Original subtitles

[Dan narrating]

[rhythmic music]

- Imagine an entire town of people

who were born completely blue.

- [Paul] They all come from the same family.

- Is this a punishment for their inbreeding?

Nobody fully understands what's going on.

- Or an outbreak of biting nuns?

- Prayers aren't working, exorcisms aren't working.

Nothing is stopping these possessions.

- And what's worse, other nuns in other convents

have now started biting each other,

without remorse.

- How about suffering from a toothache the turns explosive?

- His ears are ringing

and his tooth is in pieces on the floor.

- Anyone who has even a mild toothache

starts to get legitimately scared

because they don't know if they're gonna be next.

- These are the afflictions so strange

they can only be called

"Unbelievable."

[dramatic music]

When someone says it runs in my blood,

it's generally a good thing.

But for the folks of one small town,

their blood is the cause of a truly bizarre condition

that gives everyone the blues.

- It's 1820, and a man named Martin Fugate

leaves France for America.

He marries a woman named Elizabeth,

and they move to the town of Troublesome Creek, Kentucky.

- They start a family.

They have seven children.

Three of their children are born perfectly healthy, normal.

The other four are blue.

- And I'm not talking a slight pastel blue here.

They come out, head to toe, blue.

- Now you have to remember, this is an incredibly small town

in the mid-1800s, before cars, before railroads,

and you have farmers living on these vast tracts of land,

so there aren't exactly a lot of dating options in the area.

- [Dan] After just a few generations,

most of the people in Troublesome Creek are now blue.

- By the mid-1900s, the blue Fugates

become a target of mockery in Troublesome Creek,

not just because they're blue

but because being blue is a sign

that they all come from the same family.

- [Dan] As news spreads about this unique town,

experts are baffled.

How do these people turn blue in the first place?

- Is it a mutation?

Is it a curse from God?

Some people think they might be aliens.

It's that bizarre.

- In 1962, two of the Fugate descendants

decide that they have had enough,

and they go looking for help.

And they turn to the University of Kentucky,

where they find Dr. Madison Cawein.

- [Dan] After running a series of blood tests,

the doctor has the unbelievable answer.

- It all traces back to Martin and Elizabeth,

the very first two in the family in Troublesome Creek.

- He thinks Martin and Elizabeth

had a very rare recessive genetic trait

that leads to a condition known as Methemoglobinemia.

- Methemoglobinemia is a condition

where the oxygen molecules

are bound more tightly to the hemoglobin,

leading to skin discoloration.

- [Dan] Recessive genes often stay hidden.

But when two people both have it,

like Elizabeth and Martin,

it increases the odds for their children.

- And then because of the inbreeding over the generations,

this gene persisted.

- This is a pretty rare condition

where fewer than one in a million individuals

have the recessive gene.

So in the case where two individuals

have the same condition, it's pretty incalculable.

- [Dan] In a somewhat ironic turn,

Dr. Cawein treats them with blue medicine.

- The doctor gives them a compound

called methylene blue dye.

Now this dye helps red blood cells to release oxygen

to tissues throughout the body more effectively.

- [Dan] Shockingly, within hours of ingesting the treatment,

the Fugates' blue skin turns pink,

ending a century of trouble in Troublesome Creek.

- Around the same time, the population is growing rapidly,

people are moving in, people are moving out.

They diversify the gene pool in Troublesome Creek.

And today, you can say that the blue Fugates

no longer have the blues.

- It's not easy being blue,

but there's another type of blood disorder

that really sucks.

- Tales of vampires stalking their prey in the dead of night

go back for centuries.

Some say that the legend began in Serbia in 1732

after a soldier by the name of Arnold Paole

goes on a killing spree and kills 11 people

after he dies.

- Others believe it goes back even further,

to ancient Mesopotamia.

But by the time we get to Bram Stoker's "Dracula,"

vampire folklore is in full swing.

[ominous music]

- [Dan] This gets the medical community thinking.

Could tales of these blood thirsty demons

be inspired by something real?

