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Speaker 1: In the middle of July fifteen eighteen, the eastern French

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Speaker 1: city of Strasbourg was in the grip of a heat wave.

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Speaker 1: It had been going on for weeks, and the population

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Speaker 1: had adapted accordingly. Residents changed their daily routines to avoid

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Speaker 1: the hottest parts of the day, going out to run

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Speaker 1: errands at dawn or at dusk, and staying in the

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Speaker 1: shade for the rest of the time. On the fourteenth

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Speaker 1: of July, as it approached midday, the baking sun inching

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Speaker 1: ever higher into the sky, the streets were mostly empty.

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Speaker 1: The only people out in the sweltering heat were those

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Speaker 1: who didn't have a choice, the farmers and laborers who

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Speaker 1: had to be outside come rain or shine. In a

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Speaker 1: quiet cobble street, the echoes of a distant church bell

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Speaker 1: could be heard striking noon. Just then, a door open

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Speaker 1: and a young woman appeared in the door frame, her

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Speaker 1: face fixed in an odd, vacant expression. When she stepped

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Speaker 1: out onto the street, it was as if she was

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Speaker 1: being called to something. She didn't even stop to close

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Speaker 1: the front door before heading off briskly towards the town's

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Speaker 1: central square. Nobody in the square looked twice at the

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Speaker 1: young woman when she first arrived, but then something strange

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Speaker 1: began to happen. The woman started to dance on the spot,

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Speaker 1: her body twisting and twirling in time to some imaginary

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Speaker 1: soundtrack that only she could hear. She seemed utterly oblivious

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Speaker 1: to the sun beating down on her and to the

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Speaker 1: curious glances of passers by who stopped to stare. At first,

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Speaker 1: people were amused. This must be some kind of performance,

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Speaker 1: they thought, although the lack of music struck them as strange.

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Speaker 1: A few people dropped coins into a pile next to her,

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Speaker 1: assuming that she was a busker, but before long began

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Speaker 1: to notice some unsettling details. Despite the strange chigs she

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Speaker 1: was dancing, the look on the young woman's face was

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Speaker 1: anything but merry. Her features were contorted into a strange grimace,

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Speaker 1: as if she was in terrible pain. As the temperature

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Speaker 1: climbed above thirty degrees celsius, sweat began to pour down

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Speaker 1: her face and arms, but the woman refused to stop.

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Speaker 1: After more than an hour of continuous dancing, she was

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Speaker 1: still going. People began to exchange nervous glances. Then a

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Speaker 1: city worker approached the woman and tried to get her

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Speaker 1: to pause, offering her water. She ignored him completely, and

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Speaker 1: when he put his hands on her shoulders, her dancing

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Speaker 1: became even more frenetic. She flung her arms wildly at him,

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Speaker 1: forcing him to beat a hasty retreat. All afternoon she

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Speaker 1: continued non stop, her legs and arms flailing about, hopping

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Speaker 1: from one foot to the next. By the ear evening,

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Speaker 1: every inch of the young woman's exposed skin was sunburnt,

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Speaker 1: her face bright red, and her matted hair drenched in sweat.

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Speaker 1: By now a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch this

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Speaker 1: bizarre spectacle underneath the setting sun. It was now obvious

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Speaker 1: that this was no street performance. There was something terribly

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Speaker 1: wrong with this woman, and nobody seemed to know how

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Speaker 1: to help her. Her name was Frau Trofia, and soon

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Speaker 1: she would not be the only one you're listening to Unexplained,

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Speaker 1: and I'm Richard McLean Smith. By the morning of July fifteenth,

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Speaker 1: Frau Trofia had been dancing NonStop for close to twenty hours.

