So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Nightmare Deaths

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

In the 1980s, doctors in the United States noticed a bizarre phenomenon happening amongst Southeast Asian refugees. Many of them were having terrifying nightmares that seemed to kill them in their sleep. To this day, dedicated scientists and researchers have been unable to find a distinct cause which has led some to wonder – could Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome – also known as SUNDS – be caused by some supernatural force? For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/the-unknown-nightmare-deaths So Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod

There's nothing like crawling into bed after a really long day. I mean, I love a night where I can turn in early, climb under the covers, and fall asleep listening to raw audio of interviews our journalists do in the field. It's the simple pleasures in life, really. But when you have a toddler and a very busy job, sleep is the most delicious part of the day. There's only one thing in the world that could spoil it, nightmares.

Have you ever had a dream so terrifying that it felt real, like really real? I actually never suffered from nightmares, but recently I had one so terrifying. I mean, I woke up crying and I was almost scared to go back to bed. But at least in that moment when I woke up, when I opened my eyes, I knew for a fact none of it was real, none of it could hurt me, at least in theory.

But what if it was possible for a bad dream to actually hurt you in real life? What if it could even kill you? And what if I told you that I found evidence it's already happened? Welcome back to So Supernatural. So remember how I mentioned that I would be back from time to time with a few surprises? Well, today's the day, because you get me and me alone for the entire episode. And I handpicked this case to share with you, because it's one that has literally been

keeping me up at night. Today I'm covering a group of men, healthy guys in their 30s or 40s, who all died during a nightmare. There was no clear medical explanation for what was happening to them, which is what makes all the theories a lot less medical and a lot more supernatural. It's Friday, November 9th, 1984, and people are packing the movie theaters. I mean, so many classic films are out this weekend. The Terminator has been playing for two weeks, it's still ranking in the box office. So are The Karate Kid and Ghostbusters, even though they have been out for months at this

point. Seriously, if you are a film buff, 1984 may be the best year to be alive. But there is one other movie that comes out that weekend. A very small, independent film that runs on fewer than 200 screens across the United States. Even though it has a very limited release, it makes money hand over fist. And it goes on to be considered a horror classic. It's called A Nightmare on Elm Street, and if you've seen it, then you already know

what it's about. For those of you who haven't, here's the logline. When a man named Freddy Krueger is murdered, he swears to return as an evil spirit and torment a group of teens. He does this by appearing in their dreams, or more accurately, their nightmares, and he scares them to literal death. Now, it sounds like nonsense at the time, but it actually did happen. Because you see, the movie's writer and director, Wes Craven, was inspired by a true

story, one that's arguably even creepier than Freddy Krueger himself. So let me rewind to 1977. A man named Lee Dooha is living in Orange County, California, but that's not where he's from originally. See, Dooha used to live in the Southeast Asian country of Laos, and he's ethnically Hmong. But in the 1960s, the US government recruited thousands of Hmong people

to fight against communist forces during the Vietnam War. And when the Hmong were left to face persecution after the war, the United States allowed many refugees to come to the country around 1975, Dua being one of them. The good news is Dua had a bright future ahead of him. He's young, he's healthy, he has a job as a medic, which is fitting for him. I mean, he's this strong, big guy. He knows health inside and out, and he is at his peak. But one night in 1977, he climbs into bed ready to start the day over tomorrow,

same as he did the night before. Only on this night, he goes to sleep and he never wakes up. Now, I'm not sure how long it takes for anyone to check on him, but when he's found dead in his own bed, people are baffled. Dua wasn't sick. As far as anyone knows, there wasn't anything physically wrong with him.

Even when the doctors do a post-mortem exam, there's no clear cause of death. Nobody has any idea how this young guy in the prime of his life just dropped dead in his bed in the middle of the night. And what's even stranger is that he's not the only one. Skip ahead four years to 1981, where history is about to repeat itself. It's not too long after New Year's Day, and Xiong Toshong lives in Portland, Oregon.

