6. A Nightmare On Elm Street - Cambodian Nightmare Deaths
Alright, now, I shouldn't have to explain the plot of the original A Nightmare On Elm Street, but for those of you who are not as cultured in epic horror franchises, it is a story about a group of teenagers who all dream of the same man named Freddy Krueger, who is always trying to kill them. If Freddy killed them in their dreams, they died in real life. Everyone knows that this movie is based off of real events, however, in my experience, we've all heard different events. Someone told me once it was based off of a pedophile who was murdered by one of his victim's fathers. Someone else told me it was based on a story of a back alley doctor who would drug his patients and molest them while under anesthesia and accidently kill them. The story I heard this movie was based on was a young boy who was hospitalized for violent night terrors and died in his sleep in front of hospital staff who were monitoring him after sedating him when they found out he had hidden his sleeping pills under his pillow and kept a coffee machine in his closet. This isn't true. Well, it may be. Who knows? But that isn't what inspired Wes Craven. Wes Craven was inspired by a newspaper article detailing the mysterious deaths of several Khmar refugees who were tortured by nightmares after surviving the US bombings of Cambodia. They were so afraid of their dreams that they would will themselves to stay awake for days at a time before finally succumbing to the urge. Then, they would never wake up. They would fall asleep and the nightmares were so shocking that they literally stopped their hearts. It was a phenomenon that doctors titled "sudden unexplained death syndrome", later coined more specifically as "Brugada syndrome" in 1993. Brugada syndrome is very prevalent in the far East, Thailand and Laos to be specific. Seeing as how Cambodia is not far off from those countries, it is a very believable cause of death. So this isn't a mystery, but a very strange story that we can all be glad Wes Craven decided to draw from.