Terrifying & True | Refugees Dying in their Sleep

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You're calm and comfy in your bed, dozing off to sleep. But as

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your eyes shut and your rem sleep
begins, you start to thrash and toss

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and turn sounds like a horror movie. Right, you wake up dead?

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But what if it wasn't a horror
movie? What if it was very,

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very real what you were about to
be based on witness accounts, testimal piece,

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and public record, this is terrifying
and truth. I've always been fascinated

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by Tonight's story because I'm a humongous
Freddie Ruger fan. Yeah, the trash

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talking dream demon from a nightmare on
Elm Street. That was a major part

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of all my formative years and probably
explains my line of work now. I

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love the things that scare me,
and I love to laugh while I'm being

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scared. But Tonight's story doesn't have
a lot to laugh about. It's real,

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and it's deadly, and it's completely
unsolved. So get yourself comfortable as

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you prepare to learn how some people
began to die suddenly in their dreams,

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and we still to this day don't
know why. They also don't know if

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or when it will happen again.
We're telling that story after these messages.

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The first time that I personally had
been made aware of the Laotian refugees dying

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in their sleep was not necessarily the
way you normally learn about world history and

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events like that. I learned about
it when I was watching the behind the

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scenes for A Nightmare on Elm Street. That's right, the Freddie Krueger horror

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series that I hold so near and
dear to my heart ever since I was

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a child. Just when I thought
that Freddie Krueger couldn't get more terrifying,

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Wes Craven shared a story about what
inspired him to write the classic and timeless

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terror tale. This is an excerpt
from the documentary Never Sleep Again, writer

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director Wes Craven speaking the beginning of
a Nightmare Street. It really came to

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me with a series of articles in
the la Times about young men who are

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dying in the middle nightmares. They
were specific from the Asian wren. In

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this particular case, a young man
had a severe nightmaron told his parents I

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can't go back to sleep, I'm
going and died just know it. And

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the father was a physician and said, let me give me some sleepy pills.

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The kid didn't sleep the first night, and then in the second night

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he didn't sleep again, and then
it became clear that he was trying to

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stay awake despite everything. And finally
the kid fall asleep, and they took

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him upstairs and put him to bed, thinking, thank God, that little

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crisis is over. And in the
middle of the night they heard screams and

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ran into the room and he was
thrashing on the bed horribly. Literally before

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they got to him, he fell
still and he was dead. In the

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aftermath, the parents found all the
sleeping pills. He had not taken them,

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he had hidden them in the bed, and they also found a mister

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coffee machine. In his closet was
a hidden extension chord that went to the

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nearest plug, which was to me, it was just so out of a

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movie. That story, however factual
or based on inaccurate memories, took my

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mind and made its spin in overtime. So I decided I needed to know

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more about the true story. Over
one hundred Southeast Asian refugees died in their

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sleep across the United States in the
nineteen eighties. Many doctors investigated the case,

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stating that it could have been a
heart defect. A powerful cultural belief

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in the spiritual world, a sickness, and many other factors. Laos is

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located in Southeast Asia and is the
only landlocked country, which means it's not

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connected to the ocean. Myanmar,
China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand

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all border Laos. Vianchian is the
capital and largest city of Laos. The

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main three ethnic groups in Laos are
Lao fifty three point two percent, Kamu

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eleven percent, and Mong nine point
two percent. Many Laosian immigrants moved to

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the United States in response to the
Vietnam War when the communist government took power

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in Laos in nineteen seventy five.
By in nineteen eighty, the Laotian population

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in the United States had reached forty
seven thousand, six hundred and eighty three,

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with an estimated number of one hundred
and forty seven thousand, three hundred

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and seventy five by nineteen ninety.
The among people were seen as traders by

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Laos's new administration because they fled their
country in search of a better life in

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the United States. Many of those
who survived the war fled their homes in

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Laos to seek refuge in Thailand or
the United States. Their journey to a

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better life for themselves was described as
quote long and treacherous. Among refugees in

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the United States, suffered the most
from high rates of poverty and unexpected and

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strange deaths. In nineteen eighty one, a Laotian refugee moved to the United

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States with his family after spending time
in a refugee camp in Thailand. Yong

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Langdao, forty seven, died in
his sleep shortly after arriving in America,

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with his wife, heartbroken and confused
beside him. He was the fourth Mung

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person to die mysteriously in their sleep
in the last nine months. According to

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a July fourteenth, nineteen eighty one
article titled Mysterious fatal Malady striking Mung Men,

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with the subheading reading sudden, unexplained
deaths terrorized local tribesmen resettled in the

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United States. According to them,
the first fatality occurred in nineteen seventy seven

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in Orange County, when a seemingly
healthy young man named Lidoo died in his

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sleep. Joanne Gill, a social
worker who knew Lidao, indicated in the

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autopsy quote the cause of death was
severe cardiac in sufficiency. That was a

