Burger King wants to give you nightmares this Halloween.
The burger chain on Wednesday said that its new Nightmare King burger is “clinically proven to induce nightmares.”
The sandwich is a Frankenstein-like burger-chicken hybrid, with a quarter pound of beef, crispy chicken fillet, bacon, cheese, mayonnaise and onions on a creepy green sesame seed bun.
And yes, the company says that it has been proven to induce nightmares. Burger King said it worked with Paramount Trials and Florida Sleep & Neuro Diagnostic Services to provide a scientific study with 100 participants over 10 nights.
The participants ate a Nightmare King before going to bed and their sleep was tracked to determine if they had nightmares, based on heart rate, brain activity and breath.
“According to previous studies, 4% of the population experiences nightmares on any given night,” Dr. Jose Gabriel Medina, a somnologist and the study’s lead doctor, said in a statement. “But after eating the Nightmare King, the data obtained from the study indicated that the incidence of nightmares increased by 3.5 times.”
Apparently, the combination of proteins and cheeses in the burger-chicken thing interrupted the subjects’ REM—or rapid eye movement—cycles, when we dream the most.
The Nightmare King will be available at participating Burger King locations beginning on Monday, “while supplies last.”
“Some Burger King sandwiches are the burgers of their dreams,” the company said in its release. “The Nightmare King is the burger of their nightmares.”
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