- In 1871, a German physiologist

writes the first paper on what is called porphyria.

- Porphyria is a disease

that basically makes it hard for your blood cells

to carry oxygen around.

And since nearly everything in your body requires oxygen,

it can cause problems with just about anything.

- [Dan] It's a fascinating discovery

but doesn't gain traction until a hundred years later

when Dr. David Dolphin digs a little deeper.

- He points out a very rare type of porphyria, Type 1,

which is only found in about one in a million people,

which if you have this type of porphyria,

it presents symptoms that look a lot like vampirism.

- People suffer from some very unusual symptoms,

such as an extreme sensitivity to light.

When they go out into the sunlight, they can blister.

- They experience receding of gums,

so that their teeth are exposed

in a way that could seem fang-like.

- Another symptom is that you urinate blood,

which could potentially mean

that you are out here drinking blood.

- They have a profound sensitivity to sulfur,

which is toxic to their system.

Which vegetable contains the highest amount of sulfur?

None other than garlic.

[suspenseful music]

- The symptoms are so similar that today,

porphyria is often referred to as the vampire disease.

But folklore experts are skeptical,

merely calling this blood disease connection

nothing more than mere coincidence,

claiming that they might not have porphyria,

they might be legitimate vampires.

- Having to avoid sunlight would be challenging,

but it pales in comparison to an affliction

that gives new meaning to the phrase sweating blood.

- In 2017, a panicked,

totally freaked out 21-year-old woman

checks into a hospital in Italy.

[eerie music]

Her face and her hands are completely covered in blood.

It's like a horror movie.

She says she has no injuries, but the blood is hers.

- As insane as her story sounds, two doctors,

Roberto Maglie and Marzia Caproni, examine her.

And after they complete their examination,

they realize, yes, no cuts, no bruises,

but all the blood that is on this woman's body

is her own blood.

So where is this blood actually coming from?

- [Dan] The doctors discover that she's not bleeding.

She's sweating blood.

- Stories of people sweating blood

go as far back as the third century BCE.

Aristotle describes people sweating blood

through their own pores.

- Then in the 17th century,

a Belgian doctor writes about a man

who, when he was condemned to death,

sweated blood in this frantic and heightened state.

- Even in the Bible, in the Book of Luke,

there's a scene that's described

as Jesus starting to sweat blood

while he's praying in the Garden of Gethsemane

right before the crucifixion.

- [Dan] But while historical accounts of sweating blood

may have simply been colorful language,

the woman in Italy is very real.

- So after the doctors examine this woman,

they end up diagnosing her

with a condition called hematohidrosis.

- This is an incredibly rare condition.

I mean, there's only a handful

of confirmed cases in the world.

And almost everything about it is a mystery.

- Some scientists believe that the blood

is actually secreting through the sweat glands.

Others believe that it secretes

through the follicles or the pores,

but we just don't know.

- What's really interesting

is that it might explain some cases of stigmata

that have been documented throughout history

in which people spontaneously have appear on them

the wounds that Christ received on the cross.

- Others have suggested that it's a curse,

but until we have a definitive medical explanation,

there's not really anything that we can rule out.

- The fact that we don't understand what this really is

means there is also no cure.

The best they can do is offer blood pressure medication,

which does reduce the effect a little bit.

But at the end of the day, she's still sweating blood.

[apprehensive music]

- Many of the strangest afflictions come on suddenly,

like rashes or allergies

that seem to manifest for no reason.

Usually it's caused by some outside toxin

your body sees as a threat.

But for one woman, her body is the toxin.

[siren blaring] [rhythmic music]

- On the night of February 19th, 1994,

a 31-year-old woman named Gloria Ramirez

is rushed into a California hospital.

She complains of a shortness of breath

and heart palpitations.

So they rush her into the ER

and the staff uses the defibrillator

to stabilize her heartbeat.

- They remove her shirt.

And when they do, they notice that she's covered

in this oily sheen.

And they smell this awful smell coming from her mouth,

not garlic, but the smell of rotting garlic.

