Wes Craven has said that true stories of teenage boys who died in their sleep inspired the Nightmare on Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger. That in itself isn’t particularly interesting, as people – even the young – die in their sleep every day.
What makes it interesting is that the deaths occurred in the Hmong population of Portland, Oregon, among young men who had fled the Khmer Rouge following the Vietnam War. There were so many sleep deaths of healthy Hmong men that the L.A. Times took notice of the pattern. Between 1978 and 1981, 13 Hmong males, all teenagers and young men, died in their sleep, purportedly while experiencing nightmares. While thirteen deaths over the span of a few years might not seem like many, the Hmong population of Portland numbered only 2,000, making the percentage of unexplained deaths unnaturally high.
Investigators discovered the unexplained nighttime deaths were happening within the same ethnic group all across America. Survivors said these kinds of deaths were not typical in their home country. Friends and family said that during sleep, their breathing became loud enough to wake the household. The young men seemed to be having nightmares, but never work up to tell the tale. While researchers put up a number of possible explanations, no one ever figured out what happened.
