Sleeping Beauty. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leeb. And this is Ghost Town.

On October 29, 1861, Carolina Olson was born on the island of Okno in southern Sweden.

She lived with her mother, fisherman, father, and five brothers.

It was a simple existence, next to the calming waters of the Kalmar Strait in the Baltic Sea,

and yet it could have stayed that way, if not for an event that would make young Carolina a bizarre myth, medical oddity, and local legend. Today on Ghost Town, the strange story of

Carolina Olson, also known as the sleeper of Okno.

Carolina, for most of her life, led a sheltered existence, homeschooled until she was 14.

But on February 22, 1876, Carolina was getting acclimated to her new school, and arrives home

from her walk back from school, complaining of a toothache.

Her mother insisted that the toothache was due to witchcraft. Yes, we're going straight to

witchcraft, and tells her daughter to go to bed. Carolina goes to bed and falls asleep for 32 years.

Yes, you heard me correctly. When Carolina's mother tried to wake her up the next

morning, she was unresponsive, as if in some kind of mysterious comatose state. The family couldn't

afford a doctor at this time, so they relied on the advice of friends and a local midwife about their

hibernating daughter. These people tell

Carolina's mother to force feed her milk and sugar every day to try to wake her up and nourish

her. As word gets around Okinao, doctors and medical professionals actually do visit the family

to try to understand exactly what's happening, but nobody succeeds in waking

Carolina up. The common belief at the time was that she suffered from some kind of hysteria or

unknown psychosis. In 1892, yes, 16 years later, Carolina is admitted to Oskar Shum Hospital,

where she's treated with

electroconvulsive therapy, but that does not seem to help. After a month-long stay in the

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