- As one of the nurses starts taking a blood sample,

she notices yellowy brown particles

floating in the syringe.

But then she gets an overwhelming whiff of ammonia.

That's when she passes out.

- Then another nurse is struck with intense nausea,

and she passes out cold too.

- [Don] More people continue to drop.

Eventually we're down to a skeleton crew

staying with Ramirez

while the entire wing of the hospital is evacuated.

- 45 minutes after arriving at the hospital,

Gloria Ramirez dies.

The doctor writes it down as kidney failure,

but clearly that is not the whole story.

- The entire staff is terrified.

23 people who were exposed to this patient are sick.

Five of them are hospitalized.

One of them is in the intensive care unit.

- And it gets even weirder.

A special team arrives in hazmat suits to handle the body.

- They look for hazardous materials.

They look for biohazards.

They can't find anything.

- So they seal the body in an aluminum casket,

just to be safe, and transfer her to the coroner's office.

- [Dan] What exactly happened that night

and how did the toxic lady become toxic?

- Six months before,

she was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer.

So, yes, that could explain the kidney failure,

but all of the nurses passing out around her,

the smell of ammonia, the rotten garlic, none of it adds up.

- Officials conduct three autopsies,

and after several months,

they close the case as simple kidney and heart failure

brought on by her cancer.

And the coroner's office chalks up the fainting nurses

to simply being overworked.

- [Dan] A federal research lab is brought in

to take one more look at the case.

What they present to the coroner's office

a few months later is, well, unbelievable.

- They believe that Ramirez's body

was covered head to toe in DMSO.

- DMSO was put in many products, typically a cream,

where you would put it on your body

to cure basically anything was the idea.

And some people thought that you could actually cure cancer.

- By the late 1970s, however, DMSO is labeled toxic.

- And by the '90s, you could only get it

in its super-concentrated form,

a degreaser sold in hardware stores.

- In large quantities and concentrations,

DMSO can leak into the bloodstream and become toxic.

And when exposed to electricity,

like with the defibrillator,

it can create a poisonous gas.

- [Dan] So case closed, right?

This was simply an unfortunate home remedy gone bad?

Well, maybe not.

- The coroner's office agrees with the new findings,

but when it's released in a peer-reviewed publication,

the majority of scientists disagree with the findings.

- They're saying there is no amount

of DMSO you could slather on your body

that would generate this type of a toxic reaction

in a room full of people.

- When the Ramirez family is asked about this DMSO theory,

they're not buying it either.

They're adamant she didn't lather herself

in toxic degreaser.

And they certainly would've noticed this

when they took her to the hospital.

And so, 30 years later,

the debate of the mysterious toxic lady continues.

[tense music]

- Sometimes it's not the affliction itself that's strange

but what's causing it, as one woman in California discovers.

[rhythmic music]

- Tessa Hanson Smith had been

a normal girl her entire life.

She grew up doing gymnastics, she grew up swimming in pools,

just doing things that kids normally do.

But in 2006, at the age of eight,

she starts breaking out in these hives

and gets these really, really painful rashes.

- Her scalp begins bleeding

when she comes out of the shower.

Her parents think allergy, so they do what you should do.

They change her shampoo, they change her soaps,

they change her toothpaste, they change her deodorants.

They change any kind of chemical

that comes into contact with her body,

but to no avail, the symptoms persist.

- By the time she becomes a teenager,

the ailment just gets worse and worse.

She's even having a hard time

holding down water after she drinks it.

- Her mother is a practicing family doctor,

so she takes the lead.

She has to figure out what is wrong with her daughter.

- [Dan] After running several tests,

she comes to a startling realization.

Her daughter is allergic to water.

- It sounds crazy,

but it turns out that this is an actual condition

known as Aquagenic Urticaria.

- It's an extremely rare condition.

There are only about a hundred cases even in the world,

where you are literally allergic to water.

- And there's no known cure.

The only way to avoid these painful symptoms

is to stay away from water.