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Speaker 1: She hadn't stopped to sleep, to eat, or even to

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Speaker 1: rest for a moment. Word had spread all over the

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Speaker 1: city and that the doctor was called to make sense

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Speaker 1: of what was happening. When the doctor arrived, he found

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Speaker 1: an even more bizarre scene than he'd expected. There was

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Speaker 1: still a crowd gathered around Frautrofia, but now they weren't

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Speaker 1: all just onlookers. At some point in the previous few hours,

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Speaker 1: two others had begun dancing too, their faces locked into

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Speaker 1: the same rictus grimace, their bodies contorting into the same

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Speaker 1: strange jig, incredibly like an especially outlandish m night Shire

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Speaker 1: Marlin plot. Whatever this was appeared to be contagious. At first,

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Speaker 1: it looked like they were mocking Frautrofia, but their dancing

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Speaker 1: went on for too long to be a joke, and

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Speaker 1: for the rest of the day, the trio kept up

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Speaker 1: their wild moods, ignoring all efforts to make them stop. Finally,

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Speaker 1: shortly before five pm that evening, Frautropia collapsed to the ground.

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Speaker 1: It seemed exhaustion had finally got the best of her,

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Speaker 1: and everybody around her breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever

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Speaker 1: this strange fever was, it must be breaking, they thought.

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Speaker 1: But then Frau Trothia's legs and arms began to twitch weakly,

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Speaker 1: and soon they were wriggling again. Fearing she was dying.

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Speaker 1: One onlooker rushed forward to give her some water. No

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Speaker 1: sooner had frow Trothia managed a few small SIPs, She

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Speaker 1: steadily got back to her feet, and the dance began

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Speaker 1: once again, more manically than ever. This time, the horrified

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Speaker 1: crowd could only watch on as blood from her feet

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Speaker 1: began to seep through the straps of her sandals, creating

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Speaker 1: streaks of bloody footprints on the stony ground. It was

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Speaker 1: as if she was no longer in control of her

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Speaker 1: own body, compelled to keep moving by some hidden, all

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Speaker 1: powerful puppet master, as if her mind had been given

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Speaker 1: over to the King of the fairies. Soon after, concerned

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Speaker 1: city officials appeared on the scene and forced the crowd

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Speaker 1: to disperse. Terrified that more citizens might suddenly catch the

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Speaker 1: dancing fever, they cordoned off the square in a desperate

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Speaker 1: effort to prevent anyone else from being able to see

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Speaker 1: the dancers, but it was too late. Over the course

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Speaker 1: of the next few days, dozens more people across Strasbourg

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Speaker 1: began spontaneously dancing. When their alarmed relatives and friends tried

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Speaker 1: to intervene more reason with them, the victims were completely unresponsive,

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Speaker 1: locked in the same bizarre trance as Frautrophia. Doctors ordered

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Speaker 1: friends and family to physically restrain the afflicted just so

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Speaker 1: they could examine them, but it was impossible to even

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Speaker 1: get close to them, and in any event, the examinations

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Speaker 1: when they could conduct them, proved pointless. The physicians were

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Speaker 1: completely baffled with things threatening to get out of hand.

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Speaker 1: Officials implored the doctors to come up with a theory

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Speaker 1: as to what was happening. Though they had no concrete proof,

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Speaker 1: it seemed reasonable to assume that the frantic flailing of

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Speaker 1: the victims arms and legs had a medical explanation. With

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Speaker 1: this in mind, the doctors suggested that the victims simply

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Speaker 1: be left alone to effectively dance the sickness out of

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Speaker 1: their systems. It was a dubious idea, but it was

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Speaker 1: the only one they had. Officials began putting plans together

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Speaker 1: to manage the ever growing number of inflicted, believing the

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Speaker 1: disease would be best dealt with outside. Specific areas of

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Speaker 1: the city became designated as dancing zones, such as the

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Speaker 1: open air grain market, the guild hall, and a local

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Speaker 1: fair ground. Officials also took the extraordinary decision to try

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Speaker 1: and make everything seem as normal as possible, hoping that

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Speaker 1: whatever this strange virus was, it would be less effectively

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Speaker 1: transmitted if it was harder to discern. To that end,

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Speaker 1: the areas were completely cleared out so stages could be

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Speaker 1: erected for the afflicted to dance on, and musicians were

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Speaker 1: even hired to accompany them. What resulted, however, was a

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Speaker 1: grimm tableau, like a hyernomous bosh painting come to life.