Like Dua, Xiong only settled in the United States recently. He's also a Hmong refugee who fled the Civil War in Laos. Now, unfortunately, I don't have many details about what Xiong's new life in Portland looks like, but I do know he's only 29 years old, so the odds seem pretty good that he can adapt to the culture and environment. That is, until he mysteriously dies in his sleep

on January 6th, 1981. It's the same as what happened with Dua. Xiong isn't sick, he doesn't have any health conditions that anyone knows about. It's like he's perfectly healthy during the day, goes to bed, and never wakes up again. And nothing turns up in his autopsy that could explain his sudden passing.

I mean, there's no sign of a heart attack, aneurysm, a stroke, nothing. Then two days later, also in Portland, Oregon, Yonglong Tao and his wife are watching some late night TV. They are also Hmong and originally from Laos as well, so you might be seeing a pattern here. But this time that they have to unwind, it's precious and rare.

Tao is the father of eight children and his whole family lives under the same roof. So I would imagine it's pretty hectic. Eventually his wife, Xiang You, gets tired. She says she's gonna go to bed, but Tao decides to stay up and keep watching television. Finally, after midnight, he's ready to hit the hay, so he turns off the TV, climbs in bed next to his wife,

and drifts off to Dreamland. But You abruptly wakes up a few hours later, sometime right before 3 a.m., because she hears Tao gasping and struggling for breath. Now, Tao is only 47 years old, and just like the other men, he does not have any history of medical problems. So, Yo doesn't know what to do,

especially because Tao's not conscious. It's like he's choking to death, but no matter what she does, she cannot get him to wake up. She starts shaking him, but that doesn't work. So finally, Yeo calls an ambulance, but Tao dies on his way to the hospital. And just like with all of the others, nobody can figure out what actually killed him. He has no underlying conditions

and nothing comes up in his autopsy either. Now the county medical examiner, Larry Luman, knows this is just too weird to ignore. The fact that two Portland-based Hmong refugees died under identical, mysterious circumstances two days apart, you can see why he becomes hooked on this mystery. So he reaches out to a colleague of his,

this Dr. Michael McGee, who practices in St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Paul actually has a growing Hmong community themselves, so he wonders if McGee has seen anything like this. And sure enough, McGee says, yeah, actually, the first time he noticed it was two years ago in 1979, but it didn't just happen once. It happened to four Hmong men within 18 months, all in St. Paul.

Dr. McGee looked at all of those autopsies, but he saw nothing, no physical problem that could have killed these men. So after Dr. Luhmann and Dr. McGee speak, they realize that there is a possible epidemic on their hands. They start digging into medical records and newspapers, anything they can get their hands on to find out more about these mysterious deaths. And they actually do find a lot. Records from all across America from the past four years or so about this mysterious medical condition

that no one has gotten to the bottom of. Some of the reports even have a name for it, Mong Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome. But less officially, it's referred to as nightmare deaths because it really does seem like people are being killed by their nightmares. In fact, men in their 30s seem especially susceptible to these nightmare deaths. And there's something else that a lot of these men had in common.

In the weeks before they died, night after night, they had terrifying dreams, ones where they seemingly weren't able to wake themselves up. Their family members would hear them gasping and struggling, and eventually the person would wake up in a panic, unable to deal with whatever they were dreaming about, until the night when finally they didn't wake up at all. These nightmare deaths were so widespread that there were 117 known cases in the 80s alone.

More young men were dying of this than of heart attacks, car accidents, or anything else. Doctors were baffled. There was just no way to explain what was going on. And while they were trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, more people were losing their lives. On May 10, 1981, The New York Times published an article that described this wave of nightmare deaths in the men of the Hmong community

Now women and members of other economic communities were having these deadly nightmares, too Which may be why some doctors started calling it sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome or sons See, there's a similar phenomenon among Filipino people. They call it bungung ot. Translated to English, it literally means to rise and moan in sleep. One second, they'll be peacefully slumbering, and then in some cases, they'll start groaning and moaning, maybe even thrash around, and finally they die without ever waking up.

