A certain town in Kazakhstan might very well be the sleepiest little town in the world. Since 2013, the people of Kalachi have suffered from some kind of affliction that forces them to fall asleep at completely random times.
These spontaneous fits of sleep vary in length from a couple of hours to days in some cases. Even stranger, nobody has an explanation as to why, and the Kazakhstan government doesn’t seem interested in finding out.
Since August of 2014, 60 people alone were afflicted by this sleeping curse. That’s about 10 percent of the town’s population of 680.
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The only scientific name for the disease is “encephalopathy,” which is just a general term used to describe something that isn’t entirely understood.
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In addition to the fits of sleep, the disease also caused hallucinations in some children. They report seeing things like flying horses, as well as people with eight eyes and elephant trunks.
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Since the government failed to figure out what’s happening, the townspeople turned to theories ranging from government experimentation to space aliens.
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Some think it has something to do with an abandoned Soviet-era uranium mine nearby. No official medical links have been found so far.
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Others believe that many cases are a communal reaction to the stress of living in Kalachi. However, outsiders visiting family have also contracted the mystery illness.
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Then there is the theory that everyone is suffering from narcolepsy. This disease is typically only present in about 0.03 percent of the population. So what are the chances that all the narcoleptics of the world live in Kalachi?
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After a year and a half, nobody knows what is going on in Kalachi. The townspeople remain trapped in a nightmare that they might not wake from for a very long time.
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H/T: Vice
I wouldn’t mind taking a day or two just to nap. My co-workers at ViralNova know this. However, this is truly bizarre and scary. I think this might be the only instance where thinking about sleep is going to make me lose sleep.