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Speaker 1: The dancing zones became scenes of surreal, nightmarish chaos. The

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Speaker 1: afflicted jerked and twisted endlessly under the baking sun, their

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Speaker 1: faces aching with distress. They groaned and cried out in pain.

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Speaker 1: Some screamed out for God to save them, but the

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Speaker 1: ones who were silent were the more disturbing to watch.

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Speaker 1: They looked terrified, as though stuck in a nightmare they

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Speaker 1: couldn't wake up from. All the while, groups of perfectly

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Speaker 1: healthy musicians accompanied them with a muddled chorus of drum

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Speaker 1: beats and pipes. As an ever growing crowd of horrified

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Speaker 1: townspeople turned up to stare. It was, as one eyewitness

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Speaker 1: described it, as though the dancers created the impression of

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Speaker 1: people attempting to keep their legs and feet from burning,

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Speaker 1: as if they were poised above a fire. City officials

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Speaker 1: also hired professional dancers to perform alongside the victims to

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Speaker 1: try and keep them dancing or prop them up when

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Speaker 1: they grew too exhausted to stand, convinced that would help

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Speaker 1: eradicate the virus. Over the next few weeks, more and

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Speaker 1: more victims followed in frou Trophia's footsteps. First, they were

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Speaker 1: seized by the uncontrollable urge to die, which they did

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Speaker 1: non stop for a period of hours or days, and

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Speaker 1: depending on their age and physical condition, they would inevitably

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Speaker 1: dance themselves into exhaustion. After six days of almost non

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Speaker 1: stop dancing, Frautrophia finally collapsed into unconsciousness and her limbs

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Speaker 1: stopped moving. The following day, another dancer keeled over and died.

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Speaker 1: The cause was a massive heart attack brought on by

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Speaker 1: the sheer physical toll of the dancing. And still more

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Speaker 1: people continued to join the throng of tormented dancers, and

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Speaker 1: those who hadn't yet been affected were in their own

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Speaker 1: grip of terror, petrified at the thought that they would

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Speaker 1: be next. By now, the medical consensus was that the

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Speaker 1: dancing was being caused by overheated blood on the brain.

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Speaker 1: Due to the heat, weve, but rumblings had begun suggesting

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Speaker 1: that perhaps there was a much darker explanation. By the

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Speaker 1: end of that summer of fifteen eighteen, some four hundred

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Speaker 1: people had fallen victim to the dancing plague of Strasbourg.

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Speaker 1: Dozens had danced themselves to death, and though the physicians

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Speaker 1: were stumped as to what was happening, for the town's

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Speaker 1: religious leaders, the explanation was becoming increasingly clear. Back in

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Speaker 1: two hundred ninety CE, the Roman emperor of the day

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Speaker 1: was Diocletian, but his empire was crumbling as a new

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Speaker 1: god had begun to challenge the old powers. That year,

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Speaker 1: in the shadowed corners of Sicily, a boy named Vitus

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Speaker 1: was born into a prestigious Roman pagan family at the

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Speaker 1: age of seven. Vitus is said to have been convinced

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Speaker 1: to become a follower of Jesus by the family nurse,

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Speaker 1: who also baptized him Secretly. His father, Hylas, a local senator,

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Speaker 1: was quick to notice a change in his son. He

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Speaker 1: refused to bow before the household gods. He murmured quietly

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Speaker 1: to himself when they sat down to eat, and whenever

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Speaker 1: they went for a walk, Hilas would catch his son

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Speaker 1: gazing wistfully up to the sky. In three hundred three

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Speaker 1: c E, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict against Christians, who

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Speaker 1: were steadily growing in number. The edict demanded that all