This condition primarily strikes Filipino men between the ages of 30 and 40 years old, and most of them never had any major health problems before. Sound familiar? Legend has it that the men who die of this actually die of fright because of their bad dreams. And there are similar stories that come out of Thailand. Those are related to a condition they call Lai Thai. I'm translating very roughly here, but Lai Thai means something like groaning in your sleep then death. Here's where it gets really shocking.

Lai Thai is very rare in Thailand. But when large numbers of Thai people began migrating to Singapore in 1990, something weird happened. Rates of Lai Thai spiked, but only among those immigrants. It's almost like there's something deadly about leaving your home country. Even in Japan, there is a condition called Pocuri death, or in English, sudden unexpected death.

It has all the same symptoms as Lai Tai and Suns and Bongunot. The point is, Suns doesn't seem to be new. But in the early 80s, it gets on the radar of American researchers, and the next breakthrough comes from a man named Bruce Blattu. Bruce is also Hmong and grew up in Laos. But when he got a chance to study public health in the United States sometime between 1964 and 1973, he seized it. This was before the big refugee wave.

And he was only one of 12 Hmong Laotians in any American college. Bruce went on to become the very first Hmong person to get a PhD in the entire history of the US university system. His doctorate was in public health and Bruce spent the rest of his career finding ways to get medical support to people who might not be able to access it otherwise.

He was especially focused on refugees and especially Southeast Asian refugees. But he had one goal in particular. He wanted to find out what was behind those nightmare deaths. It's what he wrote his PhD thesis about. Bruce dug into all the information he could get his hands on, and not just what the other doctors and medical professionals had been saying, he also reviewed Hmong folktales, rumors, gossip, nothing was beneath his notice.

Because even though, yes, sons does seem to kill people in other countries, the Hmong community was hit especially hard. There's got to be a reason for that. Maybe something cultural. Maybe something cultural. Maybe something spiritual. See, Hmong tradition says that every single thing has a soul. People, animals, even things in nature like trees and rivers. And it's possible to make those souls or spirits angry. And for an evil being to attack your body while you're resting.

So when Bruce learned that there were stories about spirits killing people, including some attacks that had happened in their sleep, he took that information just as seriously as those scientific theories. What he realized was some Hmong people believed their ancestors were mad at them for leaving their homeland. See, there are certain traditions and prayers these families used to follow in Laos, but those old ways of life were being forgotten now that they lived in the States.

This was in part because immigrant families were trying to assimilate into American culture, but some elements of their traditions were considered taboo in the States. Unfortunately, a few refugees learned that the hard way that practicing these rights led to complaints from the neighbors or even calls to the police. So when they had to choose between keeping the peace

in the neighborhood or with their ancestors, they chose to stop following their customs. Some even converted to Christianity and abandoned their traditional religious practices their ancestors, they chose to stop following their customs. Some even converted to Christianity and abandoned their traditional religious practices entirely. But also, generally, the oldest members of a family are supposed to teach the younger members how to follow their traditions.

Unfortunately, a lot of elders never made it out of Laos. Some died in the war and others were still back at home, but didn't get the permission to immigrate to the U.S. So the point is, some families wanted to keep practicing their religious traditions, but they couldn't. They didn't know all the proper rituals because they never got a chance to learn them from their elders, which led many to believe maybe their ancestors' spirits were angry. They're used to being respected and celebrated.

The Hmong belief says that you don't only honor your ancestors because it's the right thing to do, but also because their spirits will keep you safe from supernatural forces if you treat them right. Another similar theory was that maybe people were dying because they weren't using traditional Hmong medicines. The idea was that sons was actually a spiritual illness, something that could only be treated

by having a shaman perform a magical ritual. But in the States, those traditionally trained shamans were hard to find. And Western doctors simply didn't understand the spiritual forces that were really behind these nightmare deaths. This is what a man named Alex Vu believed killed two of his brothers.

