STANFORD, CA—Having no choice but to discard the partial and unusable results, researchers at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine were forced on Thursday to scrap yet another sleep study after participants were murdered in their dreams by a serial killer. “Unfortunately, after our sleeping subjects were once again massacred by a phantasmagorical serial killer, all of our data were rendered worthless,” said lead researcher Gregory Thompson, saying that the wildly fluctuating vital signs of the sleeping test subjects seemed to suggest that they had been swallowed by their beds and had their bones spit out in geysers of blood. “We have attempted to fine-tune our test conditions several times since this problem first arose in the 1980s, but to no avail. Despite our best efforts, every batch of participants has either been hacked to pieces by what almost seems like invisible knifes, or they writhe as if bursting into flames as soon as they close their eyes.” At press time, the researchers each took turns watching over the test subjects only to also fall asleep and be murdered themselves.