Night Terrors

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart Choice.

Make another Smart Choice with AutoQuote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once.

Try it at Progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance and Affiliates.

Not available in all states and situations.

Prices may vary on how you buy.

Story 1.

Who are the shadow people?

Flickering in and out of existence, sometimes only for a split second, sometimes longer, but always transient, they leave only questions in their wake.

What are their intentions?

Where do they come from?

Why do they appear?

Who or what are the Shadow People?

Have you ever felt as if you're being watched?

Perhaps you are reading a book,

perhaps you're in the middle of some household chore,

maybe you're even sitting listening to a podcast.

When all of a sudden, this unshakable feeling comes over you.

The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

It feels as if someone else is in the room, even though you are alone.

Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see a movement, Only fleeting.

A shadow in your peripheral vision.

It was right there.

But when you turn your head to look, it's gone.

Or what if you're lying in bed when this feeling comes over you?

You feel a cold chill.

You look over the top of your duvet, and sure enough, there is a dark figure standing at the end of your bed.

In your wide-eyed terror, you manage to blink in an attempt to clear your eyes, and when you open them again, the figure is gone.

If you have experienced something similar to this, then you are not alone.

It is a phenomenon experienced by millions of people all over the world, regardless of age, race, religion or culture.

It knows no prejudice, no preference, no borders.

These strange figures are known simply as shadow people,

and we, as a species, have been seeing them since time immemorial.

They appear in one of two ways.

There are the peepers, which manifest right at the edge of your visual range, and look as if they are peeping at you from behind something.

Then there are the far more terrifying, full-visual apparitions, which visit you at various inopportune times, but mostly whilst you sleep.

They have been linked to hauntings, violent poltergeist activity, and in some instances have even been thought to have caused death.

There is one figure amongst them that is said to be pure evil and if you ever see him it is considered an extremely ill omen.

He is known as the Hatman and he only appears to those who are about to face a personal tragedy.

We have pulled together a few tales for this episode.

All of them were submitted by subscribers and all are said to be true.

But we'll let you be the judge of that.

Who are these mysterious and elusive beings that have been seen by millions?

Whichever stance you take, sit or lie back and enjoy.

Our first story comes courtesy of Michael Collis from Brendale, a small suburb just north of Brisbane, Australia.

Michael would never forget Christmas of 2002, when he was just eight years old.

It was the height of summer, and Queensland was experiencing something of a heat wave.

Michael had woken up several times during the night, his body covered in sweat, tossing and turning over to the cooler side of his bed.

He didn't know what time it was when he had this particular experience.

There was no clock in his room, but he knew that it was after midnight.

because his parents had gone to bed.

The house was still and quiet, so quiet in fact, that he could hear the muffled sound of his parents snoring in the other room.

Taking a sip of his water, he turned onto his back and just lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling.

The heat was troublesome, but he was also extremely excited about Christmas Day.

He had asked for a Nintendo GameCube that year, and the prospect of opening his presents was more than he could bear.

Christmas was just two days away.

He was contemplating which game he was going to play on first, when a slight movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention.

To the left of his bed was his bedroom window.

The curtains were open, and directly outside was the top of the porch roof.

Oftentimes he would climb out of his window and just relax on top of the porch whenever he wanted to get away from his annoying younger brother, who was five at the time.

Michael didn't see what had moved, but when he turned his head to look, there was nothing there.

He wrote it off almost immediately, but as he lay there it happened again, and again when he looked over, he couldn't see anything.

It was as if someone was outside, just hiding behind the edge of the window frame on the left.

This happened again and again, and each time he turned his head to look in the direction of the movement, whatever it was had vanished.

The fourth or fifth time it happened, Michael decided to just lie still and try not to look at it.

His head was angled just enough so that out of the corner of his eye, he could make out a dark figure standing outside, just off to the left.

After dithering for a few seconds, it proceeded to walk past the window, then turned around and walked back.

It paced back and forth several times.

Each time it turned, it did so quickly, like a soldier on parade.

But when it was walking past the window, its movement was more sluggish and deliberate, as if trying to show that it was there.

Michael remembered thinking that whoever it was seemed to be dressed like Dick Tracy.

The figure wore a long trench coat, and he could just about see the outline of a hat on top of its head.

