I Survived Fan Death

The rainy season has come to an end and the gochu peppers are visible in front of almost every home around here, but don’t let this benign visage fool you. There is still evil lurking in the shadows, in the dark of night, plugged into a wall during these dog days of summer.

That’s right, I’m talking about fan death and my own personal near miss.

As we all know, fan death occurs when a person (usually drunk, older, and with a pre-existing heart condition) falls asleep with the fan on and the windows and doors shut. What happens next, according to Dr. Yeon Dong-su, dean of Kwandong University's medical school, the current of air from an electric fan in an enclosed room will lower your core body temperature below 35 degrees celsius and you will then swiftly die from hypothermia.

The other scientifically proven belief is that a simple electric fan – nothing high-tech, mind you – will create a vortex (not really sure what that is, but it sounds scary) and suck the oxygen out of the air and send it to a parallel universe where oxygen is deadly, thus killing not only you, but your parallel-universe you. You bastard!

I had previously believed that this idea was crazy. How can your body temperature drop when the fan’s motor is actually creating heat? How can oxygen actually disappear? From what I learned in science class, matter can’t disappear. But this urban legend shouldn’t be ignored, after what happened to me.

Despite the media reports about several deaths already this summer attributable to deadly fans, and the fact that my own fan has a warning on it that says (in Korean) “Don’t aim at your face and for God’s sake don’t EVER close the windows or doors!”, I came home from the pub heavily intoxicated, closed my door, turned on the fan and the mosquito griller and went to sleep.

I had strange dreams that night. I heard what sounded like growling. I flipped on the light and looked around. Either I was hallucinating or the fan was glowing bright orange and hovering off the floor. It had a menacing grin and it appeared that all the air in the room was being sucked into it. My skin was turning blue and I could see my own breath. It felt like a meat locker in there. I only had seconds to spare and had to think fast. The fan was blocking the door, so I leapt for the window and flung it open with a screech of metal. Like holding a cross to Dracula or shooting a werewolf with a silver bullet, the fan recoiled in horror and dropped back to the floor.

The growling ceased and the room went dark again. Only the hum of a simple electric fan was audible above sounds of cars and motorbikes and spitting out on the street.

Although this story is complete and utter bullshit, it shows what fear many Koreans have of fan death. When I ask some of my Korean friends what they think, they kinda shrug and say, “I don’t take any chances. I sleep with the window open.” When I try to explain the flawed science behind it and the fact that most fan deaths turn out to be heart attacks or someone choking on their own vomit, they still say, “I still must be careful. The Korean physiology is different from the western body.”

So my last resort is to encourage the sheep to continue to fear their fans and let them swelter in a pool of their own sweat and get devoured by mosquitoes, while I sleep like a baby with the air con and fan on, the doors and windows shut, and my mind at ease.

I got your vortex right here.