Alex and his siblings were young when they came to the US. His oldest brother was in his twenties, and the other brother was only 17 years old, not even an adult yet. Their cases were an eerie echo of everything I've covered already. Two young Hmong men with no known medical problems, but each of them died in their sleep. However, Alex thought that if his brothers

had just gone to see a shaman, their lives could have been saved. So those were the kinds of reports Bruce was hearing, that people were dying because they weren't honoring their ancestors. They weren't practicing traditional spiritual medicine. The list went on. But still, Bruce was a man of science

at the end of the day. So he figured there had to be a scientific angle to sons. He took everything he learned and put it in the context that Western doctors were more likely to accept. And what he came to find was that a deadly version of the placebo effect might have been at play here. If people believed evil spirits were trying to kill them, and if they believed that they weren't getting

the right spiritual treatment, then they were terrified that they were going to die, brightened enough that they scared themselves to death the next time they had a nightmare. But he's not sure if that's the whole story. The Deadly Bad Dream Theory still doesn't explain why it's mostly men, and mostly strong, healthy ones at that. So Bruce kept researching, and finally he found something that suggested that the mystery might just lie in their DNA. After Bruce finished all of his research, he believed that the nightmare deaths may

have been genetic. He couldn't 100% prove it, but based on everything he looked at, it seemed like a possible explanation, at least to him. Bruce finished his dissertation in 1982, and in the decades afterward, more researchers followed in his footsteps. Some doctors even went on to find the specific gene that seemed to be the cause. And listen, I'm going to massively oversimplify it here

because this gets complicated, but basically, some Hmong and other Asian people have a gene mutation that makes their hearts beat irregularly. On its own, that might not be dangerous. But if you add a lot of stress, like fleeing your home country, and then pile on a really terrible nightmare on top of that, it might get to be too much for your heart to take,

so it stops working one night while you're asleep. And I don't mean that you have a heart attack. I mean that your heart pumps too fast and not enough blood gets to your brain causing you to lose consciousness. Then you stop breathing and then you die. That would be the sort of thing that wouldn't show up in an autopsy because your heart isn't obviously damaged. It's just done.

So all of that seems plausible enough. You would think case closed, right? Well, not exactly. That may be one piece of the puzzle, but there were still a lot of questions about those nightmare deaths that just didn't have an answer still. For example, a lot of the people who died in their sleep did have that genetic mutation,

but the majority of the people with sons, almost 70% of them in fact, just didn't have the dangerous genetic mutation in their DNA. So ultimately, Bruce's gene theory seemed to not explain those cases, like whatsoever. And who knows, maybe those people all had some other different undiscovered illness, or it could be angry ancestral spirits.

Any guess is equally valid here. And I say that because there are other sun symptoms that are kind of wild and hard to explain medically. For example, most people who died of this passed away at a specific time or within a specific set of hours, usually between three and six a.m. But there's no reason that a random gene mutation would only kick into effect at that particular time,

at least none that I can make sense of, like why not midnight or in the middle of the afternoon when someone's taking a nap? And even though the condition was supposedly genetic, it's actually rare for multiple members of the same family to die of it. About two out of every 100 cases. And you would think that if this was an issue that was passed on from parent to child, that rate would probably be a lot higher. The biggest, most baffling part of the mystery, to my mind at least, is the fact that over time,

this epidemic of nightmare deaths just sort of stops. Like I mentioned before, doctors in the United States really started noticing sons right after a bunch of Hmong refugees settled on American soil. The immigration wave started in 1975, and at first, the nightmare deaths spiked. But in 1981, right when doctors were just starting to research what was going on, that's when reports started to peak. And then by 1987, very few people were dying in their sleep anymore.

Which, of course, is good news, but there was were dying in their sleep anymore. Which of course is good news, but there was no reason for that to happen. It's not like there was some new treatment out there. Nobody was doing anything differently. And if Bruce was right, and there was some genetic issue at play, it's not like they would be able to change their genes in 1981.

