The Mysterious Deaths That Inspired A Nightmare On Elm Street

According to Dr. Khatharya Um, author and associate professor at UC Berkeley, the ailment might have a less concrete explanation. It was a commonly held Hmong belief that people have a duty to honor their ancestors, but leaving their homeland meant they had lost the ability "to do right by [their] ancestral spirits because [they're]

According to Dr. Khatharya Um, author and associate professor at UC Berkeley, the ailment might have a less concrete explanation. It was a commonly held Hmong belief that people have a duty to honor their ancestors, but leaving their homeland meant they had lost the ability "to do right by [their] ancestral spirits because [they're] not there, or because [they] don't have the right things to perform the right rituals." As a result, their ancestors were now punishing them, via History. She went on to say that it was also possible that extreme stress was the culprit, speculating the deaths might have been a reflection of the "kind of stressors that come with being forcibly removed from a familiar world to a completely alien and sometimes even hostile context." 

Despite all the media attention, medical interest, and an official investigation conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whatever was silently killing these refugees was never adequately explained. But the fear of a sudden, mysterious nighttime death had worked its way into the broader social psyche, finding an outlet in the wildly popular horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street.

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