- Suffering from Aquagenic Urticaria means you can't cry,

you can't sweat, you can't go swimming,

you can't get caught in the rain.

Any and all contact with water

will cause you to break out in these painful rashes,

in these painful hives.

- [Dan] Even the most basic things become a challenge.

- To stay clean, Tessa has to take lightning-fast showers

and dry herself off immediately

before any of the symptoms can take hold.

To stay hydrated, she can only drink skim milk

because the fats, the lipids, and the proteins in there

are not water soluble, so she could still get the hydration,

but not be exposed to actually physically touching water.

- [Dan] It's so unusual

that doctors know almost nothing about it.

- The first reported case of Aquagenic Urticaria

was in 1964, when a 53-year-old Mexican woman

reported every time she did the dishes,

she would get this rash on her hands.

- [Dan] This leads some medical professionals

to think that the water itself might not be the cause.

- There are theories

that it might not actually be a water allergy,

but something in the water,

like a chemical that some people are allergic to.

There's also theories that something in the water

reacts only after it dissolves in the body.

But at this point, it's all speculation.

- When you only have 100 documented cases of this

on a planet that has 9 billion people,

there's not a lot of research

that's gonna go into this affliction.

So we may never truly know.

[tense music]

- Incredibly, Tessa has been able to survive

in a world without water,

a feat that continues to baffle doctors.

- On average,

a person spends a third of their lives sleeping.

For most, that's a good thing,

a peaceful slumber to recharge for the day ahead.

But for one 19th century British girl,

even a solid eight hours doesn't seem to be enough.

[suspenseful music]

- A little 11-year-old girl named Ellen Sadler

is living with her large family

in the tiny town of Turville in the outskirts of London.

And like a lot of families in their town, they're very poor.

So little Ellen is sent to work to help feed the family.

- At first, everything's normal,

but her boss starts to notice

that she's getting a little bit sleepy on the job.

After four months, she gets too lethargic

and he fires her and sends her home.

- She goes home, and now she's acting even more tired.

So she goes to bed and immediately falls asleep.

- [Dan] Little Ellen Sadler sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps.

After an entire day, she still hasn't woken up,

and her mother begins to worry.

- Ellen's mother tries everything to wake her up,

splashes of water, pricking with pins.

- Nothing works.

And the local doctor named Henry Hayman examines her,

but he's totally baffled.

- According to local newspapers, Ellen continues to sleep.

She sleeps for days, she sleeps for weeks,

she sleeps for months,

and months, and months.

And a whole year goes by.

- Of course news gets out,

and this becomes quite a spectacle.

People come from all over the world

to see the sleeping girl of Turville.

- This little girl basically becomes a tourist attraction.

And it's not just gawkers.

Doctors come to visit her, and even they're stumped.

- Almost two years go by and she still hasn't woken up.

So a reporter from the Daily Telegraph out of London

pays her a visit to see if this could possibly be real.

After seeing her himself, he returns to London and writes

that he's totally puzzled by the sleeping girl.

- [Dan] Many try to help, including the Prince of Wales,

who would later become King Edward.

- This might sound strange,

but there was actually a historical belief

in the power of royalty to cure illness.

- [Dan] But not even a royal visit

rouses this real life sleeping beauty.

- Now, remember, this family is very poor.

So when the visitors start offering donations to help,

they gladly accept.

The problem, of course, is that this starts a speculation

that this is all a hoax.

- The government actually sends in investigators,

but nothing is found, no charges are filed,

and Ellen keeps sleeping.

- [Dan] By 1880, Ellen has been asleep for nine years.

And then on a crisp September morning, she wakes up.

- She was 11 years old when she fell asleep,

and now she's a 21-year-old young woman,

and she remembers nothing.

By November, she's almost fully recuperated,

except for one thing.

- She doesn't wake up as a mature 21 year old.

She wakes up acting like an 11 year old.

- According to the family, it takes her several years

to adjust to the new world around her.

But she slowly starts catching up.