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fancy way of expressing. They had
no idea what killed him. The Orange

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County epidemiologist, doctor Tom Prendergast,
then received a call from a reporter in

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Minneapolis asking if they had any mysterious
fatalities among mung men. Another call came

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in from Portland, Oregon, asking
the same question as the first. When

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epidemiologist doctor Tom Prendergast and his colleagues
got together to figure out what was going

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on, they discovered that twenty people, nineteen men and one woman between the

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ages of twenty five and sixty five, all went to bed and never woke

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up. Quote. All were either
found dead in the morning or were observed

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throughout the night making some grueling noises
and in a collapsed state from which they

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could not be revived, they claimed. Doctor Prendergast and the federal public health

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officials began to investigate the inexplicable fatalities. Initially, they suspected that their deaths

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were the result of a disease that
had spread from the hung to other populations.

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They quickly ruled out that possibility.
The case of the strange deaths grew

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in popularity, prompting many people to
develop speculations about what happened to them.

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Most people assumed that when the hung
people emigrated to the United States, they

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experienced severe stress or culture shock as
a result of having to relocate so far

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away from their home and adapt to
an entirely different way of life in America.

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According to medical professionals, it was
difficult to determine that stress was a

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major impact because stress effects everyone in
different ways. The next possibility they looked

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into was that the victims were experiencing
a delayed reaction to the North Vietnamese gas

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attacks. However, doctors never support
to the theory, with one medical examiner,

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doctor Larry Luman, declaring, quote, nerve gas does not behave in

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this way. There is no proof. Second, if it is nerve gas,

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why does it only affect men and
only at night. One survivor of

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the gas attack reported that when he
arrived at the hospital, he was in

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ventricular fibrillation, which indicates that his
heartbeat was irregular. The lower heart chamber

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beats fast and uncoordinatedly, and the
heart does not pump blood to the rest

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of the body. The patient received
appropriate treatment as a result of the developed

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ECG pattern, which is seen in
people who have had a heart attack.

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Doctor Prendergast examined the individual and discovered
no evidence of heart arterary disease. Many

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young people believed that they were being
punished by the spirits of their ancestors for

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fleeing their homeland. To another doctor, doctor um quote, the inability to

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do right by your ancestral spirit is
because you're not there or because you don't

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have the necessary things to do the
right rituals and is centered around anxiety.

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Other doctors said that their deaths were
caused by Oriental nightmare death syndrome, which

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indicates that they died as a result
of terror induced by a nightmare. They

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then identified the inexplicable deaths as sudden
unexplained nocturnal death syndrome or SONS, which

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is an abrupt cardiac arrest in young
adults while sleeping at night. The Center

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for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia has studied this cause, but

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no one understands how to say that
SONS killed the victims. Another doctor has

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returned to the idea of stress being
a part of their death. Positing quote

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was that a reflection of what kind
of pressures come with being forcibly removed from

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a familiar world to a completely alien
and often even hostile context. Fast forward

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to many years later, and there
has never been a confirmed explanation for how

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so many individuals mysteriously died in their
sleep. But following those deaths in nineteen

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eighty one, no more fatalities were
reported, which is in and of itself

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rather unnerving. Many people believe that
if the CDC couldn't figure out what killed

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those victims, then who could ever
solve the medical mystery of what killed the

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Laos refugees. The more cynical side
of my brain wonders if the reason we

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never got to the bottom of this
mystery may have had something to do with

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some lingering xenophobia and misconceptions about East
Asian people. Please remember, there was

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a long stretch of history where Chinese
people were not allowed to immigrate to the

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United States of America, and of
course there was the Japanese internment camps,

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although that was tied to a global
war, so maybe that's not entirely related

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to xenophobia and fear. But when
I heard that term oriental nightmare death syndrome,

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the first thing I thought of was
how back in the day when Chinese

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restaurants were popping up everywhere, people
started claiming that they were getting headaches from

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monosodium glutamate or MSG. MSG is
a common flavor enhancer and just about everything

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you eat, and it's pretty much
impossible to be sensitive to it. But

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people would claim that they got headaches
from consuming the MSG. MSG, which

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was originally discovered, for lack of
a better term, by the Japanese.

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However, when people started claiming that
MSG would make them sick, it was

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coined Chinese restaurant syndrome. I'm glad
we've come so far. Think about it

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in this day and age. No
matter how elderly and small minded a relative

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could be, well, I'm sure
they'd like to go get some egg rolls

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with you. In the end,
what really matters is most of those people

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found a safe place to live.
Terrifying and True is narrated by Enrique Kuto.

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It's executive produced by Rob Fields,
produced by Daniel Wilder, with original

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theme music by Ray Maddis. If
you have a story you'd like us to

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King, Karen Wee, met Jack
Kerr and Craig Cohen. Thank you all

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so very much and we'll see you
next Monday.