The Sleeping Sickness That Turned People Into Human Statues

Astonishing Legends Network. It's Flashback Friday, and you know what that means. A classic episode of Scared All the time's fan favorite bonus show, New Fear Unlocked is out of the vault and on the main feed. This episode originally aired on Patreon September twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, but is being played by you right now. Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here, but in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. You can't take a week, so it's to fill the trump with. Something half feightycent? Is that? Which is a wait? Decent? So when to a lie? And the show? Did the host? You know? And now, hey, everybody, welcome back to New Fear Unlocked with me, Chris Klari and Edcola. As always, we have our camera set up, we have our sweat figured out. We are sweating. It is summer, it is hot, and we are here to bring you a hot, hot, hot New Fear Unlocked episode. Damn, okay, it's actually not that hot. It's really kind of sad and disgusting a little bit. Oh good, good, good, good. Let me, let fucking suck down this, Michelo. Most most of these New Fear Unlocked episodes include a little bit of that, because, after all, while else so we call it New Fear Unlocked. That's true, not just because it's a cool sounding phrase we heard on the internet. People keep saying we wanted to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and here we are. We've talked before on the main show and maybe in New Fear Unlocked about sleep disorders. Yeah, we've done hat Man, We've done sleep paralysis, and there's a whole other world of bizarre sleep disorders that we're probably going to dive into on the main show at. Some We've done that. We've done this stuff about people who like go to sleep and don't look up. Yes, this is a case of a sleep disorder that I had never heard of and didn't fit into the episode with the Laotians. Okay, but is sort of a similar, similar mystery less confined to one group of people like the Laotian cases. For those of you who didn't watch this sleep or listen to the Sleep. Distress as always paused this right now and go listen. And go listen. But the quick recap would be Freddy Krueger and night Ren Elmstreet were inspired by an article that was craven read in the nineteen seventies in the La Times about a group of Laotian Americans I believe, who were suffering from a crazy malady in their sleep where they would go to sleep, they would scream a lot and then they would die. Oh so I misremembered a lot of that. Yeah, and the you know, that inspired sort of Nightmare on Elm Street. But really, these cases of people dying mysteria and there's mysteriously in their sleep, especially in the Southeast Asian community, had a long history before that and a history after that that was studied, and you know, comes down to a couple of different like genetic disorders and heart problems and way yea, yeah, I'm sure I got all of them. But this, this is very different. This. I found an article the headline is the Forgotten plague Encephalitis lethargica and the mystery that still haunts medicine. Well, lethargic it's like people who don't move a lot, So I imagine. There's definitely some not there's some stillness that takes place. Yeah, I'm just trying to break down with my simple brain work. The Latin roots there. Yeah, well we know encephalitis is the swelling of the brain, right, I do know, so I in cephalitis. Lethargica would be a brain swelling that makes you lazy and sleepy. Oh I have that. I think I have it. I don't think you have this. Okay, well you find me, you tell me, we'll hit the symptoms and you will do a checklist. So you tell me yea, yeah, I'm ready. It began as a whisper, a strange affliction barely noticed amid the chaos of World War One, a handful of cases in Europe that a few more in the United States. By nineteen sixteen, the medical community was beginning to realize something was wrong. People were falling into a bizarre state of near sleep, unable to wake up fully, unable to move normally, near sleep. Some died within weeks, others recovered, only to be left with permanent neurological damage. And then there were those who neither died nor recovered. They became statues. I have this, trapped in time, I have this. This is what you do between Episodeseah. Because I'm trapped in time for hour after hour reliving our fucking podcast, recording editing it. Well, I'm usually still. You don't get this physique moving a lot. I think I have a disease. That's a good joke for the visual viewer, video viewer. Yeah, they made that joke as soon as they saw these sweat stains. Between nineteen sixteen and nineteen twenty eight, a wave of this strange illness swept across the world, infecting an estimated one million people. That's so fucking it's a lot of people. I mean, if that many people were turning into statues, it's that fucking soldiers