An inhabitant of the village is treated by a doctor[SIBERIAN TIMES]The locals of Kalachi village in Kazakhstan and the almost abandoned Soviet town of Krasnogorsk, Russia have been suddenly falling asleep, and then waking up with no recollection of what happened.
More than 7,000 experiments into the soil, air, water and patient's blood, hair and nails have been carried out by scientists in these remote villages.
But so far, all results have come back inconclusive - although scientists fear leaking uranium could be to blame.
And villagers even fear that they buried an elderly man before the sleeping condition was known about, because they thought he was dead.
The sleeping epidemic causes people, including children, to suddenly fall into a deep sleep, which can last from two to six days.
Marina Felk, 50, a milkmaid in Kalachi, said: "I was milking cows, as usual, early in the morning, and fell asleep. I remember nothing at all, only that when I came round I was in a hospital ward, and the nurses smiled and me, and said: 'Welcome back sleeping princess, you've finally woken up.
"What else do I remember? Nothing. I slept for two days and two nights.
"The women in my ward said that I tried to wake up several times, saying urgently needed to milk my cows".
The sleeping plague has become commonplace and some locals are now packing bags in advance, in case they are rushed to hospital.
Aside from the sleeping, other symptoms include weakness, dizziness and memory loss and children have reported seeing terrifying hallucinations.
The sleep epidemic has affected around 60 people so far, and it is thought to have started in March 2013.
Since then there have been repeat "waves" of the epidemic, in May 2013, New Year 2014 and most recently now, in May 2014.
Alexey Gom, 30, came to visit his mother-in-law in Kalachi, and was also hit by the sleeping plague.
Krasnogorsk was once home to 6,500 people [SIBERIAN TIMES]Alexey said: "In the morning, I wanted to finish my work. I switched on my laptop, opened the pages that I needed to finish reading - and that was it. It felt like somebody pressed a button to switch me off.
"I woke up in the hospital, with my wife and mother-in-law by my bedside. The doctor found nothing wrong with me after a series of tests he performed. I slept for more than 30 hours. But it never happened to me before, never in my life, or to anyone from my family."
One theory is water from the disused uranium mine is seeping into the local rivers and then into domestic supplies.
In the USSR era, Krasnogorsk was a secret and 'closed' town run directly from Moscow.
Around 6,500 citizens lived here, their work linked to the uranium mine, and life was unusually prosperous because the work was seen as of high state importance.
Today there are only 130 residents and the town lost its purpose in 1991 with the Soviet breakup and nearby Kalachi now has 680 residents.
Dr Kabdrashit Almagambetov, from neighbouring district Elsil, said: "When the patient wakes up, he will remember nothing. The story is one and the same each time - weakness, slow reactions, then fast asleep.
"Sadly, the nature of this condition is still not known. We have excluded infections, we checked blood and spine liquid, nothing is there. We categorised it as toxic encephalopathy, but 'toxic' is just a guess here, and encephalopathy is just the title of the set of brain diseases."
Radon gas has been considered as an option, but the doctor said: "I am an anaesthesiologist myself and we use similar gases for anaesthesia but the patients wake up a maximum of one hour after surgery.
"These people sleep for two to six days, so what is the concentration of this gas then? And why does one person fall asleep and somebody who lives with him does not?"
Expert somnologist Mikhail Poluektov, tutor of neurotic illnesses at the First Medical Institute, in Moscow, said: 'What is going on in Kazakhstan has nothing in common with any of 85 known sleeping disorders. But it does not look like toxic encephalopathy either. People with encephalopathy do not walk and talk, they lie there and going deeper and deeper asleep.
'We also do not know what is the toxic agent, so the doctors cannot offer any particular treatment.
'At the same time we see that patients are getting better even with general therapy. It supports the idea of psychogenic nature.'
Mr Poluektov suggests the the sleep disorder could be a case of massive psychosis, similar to the 'Bin Laden itch' in the USA when people found rashes on their skin because they were scared of possible bacteriological attack.
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