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Speaker 1: Christians renounce their faith or faith severe punishment. Terrified of

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Speaker 1: what it might mean for his son, Hilas insisted that

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Speaker 1: Vitus comply, But as the story goes, the boy refused,

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Speaker 1: even when Hylas resorted to beating and imprisoning him. In fact,

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Speaker 1: each punishment seemed only to strengthen Vitus's conviction. Then strange

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Speaker 1: things began to happen. Hylas's arm would seemingly become temporarily

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Speaker 1: paralyzed whenever he raised it to strike the boy. Then,

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Speaker 1: a magistrate sent to interrogate Fightus on behalf of the

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Speaker 1: emperor died unexpectedly. One morning, while out walking in a

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Speaker 1: market with his nurse, Fitus found himself drawn to a

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Speaker 1: blind beggar. The young boy placed his small hands on

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Speaker 1: the blind man's face, and the man gasped, blinking rapidly,

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Speaker 1: when he felt a sudden flood of light rush into

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Speaker 1: his eyes. It's a miracle, he said, I can see. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: at the Emperor's palace in Nicomedia, in what is present

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Speaker 1: day Turkey, Diocletian's son was in the grip of something terrifying.

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Speaker 1: He writhed about in his bed in a horrifying seizure,

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Speaker 1: as foam flecked his lips. The emperor's advisers stood over

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Speaker 1: the boy and gave their ominous assessment. There was no

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Speaker 1: doubt about it. The Emperor's son was possessed by a demon.

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Speaker 1: So when the Emperor learned of a peculiar boy in

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Speaker 1: Sicily who was said to have extraordinary healing powers, he

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Speaker 1: sent for him immediately. As the legend goes, it took

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Speaker 1: Vitus only a matter of minutes to cure the emperor's

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Speaker 1: son and bring an end to his and his father's torture,

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Speaker 1: but it would come at a great cost. Though grateful

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Speaker 1: for Vitas's help, Diocletian was unwavering in his edict against Christians.

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Speaker 1: When he demanded that Vitus renounce his faith once again,

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Speaker 1: the young boy steadfastly refused. Vitus was swiftly imprisoned and

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Speaker 1: then beheaded by five hundred CE, Vitus was being widely

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Speaker 1: recognized as a saint. Then, sometime in the fourteenth century,

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Speaker 1: in the Rhine Valley in Germany, some farmers began suffering

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Speaker 1: from a mysterious affliction characterized by uncontrollable dancing and twitching.

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Speaker 1: But when they began praying to Saint Vitus, the affliction stopped.

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Speaker 1: And with this association came its dark inversion. If Saint

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Speaker 1: Vitus could stop the dance, could he not also start it?

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Speaker 1: As the religious leaders of Strasbourg looked about their town,

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Speaker 1: the explanation for the dancing plague, as it would come

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Speaker 1: to be known, was simple. It wasn't just the dancers

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Speaker 1: that were sick. It was all of them. The entire

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Speaker 1: society sick with the sin of debauchery, and now Saint

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Speaker 1: Vitus was punishing them for it. With nothing to lose,

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Speaker 1: the city council embraced the theory and swiftly ordered the

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Speaker 1: dancers to be confined to their homes out of public view.

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Speaker 1: Once this was done, they went on a mission to

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Speaker 1: rid Strasbourg of any activity that could be considered sinful.

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Speaker 1: They imprisoned sex workers and gamblers, and banned known drunkards

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Speaker 1: from taverns in their efforts to purify the city. When

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Speaker 1: this failed to do anything, a period of enforced penance

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Speaker 1: was initiated, during which all forms of music and dancing

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Speaker 1: were banned in public. All present victims of the dancing

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Speaker 1: plague were rounded up and taken to stay at the

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Speaker 1: shrine of Saint Vitus on a mountaintop just outside the city.