buried in the ground in China or whatever. Yeah, they all get that's a fuck. Terracotta army, terra cotta army. This is how you get there. This illness that infected around a million people was called encephalitis lethargica or sleepy sickness. Wow, that was a very cute name. Yeah, how horrifying this thing is. They went one hundred and eight degrees on those two sleepy sickness. Yeah, it sounds like something I tell Felix before he goes to bed. This disease didn't just put people to sleep, it locked them in their own bodies. Some were frozen in place for decades. They are minds, still intact, but unable to communicate or move. That's a true nightmare. It's like that's uh fucking Johnny got his gun ship. And the people who didn't developed violent, uncontrollable movements and suffered devastating psychotic episodes. So there's no wind, there's no encephalitis. Lethargica is what we call a no wind disease. This is I don't think I have it. Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm not sure if any of this I have a lot. I'm a lethargica adjacent. Yeah, you're lethargica adjacent, but you don't have any violent, uncontrollable movements. I've shared beds with the people who have maybe this disease. And who have suffer for a devastating psychotic episode. Yeah, exactly. I've been kicked out of bed by these people before. Even wilder than the symptoms of this disease. The epidemic vanishes mysteriously as it arrived, leaving thousands of survivors in asylums nursing homes are trapped within their own unresponsive bodies, that's like an avengrous plot. To this day, doctors don't know exactly what caused it. The Forgotten Plague remains one of medicine's great mysteries, a disease without a known origin, a cure, or an explanation. It went away too fast to cure it. I mean a million people. I know, when you talk about six I mean at that time period, it wasn't seven billion people on the planet yet, But talking about billions of people, a million ate nothing, but a million's a lot, Yeah, like a million's a lot. We had a million people locked in their bodies, and it's like that lockout syndrome or whatever I think too, which is so horrifying and terrible. A little similar to this. Yeah, but like are they putting up numbers like a million? I don't know. That'll be an episode someday. Locked in syndrome, locked out syndrome. That depends on what part of relationship you're in. The Symptoms of encephalitis lethargica were as bizarre as they were terrifying. It often started with a fever, sore throat, or general fatigue. Okay, we both suffer from that, yeah, general fatigue. Yeah. The other two, you have to have COVID. Nothing that seemed particularly alarming at first, but then something changed. Patients began to experience uncontroled drowsiness, slipping in and out of consciousness. Some okay, check, well. I mean I'd have to have a lot more of these. Someone fall into a deep, unshakable sleep for days, weeks, or even months. Others remained awake but became strangely paralyzed, unable to move normally or respond to stimuli. For many, it didn't stop there. Some patients developed Parkinson's like tremors, with their muscles locking up in rigid, unnatural positions. Others suffered extreme personality changes, growing restless, paranoid, or violent. Hallucinations were common, and so was catatonia, the state where a patient will remain frozen, aware of their surroundings. But you can snap in front of their eyes and they don't react. There's no unable to react, which is very similar to locked in syndrome. And I think maybe. Maybe a lot of this they've just called now locked in syndrome. Maybe A staggering number of patients about a third died in the acute phase of this disease. Others seven hundred and fifty thousand people. Yeah, wait a third million, that's not that's two thirds is seven hundred, so two hundred and fifty two hundred three thousand. Yeah, we can do this math because it's it corresponds with quarters. Yeah. If it wasn't part of our currency would be fucked. No, it isn't. No, it doesn't. None of this is right. Wow. I think that is too many people to die for. I mean, if two hundred and fifty thousand people died from a disease in twenty twenty five that we didn't know where it came from or how to cure it, I feel like there'd be a worldwide panic. I think they did and we don't. Still. Well, I really five years into not having great jobs opportunities because of it. Well, there's a vaccine, there's a that's not a cure, and it wasn't. Well that's what I'm saying, killed a bunch of people, don't know where. True, there's debate on where it came from, and there's no cure. This is but okay, touche my friend, you got it, pow. But I would I'd say My point I think in general is that this is a very mysterious disease. There's things about COVID that remain debated. But yeah, there was no like lab in Wuhan called like sleepy times sickness. Yeah that they were like, I