Host (3:56)
It's Friday, November 9, 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 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. 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. 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. Deua 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 Touxiang 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 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, Yong Leung Tao and his wife are watching some late night tv. They are also Meng 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 Yeo, 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 Yeo abruptly wakes up a few hours later, sometime right before 3am because she hears Tao gasping and struggling for breathing. 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, Yoh 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. Luman 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. 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 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.
