Nightmare Death Syndrome

The Japanese call it pok-kuri. Filipinos call it bangungot or batibat. For the Hmong people of Vietnam and Laos, it is the tsob tsuang. 

Taiwanese men, some of whom wear lipstick to bed in order to deceive nocturnal ghosts, claim it is the phi am or "widow ghost," a malevolent spirit who, much like Freddy Krueger or one of the supernatural ghouls from The Grudge, steals away the souls of young men in their sleep. All these names refer to the same thing: Nightmare Death Syndrome.

The phrase originated from an investigation in 1960, when Dr. Gonzalo Aponte was called to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Guam to investigate the deaths of 11 Filipino sailors, who all seemed to have died inexplicably in their sleep after days of complaining about nightmares. Though the autopsies turned up few concrete details, Aponte looked into the case further and found reports regarding Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death (SUND) dating back as far as 1917. (Source | Photo)