They die in their sleep, one after another, thousands of kilometers from home. Their average age is 33. All but one, that is, 116 out of 117, are healthy men, immigrants from Southeast Asia, who have lived on American soil for less than a year
Deaths peaked in the early 1980s. The Hmong men died in their sleep. Why - no one could understand. None of them were sick. Everyone lived in different cities in the United States. They were united by belonging to one culture and the country from which they all came - Laos. That's all.
Doctors gave the problem a symbolic name, which, one might say, signed for their own helplessness: "Sudden Night Death Syndrome." This did not help in any way to understand the causes of the mysterious ailment, and even more so to treat it, but it became much easier to convene scientific conferences dedicated to it.
Twenty-five years later, University of California (San Francisco) professor Shelley Adler collected and summarized all the information about the strange deaths. She has interviewed many of the Hmong diaspora and studied the existing scientific literature on the subject.
The result is Sleep Paralysis: Night Spirits, Nocebos, and the Body-Mind Connection, an exploration of how consciousness affects biology.
The conclusion that Adler comes to is stunning: in a sense, the Hmong men were killed by their own belief in evil spirits.
* * *
By 1986, the mortality rate among the Hmong had declined, but the epidemiological fact remained unexplained.
Promotional video:
At the time, Adler was studying traditional beliefs at the University of California about what she herself called "soul-constricting nocturnal attacks."
In the scientific literature, this phenomenon is called "sleep paralysis" (a condition where muscle paralysis occurs before falling asleep or after waking up; usually accompanied by a feeling of terror; approx. Mixednews).
It is noteworthy that sleep paralysis is known in almost all cultures, and almost everywhere is associated with a night evil spirit.
In Indonesia, it is called digonton (choked). In China - bei gi ya (dominated by a ghost). He is known to Hungarians as the goddess-nimas (captured by a witch). The inhabitants of the island of Newfoundland call the night spirit the old hag (kikimora).
The Dutch name is closest to English (night-mare) and means "night witch". The root mare appears to be derived from either the Germanic mahr or the Old Norse mara. This was the name of a fantastic female creature who, according to Adler, "sits on the sleeping man's chest, causing suffocation."
In different cultures, visits by a "witch who strangle sleepers" are described very similarly. Victims are always sure that they are awake, the world around them looks extremely realistic, but they are not able to move. The person is overwhelmed with "indescribable fear and horror", he feels as if someone is squeezing his chest, it becomes difficult to breathe.
Scientists understand the mechanism of this phenomenon quite well. Paralysis, chest compression, are all described in detail in the scientific literature on sleep disorders.
Sleep paralysis occurs when REM sleep occurs "in the wrong order."
During REM sleep, our brain blocks body movement; we are temporarily paralyzed. This is normal. But we shouldn't be awake in REM sleep. And sleep paralysis happens exactly like this: the brain mixes up the states that must occur sequentially.
This is where the "time of the night witch" comes. People who have experienced sleep paralysis said that at this time they felt the presence of something terrible, evil and otherworldly.
“I know it was there. An ominous presence … but I could not defend myself, I could not lift a finger,”said one of the interlocutors, Adler. Such sensations are described by representatives of many cultures; even if they are called differently.
“I experienced sleep paralysis twice in my student years. It is impossible to convey what a deadly horror it was. I saw - no, I felt - that there was "evil" to my left. What kind of evil it was, and how did I know it was so disgusting, I cannot say. But I know it was there. As this continued, the evil came closer and closer. I felt that it could not kill me. Too little for that. The feeling was as if there was something else behind this presence. Perhaps what is called the soul, although I am a convinced materialist. I woke up in such horror as I have never experienced in my life. Overwhelming fear. An indescribable nightmare. When, later, I read about sleep paralysis, I immediately recognized in the "night witch" my nocturnal evil."
But there is also a significant difference between the sleep paralysis that is familiar to many of us and that experienced by the Hmong immigrants in the 1980s. Normal sleep paralysis is an extremely unpleasant experience, but harmless. What happened to the Hmong men was killing.