think it came from here. No, this is just like it appeared and then it disappeared a few years later. That's why I said, it's like an Avengers plot or something. It's just like some external force tried to succeed in making the whole planet disappear or fall asleep. Yeah, but like the Avengers stopped them after only a million and like we don't even notice. I thank you. Yeah, it is very supernatural or comic bookie, it's it's very bizarre. So two hundred and fifty thousand or. Two fifty thousand, one third of the people. Died in acute phase of this disease. Others seemed to recover, only to suffer long term effects that doctors couldn't classify. Some were left with chronic insomnia, unable to sleep at all. Who'd want to go back? You've done it enough, I know, I mean that's not even that's just a choice. Yeah, I'm not sure that's insomnia. Others became depressed, erratic, or psychotic. And then there were those who developed an almost mechanical stillness, locked in a neurological limbo that medicine could not explain. And that's where it's like, that sucks because you can't give consent to like d n army, you don't need recitation. Yeah, Like, but you also can't be like reheel me to a fucking cool state where I can kill myself, yeah, because you're locked in or you're you're catatonic. Yeah, and so you're just in this like real shit limbo. It's a yeah, it's a really it's a really bad deal. And I think that there should be neuralink needs to get out ahead of this coming back, and there needs to be like an eject button if you get. This, Yeah, you have. At best, they're working on you jumping into a block in Mario or something. It doesn't seem like they're they're not. They're not thinking of encephalitis. No, they're trying to find a pathway for billionaire to like enter a robot's body, and that's all they're working on. Autopsies confirmed what the symptoms implied. Patients suffered from an inflammation confined to a small region at the base of the brain. Oh boy, and the recovery of those who survived really was just an illusion because there was this multi stage element to the to the disorder. Oh shit, so it's like in remission essentially. Well yeah, for for oh shoot, I popped the wrong. Oh okay, I guess I'll do a tight five for the audience while you figure this out. I have a lot of onion material from a previous episode or a future episode. Unbeknownst to the God damn, yeah, guys, we're firing on all so we're back onion. Beknownst to the victim, localized neurodegeneration proceeded a pace through this first phase and after an interval lasting between a few days and thirty years. Oh my god, that is the same one eight. That's so much. So this is what I think people discover, you know, studying it post the initial World War One era nineteen sixteen to nineteen twenty eight, you know whatever, Like that's where people were originally infected with this. That's where doctors originally became aware of it. This this thirty years must have come from people studying it, you know. Like that's when they're hanging. They're knocking on your door to be like, hey, we need you to fight in World War two. Now can't like, oh, you can't fight still from the first one, and they're like, fuck, we should write this down, huh. Lasting between a few days. So after this interval that lasted between a few days and thirty years, post encephalitic parkinsonism or PEP emerged. Oh it's the opposite having a step. Yeah, it's a real confined energy or a PEP I didn't ask for, because now you're violently whipping around. Unmistakable and irreversible PEP can signed the young sufferers, mostly between fifteen and thirty five years of age, to decades of disability. For those who had not yet passed adolescence. The second period was marked by pathologic changes of character that approached the psychopathic. Younger children between five and ten might merely irritate with their cleanness, their impaired concentration, their incessant restlessness and need for noise, and their lack of consideration for others. I think I had PEP as a kid. You might have PAP, which this article notes is not unlike current attention deficit to day. Then I had pep and actually with I'll take my hat off. I'm looking more and more like a pep boy every week. I don't cut my hair. People love us if we love a pet boy. I also look like a reenactor and a Confederate soldier thing too. I gotta probably cut this air. The hair is doing all right, man, I mean it's there. It's not falling out, but I'm saying it's a bad look. I gotta like cut it. This is for the video watchers. Yeah. Yeah, remember for a while you were like, I'm not cutting my hair and it's leg it's square, and did I say that, Yeah, you were gonna grow it out into like a big mullet or something. Fuck, guys, I let you down. I think I cut it well. I'm trying to give this like a year ago. Yeah, but there was just like teen year old kid who was handing out five