Also from Wikipedia’s list of unusual articles (which is incidentally an absolute GOLDMINE of fun stuff!!), we have a few new crazy medical/psychological syndromes:

1. Exploding head syndrome: No, your head doesn’t explode. What happens is that an hour or two after you fall asleep, you hear a tremendously loud explosion which is neither caused by a dream, nor anything occurring in real life. The cause is unknown. Here’s another article on it.
2. Foreign Language Syndrome: is the rare result of certain types of brain injury which causes the sufferer to start speaking their native language as though they had an accent from a foreign country. I remember reading about this in a news article in highschool.
3. Capgras Syndrome: I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating. It’s when you start believing that friends and family-members have been replaced by identical impostors. Scientists speculate that it has to do with the inability to remember emotional connections to faces.
4. Bonnet Syndrome: Another good one not on Wikipedia is Bonnet Syndrome. Supposedly, this is not actually a psychological disorder, but occurs with people who have a specific type of eye degeneration. They start seeing ghosts and little costumed elves and leprechauns and things.
5. Old Hag Syndrome: Also notable absent from Wikipedia is Old Hag syndrome. It’s a type of sleep paralysis where the sufferer awakes, but is paralyzed, and they feel the presence of some kind of entity which is sitting on or pressing down on their chest, restricting their ability to breathe. Sometimes people with the condition also see red eyes, and hear the sound of feet or fingers scuffling and the entity breathing. A girl I know actually has this syndrome, although I never got a chance to talk to her about it. From what I’ve read, its more common in certain ethnic groups. Not to be confused with incubi or succubi, who have sex with the afflicted, like in Anna Nicole Smith’s famous case.

Also see some of my older posts about culture-bound syndromes, which are really interesting because they are specific to one specific ethnic & culture group usually.

1. Nodding Syndrome
2. Running amok (mata elap)
3. Windigo Psychosis
4. Grisi siknis