The creepy real story that inspired Freddy Krueger's movies

Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) is one of the most emblematic horror films of all time. The Tape, directed by Wes Craven, has as the primary antagonist to Freddy Krueger, a violent killer who stalks his victims within his dreams, making sleep become a danger.

Although the plot seemed most fanciful, his creator revealed that he was inspired by a disturbing real story. Craven conceived this film after reading a series of newspaper articles from the Los Angeles times, which counted the case of a group of Asian immigrants who began to have horrible nightmares that led them to refuse to sleep and when they finally returned to sleep, they died Inexplicably.

As Craven explained to cinema, he had the idea of designing a truly scary psychopath for a new tape and without waiting for him, he found inspiration in the real world.

" I wanted to do something that was tied to the deepest part of our subconscious. I had an earlier career in the academic world (I had studied psychology at John Hopkins University), so there were certain things I knew ", he commented on that occasion.

This is how the filmmaker took elements of Freudian and jungian psychology and mixed them with what he read in the paper, giving fruit to a monstrous killer who lived in the subconscious of his victims.

The true story
But what really happened to those who died in their dreams in real life? According to the portal, they suffered something known as unexpected sudden death syndrome.

The accounts read by Craven addressed the case of about a hundred Asian individuals, primarily young and healthy, who died in their dreams and whose autopsies revealed no anomaly in their body.

It was a group of ethnic immigrants known as hmong or miao, who arrived in the United States fleeing mainly from Laos, where they were persecuted to death.

When Vietnam attacked laos - one of the Hmong's main places of residence - he named them "priority enemies" and began to kill them. This, in response to the fact that many young people of the ethnic group had previously fought in favour of the united states - its main adversary - in exchange for promises of a better life. That was how many members began to flee to other parts of the world, including America, where they were granted the status of "political refugees".

When they arrived in North America, life became difficult for this ethnicity, who barely spoke English and faced a tremendous cultural shock. The worst was that when they began to adapt to this different society, some of them began to die in dreams.

According to gizmodo, the first known case occurred in 1977 in orange county. There, ly houa - a working man and a good physical condition - inexplicably passed away. That was the beginning of the deaths of the same nature.

Over the course of 5 years, more than a dozen young and healthy Hmong immigrants had died in a similar way. According to witnesses, before they died, these people were wailing and seemed desperate in the midst of their dreams. This situation began to alarm the members of the ethnic group, who saw how many of them died so strangely.

In the face of confusion, the centers for disease control and prevention in the United States began to conduct investigations, in order to determine the causes. Heart Failure, consequences of gas attacks suffered by the people, stress or extreme fear, were some of the options that were.

Then there appeared other cases in Asia not related to the Hmong and involving Japanese, Filipinos and Singaporeans. In fact, there were researchers who claimed that 500 nips had died in previous years of similar causes, repeating the same pattern: healthy young people-under 35-who died in sleep. It was also determined that 43 out of 100 Filipino men were likely to die in this way.

This was compounded by a study showing that some 200 Thai men died between 1982 and 1989 in a similar way. This LED to a number of explanations based on mythology and the paranormal, which spoke of monsters and witches that would haunt their victims in dreams.

In the mid-80 s, there were 116 cases of Hmong men residing in the United States who died from the so-called unexpected sudden death syndrome.

Possible causes
After many analyses and medical follow-up to 3 Men of ethnicity who managed to survive due to timely cardiopulmonary resuscitation, it was discovered that these deaths could be caused by ventricular arrhythmias - whose origin was unknown - which led to cardiac arrest.

According to a study published by pathologist Roy Gibson in 1988, these people would have suffered hereditary problems that hit in tissues transmitting electrical signals, slogan, adding that these defects were not often a problem for most of the time, But when the person was subjected to a lot of stress, they could cause death.

Later, as early as 1992, pere and josep brugada were able to identify the risk of unexpected rising death syndrome through electrocardiograms.

In this way, when a patient was in danger, he was given a device called defibrillator defibrillator, which was able to emit an electrical impulse in the heart when it presented the fault, avoiding cardiac arrest.

Although it is still not entirely clear why the Hmong people had so many victims for this problem, it is believed that the hereditary factor added to the past suffering of the tribe and the subsequent cultural shock that they had to live on when arriving in the United States, triggered severe stress He LED them to present these fatal arrhythmias.