from behind the hay into the gathering area, the blast of warm air from the wood stoves hits you like a hug.
You nod and say hello to the strangers. Everyone seems kind, if tired and keeping to themselves. Your collie stays by your side. No one flinches at a wet dog, as everyone around looks like recently-dried dogs themselves. But all are in good spirits, because they aren’t outside anymore, in the storm, below the swinging lanterns that called them in.
You hang up your dripping clothes on some free space over the closest stove. Another traveler points to where several horse blankets, just laundered, hang off the railing like tapestries. You can see everyone has taken one as their own bedroll. Some folks have stuffed hay under theirs to make a mattress. You take one and find a corner near a smallest cannonball of a stove with a few hot coals in it. It’s near a small window and the sound of rain hitting it is soothing. You stoke the fire in the small stove with kindling and roll out the horse blanket, almost incapable of accepting this flush of luck.
As you’re getting yourself settled, your dog lays beside you and is asleep in minutes. You watch the steam rise off his fur as he finally rests, the magnitude of the day hitting. Soon you are running your hands through his dry silky fur. You’re listening to the wafting pleasant sounds of a ballad, played by the man with a mandolin in the corner. He’s three tankards in and smiling. A woman leaning over a wagon wheel can’t get enough. It must be love and you smile at the simple joy all around you.
Dinner arrives, handed over to you by the woman you met at the entrance, the owner. Her white hair tied back in long braids. She’s younger than you first thought, but clever and tough. She hands you a basket and a bottle.
Heat rises up into your hands as you grasp the handle, and you could kiss her your so happy. Inside is a brown loaf of honey bread, large as your forearm, and a big hot bowl of brown stew loaded with carrots and herbs and chunky potatoes and goat meat. There’s a wedge of cheese the size of your fist, three apples, carrots for the horse and a hot slice of apple pie. The bottle is a five-year-old port. She thanks you for your generosity, pats the dog, and says if you needed anything else at this point you were beyond her help, and she’d see you at breakfast.
You lean back against the hay, the small round stove crackling beside you. Your warm dog sighing against your thigh as you rip into the bread and dunk it into the stew. You have never tasted anything so delicious. It is fortifying and soporific at the same time. You eat slowly, as to not do yourself an injury, and the savoring is heavenly. It’s hard to believe that less than an hour ago you were ready to lay down in the mud and die, but just one lucky break in the trees later, were resting with warm food and a fire, your animals safe beside you, the storm already an afterthought as it’s happening.
You take a sip of the port. It is rich, almost thick as milk, and you feel it coat your throat as it warmly slides into your own hearth fire. The buzz hits, you bite into the pie. How could life be this delicious?
The dog wakes from the smells of warm food, and you give him a third of the loaf soaked in broth and half the cheese. He eats it in a few gulps, stretches, turns around three times in a circle and lays down beside you and the stove. He is asleep again in seconds.
Finally safe, finally warm, finally fed. You grab another horse blanket off the railing. You stuff the one you were already resting on with hay like you were passively taught. Now, outfitted with a proper bed, you crawl below the covers and pull the black dog tight against your chest. The warmth is intoxicating. The air smells of wood smoke and meat and dried sunlight. Your belly is full and you can finally allow yourself to feel every aching muscle releasing itself from a clench.
As you slowly drift off to sleep, you can hear the rain and wind against the barn. You can see the world you’d just sought shelter from, and the wildness of the storm now like a play you watch from the comfort of your elevated box seat. Out there the giant maple sways, its two lanterns dancing in the wind.
And right before you fall asleep, you think to yourself “by morning this will all be a dream and sunlight will point the path home if you have the courage to keep going.”
Goodnight, Darlin’
The Barn: A Sleep Story