Welcome back!
Re: sleep deprivation, I do sometimes get very paranoid about sleeping after I stay up too late. That "second wind" around 4-6AM sometimes (not always) comes with a feeling that when I do sleep, I'm going to have nightmares. Yet I have to sleep *sometime*. Hasn't happened as much recently though.
I vaguely remember being creeped out by some really old internet horror story involving a vast wilderness, western researchers, some kind of mysterious creature native to the region and at some point a crashed helicopter, mostly told through the perspective of recovered journal entries penned by one of the surviving researchers (yeah it sounds pretty cheesy now, but I read this as a kid I think), but I've never been able to track down that particular story again.
if anyone knows this, I would be interested in reading it
The game Kholat, from what little I remember, sounds kinda like that? I watched a LP a long time ago. It was about a spooky wilderness where some people died for unclear reasons, one of them apparently over a mile before immolating. The game involves walking through the forest years later, encountering spookies.
And on a completely different note: I'm playing Star Control 2 The Ur-Quan Masters v0.6.4 - Extended Edition. I went in having very little clue as to what it adds, but I've found a few things already! No big plot changes or anything, just neat stuff- like, Commander Hayes offhand mentions an abandoned Precursor starbase around a certain star, and if you go there - it's there now!
And later I was following up on a clue about a Mmhrm colonization effort. The system the Spathi met them in was disappointingly empty, so I explored around doing normal mineral collection - and found the Mmhmrm homeworld?? Nobody named their home system, but it's pretty much on a direct line from Spathiwa, to the planned colony, to the homeworld. Since it's now in enemy territory, it's possible that I just never found it in the original game.
I've recaptured a little of that love of exploration in one of my favorite games of all time~