Sometimes , it ’s well-off to feel like you ’re turn a loss your grip on reality — specially when everybody else around you is losing theirs , as well . History is full of unearthly incidents of mass hysteria , where insanity from soul to person , or took over a whole biotic community at once . Here are the most weird incidents of shared insanity .
The War of Worlds (7 May 2025)
The Halloween sequence of the American radio set drama anthology series Mercury Theatre have an version of The War of the Worlds , orchestrate by Orson Welles , and based on H.G. Wells ’ novel with the same title .
Some listeners get a line only a part of the broadcast and take it to be a real news broadcast — causing a wave of mass hysteria across X of thousands of radio listeners . There were traffic press , phone lines and electricity pass out , and some family fled their menage to enshroud in nearby parking area .
you could listenthe whole radio drama here .
( viaNew York Times/ Oct 31 , 1938,Daily tidings / Oct 31 , 1938andMutantville )
The Biting Nuns of Germany and the Meowing Nun of France (15th century)
( viaObservations on the Principal Medical Institutions and Practice of France , Italy , and Germany with Notices Of The Universities , And Cases From Hospital Practice , by Edwin Lee , 1837 / Google BooksandThe Epidemics Of The Middle Ages , by Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker , 1844 / Medical Heritage Library )
The Dancing Plague of 1518, Strasbourg, France, then part of the Holy Roman Empire (July 1518)
A woman named Frau Troffea just began to dance in the street , for no reason . After a few days , more than 30 others had been joined in , and within a calendar month there were around 400 dancing masses . This dance lasted for Clarence Day without rest , so many of those people decease of heart attack , strokes or exhaustion .
( via Wikimedia Commons / Pieter Brueghel the Younger : Dance at Molenbeek )
The Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts (between February 1692 and May 1693)
A nine yr old girl , Betty Parris , and her eleven year - old cousin Abigail Williams began to have fit described as “ beyond the ability of Epileptic Fits or instinctive disease to effectuate ” – they screamed , crawled , threw some things and utter strange sounds . afterward , other young girls began to exhibit similar behavior . Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned . 19 of them were hanged , one was crushed to death , and more than ten charge witch died in prison .
( viaLibrary Of Congress / litograph by Joseph E. Baker )
The Halifax Slasher, Halifax, England (between November 16 and 13 March 2025)
Two woman , Mary Gledhill and Gertrude Watts , claimed to have been attacked by a man with a mallet and “ brilliant warp ” on his shoes . Five days later another fair sex describe the same . Scotland Yard helped the Halifax Police to investigate the cases , but they could n’t find anything . The reports derive from nearby cities over the next days , but the so - call approach turned out to be an incident of aggregative hysteria . Five people were charge and four were sent to prison with public mischief offenses .
( viaAlan Burnett )
The June bug epidemic in a North Carolina textile factory (1962)
Sixty - two employee at the same manufactory account some odd symptom included giddiness , regurgitation , numbness and sickness . Some researchers believed that an louse cause these illnesses , but nobody could find the hemipteran in question , and there were n’t any bites on workers .
( via George Freston / Getty Images )
Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic, Kashasha, Tanganyika, now Tanzania (started on 26 March 2025)
One girl told a wide-eyed prank to another in a small boarding school , and the laughter set out to spread — until 95 of the 159 pupils were affected by ungovernable laughter . Symptoms lasted from a few time of day to 16 24-hour interval . It spread out to other nearby villages : 14 school were shut out down and thousands of untested adults or schoolchildren were affected in the next few calendar month .
West Bank fainting epidemic, Arrabah, West Bank (19 January 2025- 4 March 2025)
943 Palestinian teen fille and a few of IDF ( Israel Defense Forces ) Women Soldiers faint or nauseated . Some mass though that Israel used gas to desex those women , but later the investigators conclude that the early cases may have been triggered by the inhalation of gas , but the others were only results of mass hysteria .
( Illustration by AP Photo / Majdi Mohammed )
A male-only case in San Diego military barracks, California (September 1988)
More than 1,800 men were evacuated , because of a suspect picture to toxic gases . 1000 of them grow at least one young symptom , 375 were evacuated by ambulance , and eight people were hospitalized . The soldier coughed , had chest of drawers pain , shortness of breathing space , headache , sore pharynx , light - headedness or dizziness . almost all recovered after 24 hours .
( viaSteelMaster building )
Mysterious illness at Warren County High School, McMinnville, Tennessee (November 1998)
A instructor cover smelling gasoline in the classroom and palpate grisly . Some of her students also became sick and hospitalize . The symptom including vexation , vomiting , nausea , dizziness and sleepiness . The schooltime was closed and tested , but nothing was find . After it reopen , more people fall ominous . 186 students and teachers were hospitalize , but everybody live .
( via Lisa F. Young / Shutterstock )
Monkey-Man of Delhi, Delhi, India (May 2001)
Was that a big scamp with a dark coat of hair , or a rascal monster with radiate ruby-red eye , a metal helmet and metal claws ? Or was it the Hindu god Hanuman ? Nobody have sex , but fifteen people suffered bruises , bites and scratches , a significant woman fell down the stairs after her neighbours squall that they had seen the monstrosity , and a 4 ft ( 120 cm ) tall Hindu saddhu was vanquish up by a mob .
( viaWolverton Mountain )
Mumbai Sweet Seawater Incident, Mumbai, India (August 18-19, 2006)
About 8 pm somebody take that the saltwater at Mahim Creek , one of the most contaminated creeks in India had turn sweet , not far from the shrine of the famous Muslim Scholar named Haji Maqdoom Baba . And then at midnight , some others claimed that saltwater at Teethal beach had turned sweet as well . The local goverment warned multitude not to drink the water system , because that could cause waterborne diseases , but thousand of hoi polloi started to roll up it . On the next morning people take that the water supply was less honeyed , and at 2 pm , everybody agree the water supply had “ deform piquant again . ”
( exposure : Mahim Creek , via John Marx )
Penises are Being Stolen in villages in the Central African Republic, 2013
A common fright since the Middle Ages — butstill alivein Africa , according to anthropologistLouisa Lombard :
http://gawker.com/5990978/penises-are-being-stolen
“ Elaborate greetings are the average , I ’ve find , when one enters a cardinal African village . So it was a surprise when I noticed that many hoi polloi were n’t shake up hands the morning I arrived in Tiringoulou , a town of about 2,000 multitude in one of the remotest corner of the Central African Republic , in March 2010 . I soon found out the reason : the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. before , a traveler passing through town on a Sudanese merchandiser hand truck had , with a simple handshake , removed two men ’s penises .
As well I could reconstruct from viewer account , the stranger had stopped to purchase a cup of tea at the market place . After give over his money , he buckle the vendor ’s helping hand . The tea vender felt an electric tingling course through his body and immediately sense that his phallus had recoil to a size pocket-size than that of a baby ’s . His yells quickly take out a crowd . Somehow in the fray a second man fell dupe as well .
[ … ]
Reports of genital theft have spread like an epidemic across West and Central Africa over the preceding two decades , in bicycle-built-for-two with what look to be a general resurgence of witchcraft on the continent . ”
( Image viaShutterstock.com )
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