* * *
Adler studied the culture of the Hmong people and the beliefs of these people in the night spirits, which they call "tsog tsuam" for many years. She traveled to places where mystical deaths took place, communicated with many Hmong immigrants, collected dozens of testimonies of those who survived sleep paralysis, studied everything that was collected by other researchers. One 49-year-old interviewee described his experience as follows:
“It happened a few months after my arrival in the United States. I went to bed. He turned off the light and … suddenly felt that I could not move. I tried to move my hand, but I couldn't. I tried again and again - without success. I realized that it was tsog tsuam. I was terribly scared. I could hardly breathe. I thought: “Who will help me? What if I die?"
Adler found that the visits to the "night witches" were inscribed in the traditional belief system of the Hmong people (both animalists and Christians). She suggested that belief in tsog tsuam and panic about its appearance could be a factor that provokes or aggravates attacks of sleep paralysis.
“When the Hmong does not pray the way it should be; when he does not perform religious rituals properly, forgets to make a sacrifice or something like that - the spirits of the ancestors or the spirits of the village cease to protect him, - explained one of the Hmong. "And then the evil spirit has the right to come and take him."
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Hmongs had ample reason why they could not do whatever their faith required.
Hmongs received permission to immigrate to the United States after the Vietnam War. Many of them fought a guerrilla war against the Laotian government on the US side. When the Lao communists won, a stream of Hmong immigrants poured into America, facing reprisals in their homeland.
The US government decided to disperse the Hmong diaspora across 53 different US cities to avoid large immigrant settlements. But the Hmong organized a second migration almost immediately, and settled mainly in California, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Immigrants in the United States always have to face many problems. Minneapolis or Fresno are not at all like high-altitude Laos with its livestock and hunting. Unemployment was extremely high and many felt that they were losing their footing.
Some Hmongs could not honor the memory of their ancestors the way they did at home. And they knew that they were at risk of meeting Tsog Tsuam. When the terrible night witch appeared, it was supposed to call the shaman and perform the ceremony. But the Hmongs, scattered across the country, were far from always able to find the right person. And without the performance of traditional rituals, without shamans and in an alien cultural environment, they felt defenseless.
Adler concludes that the Lao immigrants were, in a sense, killed by their powerful cultural beliefs in the existence of night spirits.
“The strong and prolonged stress caused by the break with one's own culture and resettlement in an alien environment was superimposed on the belief in evil spirits with the power to kill a person who does not perform religious rites. As a result, lonely Hmong men were forced to live in constant mystical fear of visiting a night witch, which, in the end, could lead to death.
Adler considers the strange Hmong deaths to be manifestations of the nocebo effect (A drug that has no real pharmacological effect, but causes a negative reaction in the patient; the term originated as the antithesis of placebo; approx. Mixednews).
The effect of nocebo is very poorly understood. The reasons for this are predominantly ethical - the study of this effect can be associated with harm to humans. However, the few scientific works that were still carried out prove that nocebo is a real phenomenon and has great power.
For example, people who were told that they were sensitive to electromagnetic radiation from mobile phone signals began to experience debilitating headaches.
The rate of side effects among patients treated for arthritis was found to be related to what they knew about the medications they were taking.
But if there are external manifestations of faith, why not be internal? It would be logical to assume that the stronger a person believes in something, the more powerful the impact to which his body is exposed, even if the beliefs in question relate to something completely unscientific.
If you are still in doubt that the nocebo effect can really lead to untimely death, Adler has another compelling example.
A group of scientists made an amazing discovery: Chinese Americans, if they were born in the "unlucky" year from the point of view of Chinese astrology and suffered from some kind of disease, died earlier than those with the same disease who were born in the "happy" years.
That is, people born in a year that is considered "bad" for lung health die from lung diseases on average five years earlier than the same sick, but born in a different year.
Nothing of the kind was observed with representatives of other nationalities living among the Chinese. Moreover, how much earlier these people die is directly related to how "strong their connection with the traditional culture of China."
There is something to think about. If a person was born under an unlucky star, he dies five years earlier than the one born under a happy one, from the same disease. But only if he believes in Chinese astrology.
Adler calls this phenomenon "ethnic biology."
“Since the attitude to reality can have biological consequences, and this attitude is different in different cultures, then depending on the cultural context, biological processes in the same conditions can proceed in different ways,” she writes. “In other words, biology is“national”.
We still know very little about how our consciousness is connected with the body. Sleep paralysis studies may provide us with a clue to this puzzle.