dollars off haircut things, and I just felt like, you know what, I'm going to give them a shot. Not the best haircut I've ever had, but like I still go to them. Yeah, okay, so I keep giving them a shot. Maybe he'll get better or this disease and I don't have to worry about anymore. But uh, yeah I did. I didn't cut my hair through all the COVID though. Remember it was past my it was past my collar and everything was like crazy. Yeah, I'll try and find a picture if I can't put in the show notes, and if it's not there, it means I didn't do it. Hey, are you enjoying this old episode of New Fear Unlocked? If so, don't forget that. You can stay up to date with brand new, commercial free episodes of it every week the main shows off. Now here's one of those ad breaks you could be avoiding. As these symptoms grew in strength, the kids incorrigible impulsiveness, escalated in violence, and they began to pose a danger to themselves and others. Arrant behaviors included cruelty to anyone who crossed them, destructiveness, lying in self mutilation, and including, in one example, removal of eyes other people's unclear. Okay, we touched on that unlocked boy. Yeah. What's funny is it's like it's a sleep disease or whatever. But yeah, and so, like half of those are could could be summed up with one of those like don't talk to me before I have my coffee bumper staffers like, yeah, you know what I mean that, Like, I'm a prickly pair in the morning. I am. If my mom's listening, she'll tell you I'm a prickly pair in the morning. I'm not pulling your eyes out though. I mean, most of these symptoms really feel like just a child turned up to eleven. Sure you know when they reached out of lescens These patients manifested inappropriate and excessive sexuality. Oh boy, talk to me at fourteen years old. I don't think you should mean throw your name in with inappropriate. Oh well not yeah not This next part including sexual assault without regard for age or gender, don't include me. Don't include this is that we got cap it again. We got to gotta have confident that we were appas until we didn't want to be. Bizarrely, these children were driven by impulsiveness, not self interest. Thefts, for example, were not undertaken for personal benefit, and stolen goods were often immediately forgotten or given away again. Also just kind of sounds like mischievous kids. Some kids just want to watch the world burn. Yeah, some children improved after adolescence, but in many the only break on their bad behavior was the parkinsonism that they developed as they entered adulthood. Oh my god. The only way to stop their their crimes, yeah, was to just get to make it impossible to do crimes. Yeah. Those who ended up not confined to the hospital with their posts encephalitic parkinsonism often proceeded to a life of habitual criminality, mostly theft in men prostitution in women. Which seems it's almost like an advantage of that situation. This I did double check to make sure this article wasn't written in the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, yeah, because I don't. I mean, it's like sex work in many places is criminal, but to call it a life of habitual criminality. Yeah, that's more just an info maniac at that point, because and also it's in it's a one sentence. After all the things they saw they instantly forgot about and toss aside, Very different from stealing a hubb abubba or whatever like gum and tossing it aside and like fucking people like can I know, like what they then they got paid for it and just left on the night stand the money. I mean, like, where how is there an equation here? Yeah? I because this sentence also ends with also ranging up to rape and murder. So this is this is the pladies. Well, no, this is it was Those who were not confined to a hospital with parkinsonism often proceeded to a life of habitual criminality, mostly theft in men, prostitution and women. Yeah, but also ranging up to rape and murder. Okay, maybe of women by men for yeah, that's what I'm thinking. The four those are four things you listed. Three of them are for sure crimes, yes, and and one of them is a crime just because people say it's a. Crime, Yeah, exactly. But in any and I don't know how much to ascribe some of that to this encephalitic parkinsonism. But this aspect the parkinsonism was the neurologic side of the third interminable phase of this disease. And it's this stage that enabled the discovery of the essential lesion of the substantia negra that's a tough name show in parkinsonism. The psychiatric facets of this phase were no less significant. A peculiar lack of internal drive separating the patient from their world was typical. So this is where you sort of start to see the beginning of something that appears to be like a sleepiness or a statue aspect, because despite their intelligence remaining normal, these patients could not summon the willpower to execute their wishes. Most insight