People in Sleepy Village of the Damned Wake Up Craving Sex

For the past four years, residents of the small town of Kalachi in northern Kazakhstan have been plagued by a mysterious sleeping sickness which knocks them unconscious without warning, keeps them in a coma for up to six days and has no known cause or cure. The sickness has prompted the media to label Kalachi the “Village of the Damned.” Now its residents say they’re suffering from strange side effects after awakening, including hallucinations, odd behaviors and a month-long craving for sex. Say what?

Scientists and doctors investigating the sleeping sickness could not agree on a cause, although some speculated that it's due to radon and other gases leaked from secret uranium mines in the area dating back to the days of the Soviet Union that were closed in the 1990s. While residents who moved away from the area no longer suffered from the sleeping sickness, people living in Krasnogorsk, a village even closer to the mines, have had no cases of the illness.

While 140 people have left Kalachi, almost 400 have remained and put up with the sleeping sickness in hopes it would be cured or just go away. Instead, they now are reporting some strange side effects. Nurses at the hospital report children seeing their mothers grow eyes on their foreheads and mild-mannered adults acting like animals or calling the nurses whores and prostitutes.

Then there’s the sex. Men are reportedly waking up from their 6-day slumbers craving for sex, a desire that lasts for a month. One nurse described a newly-awakened man who “still couldn't eat properly let alone walk, but he was all over his wife. He really needed it.”

The sex craving is causing problems for both men and women (it lasts a month!) and the never-ending sleeping sickness, hallucinations and mass psychosis has residents increasing their demands for causes and cures. The Kazakh government is spending nearly $10 million on the problem, including money to build apartments for residents to relocate to. Many now suspect there’s a secret plan to move them out so a secret gold mine can be opened.

Would a government give its people sex cravings just get them to move away so it can mine their gold? Stranger things have happened.