He couldn't see any features.

Everything was just black.

silhouetted against the street lights outside.

Strangely, he didn't feel scared by this experience.

His young mind was not quite world wary and he didn't consider the implications of a possible prowler outside his window.

If anything, he found it annoying.

As he got out of bed to close his curtains, he heard footsteps running across the porch roof, which abruptly stopped as he looked outside.

Whoever had been out there had seemingly disappeared.

By the time he awoke the next day, he had completely forgotten about the strange figure, and in in fact, didn't think about it again until many years later.

When Michael was in college, a friend lent him a book on the subject of strange phenomena, and there just so happened to be a chapter in there regarding shadow people.

When he read one passage in particular, his mind was immediately transported back to that night all those years before, and a sudden chill ran up his spine.

He realised that what he saw could more than likely have been the infamous Hatman, but what disturbed him the most were the implications attached to seeing such an entity.

When he went home at the end of term, he told his mother about what he had seen outside his window when he was younger, and told her what it was supposed to mean.

He wanted to ask whether anyone in the family had passed away at around that time, but before the question even left his mouth, his mother simply said,

I wonder if he was here for Emily.

Initially, Michael drew a blank, and his mother had to clue him in.

Emily was his friend from next door.

She had died in her sleep somewhat mysteriously on the 23rd of December that same year.

He was shocked to find that he had completely forgotten all about it and wondered why this was so.

Was it so traumatic that he had just blanked it out, or did his late-night visitor have something to do with it?

Start the season with Etsy and make your holiday traditions extra special.

On Etsy, you'll discover original pieces from small shops that will help you celebrate your way.

Shop Etsy for holiday decor that makes you feel seen.

Special starts on Etsy.

Tap the banner to shop now.

This Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch.

Prize Pick is making sports season even more fun.

On prize picks, whether you're a football fan, a basketball fan, it always feels good to be right.

And right now, new users get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5.

The The app is simple to use.

Pick two or more players.

Pick more or less on their stat projections.

Anything from touchdown to threes.

And if you write, you can win big mix and match players from any sport on PrizePicks, America's number one daily fantasy sports app.

Prize Pix is available in 40 plus states, including California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia.

Most importantly, all the transactions on the app are fast, safe, and secure.

Download the Prize Pix app today and use code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

That's code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

Prize picks, it's good to be right.

Must be present in a certain six.

Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

Our second tale comes from Sarah Whittaker.

Sarah submitted the following story regarding her grandparents, Albert and Susan Putney, who were from Cranbrook in Kent, England.

Albert, or rather his wife, would have a chilling experience in 2013.

They slept in separate bedrooms, as many older married couples tend to do, for a variety of reasons conducive to a peaceful night's sleep.

One morning, Susan got up in the early hours to answer a call of nature.

On her way, she passed her husband's room and could hear him snoring, as he always did.

This was one of the main reasons they had taken to sleeping in separate rooms.

It was also also the reason why, on the way back from the bathroom, she stopped at his door and listened.

It had gone awfully quiet.

Albert had always suffered with sleep apnea, and she wondered if he might have stopped breathing in his sleep.

It is, after all, a potentially dangerous disorder, which can be fatal in extreme circumstances.

Putting her ear to the door, She was horrified to hear the sound of her husband choking.

It was almost inaudible behind the solid oak panel, but there was no mistaking it.

She immediately opened the door, ready to rush over to Albert, but instead she just stood still, frozen in place.

She would be in floods of tears when she related this tale to her granddaughter some years later.

Sarah was moved enough to believe her grandmother when she said that what she saw inside that room chilled her to her core and almost stopped her heart dead.

It had your grandad round the throat, she said.

It was just black, sitting there on his chest.

No face, just this black thing.

I could see the outline of a head and shoulders, but the rest of it was just a sort of mist.

As I opened the door, it sort of turned to look at me, and then sunk into the bed.

Vanished.

Gone.

Susan never told anyone else about what she had seen.

Not even her husband, for fear of being committed as she had put it.

Sadly, Albert passed away in April 2018.

Our final story comes by way of a couple living in Cardiff, capital city of Wales in the United Kingdom.

Lindsay Morton and her boyfriend Ian Jenkins had recently moved in together.