or more insightful sufferers described how neither their perceptions nor their own thoughts were associated with the required emotional content that permitted the exercise of their will. So to some of these people, it wasn't so much that they were falling asleep. It was this almost it was like a laziness that was born of their thoughts not being connected to actions. It kind of God this whole thing, like you think, oh, man, I'm really hungry, I want to go to the fridge, but they just doesn't. The thing beyond your hunger is is like an overpowering like lack of will to go to the fridge. Yeah, it's just like you your thought, man, I'd love something out of the fridge doesn't connect to the action I need to get up and go to the fridge. It kind of seems like for a short period of time, God or an alien or a super villain intervened with crime where they were just like, I'm going to give you something that you shake too much to steal. And if that doesn't work, you lose the will to steal. I kind of but also I feel like. This does it only affecting bad people or do they part of getting this makes you want to be bad? I think that's kind of the more what's being described here is that the post encephalitic parkinsonism makes you crime, makes you makes you a criminal. Uh. And then but then it will on its own. If you leave it alone, we'll stop the crime. Yes, But I guess I think part of what's so weird about this disease, and part of what makes these articles I think a little bit uh confusing, is that it seems so understudied in some ways that it just sort of seems like this is a disease that can make you do anything. It can make you into a criminal, It can make you really sleepy, it can lock you in your body, it can it can make you shake. Yeah, we don't really know exactly how all these pieces fit together. But we know they're all there when we've observed. It, when we've observed this swelling of the brain stem or whatever was One patient described an increased sense of empathy that we got to get that back, but reduced sympathy. I spoke too soon. I'll take empathy over sympathy, though sympathy means that you can you literally know what they're going through. Well, think it's important. I think we are losing empathy as a society across the whole world. Empathy I mean to me, I got to get it back, baby. That also echoes the disconnect between the thought and the action of Like the empathy is recognizing the feelings in somebody else, whether it's a happy feeling or a sad feeling. Or if I did this to them, they would have these feelings, right. But sympathy reduced sympathy is sort of the like the severing. Of I'm not going oh okay, sure you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, So a lot of bad stuff they've really put in this like fucking we don't know what it is blender. Yeah. This inability to interact with the world, combined with their inexpressive, immobile Parkinsonian face and their muscular rigidity, them the aspect of a puppet or statue. All this while the sufferer's minds remained active. I mean so active enough to know that we're being called fucking puppets and statues. I'm standing right. Here pretty much. Yeah, so rude, incredibly rude. Yeah. The only consolation was that this same apathy often meant the sufferers were not overly depressed by their illness or by the prospect of life in an institution. No, they just couldn't say how bad it bothered that there was a disconnect between I want to kill myself and the will. Yeah. But if you, guys, if anyone listening has a problem or watching, do reach out to a suicide hotline? Yeah, not trying to No, no, no, If you have the will, don't find a way. The profound psychiatric changes in both children and adults suffering encephalitis lethargica challenged assumptions that the cerebral cortex was the seat of all higher human functions, including the sense of self, because despite all these severe psychiatric changes, it was the brainstem that was always damaged in these patients, not the cortex. Oh, so they were saying that it was a totally different spot than we had thought. Yeah, so their sense of self was changing, but not from the place that they previously thought that the sense of self must have been. No wonder they made this a forgotten disease. No, one wants to rewrite the book. The so called lizard brain that humans inherited from their premammalian forebears bore the brunt of the disease, not the higher brain centers assumed to be the seat of functions once attributed to the human soul. An even greater challenge was posed by the minority of patients who developed conditions that were difficult to distinguish from catatonic or paranoid schizophrenia. This provoked a long debate concerning the degree to which schizophrenia might be as much a motor disorder as a psychiatric condition, and this debate was also fueled by the fact that many symptoms then regarded as hysteric were also seen in encephalito