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Witness History: Cameroon’s mysterious lake deaths

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Cameroon’s mysterious lake deaths

29/11/2023 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, Cameroon’s mysterious lake deaths

In 1986, remote parts of Cameroon were turned into ghost villages overnight

In 1986, villagers in Cameroon awoke to find hundreds of their friends and neighbours had mysteriously died in the night.

On 21 August 1986, hundreds of villagers in a remote part of Cameroon mysteriously died overnight, along with 3,500 livestock.

In the weeks-long investigation that followed, scientists tried to work out what had happened. How had hundreds died, but hundreds of others survived?

In 2011, scientists Peter Baxter and George Kling told Tim Mansel how they cracked the case.

(Photo: Dead cattle by the shore of Lake Nyos, Cameroon. Credit: Eric Bouvet/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images)

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