While Eli wasn't completely ignorant of muggle things, his knowledge of what muggles did was limited largely to their work in the sciences and traditionally the medical or biological. So, he didn't really understand what a Yahoo!Group was or if muggles also had some journal system that they decided to dub great. "That might be be pushing the statue a bit too far."
Eli couldn't imagine why random muggles would be affected. The logical answer would be that those exposed to magic could be susceptible to the nightmare-memories. Maybe it was some sort of ripple effect like the Clearwaters. "Do either you or your friend have the the nightmares and the spots?"
He wasn't really expecting much of use, the man didn't even think to ask the right sort of questions. Not that he was surprised, few people processed at his level. Scanning the ancient runes stacks, he finally found the book he was looking for.