as prostitution, yeah, exactly, suggesting that the hysteria was as much a motor disorder like Parkins's disease as it was a psychiatric condition. I mean, the more we do sorry I opening I won't be able to edit that out opening another beer because it's fucking hot and a little bit of the hair of the dog here. But the more we do these things, the more we learn about this fucking disease or that other fucking disease. We gotta either we got to eradicate these diseases or we gotta just open up the fucking the suicide coaster from that episode we did. Oh yeah, I know what I just said about like fugging whatever calling the hotline. But also I think there should be a path for people who have whatever the fuck this is, yeah to Cascade. Well, I want to show you add some pictures we'll put up on screen here because this looks pretty awful for the people who suffered this. This is one photo I hate it. I don't even want to put I'm not bringing this up on the screen. What about these two photos? These are a little less graphic. Well, these are still image zone of She's always like that. I think the ideas that they were, although to be fair, I guess I don't have a source for these photos. So maybe I I think this little girl that we're looking at here, yes, yawning prop I mean back then you had to hold that face for me. Yeah, because she's very clear it was Nobler Crystal. So yeah, you know, I think that might be a human statue in that photo. That is awful. Yeah, guys just dressed like they're frozen on the good ship lollipop. I mean she could fit a lollipop. Let's not talk about what kids could fit. But I'm just saying there is there's a nice damn it. I will put this person laying in wicker over your your faux pa. Okay, thank you. One of the most controversial theories about encephalitis lethargica ED is its possible link to the Spanish flu Okay, the devastating pandemic that swept. The world and COVID comes back again in nineteen. Eighteen and nineteen nineteen. The timing was suspicious because both diseases appeared around the same time, and many encephalitis lethargical patients reported having flu like symptoms before developing Yeah. They said that they had like a scratchy throat. Yeah, cough, fever, and some of the numbers here that that we skip past a minute ago. Just to kind of paint a picture of how this epidemic spread. The first why the recognized outbreak appeared in nineteen sixteen in Vienna, although isolated cases had been noted elsewhere, and then from there it spread like wildfire. By nineteen seventeen, hospitals across Europe were admitting patients with all the same puzzling symptoms fever, fatigue, and an overwhelming me to sleep. Doesn't somebody right now have like the plague in California? Yes, the black plague did come back in California. Yeah, I got ale for this episode. Shit, man, well we're doing it now? Is I don't love this sentence of like it was one or two people and then it. Spread by wildfire. I'm like, shit, man, are we in the like black plague? Pre I mean this is a state known for wildfires. Yeah, well the plague. I remember when I went to. When you got the play You remember when you got the plague? No, I went to, God, where the fuck was it? Was it Tahoe. I was somewhere this was like a decade ago, and there were all these really cute ground squirrels that would run up to you to feed them. But there were all these signs that said that the squirrels carried plague and not to feed them. Oh so plague is still a really real thing. It's just we have a better we have better defenses against. I kind of feel like those signs should read, if you see a squirrel, kill it, and we'll give you five dollars. We had to keep the public shovels out. Yeah, like we got to get rid of these plague filled squirrels. Yeah. I also feel like if they get I mean, I guess you just have to stay away from them because it's the fleas that carry the plague. So if you get close enough to the squirrel flea. No, but you don't have to pet the squirrel or feed the squirrel to get the plague. The flea could jump on you. Dude, we go, we gotta. This is every week we learned something horrible in this show. Over the next decade, the sleeping disease made its way across the world. By nineteen nineteen, thousands of cases had been reported in North America, South America, and Asia. There was a draft in World War One or no in the States. Yeah, I don't know anywhere. I think there was a draft for World War One. If there was, I'd be like, I got sleeping disease, Please move on. I know. Well, like I was a great plan for the people who were still around for World War two. Yeah, they were like, yep, I got it, man, You've already heard about this. No way, man, I can't make it. The worst years were between God, imagine saying that about war. I can't make it like it's a vacation that you like. I had to work. The space in my brain between the thought of how much I want to shoot a Nazi and