They had been living in their house for only a month when weird things began to occur.

At first the activity started small.

Things would go missing and reappear in odd places.

They would find tins of canned food which had been placed in a cupboard suddenly stacked in weird formations, and other times they would catch a strong scent of sulphur throughout the house.

Of course they accused each other of playing pranks, but over time they began to realize that something was not quite right.

They had recently bought a golden retriever puppy, which would growl and bark at thin air, and the couple began to get an unshakable feeling that there was another presence in the house, watching them.

What the presence was, they did not know, and as they described it, it wasn't something they were consciously aware of, it was just a strange feeling in the back of the mind.

They were cuddling on the sofa watching TV when they caught their first glimpse of this presence.

The TV was directly in front of them, and the doorway to the living room was over to their right, outside of which was the hallway and the stairs leading up to the first floor.

Mitch, their retriever, was stretched out on the rug in front of them, and they were just settling down to watch a film when all three of them, including the dog, suddenly looked over towards the doorway.

Did you see that?

Ian asked.

I saw something.

What did you see?

Lindsay replied.

They both described that they had seen a head peeping around the doorframe at them.

Most peculiar of all was that the dog had seen it too, and was now letting out a low growl.

Ian went out into the hallway to check, then checked all the other rooms to make sure there wasn't an intruder.

Other than Mitch, they were completely alone in the house.

Over the course of the night, they kept seeing this thing peeping around the door at them.

Its movements were fast but jerky, almost as if it was moving at a lower frame rate.

But they never caught sight of it directly.

It was always in their peripheral vision.

This went on for several weeks whenever the couple watched TV.

It was definitely strange, but became something of an amusement to Ian and Lindsay, who would often laugh it off and say, looks like our little friend is playing peekaboo again.

They described it as little because judging by where the head always appeared in relation to the door frame, it couldn't have been any taller than four foot.

The amusement wouldn't last for long, unfortunately, as the activity in the house became more malevolent.

Doors would open and slam shut of their own accord.

There would be thumps and bangs from upstairs when no one else was up there.

Objects would fall off shelves.

One day the couple came home from shopping and found a number of plates smashed on the kitchen floor.

How they had made their way out of the cupboard to the other side of the kitchen was a complete mystery.

Ardent sceptics though they had been, they began to accept the possibility that they might be dealing with a poltergeist.

The most disturbing experience would occur during the week commencing the 11th of August 2014.

when Ian had to work away for a couple of nights.

At around 4am in the morning, Lindsay called his mobile in hysterics, telling him to come home right away.

Apparently she had been asleep in bed when she was awoken by the feeling of someone grabbing and shaking her foot.

When she turned onto her back, she was fully expecting to see Mitch at the bedside, but instead, there was a huge dark figure towering over her.

It was completely black, with no features, and was easily around 7 foot tall.

The only thing she felt she could do at the time was hide under the covers, crying her eyes out as she heard footsteps walk around to the other side of the bed, and then the sound of the bedroom door closing.

She remained under the duvet for as long as she could, but in the end, as it was summertime, the heat became unbearable.

When she finally emerged, she saw that the room was empty.

Afterwards she checked the whole house, and found that all entrances were locked.

There was no way it was an intruder.

At least not the kind of intruder one might expect.

Unfortunately, Ian was unable to make his home the next day, and Lindsay went and stayed with a friend.

When Ian did return home, they went to visit a spiritualist church, despite the fact that neither of them were religious.

A medium offered to come and visit the house, and when she arrived, she had something rather disturbing to tell the couple.

Her words were something to the effect of, There is more than one presence in this house, and they are so far back behind the shroud that I cannot see who they are.

They speak in a language I don't understand.

Lindsay felt silly as she went from room to room, holding a candle and reciting a prayer, as instructed by the medium.

But as she went into her and Ian's room, she felt a tremendous pressure on her chest, which she said felt like resistance.

After the blessing was complete, the couple settled down that night, and for the first time in ages, they felt comfortable, as if a weight had been lifted off the house, and the paranormal activity ceased completely from that day onwards.

So what are we to make of these stories?

They are certainly compelling, but like the majority of ghostly sightings, they are anecdotal, and this is the unfortunate tragedy that surrounds such phenomenon.

