The curious case of the Sleepy Hollow
One 28 August 2014, in a small town in Kazakhstan called Kalachi, a man named Viktor Kazachenko drove off to the nearest village on some errands, but never arrived there. He was found later just sleeping near his motorcycle.
He woke up from his deep sleep a week later. When asked after he gained consciousness , he said
"My brain switched off. That’s it. I don’t remember. I came round on 2 September. I understood [on waking up] in the hospital that I’d fallen asleep.””
This was the first of the many cases of the "sleeping sickness" that began to afflict the people of the village. And no one could explain why.
Since 2014, over a quarter of the population living in the village, which is now called "Sleepy Hollow" by the media, has stopped doing whatever they were doing and fell into a deep sleep.
This phenomenon has been dubbed "sleeping sickness" by the scientists, who are now trying to analyse this mystery.
The episodes of sleeping are marked by an instantaneous deep slumber that lasts days on end and has been designated as a coma by the doctors. Those who were affected woke up feeling confused and dizzy. Most of them do not recall what happened and those who do , report seeing frightening hallucinations.
“To bring them into full consciousness is practically impossible on the first day,”explained professor Leonid Rikhvanov, who is investigating the disease.
Even after the affected people wake up, most of them suffer some kind of symptoms that continue even after their sleeping episode.
"After [the] slumber, my blood pressure started going up for no reason. For six weeks, I didn't know where to put myself. It strongly affects your mentality. I'm very on edge."Viktor Kazachenko told Eurasia.net.
Viktor Kazachenko, along with 30 other villagers, has already been affected by this mysterious condition twice.
So what is making these villagers fall asleep?
This phenomenon is the most intriguing mystery that happened in this millennium, attracting doctors and scientists from around the world to come to Kalachi. Many of them came up with interesting theories, trying to explain this.
1. Wind blowing form an abandoned uranium mine.
There is an abandoned Soviet Union uranium mine next to the village. Some scientists believe that Radon gas emitted from the mine that wasn't operational in two decades could be the cause. To buttress the claim they found elevated level of radon gas in the village.
But the doctors involved in this shot down this theory saying
I am an anesthesiologist myself and we use similar gases for anesthesia, but the patients wake up a maximum in one hour after surgery. These people sleep for two to six days, what is the concentration of this gas then? And why one person falls asleep and somebody who lives with him does not?"
So it seems the concentration of the radon gas is not high enough to knock out someone for many days. It also doesn't explain why one person gets knocked out, while the other who was close by doesn't get the same effect?
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