The Mystery of Sleepy Hollow in Kazakhstan
Kalachi, a village in Kazakhstan, got the attention of the government and scientists when villagers started reporting cases of falling asleep in broad daylight -some unable to wake up for several days. It started somewhere around 2013. People also reported memory loss and hallucinations.
one day last summer, Viktor Kazachenko set off across the steppe from his village in northern kazakhstan He was driving to the nearest town on some errands, but he never arrived.
“My brain switched off,” he says. “That’s it. I don’t remember.” Kazachenko had been hit by the so-called “sleeping sickness” that is plaguing Kalachi, a remote village about 300 miles west of the country’s capital Astana.
The mysterious illness has sent residents into comas, sometimes lasting days on end. “I was going to town on 28 August ,” Kazachenko told EurasiaNet.org, still disoriented by the experience. “I came round on 2 September. I understood [on waking up] in the hospital that I’d fallen asleep.”
Kazachenko blacked out while driving his motorcycle, with his wife riding with him.
After conducting more than 20000 tests on air,water,soil,food,humans and animals, over two years ,the government finally declared the mystery as solved.
The disorder was said to be because of carbon monoxide emission from a disused Soviet Uranium mine located near the village.
"The uranium mines were closed at some point, and at times a concentration of carbon monoxide occurs there. The oxygen in the air is reduced accordingly, which is the real reason for the sleeping sickness in these villages," said the former Soviet nation's Deputy Prime Minister Berdibek Saparbaev.
Source : The village that fell asleep: mystery illness perplexes Kazakh scientists
Kazakhstan solves mystery over sleeping disorder in Kalachi