Oriental Nightmare-Death Syndrome

Oriental nightmare-death syndrome is a culture-bound syndrome from Thailand that attributes the death of sleeping young men to "window ghosts" that enter the bedroom and proceed to steal a man's life energy, An outbreak of this occurred in 1990 causing a major panic in the province where it occurred. Following autopsies the deaths were medically attributed to malnutrition due to the victim's diets that consisted largely of sweet rice that negatively affected the men's metabolisms and resulted in multiple organ failures.