The film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was inspired by newspaper reports (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) of Southeast Asian refugees dying in their sleep. The deaths were sudden and lacked a medical explanation. They mostly involved young men (Hmong refugees) who fled to the United States to escape persecution following the Vietnam War.

Even today, Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome (SUNDS) remains a mystery. The typical finding is that these nocturnal deaths happen in young, healthy men, mostly from Southeast Asia. One fascinating hypothesis relevant to the movie “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is the possibility that victims experienced night terrors. This theory posits that night terrors flood the body with stress hormones, which overwhelm a pre-existing heart abnormality, leading to sudden death.