These are very personal experiences, which are often fleeting and terrifying, but there is no real way to prove whether or not something actually happened.

We, as onlookers, can only choose to believe, or disbelieve, until it happens to us.

But what of the so-called shadow people?

Who or what are they?

And do they even exist at all?

There are many hypotheses out there.

We have already established that there is a definite link between these entities and poltergeist activity.

and for this reason, the go-to explanation is that they are ghostly or spiritual in nature.

The reason they appear black is because their energy is negative, suggesting that their souls were either evil or tormented during their lives.

Obviously, there are those who believe that these beings are demonic and that they exhibit parasitic behavior, feeding off negative energy such as fear and anger.

It is not certain whether they are the cause of paranormal events or whether paranormal events attract them due to the levels of fear being induced.

On the other hand, there is a whole host of left-field ideas, which are as bizarre as they are baffling, but intriguing nonetheless.

Particularly in modern times, shadow people have been thought of as interdimensional travellers, phased slightly out of our visual range, which is why they always appear somewhat obscure and distorted.

They have also been linked to aliens.

Believe it or not, Shadow people and poltergeist activity are common occurrences in the houses of alleged alien abductees, so maybe there is something more to this idea.

Furthermore, along the same lines, people have also made a connection between the Hatman and the elusive men in black, due to the fact that both seem to favour wearing fedora hats.

On the flip side, sceptics argue that shadow people are non-existent in physical terms, but are in fact visual anomalies.

particularly as far as the peepers are concerned, which only seem to appear in one's peripheral vision.

It is thought, although not proven, that very low VLF and ultra-low ULF frequencies can manifest visual hallucinations and feelings of intense fear in human beings and animals.

It is also important to understand how the brain fills in missing information gathered from the senses.

If you have ever been listening to someone speak, and not quite heard a particular word or sentence, but then worked it out a few seconds later, you'll understand this process.

The brain does the same thing with visual information, particularly in the peripheral range.

Up to 80% of a person's peripheral vision is recreated within the brain, based on very limited information, so it seems likely that the odd anomaly might slip through.

But this process would be unique to each individual.

How do we explain instances when multiple people see something in this way, such as with Lindsay and Ian, as well as their dog?

Whilst we are sure that many instances where peepers occur are visual anomalies, surely not all of them are.

Secondly, what about when shadow people appear in full view?

It seems sceptics also have explanations for this in the forms of either sleep paralysis or waking dreams.

But not all shadow people are seen upon waking, not all of them are seen at night, and not all of them disappear after a few seconds.

They are seen all over the world, in all kinds of locations, and at all times of the day.

Short of accusing people of either lying or being mentally ill, this explanation doesn't always stand up to scrutiny.

In the end, it seems the world will always be divided regarding the existence of shadow people.

Their appearances are so fleeting that photographing them or capturing them on film has proved difficult.

And even when they have been recorded, the phenomenon is so easy to fake that sceptics remain unconvinced.

But disproving their existence is just as difficult as proving it.

These experiences are deeply personal and the only way to know for certain is to see one for yourself.

But that is not something to hope for.

In fact, you should hope for the opposite.

You should hope that if you wake up in the middle of the night, you don't see a terrifying dark figure standing at the bottom of your bed, watching you whilst you sleep.

16 years from today, Greg Gerstner will finally land the perfect cannonball.

Epic Splash, Unsuspecting Friends, a work of art only possible because Greg is already meeting all these same people at AARP volunteer and community events that keep him active and involved and help make sure his happiness lives as long as he does.

That's why the younger you are, the more you need AARP.

Learn more at aarp.org/slash local.

Story 2:

The Curse of the Dab Sea

During the 1980s, A Nightmare on Elm Street first introduced audiences to the iconic horror character Freddy Krueger.

But as unsettling as the movie was, the true story that inspired director Wes Craven's creation of the supernatural killer is equally disturbing.

This week, we examine the terrifying curse of the Dab So.

As a blanket of heavy rainfall continued to roll in over the San Francisco Bay Area, the duty night detective for the Oakland Police Department sought shelter in a shop doorway.

It was December of 1981, and in addition to the unrelenting downpour, it was also the coldest month of the year.