actually picking up a gun to shoot. A Nazis to just connect it disconnected. They can't do it. But if anyone listening, we should get back to punching Nazi. Absolutely. Yeah, don't make this sure. That's a that's a strong connection. Between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty four, when the epidemic was at its peak, at least five hundred thousand cases were recorded, and the actual number, as with most of these diseases back in the day, was likely much much higher. But yeah, there's no reporting did Yeah, they had to save paper because of the war effort. New York was hit particularly hard, hundreds of patients there. London, the epidemics swept through entire neighborhoods. Is are densely packed places. Yeah, So that's why people think maybe there was a connection to the Spanish flu because that nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty four period. But also there could be a connection in terms of virality or whatever, like in terms of like, oh it might move or be con What the hell's the word when you get infected? Like getting infected? You know what I'm saying, Like the transmission could be similar. They can also look at the nineteen eighteen or whatever flu and be like, oh, what did they do to stop that? And will can that be applied here? Because there's enough similarities. Well, they don't know what the direct connection would have been. Some researchers argue that the Spanish flu may have triggered a post viral autoimmune response that caused the brain to attack itself. So those initial cough flu symptoms were that was the flu that people got, and then in this smaller subset of people who got the flu, the brain started to attack itself for. Some reason, coming for you people who got Johnson and Johnson vaccines, or maybe madernef it's me. Others suggest that both diseases were caused by the same pathogen, which was a virus that first manifested as influenza before attacking the nervous system, but no definitive evidence has ever been found either way. No one has ever identified as specific virus or bacterium responsible for causing this, and the flu connection just remains an intriguing but very unproven theory. Sure, for many victims this did last the rest of their lives throughout. For many it seems like almost one hundred percent. Well yeah, I mean it lasted the rest of their very long or very short lives. Depend on the thing that sucks about it is like even with that long life, it's just a miserable life. Well, right through the nineteen twenties, to be. Able to want to do crimes and not be able to do it must the worst. It's got to be the pis I want to do crimes every day, I can't do it, and I can't do it. We signed the social contract. They became shaky and unresponsive. Yeah, in the nineteen twenties and thirties, it was a lot easier to do a crime, but we talk about it all the time. I felt the urge to do a cross. Absolutely. You can change your identity with a razor blade and Scotch tape. Yeah. Yeah. So for the nineteen twenties and thirties, there were thousands of survivors in asylums and in long term care Facilityfield Hills. Probably probably there were probably hundreds of people sitting in Fairfield Hills with this sleeping disease. And then came doctor Oliver Sacks. There's always somebody that I will say, when the doctors show up in these stories, it's not always helpless on the way. So let's find out how this plinko ball. Now, let's see how doctor Oliver sackss this problem. In the late nineteen sixties, Sacks, a young neurologist working at beth Abram Hospital in New York, encountered a group of patients who had been immobile and institutionalized since the nineteen twenties. Okay, encountered like four sides of the Chrysler building. Those are the gargoyles. I think more in the halls of the hospital. Maybe a handful of them did escape. Yeah, and they got they had they got to Perchin real fast. Sax noticed something strange about these patients. Though. Many of them had occasional movements of moments of awareness. Oh my God, like Michigan j Frog. Only when no one's looking. Yeah, when no one was looking, they would have a flicker of recognition or a sudden movement. Doctor Sachs would turn. Quickly, Yeah, and the song would stop. Yeah, and he decided to try in experimental treatment. There's a buzzword we hear with these doctors a lot, experimental treatment. Which back then you didn't even have to tell anyone. This drug was called el dopa, which was being used to treat Parkinson's disease. I mean, there was enough Parkinson's in this that I imagine they'd be like, what do you got for at least one of these symptoms? We're working on something. Yes, And when these patients were hit with the el dopa gun, they some of them woke up. The people who'd been catatonic for decades started to move, They spoke, they laughed, some of them got up and danced. Whoa for the first time in years. A lot of these people were