Written By: Sandhya Raghavan | Updated: October 31, 2017, 3:01 PM
1/10
In the world of medicine, reality can be stranger than fiction sometimes. These diseases are not your run-of-the-mill fever or migraine but bizarre medical conditions that could be mistaken for paranormal interventions. If you thought ghosts and goblins were the only scary things, take a look at these nine scary medical conditions that you never believe could exist.
2/10
Sleep paralysis: In the middle of the night, you feel a crushing, suffocating weight on your chest. You can barely move a single limb in your body and worst of all, you sense the presence of evil or see a demon sitting on your chest and staring at you in the dead of the night. This isn't a script for a scary movie but a legitimate condition called sleep paralysis. It happens during REM sleep and is caused when your body and your brain are not in synch. But the hallucinations seem so real and frightening that they cause intense fear to the person experiencing sleep paralysis.
3/10
Exploding head syndrome: The head doesn't explode in the real sense, but the person hears loud exploding noises such as that of a bomb going off or a gunshot, just before drifting into sleep or waking up. It is a type of auditory hallucination that doesn't cause any other harm apart from startling the person and causing them a great deal of distress.
4/10
The disease causes excessive hair growth, which some say can make those affected appear like a werewolf.©Shutterstock
5/10
Alien hand syndrome: Imagine your hand having a mind of its own and attacking you with your night lamp as you sleep. Scary thought isn't it? Yet it is a quite plausible. In 2011, a 55-year-old woman suffering from alien hand syndrome found herself unbuttoning her clothes with her left hand, which was seemingly under alien influence, in her doctor's office. Even as her right hand struggled to keep the buttons on, her left hand kept unbuttoning them. Alien hand syndrome most commonly affects the left hand and is seen in former epilepsy patients who have had their brain hemispheres separated as treatment.
6/10
Homicidal sleepwalking: Sleepwalking or somnambulence is considered dangerous for the ones afflicted by it. They could place themselves in perilous situations or hurt themselves. But can sleepwalkers pose a threat for others too? There are documented cases of people murdering others in their sleep and it is called homicidal sleepwalking. Most famous is the Kenneth Parks case, where Kenneth a Canadian man drove 23 kilometers at night in his sleep to murder his mother in law.
7/10
Phantom limb: Around 80 percent amputees experience phantom limb syndrome where they feel pain and sensations in the place where the limb once was. Even though the limb is amputated, the brain inexplicably continues to receive signals from the phantom limb. Far from being a paranormal phenomenon, phantom limb is a legitimate medical condition whose causes are still unknown.
8/10
Near death experience: There are many cases of people, who have been clinically declared as dead, coming back to life. This is termed as NDE or near death experience. Although science is by and large sceptical, people who underwent NDE speak of being visited by dead relatives, seeing a bright light and feeling pleasantly weightless and devoid of any pain. The most notable and well-documented case is that of Anita Moorjani who was completely cured of her last stage cancer after she came back from the dead. She reported meeting her deceased father and friend who advised her to go back and start life anew.
9/10
Porphyria: Also known as the Vampire disease, people experiencing porphyria show signs that are typically associated with vampirism, including sensitivity to sunlight, receding gums which made the teeth look prominent, pale skin, aversion to garlic and its scent and abnormal hair growth. But these are just clinical symptoms of excess porphyrin in the body.
10/10
Cotard delusion: A rare mental disorder where the ones suffering from the condition believes they are already dead and rotting. They also delude themselves into believing that their organs or body parts are missing and their souls have left their bodies. Suffers also neglect their health and personal hygiene and turn a blind eye to any proof that show they are still living.