Cursing under his breath whilst he shook the water from the sleeves of his now saturated overcoat, He watched impassively as a couple of EMTs removed the body of the deceased from the apartment block on the opposite side of the street.

The case was as unwelcome to him as it was inexplicable.

Homicides and robberies were continuing to rise in the city at large as a flood of crack cocaine flowed into the streets of San Francisco.

And now, he was also saddled with investigating the mysterious death of Mr.

Pang.

An unassuming factory worker with no criminal record or known medical issues, the 35-year-old Laotian migrant had passed away suddenly in his sleep without warning or explanation.

With no apparent signs of injury or trauma, the only evidence as to how the deceased had met his end was provided by Mrs.

Pang, who had been with him when he died.

The woman was understandably traumatised by what had just occurred, but had managed to relate the incident using broken English.

She had been awoken from a deep and restful sleep by the violent movements of her husband as he convulsed erratically beside her.

The dead man's widow explained that when she turned over to investigate, he had appeared to be struggling in his sleep, as if trying to haul himself up off the bed into a seated position.

He then began to lash out with his arms, seemingly in an attempt to fight off an unseen attacker.

Her desperate efforts to rouse him had failed, with his frantic and violent actions continuing, despite the fact he still seemed to be fully asleep and completely unaware of her intervention.

Whilst she watched helplessly, his wild movements suddenly ceased, and her husband let out an anguished cry before going completely limp.

He was declared dead as soon as the ambulance had arrived.

With the body now on its way to the morgue for further examination, and the bereaved wife being comforted by members of the local community, there was little more to be done.

As the police officer stepped back out into the rain and headed for his car, he found himself irritated by two details of the investigation that he knew would make the case a difficult one for him to file.

The first was the revelation that this was the 18th seemingly healthy member of the Hmong community to die in identical circumstances that year alone, and the second was the unshakable insistence of the man's wife that he had been killed in his sleep by a vengeful spirit, one that had pursued him halfway across the globe.

In 1959, The already troubled kingdom of Laos became the scene of a bloody and brutal civil conflict between an emerging socialist undercurrent and the ruling royalist government.

When the populist forces embraced communist ideals, the ongoing war in neighboring Vietnam subsequently spilled across the borders and into the tiny country.

In the face of advancing North Vietnamese armies and assisted by covert CIA military assets who were desperate to see the takeover fail, the Hmong sided with the Laotian government forces.

It was a decision they would come to regret.

By 1975, public unrest unrest in the United States had led to the complete withdrawal of American forces from the Vietnamese theatre of war, leaving the Hmong at the mercy of the victorious communists.

The Laotian royal family would eventually perish in the nightmarish prison camps that they were thrown into, and huge swathes of the ethnic Hmong population would be massacred, accused of being puppets and lackeys of the defeated Americans.

Those that were able to flee headed for the border with Thailand, with 50,000 Hmong eventually finding their way to the United States, where they were granted asylum.

It was then that these strange deaths started to occur.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, increasing numbers of Hmong migrants who had settled in America started to violently panic in their sleep and then suddenly pass away.

In all, over 100 of their number would perish in this manner.

with no obvious indication or reason why.

For over a decade, the authorities remained baffled by what was happening until the stories of the survivors began to emerge.

Wang Keong was amongst the first thousand migrants to reach the safety of America and one of a significant number who had settled in Chicago.

Shortly after his arrival, he was asleep in bed one night when he sensed another presence in the room near to where he was lying.

It was then that he became aware of a tall, pale-skinned woman watching him intently from the end of his bed.

Keong found that he was unable to move and was forced to watch with growing horror as the slender figure slowly climbed up onto the bed and then deliberately lowered her body onto his, crushing his chest.

As the stranger stared angry and unblinking down into his terrified eyes, he felt his breathing start to become restricted and laboured.

When Keong tried to cry out for help, he found he could not even open his mouth, unable to do anything other than stare at the hateful female features that hovered mere inches above his face.

Whenever he tried to shift his body to one side in order to relieve the relentless pressure that weighed down on his lungs, the female intruder would match the movement, continuing to press down hard onto his torso.

For the next 15 minutes, unable to move to any real extent or cry out for help, Kion could feel his life slowly ebbing away.

