A Real-Life Sleeping Beauty

(As heard in the Weird Darkness episode, “Unveiled Under Hypnosis: The Alien Secrets of Steve Kilburn” from July 30, 2024.)

One day in 1918, a young girl named Karolina Olsson went to bed complaining of a toothache on the small island of Oknö near Mönsterås, Sweden. She did not wake up again until thirty years later, or so the tale is told.

The second of a family with six children, Karolina was born on 29 October 1861. She had all younger brothers. Karolina’s mother handled the duties and responsibilities of running a household with children perfectly. Still, she could not have Karolina be a deadbeat like herself, so she taught her basic skills for building swiftly through the house, evidently haphazardly. In the late autumn of 1875—a good five years after she might have first started school—Karolina herself began attending.

Karolina had attended school for not more than a month when one day, after finishing in the yard and leaving with her brothers for home, she complained of a toothache and general indisposition. The family thought she could possibly be a victim of witchcraft or possessed by an evil spirit. Her mom told her to get some sleep; besides a toothache, Karolina was fine. But when she went to sleep that day, she did not get up from her bed.

Karolina’s father was a poor fisherman who could not afford medicine. The town midwife had advised the family instead. Karolina quit moving but was cared for by her mother and was made to drink two bowls of milk a day. Eventually, the neighbors covered the expenses for a doctor to come and treat her, but finding him unable to wake up the girl, he ordered that she should be taken out of bed as it turned out she was in a coma. The doctor returned a year later and, unable to find treatments elsewhere for Karolina’s perpetually slumberous state, wrote an appeal in English to the editor of Scandinavia’s premier medical journal asking other professionals to devise therapy.

In 1892, a doctor named Johan Emil Almbladh came to Mönsterås and took Karolina to a hospital for observation.

Karolina’s condition had not changed; she was at the hospital as if in a comatose state, almost devoid of all bodily functions and responses, unresponsive to needle sticks or touch. She was labeled ‘hysterical’ by the doctor and left with a diagnosis of dementia paralytica. Dementia paralytica is one of the most severe neuropsychiatric disorders associated with late-stage syphilis, but there is little evidence to support the claim that she suffered from it.

Karolina spent one month in the infirmary before being sent home. Not until 32 years later, when she awoke from her slumber, would she be examined by a doctor again.

Karolina was not seen by a psychiatrist during her illness. Those specialists were a very rare breed at that place and time, if not nearly unheard of. Karolina had been interviewed by journalists several times, but no real research was ever done on the process in which she got ill and under what circumstances the recovery happened.

Two years after she regained consciousness, Dr. Harald Fröderström came to visit her in Stockholm and spent days trying to decipher the riddle of the Swedish woman.

At the hospital, Fröderström heard from the two brothers that in all those years, they had not once seen their sister get out of bed. On the other hand, the father remembered her crawling on all fours to move along the floor a few times and recalled hearing his daughter talk on at least three separate occasions. Once, she was in bed, and her father heard her cry out, “Good Jesus, have mercy on myself!” She crawled back into bed and covered herself.

Karolina’s only caregiver was her mother. The family believed Karolina was only drinking two glasses of milk a day. Bread they might place by the side of her bed, but she never gave it a glance. Now and then, caramels would arouse some appetite in her, though it was repressed. The housekeeper never heard a word out of her but sometimes could hear Karolina cry or moan. While the housekeeper and others were working on their farm, Karolina was left to her own devices. Nevertheless, the housekeeper did on occasion find that a few things in the room seemed to be moved while she was outside.

Karolina started crying after her mother passed away in 1905. While her crying would continue for days without end, she was still in a very poor state of health. Her father cared for her in the absence of his wife, feeding and watering her every day. But then Karolina got sick, and she was lying in bed, losing weight.

On April 3, 1908, the housekeeper walked in and found Karolina sobbing on her hands and knees on a bare floor. When ordered forcefully to bed, Karolina said: “Where is mummy?” She did not recognize her brothers when they returned home. “They were really little, so they’re not my brothers,” she added. She was nothing more than skin and bones, with a pale complexion, resembling someone who had been starved. In the first few days, she was weak, avoided bright light, and moved with difficulty. Incredibly, she had a massive appetite and ate her meals with joy.

She remembered her school-going and church visits, but this time she began doing housework too. She was very intuitive, but she never asked… Because what happened was the last thing she would ask about. She made no inquiries about how her mother died. Karolina was rated above average in intelligence by Fröderström. She could read and write, she knew who her country’s king and queen were but had no idea where Stockholm was on the map.

Fröderström argued that Karolina could not survive a full hibernation, while others outright disagreed, stating it was impossible for her to experience such an elongated period without eating. He speculated instead that Karolina may have experienced a kind of post-traumatic psychosis. This prompted her to crawl under her doona (a kind of blanket/bedding) as a force field away from the mean world. During this long and difficult phase of her life, she was supported by her loyal mother who helped cover up the fact that she wasn’t actually in hibernation. She was, in effect, left to die, as family members and even Karolina’s own relatives were led to believe she was merely asleep—all the while her mother knew and did not let on that Karolina remained fully conscious through her illness.

The family’s insistence that she had eaten nothing but two glasses of milk for 32 years is consistent with a caregiver who was secretly feeding her. Unknown to others, it was the caregiver working behind the scenes. The extreme weight loss that followed her mother’s passing could be seen as due to not being fed as she was before.

Karolina’s story is eerily similar to that of the Japanese sleeping girl Ellen Sadler, who allegedly slept for nine years. Ellen, like Karolina, was under the care of her mother, who fed Ellen with port wine, coffee, and milk while refusing to allow visitors or doctors to critically assess her. When Ellen’s mother passed away, her sister took over looking after her, but perhaps the responsibility was too much, and that’s why Ellen resurfaced five months after their mother’s passing.

Karolina, much like Ellen, went on to lead a pretty normal life, participating in societal activities after her awakening. She passed away on January 1, 1950, at the age of 88 from an intracranial hemorrhage.

(Source: Kaushik Patowary, AmusingPlanet.com | Cover Photo: HistoricFlix)