- She finds herself a job, and in 1886,

she even gets married and goes on to have six kids.

According to records, she lives at least into her 50s,

kinda like nothing had ever happened.

[suspenseful music]

- Falling asleep for nine years is quite the nightmare,

but at least it's one little Ellen eventually wakes up from.

The same can't be said for a group of Laotian men.

[tense music]

- It's 1981 and a 47-year-old man named Yong Leng Thao

is asleep at night next to his wife Xiong You.

He is a Laotian refugee

that has recently moved to

the United States from Thailand.

They live in Portland.

They have set up their new life here with their kids.

- Yong Leng starts thrashing about in his sleep,

and it gets so loud and so bad that he awakens his wife.

And she looks over and realizes

he's having another one of his nightmares.

So she attempts to awaken him, but nothing is waking him up.

- [Dan] Then he sits up, makes one last gasp,

and falls back to bed.

[ominous music]

His wife shakes him, but it's no use.

Yong Leng Thao is dead.

- Doctors investigate his death.

He appears to have had a cardiac arrest.

His heart stopped beating while he was sleeping.

But other than that,

they can't find anything wrong with him.

They don't know what caused this to happen.

- What they do know though is that Yong Leng

is the fourth Laotian refugee

to die while sleeping in the last nine months.

[tense music]

By 1981, there are a staggering 117 victims.

All but one are men, and the average age is 33 years.

And it is a complete mystery.

- It's bizarre enough that the CDC

starts investigating the matter.

And by the end of 1981,

they've linked them all

to a phenomenon that's known

as sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome.

- [Dan] It's a terrifying term

that basically means death by nightmare.

- And these deaths are still a mystery

as to the actual cause.

We have to remember,

this is a categorization of these deaths.

This isn't the cause itself.

That's why they're categorized

as sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome.

- But why would this mysterious death by nightmare

only be afflicting one group of people,

one ethnicity from one nation?

- [Dan] Families of the victims

think they know who or what's behind this,

a nasty little nocturnal spirit known as Dab Tsog

- Before these families came here,

their home country of Laos was wracked by a civil war,

all throughout the 1970s.

And what does that mean?

That meant that people didn't have the time

to do their normal prayers.

- Hmong people believe that when they're not able to pray,

then they won't have protection from Dab Tsog,

who will come to them in the middle of the night,

press on their chest, and kill them.

- The Laotian Hmong are not the only culture

that believes in something like this.

The word nightmare is actually derived

from German and Dutch language.

The word mare refers to an evil spirit

that is said to sit on your chest

and crush the breath out of you until you die.

And if you've been thinking

that this sounds a lot like the plot

to "A Nightmare on Elm Street,"

that's because this story inspired it.

[Yong Leng gasping]

- Personally, I prefer ghosts you can catch.

- Religion has a long history of strange afflictions,

possessions, stigmata.

But perhaps the most bizarre case occurs in the 15th century

when a group of Catholic nuns

are struck with a mysterious curse

that turns them into something out of a zombie movie.

[eerie music]

- Life in a 15th century convent

isn't what I would necessarily call pleasant.

- It's isolating,

and they spend their time praying, working.

The priests frequently set them to manual labor tasks,

which results in total exhaustion.

- If they complain, they were told

that they have a lifetime of fire and brimstone,

and punishment for their petulance.

- [Dan] But according to a doctor named Jerome Cardan,

in a Saxony convent,

one of the nuns snaps.

[apprehensive music]

- She just starts uncontrollably

biting other nuns.

- And before the priest can intervene,

the other nuns also start biting each other.

[nun gasping] [apprehensive music]

And before you know it, it's a giant bite fest.

- [Dan] The priests fear the worst,

a demonic possession is spreading.

And so they begin performing exorcisms.

- But it only makes things worse.

- Within days, almost every nun in the convent

is infected with this demonic biting nun disease.

- And what's worse is that these priests

are now concerned that this biting epidemic

might go beyond the walls of this convent in Saxony.

