The popular Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–) partly derives its terror from its construction of a parallel universe termed the ‘Upside Down’. This alternate dimension is a site of chaos, destruction, and invasion, a space constructed in opposition to the civilization and familiarity of the small North American town inhabited by the series’ teenaged protagonists. A similar concept appears in the second season of the American series Channel Zero (2016–2018) in which an uncanny alternate universe is accessed via the ‘No-End House’; in this subverted world, people and things look the same as they do in the ‘real world’, but behave, horrifically, very differently. We borrow the term ‘Upside Down’ because the Otherness it evokes mimics the construction of Australasia as the ‘Antipodes’, a space not only geographically opposite to the northern hemisphere but, in the lingering relics of colonial discourse, culturally and philosophically opposite too. In Australia and New Zealand, such an orientalist or carnivalesque construction supposes, everything is ‘upside down’, topsy-turvy, out of place. As the travel writer Jan Morris famously wrote of the Land Down Under, ‘the water goes down the plug-hole the other way in Australia, and it really is possible to imagine, if you are a fancifully minded visitor from the other hemisphere, that this metropolis is clinging upside-down to the bottom of the earth’ (470).

Since the global outbreak of COVID-19 – ‘the most crucial health calamity of the century and the greatest challenge that humankind has faced since the Second World War’ (Chakraborty and Maity 1) – a number of sleep neurologists have reported an increase in sleep disorders associated with the pandemic. From insomnia and hypersomnia to recurrent nightmares and abnormal dreams, this surge in sleep disturbance has been coined ‘COVIDsomnia’ (Geffern qtd. in Goldfarb), a new epidemic of sleep pathologies that, according to one study, ‘could be short-lived […] abating once the pandemic subsides, or it could become, in some cases, a chronic condition’ (Taylor et al. 713). Initially linked to a fear of infection, including a fear of infecting others, reported declines in sleep quality have been reconceptualized through the development of multi-factorial measures of pandemic-related distress. For example, a recent study of COVID Stress Syndrome identified five correlated facets of the syndrome's severity: (1) fear of the danger of COVID-19, including a fear of coming into contact with contaminated objects and surfaces; (2) concern about socioeconomic impacts, such as stress on finances; (3) xenophobic fears that foreigners are spreading the virus; (4) traumatic stress symptoms associated with direct or vicarious exposure to the virus, such as nightmares and intrusive thoughts or images; and (5) compulsive news checking and reassurance seeking from family and friends (Taylor et al. 707).