Bangungut
From the Fortean Times, a piece on nightmare death syndrome, locally known as bangungut.
“A man who goes to bed fit and healthy is heard to cry out in his sleep, and the next morning is found dead. The same scene is repeated again and again. The doctors cannot find any physical cause for the mysterious deaths, but people mutter darkly about dæmonic beings and deadly dreams. The 11 victims were all Filipino sailors. . .”
A friend of mine swears that twenty years ago he experienced something very similar to bangungut, except that he was awake at the time. He was on vacation in his hometown, and after a heavy lunch of rice, tuyo, and chorizo bilbao, he felt a terrible pain in his midsection. Now this is what generally happens when you eat an entire kaldero of rice with salty fish and lardy sausage, but this pain so extreme he couldn’t breathe. He had all the symptoms of bangungut, only he was conscious.
He was was rushed to the town hospital, where the doctors were ready to open him up to see what was wrong with him. Fortunately, his friend happened to be visiting the hospital at the time. This friend, a veterinarian, had a look at him and declared that he’d seen the same thing happen to horses. His advice was to get a test for serum amylase.
My friend the patient suggested this to his doctor, who said, “Hmm, where’d you hear that?” The patient was too embarrassed to say the advice had come from a vet, so he feebly claimed to have read it somewhere. The test for amylase was done, and my friend was found to be suffering from “reverse peristalsis of the pancreatic duct”. Something about his stomach being so full of rice swollen with salt that it was putting pressure on his pancreas. So they pumped out his stomach as if he’d OD’d, and he survived his waking bangungut.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 26th, 2007 at 15:48
This post may have just saved my life. And many others’, no doubt. I was just craving tuyo. The vile, foul-smelling, fried, dried Sardinella fimbriata has me in its spell.
Not anymore.
July 26th, 2007 at 20:41
i think i had experienced the same thing two weeks ago.the sickness lasted for 11 days the doctor can’t say what it was, she says i probably catched some virous while jogging in the park or it may be the cause of the caterpillar epidemic here ib Belguim. After reading this, gosh, must be those tuyo dip in suka n’ patis i just ate three days in a row!!!!
July 27th, 2007 at 08:53
it’s not the tuyo. it’s the rice. bangungut is most prevalent in southeast asia where rice is staple food. true, one is conscious when it strikes.
tips to wake self up: wiggle your toes first. those are the only parts of the body that are movable at this point. relax, do not panic in your struggle. tell yourself not to scream–it will only deprive you of oxygen (or so i think). at some stage in your controlled struggle, give yourself a sudden lurch. that should wake you up. but never, never succumbed to the temptation of falling to sleep again-it can recur!
one can have bangungot within one’s bangungot. that’s even more difficult to deal with. one has to wake up in one’s dream, before struggling to wake up in one’s actual half-dream half-conscious state.
finally elevate your head with pillows when sleeping. this technique minimises its occurence. don’t sleep in warm/heated places. even the heat from light bulbs could trigger it.
warning: am speaking from repeated experiences, and therefore these tips are not scientific remedies.
July 27th, 2007 at 17:12
you just killed my appetite for tuyo.now i’ve got to find an alternative for food.
July 27th, 2007 at 21:53
berto, you’re talking about sleep paralysis (http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html). It’s like the ‘bangungut’ in that you have nightmares, but sleep paralysis doesn’t really cause physical harm. The ‘bangungut’ we Filipinos know generally leads to death. Like what Miss Zafra had written, it has something to do with the pancreas. Our stomachs are located in front of our pancreas. When we have had too much to eat just before going to bed, the stomach then may put too much pressure on the pancreas (especially if we’re lying on our backs) and cause the digestive enzymes the pancreas secretes (amylase) to back up into it. If these enzymes get activated in the pancreas, instead of the small intestine, they may start digesting the pancreas itself.
July 27th, 2007 at 22:29
to berto:
i nod my head to your advice, but i don’t really think it’s the food-induced bangungot you’re talking about. i think it’s more of the “sleep paralysis” caused by stress or irregular sleeping hours.
in my case, i experience HSP, hallucinatory sleep paralysis, which is worse than the normal waking bangungut because i normally see various forms of death (ha!) while struggling to move or breathe. but now i know better than to accuse the aswang or the neighbor rumored to be a mangkukulam.
i also think it’s helpful to try to scream. i dunno. it worked for me. i shouted “mommy! mommy!!!!” (sissy me, i know!) and then i was able to breathe in and out oxygen.
and yeah, i have countless episodes of HSP. so i’m speaking from experience.
July 28th, 2007 at 09:15
so that’s what it’s called, hsp. all the while i’ve been told i am having bangungot. thanks for educating me. appreciate that.
August 1st, 2007 at 16:59
Gosh, I love eating. Especially when I’m home in Pinas during vacation–that’s when I could probably eat a kaldero of rice if my Mom isn’t always present to control me. =D
I shall remember that stomach-pumping thing, just in case.
August 7th, 2007 at 19:39
bangungot commonly affects men.. i am not sure why.. Does this mean, that women have a stronger gullet? hehehe..
but to deviate from the typical bangungot.. my concept of bangungot would be individuals with peculiar, repugnant, nausea-inducing stench. and it would be the pinnacle of bangungot if they are sitting beside you, in an airconditioned train filled to the brim with people.
but the person, and the experience is bangungot for me.