- [Dan] Within a few weeks, the priests in Saxony

learn that nuns from Amsterdam to Rome

have picked up the same bad habit.

- So these priests start thinking to themselves,

this can't just be demonic possession.

This has to be the devil himself

coming to possess all of Europe.

- Now the priests are starting to get desperate.

Prayers aren't working, exorcisms aren't working,

nothing is stopping these possessions.

- Time to go to Plan B, old school flogging

and dunking a nun's head inside of ice cold water.

- And it works.

- [Dan] The afflictions suddenly stop,

and the curse of the biting nuns is over.

- Nearly 600 years later,

religious scholars are still speculating

as to what is it that exactly happened.

Was it demonic possession?

Was it the devil himself?

Nobody knows.

Clearly there's something else going on here,

but we may never know what that something is.

- If you think

a contagious biting nun epidemic sounds terrifying,

hold on to your crucifix.

500 years later, another dental condition strikes the clergy

with more explosive consequences.

- It's 1817, and a Pennsylvania reverend

known only as D.A. is suddenly suffering

from a terrible, terrible toothache,

so bad he's about to lose his mind.

He's frantically running around the house like a madman,

screaming in pain.

- He is slamming his head

against the ground in pure agony.

- He's on the verge of taking his own life.

- And suddenly there's a fierce explosion

inside the reverend's mouth.

[explosion booming]

Fragments of his teeth shoot out all over the rug.

- His ears are ringing and his tooth

is in pieces on the floor, but the pain is suddenly gone.

- [Dan] The reverend has just become the first case

in an epidemic of exploding teeth.

- Two more cases are reported in the Pennsylvania area

by Dr. W.H. Atkinson,

who in years ahead becomes the first president

of the American Dental Association.

- One of these cases is a woman in 1830,

and it is the exact same scenario,

terrible toothache pain, a pop, and then relief.

And then it happens again to another woman in 1855.

Same MO, horrible pain, popping noise, relief.

- [Dan] But teeth aren't just exploding in Pennsylvania.

[suspenseful music]

- Dr. J. Phelps Hibler is treating a young woman

in his dental office.

She is also complaining of excruciating mouth pain.

Boom, one of her molars explodes.

She's knocked out of the chair.

Her ears are ringing, but she reports total relief.

- By the 1870s, there have been so many reports

of people with exploding teeth

that anyone who has even a mild toothache

starts to get legitimately scared

because they don't know if they're gonna be next.

- [Dan] By the 1920s, cases of exploding teeth

suddenly stop.

So what caused this terrifying phenomenon?

- There's lots of theories

about what's behind the exploding teeth epidemic,

but most have to do

with what the dentists used for fillings.

- Around the time of the exploding teeth epidemic,

the best way to fill a cavity is with gold.

It's strong, it doesn't decay.

- But that's also really expensive.

And so if you can't afford that, what's the option?

Well, a lot of dentists

start mixing their own metal composite fillings.

- Some of these metals include lead, tin, silver,

and even mercury before it was understood to be toxic.

- What they also don't know

is that some metals don't play well together.

- Some of the mixtures of metals

that they were using to fill cavities

would chemically react with each other,

releasing gas in the process.

- And then if you have a little air pocket

in the same tooth,

you are getting an intense buildup of pressure.

You basically are carrying around

a tooth bomb in your mouth.

- Luckily, by the 1920s,

more standards are put in place for fillings.

And now dentists mostly use composite fillings.

And yes, the old standard and my personal favorite, gold.

- I think we can all agree

it makes that nightmare about your teeth falling out

seem pretty tame.

- When mysterious afflictions occur,

there's always a desperate search for the cause.

But what if the cause were as simple as watching TV?

[suspenseful music]

- In Japan, on December 16th, 1997,

this incredibly unusual scenario plays out.

All over the country,

children are suddenly being rushed to hospitals.

They're having seizures, they're having convulsions,

they're having headaches, they're having dizziness.

Some of them are nauseous.

And it's happening in huge numbers.

There are 600 cases initially reported.