To this day, doctors still don't know exactly what caused these mystery deaths. Some people went to bed and then their hearts failed. Again, not like a heart attack. It really did just stop beating, apparently during a nightmare. And I know it sounds a bit out there, but in fairness, the people who have died of sons

have been under a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. The kind that might just make your body fail somewhere along the way. I mean, fleeing your home country and resettling in the United States, it wasn't as simple as hopping on a plane and moving out to a brand new apartment in a new town. Different US officials at the time were worried that it would be too expensive and difficult to let large numbers of specifically Hmong refugees settle down in any one city or state. They were also worried that if a bunch of Hmong people were to all live together in the same neighborhood that it would be harder for them to adjust to American life.

So instead they split up groups of Hmong refugees in sort of like spread them out all across the country. They literally told some people like, "'Sure, you can live here, but only if you break up your family so you're not all in the same city together. And if you need extra help, you can't rely on your community,

like just check with your local churches or other American groups. And if they can't or won't give you what you need, too bad, that's the deal, take it or leave it. The idea was that these new citizens would have no choice but to learn English, get jobs, and assimilate, especially if they didn't have a social network

in the form of other local Hmong refugees. Which means these immigrants were under immense stress, even more than other refugees might have been. They just didn't have a lot of options if they wanted to connect with other people who shared their culture, their language, their religion, even their experiences. And that is all before you get into any PTSD or other trauma that they might have been dealing with from the civil war that they ran from. Some of those people survived chemical gas attacks and bombings that destroyed entire villages.

And that is something that stays with you. Some survivors find it impossible to talk about the war even to this day, and evidence does suggest that PTSD can cause terrifying dreams and night terrors. The good news is that Sons is very rare. It's said that maybe five out of every 10,000 people die of it, but it's also kind of hard to say for sure, because almost by definition,

a person is only diagnosed with sons if the doctors don't know what really killed them. I mean, it is called sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome for a reason. We do know nightmare deaths are still a lot more common in people from Southeastern Asia or Japan. They also kill far more men than women. But almost anyone can potentially die of it,

people from any race or any gender. Beyond that, though, we just haven't had any new breakthroughs beyond what Bruce figured out all the way back in 1982. It's just kind of wild. I mean, it's been over 40 years. There have been so many massive developments in medicine and technology during that time.

The fact that we still don't understand suns is mind boggling. Enough so that you really do have to wonder if there is something otherworldly at play here. If maybe there are evil spirits behind the condition or maybe some kind of psychic illness that needs to be treated by a shaman. Plus I do think it's worth mentioning

that South Eastern and Eastern Asian people aren't the only ones who believe spirits can attack or even kill you in your sleep. Even the ancient Greeks recorded stories of people being choked by demons in the middle of the night. And there are countless stories in the Western world and Europe about demons called succubi and incubi. Imagine being dead asleep only to open your eyes

and see a dark shadowy figure in your room with you. It climbs on top of you, holds you down, and you suddenly can't move or breathe. You can't fight it off, and you can't get away, but you can scream and moan and call for help. If you've ever had a night tear or experienced sleep paralysis, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And you might also be noticing how this sounds very similar to suns, which also involves groaning and shouting, maybe even a struggle before the person dies. It's easy to write night tears off as bad dreams and tricks of biology. In fact, that's what a lot of experts think is going on, that people are having nightmares while they're half awake.

But if that's true, then what killed those 117 South Asian men? Bad dreams? Or something more? We might never know what's really behind it, which is pretty frightening. The kind of thing that might even keep you up at night. But honestly, a bit of insomnia might be safer

than the alternative. ["Skyfall", by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by The Bumblebee, by AudioChuck original produced by CrimeHouse. You can connect with us on Instagram at SoSupernaturalPod and visit our website, sosupernaturalpodcast.com. Join us next Friday for an all-new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?