basically alive again. I mean, that's gotta be for them and the guy wielding the gun, the dopa gun, the dopa gun. It's gotta be like it fucking a knew it. Yeah, it worked. This is the greatest moment in the world. But be like, but follow up question, can you stop dancing? Because we see you dancing and I don't know if it's out of joy or a new symptom. To fix well. Unfortunately, many of these patients did stop dancing because the effects of el dopa were only temporary. Oh no, and for many the side effects were even worse than the initial disease. Some patients experienced uncontrollable movements or wild emotional swings where they hadn't before, and. Others Johnson Johnson people. Others sake back into catatonia, never to wake up again. Ugh. And if all of this sounds a little familiar, that's because Sachs wrote a book called COVID What Do You Expect Awakenings, which was made into a nineteen ninety movie with Robin Williams and Robertoniro. Yeah, so that's your homework listening. I watch Awakenings. If you haven't seen it. I've never seen it. Have you seen it? I feel like I've seen the cover I worked at Blockbuster. I confuse Awakenings with that Joy, with that movie where Kevin Bacon is the is the cruel prison guard. The statistics, Yeah, Awakened, which was shot at Hills. I confuse all the time, probably because they sound like of the same you you awaken then you sleep? Yeah, I got Sleepers. Yeah, that movie is really kind of fucked up and it was shot at Fairfield Hills, which we talked about in the this episode. So yeah, we don't know. We don't know what happened. We did learn a little bit about Parkinson's from this disease, because. Yeah, don't give them that drug. Yeah that was that was They might have created a secret race of maybe that's where the melon heads came from. We haven't done that episode yet, but if we find out it's from the DOPA gun. This I sent you that picture of the melon heads, right. I don't know. We sent each other so many pictures children. Great image heads. So yeah, I don't know what. The government may be confiscated the l DOPA gun. You gotta take it away. It's the one gun they'll take. As a gun owner, I'm happy to say that. But yeah, this sleeping disease could come back at any time. I suspect we've probably in our Parkinson's research and prevention and whatever. Probably there's enough famous people with it cut back on the cases of this that probably would come to light. But until we know what caused it and why and how it's spread, it remains one of the greatest medical mysteries of the twenty First. I'm glad we missed it century. Yeah, I'm glad we missed this time period for. Not that much. But you can throw in this disease to the number of things I'm glad I missed during that time period. Yeah. Well, well they're all coming back. Right, it's all come World Wars and strange disease forgotten diseases are all coming back. Make it a huge comeback. Yeah, So that's that. That's this episode of New Fear Unlocked. I'm gonna go to sleep forever. I hope. I mean, we both had we we've had a. Rough couple of days, so yeah, but we're having a great month. Heh Yeah, I hope everyone's been enjoying this, uh this new headache for. Ed the video, the video version of New Fear Unlocked one of the best aspects of the Patreon that people have come to love. They love it until they until we get even higher definition video. Yeah yeah, yeah, they're that. Really reveals the texture of our skin. They're gonna be like, why don't you have a single Neon bold behind you like every other YouTuber, Why don't you guys have We're trying to make this look cool, man, we're trying to make it look I. Don't know if you noticed, but we're very young and handsome. We're young and handsome. I got to get some vaz Lean on these lenses. Yeah, and uh, we just want you guys to know that every dollar coasts at the show. Yes, and this is what it's bought. So yes. So thank you again so much for being a patron. And we love New Fear in Left. I like it a lot, and it will return next month with a bunch of our October surprises. So this has been this has been that, this has been New Fear Unlocked. Guys, we're on the couch. That gonna be a thing. Now we're gonna start being like, hey, we're on the couch. Maybe I guess around the couch. It's like the snack couch. But it's better than being the fucking whatever couch we've seen on porn Hub. They're in Chatsworth probably Anyway, this is a this is New Fear couch. No, not sex on. This has been New Fear Unlocked. I'm Chris Klari and we'll see you guys next time. Bye bye bye. The theme song may say this show has no name, but as you know, It actually has a name, New Fear Unlocked, the thing you guys always say that's the name. The name is New Fear Unlocked. But now it's over so you can serve burn it off. There's nothing more after this. Thanks for coming, see you next time. For not necessarily fears more than likely for sure not fears