- People think that it might be something in the water

or some viral pathogen spreading through the air.

It's really unclear what the causes are.

- [Dan] As news of a mysterious child illness spreads,

a chilling through line appears.

They had all just watched the same broadcast

of the animated series "Pok�mon."

[rhythmic music]

- Pok�mon was a card game that was adapted for TV in 1997,

and this animated series becomes a pop culture sensation.

- Everybody in Japan seems to be watching "Pok�mon."

There are about 127 million people that live in Japan.

4.6 million viewers would

watch Pok�mon every night,

not just kids,

people.

- [Dan] But on the night of December 16th,

"Pok�mon" is causing widespread panic.

- Parents are terrified.

There is a real genuine fear that watching "Pok�mon"

could be dangerous.

- An investigation's underway in Japan

into why more than 600 children

suffered from convulsions and vomiting.

- The next day, TV Tokyo suspends the series

but not before 12,000 children are hospitalized.

- [Dan] As "Pok�mon" shock quickly becomes world news,

parents wonder why this adorable anime character

is sending children into violent seizures.

- The episode in question that was being watched

had a pretty egregious use of strobe light effects.

- What these strobing lights can do

is activate a condition called photosensitive epilepsy.

- Photosensitive epilepsy

is a neurological condition triggered by flashing lights,

strobe patterns, which can lead to dizziness, nausea,

and vomiting, sometimes really violent convulsions.

- [Dan] But this theory has a problem.

- This episode wasn't the first anime show

to ever use that kind of effect,

and there had never been anything close

to this kind of outcome before.

And also, statistically speaking,

there is no way nearly 13,000 "Pok�mon" fans in Japan

all suffer from this condition.

- And sure enough, after examining the patients,

only a handful of the thousands of kids

that were rushed to the hospitals

actually do have photosensitive epilepsy.

So what accounts for all those other hospitalizations

from all those other kids?

- [Dan] Many psychologists eventually agree

on a more likely scenario, mass child hysteria.

- Once the hysteria dies down,

nearly all of the children make full recoveries.

Four months later, TV Tokyo allows "Pok�mon"

to go back on the air.

- This quickly becomes, when you look at all the factors,

a really wild and kind of important example

of absolute social persuasion,

where people found out about a story

and then kind of became part of it.

- Sure, mass hysteria can spread,

but they say nothing is more contagious than laughter.

[suspenseful music]

- On January 30th, 1962,

the boarding school for teenage girls

run by the Kashasha mission

in Tanganyika, modern day Tanzania,

is having a totally normal day,

until three girls start laughing in class.

[girls laughing]

- Teenage girls laughing in school is not a rare occurrence,

but today it marks the start of something different.

The girls' laughter is uncontrollable,

and it's starting to spread.

- Within minutes, 95 of the 159 students in the school

are laughing uncontrollably.

For some, their laughing stops in hours.

But for others, it continues for days.

- These students go home, they're still laughing.

They come back to school, they're still laughing.

Some of the girls are laughing for two straight weeks.

But even after they stop,

they just start right back up again.

- They are crying, they are having trouble breathing,

they're developing rashes.

- At this point, parents are suspicious.

They're thinking, is there some kind of gas leak?

Is there something in the water?

But then they realize,

it's not happening with the teachers.

This is only happening with the girls, the students.

- This mysterious epidemic continues for a year and a half

and ends up affecting over a thousand girls

and closing 14 schools.

And then after 18 months,

the laughter starts to fade,

and then it just stops.

- There's still no explanation,

but there's well- documented instances

of these mass hysterias

happening before throughout history.

The Dancing Plague of Europe in 1518

killed over 400 people in France.

They basically were compelled to dance themselves to death.

There's the Hollinwell event of 1980,

where 300 people in London just mysteriously

and spontaneously faint at a marching band event.

To this day, there's still no explanation.

- There are theories

as to what could cause this kind of mass madness,

anything from community stress

to subconscious peer pressure.

Either way, the laughing plague of Tanganyika

remains a mystery.