His vision became blurred, and his breathing gradually slowed, with darkness starting to envelop him.

Throughout this, his attacker wore a mixed expression of condemnation and hostility, neither moving nor speaking.

As he felt the last few traces of breath leaving his body, the figure that was lying on top of him suddenly disappeared, instantly releasing the crushing weight on his chest.

He fell sideways out of bed, clawing desperately at his throat and sucking down huge lungfuls of oxygen.

As his eyes darted nervously around his bedroom, the young man could see no trace of the woman.

Only the memory of her hate-filled eyes remained.

As he sat gasping for air on the floor, Kyong realised that he had just been paid a visit by the Dab Tso.

Also known as the Night Hag, the Sou was one of a number of horrific monsters that populated the culture and folklore of the Far East.

Others included the Mananangao, a form of winged vampire that sought out pregnant victims, using its long tongue to suck the blood from their unborn babies.

There was also the gruesome Painangalan, a cannibalistic entity that took the form of a beautiful woman by day, but whose head separated from her body at night and floated across the fields searching for prey, its entrails and spinal column dragging along behind it.

The So was a similarly nocturnal creature, dwelling underground or in mounting caves by day and roaming the countryside during the hours of darkness.

It would sneak into residences and suffocate unsuspecting humans, stealing their souls as they died.

Protection from these creatures could be achieved in the form of sacrifices and offerings to a family's departed ancestors, who would reward these acts of remembrance by watching over and protecting their loved ones.

Descriptions of the Dab So varied from survivor to survivor.

suggesting that it possessed the ability to use its victims' fears and anxieties against them.

In some cases it was only a shadowy outline, in others a fully defined person.

Sometimes it would be clothed, on other occasions naked.

The only common feature was that the entity always manifested as female in appearance, ranging in age from a young girl to an elderly woman.

The attacks were not restricted to the United States, seeming to occur wherever the Laotian refugees had settled.

There were further cases of deaths attributed to the Dab So within Hmong settlements in Thailand and Singapore, where records show that over 230 fit and healthy males died painfully and unexpectedly in their sleep, during the same timeframe as the deaths in America.

The stories related by the handful of victims who had managed to survive the encounters sent shockwaves throughout the rest of their community.

There were cases of young Hmong men not sleeping for an entire week, using coffee and drugs to stay awake beyond the point of exhaustion, for fear of being murdered as they slept.

Then gradually, the number of deaths began to fall, and by the start of the 1990s, there were no more incidents attributed to the SO.

So are we to believe that the tragic deaths of over 100 American residents during the early 1980s were caused by a malevolent paranormal or supernatural entity that had followed them to their new home on the other side of the world?

It's an argument that perhaps unsurprisingly failed to convince the US authorities, who attributed the Hmong deaths to a slew of other medical and societal factors.

The cases were classified in official reports as sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome, or suns for short.

A number of frequently occurring features were identified from examining the sun's cases as a whole.

With only one solitary exception, the victims were all male.

They were middle-aged, averaging somewhere between 33 and 34 years old.

They had also died within the first 17 months of their arrival in the United United States, and whilst an exact cause of death would prove impossible to pin down, a closer examination of the bodies did manage to highlight shared symptoms in at least some of the cases.

Chicago pathologist Dr.

Frederick Eckner reported that in 17 of the 18 bodies that he had been asked to investigate, small defects were present within the tiny fibers that carried the electrical impulses from the brain to the heart.

These fibers were found to be frayed and curled, much like a fuse that had been overloaded and burnt out.

He hypothesised that the hearts of the dead men had suddenly stopped working because of an immediate and wholly unexpected electrical discharge, the type of discharge created by the body's nervous system in times of extreme stress and anxiety.

In short, while sleeping at night, the victims appeared to have been killed by their own nightmares.

Other theories that were brought forward seized upon the high levels of depression that were present in the Hmong community.

In addition to the anticipated stresses and strains of the panicked flight from Laos, many of the migrants also admitted to possessing an unhealthy degree of survivor guilt, feeling as if they had abandoned their friends and families to die at the hands of the victorious communist authorities.

The way that American society treated the newcomers did little to help their fragile mental health.

The Hmong were often mistaken for either Vietnamese or Korean nationals by their new neighbours, which resulted in verbal and physical abuse.

