THE UNKNOWN: Nightmare Deaths

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?

• 0:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  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.

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• 2:37Speaker 00

  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.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  And if you've seen it, then you already know what it's about. For those of you who haven't, here's the log line. "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.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  So let me rewind to 1977. A man named Lee Dua is living in Orange County, California. But that's not where he's from originally. See, Dua 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.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  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 postmortem exam, there's no clear cause of death.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  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 Shong Koshong lives in Portland, Oregon. Like Dua, Shong 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.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  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 6, 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, Yonge Long Tao and his wife are watching

• 6:52Speaker 00

  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, Xiong Yo, 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 Yo abruptly wakes up a few hours later, sometime right before 3 a.m., because she

• 7:35Speaker 00

  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, Yo 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.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  He has no underlying conditions and nothing comes up in his autopsy either. Now, the county medical examiner Larry Lumen 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

• 8:56Speaker 00

  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. Lumen 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.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Some of the reports even have a name for it, Hmong's 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

• 10:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 11:05Speaker 01

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• 11:38Speaker 00

  On May 10, 1981, The New York Times published an article that described this wave of nightmare deaths in the men of the Mong 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 SENS. See, there's a similar phenomenon among Filipino people. They call it "bangunot." 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

• 12:19Speaker 00

  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 "laitai." I'm translating very roughly here, but laitai means something like groaning in your sleep then death. Here's where it gets really shocking. Laitai is very rare in Thailand.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  But when large numbers of Thai people began migrating to Singapore in 1990, something weird happened. Rates of laitai 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 pakuri death, or in English, sudden unexpected death. It has all the same symptoms as laitai 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 Blattou.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  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-Laochians 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.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  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, suns does seem to kill people in other countries, the Hmong community was hit especially hard.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  There's got to be a reason for that. 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

• 15:44Speaker 00

  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 rites 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

• 16:27Speaker 00

  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 US. 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.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  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 SARS 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.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  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 seventeen 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.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  So he figured there had to be a scientific angle to SARS. 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, frightened 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.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  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.

• 19:42Speaker 01

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• 20:13Speaker 00

  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 Mong and other Asian people have a gene mutation that makes their hearts beat irregularly. On its own, that might not be dangerous,

• 20:58Speaker 00

  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.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  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 suns, 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.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Or it could be angry ancestral spirits. Any guess is equally valid here. And I say that because there are other suns 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 3:00 and 6:00 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.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  About 2 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.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Like I mentioned before, doctors in the United States really started noticing suns 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 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,

• 24:09Speaker 00

  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 suns 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?

• 24:51Speaker 00

  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 and 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.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  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.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  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 SARS 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

• 26:59Speaker 00

  only diagnosed with SARS 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. Which is kinda wild. I mean, it's been over forty years. There have been so many massive developments in medicine and technology during that time.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  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 southeastern 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.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  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.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  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 hundred and seventeen 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.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram @SoSupernaturalPod and visit our website, so supernatural podcast dot com. Join us next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

• 30:18Speaker 03

  I've been having a hard time trying to explain what Midnight Burger is. How about I let them give it a shot?

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  Your podcast is amazing.

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  It's such an amazing show altogether. You guys have actively ruined all other audio dramas for me.

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  You can't get people to understand the humaning that happens in this damn show.

• 30:35Speaker 05

  Keep doing what you're doing because it's awesome. You might not think it, but you are far more important than you realize. Thank you.

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  At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. Look for Midnight Burger on your favorite podcasting app or just go to weopenat6.com.