[girls laughing] [suspenseful music]

- I should invite them to my next movie premiere.

- We've all dreamed of having superpowers,

the ability to fly, ESP, X-ray vision.

But one woman in Minnesota

learns that not every superpower

is all it's cracked up to be.

[mysterious music]

- Stephanie Schmitz is a woman

who lives in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

And one day she notices this sound.

[apprehensive music]

And it's something she can't quite put her finger on.

She doesn't know where it's coming from.

[ear ringing]

- She's wondering, is it an appliance in her house?

Is it something outside the house that she's hearing?

- This continues for days and weeks,

and she cannot identify the source of this sound,

until she notices that she only hears the sound

when she moves her eyes.

- [Dan] That's when Stephanie

comes to a startling realization.

The strange noise she's hearing is her own eyes moving.

- You're not used to hearing people

that can hear their eyeballs move.

- At first, she's thinking, this is gonna go away.

But as the months go on, this actually gets louder.

- And soon she also starts to realize

that she can hear her neck creaking

when she moves it side to side.

[neck crackling]

She can also hear her own heartbeat.

[heartbeat thumping]

It's like in Edgar Allan Poe's story.

She is tortured by all of these noises,

but her own body is making them.

- Stephanie can't take this anymore,

so she goes to the doctors and they examine her.

- [Dan] After running tests,

the doctors give her the terrifying diagnosis.

- They realize that the cause of it

is that she has a hole on her inner ear.

It's superior canal dehiscence syndrome, or SCDS.

- The inner ear's job is to hear things in the environment,

not to hear sounds from within.

Once there is a hole, there is now a pathway

for all of the usual daily sounds that your body creates.

- And that's something that affects

only 1% of the population,

which may sound like a lot of people,

but most people don't have this

to the degree that Stephanie does.

- [Dan] In Stephanie's case,

the location of the hole in her ear

is what causes the sound to be intensified

to a deafening degree.

- Think about how frustrating this would be,

to be distracted with the noise of your own eyeballs moving.

Think about how often you move your eyes

throughout the day every day.

- The good news is there is a surgery that can fix SDCS,

but Stephanie is still awaiting that procedure.

- Talk about being in your head.

The mind is certainly a powerful thing,

but how much of it do we really need?

Maybe less than you think.

[rhythmic music]

- In 2007, a man in Marseille, France goes to the doctor.

He's 44 years old.

He tells the doctor he's been having dizzy spells lately.

- It's getting so bad at this point

that he's now actually having difficulty walking.

- The doctor starts running some tests,

and he thinks this is probably related to his brain.

And he does some CT scans.

But when he reviews the images, what he sees is crazy.

- [Dan] 90% of the man's skull is empty.

- The doctor learns that when he was an infant,

he was diagnosed with a condition called hydrocephalus,

which is basically excessive fluid in and around the brain.

At one point, he had a shunt

to help drain that fluid off of the brain.

- And by the time he was a teenager,

it seemed like this problem had dissipated,

and so they decided to remove it.

But now all of this history

leads his doctor to wonder

if perhaps that hydrocephalus situation has returned.

- Doctors think that over the years,

the majority of his brain started to erode away

because it kept getting filled

with more and more brain fluid.

- His doctor has him take an IQ test.

And what's really interesting here is that he scores a 75.

- The average range is up in the 80s,

so he's doing pretty well for what he's got.

- He's holding down a government job,

he has a wife, he has a kid.

For someone who only has about 10% of his brain,

it's pretty incredible.

- [Dan] 15 years later, there isn't a consensus

as to how he could still possibly be alive.

- Some doctors think

that maybe he does have all of his brain.

The theory is that the fluid pressure

pushed the brain flat against the inside of his skull,

almost like a pancake.

[rhythmic music]

- Even if he does have his entire brain,

it's pretty impressive that it still works in pancake form.

Strange afflictions can strike at any time,

from the moment we're born to the moment we fall asleep.

But whether they affect the body or the mind,

they're all truly

"Unbelievable."

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