The American people were understandably exhausted and outraged by 20 years of bloody conflict in the Far East.

There were many cases of aggression and violence towards the migrants, which was particularly sad, given that so many ethnic Hmong soldiers had died fighting against the communists.

Increased levels of stress can sometimes cause significant sleep deprivation, and one possible side effect of this is a disorder known as sleep paralysis.

This is exceptionally common, believed to affect up to 50% of adults at some point during their lives.

During a paralysis episode, as the body is on the verge of falling asleep or about to wake, the subject temporarily enters a state where they believe they are conscious but cannot move.

This can sometimes lead to hallucinations, with visions of intruders or strange demonic entities often reported by those who have experienced it.

However, it is not usually fatal.

Could the overwhelming stresses of integrating into a new culture and the observed defects in the nerve fibers have combined to turn this usually terrifying but harmless disorder into a deadly condition?

It's an interesting question.

There is also the possibility that the nervous and immune systems of the Hmong could simply not adapt to the pollution-heavy environment they now found themselves living in.

In their Laotian homeland, they had lived off a natural and healthy diet.

The rural communities enjoyed much cleaner air and extremely low rates of heart disease.

Now residing in congested cities, choked by exhaust fumes and industrial pollution, and with cheap and easy access to fast foods, containing ingredients their bodies were just not accustomed to, there was a significant increase in their levels of congenital illness.

The narrative provided by the migrants is a compelling one when viewed objectively.

The fact that no children or old people were ever involved in the incidents certainly seems to indicate some form of targeting or sentient intelligence to the attacks.

There is also an argument as to why the timeframe in which the deaths occurred is so narrow.

The move to America was a huge cultural shock to most Laotians, and it was their efforts to adapt and integrate into American society that allowed the SO to enter into their lives.

The communist purge in Laos killed many Hmong elders and shamans, the people who had been tasked with keeping the Dabso and other monsters at bay.

The legend says that when the survivors settled in the United States, the amount of holy men amongst their number had dwindled to such an extent that there was now little in place to guard against the attacks by the night hag.

Customs of sacrifices and offerings that had kept them safe in their beds whilst in Laos were slowly forgotten, removing the protection their ancestors had traditionally provided for them.

With very few Hmong left in Laos to target, the Dabso were also forced to leave their homeland, setting off in pursuit of the few believers that still feared them.

For a brief period, they were able to hunt and kill with impunity, but their eagerness to steal the souls of their victims would also eventually be their undoing.

As they gleefully called the middle-aged bracket of survivors, the older migrants who believed in them also passed away from natural causes.

But a significant portion of younger migrants ended up converting to Christianity, and in a short space of time, the number of Hmong who believed in the Seou had all but disappeared.

Scientists and doctors who have examined Suns have never been able to conclusively diagnose the exact reason why the nervous system of the victims failed, but from the observations of Dr.

Echner, it seems apparent that the cause was psychological, rather than any kind of external factor, possibly related to a form of sleep paralysis.

Something very painful and persistent was embedded in the depths of the Hmong culture, something that exposed the migrants to events of extreme anxiety.

so extreme that it proved fatal for the minds of some of the people involved.

Perhaps the most important question to be asked when examining the case of the Dab So is this.

What exactly is an evil spirit?

Is it as traditionally conceived, a paranormal entity possessing its own consciousness, acting with malicious will and intent?

Or is it something we manufacture in our minds?

a form of subconscious projection that we manifest in response to events that are taking place around us?

Whichever of those answers you subscribe to, there is little doubt that the Hmong migrants who died in their sleep were killed as a result of the most extreme level of stress and anxiety they had ever faced.

Whether that was because of a paranormal entity or one they imagined because of the awful situation they had been exposed to is irrelevant.

They still died at the hands of the Dab So.

And what makes this case even more compelling is the fact that the vision of the night hag is so common in episodes of sleep paralysis, even in Western culture, that one has to wonder how and why so many people witness the same entity all over the world.

The sheer hopelessness and helplessness of the manner in which these people perished is easily one of the most tragic cases we have examined.

We take comfort in the hope that sharing this story keeps the memory of those who died alive, and that whatever forces were at work in claiming them will never return.

Bedtime is glorious.