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Speaker 1: One by one, they arrived, hopping and jerking at the

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Speaker 1: hillside shrine, their feet blistered and bleeding. Each was sanctified

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Speaker 1: with holy oil and water, and given a cross to

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Speaker 1: wear around their necks and a pair of red shoes

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Speaker 1: gently placed on their ravaged feet. Then, every day, beside

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Speaker 1: a wooden figure of Saint Vitus, the local priest conducted

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Speaker 1: a mass exorcism, crying out to Saint Vitus to relent

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Speaker 1: with his punishment and grant absolution. Then something extraordinary happened.

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Speaker 1: The victims began to recover. They regained the ability to

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Speaker 1: control their movements, and although they were still sometimes gripped

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Speaker 1: by the sudden urge to dance, the episodes lasted for

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Speaker 1: minutes rather than days. Finally, by the end of September

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Speaker 1: fifteen eighteen, the dancing plague including for Frau Trofia, who

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Speaker 1: had survived. The whole ordeal was all but over. In

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Speaker 1: the five centuries that have passed, there has never been

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Speaker 1: a conclusive explanation for what happened, but there's been no

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Speaker 1: shortage of theories. Some have tried to explain it away

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Speaker 1: as a purely sociological phenomenon. The dancers were members of

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Speaker 1: a religious cult. Some suggested enacting some kind of ritual,

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Speaker 1: but this doesn't tally with any of the eye witness accounts.

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Speaker 1: The afflicted seemed distressed and desperate, and were clearly dancing

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Speaker 1: against their will to the point where their feet bled

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Speaker 1: and their bodies collapsed. No cult could sustain that kind

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Speaker 1: of power. Another possibility is that the victims were all

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Speaker 1: poisoned by some kind of toxin. Ergot is a type

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Speaker 1: of toxic fungus that grows on damp rye, which grew

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Speaker 1: plentifully in the field surrounding Strasbourg. Eating at once isn't

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Speaker 1: a problem, but long term poisoning can cause hallucinations and

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Speaker 1: muscle spasms. If the city's bread supply was contaminated by ergot,

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Speaker 1: this might have caused widespread poisoning, but this theory doesn't

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Speaker 1: really hold water either. Hallucinations and spasms don't tally with

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Speaker 1: an insatiable urge to dance. In order to really understand

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Speaker 1: what happened during the Dancing plague, it's important to understand

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Speaker 1: what was happening in Strasbourg before it started. The early

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Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds had been a terrible time for the city.

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Speaker 1: Multiple harvest failures had caused wheat prices to soar, leaving

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Speaker 1: many people on the brink of starvation. A number of

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Speaker 1: terrifying new diseases had also begun to spread widely during

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Speaker 1: this period, including syphilis and the bubonic plague. Homeless shelters, hospitals,

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Speaker 1: and orphanages were besieged, and the streets were full of

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Speaker 1: people begging for food. In short, people were desperate, grief stricken,

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Speaker 1: and struggling to see any light at the end of

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Speaker 1: the tunnel. One moralizing book written by city chancellor Sebastian

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Speaker 1: Brandt about twenty years before, titled Das Narrenschiff The Ship

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Speaker 1: of Falls, also seemed to have seeped into the public imagination.

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Speaker 1: In it, he wrote that dance and sin are one

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Speaker 1: in kind. All of this created the ideal conditions for

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Speaker 1: a mass psychogenic illness, more commonly known as mass hysteria,

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Speaker 1: a situation that occurs when there's a rapid onset of

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Speaker 1: similar or identical symptoms among members of a group. Importantly,

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Speaker 1: mass psychogenic illness only occurs in the context of some

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Speaker 1: plausible threat, which provokes anxiety and panic within the group.

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Speaker 1: The existence of this threat is what makes the spread

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Speaker 1: of mass hysteria possible. Just as being sleep deprived or

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Speaker 1: malnourished can suppress your immune system and make you more

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Speaker 1: susceptible to getting ill, feeling constantly anxious and threatened can

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Speaker 1: make you more psychologically suggestible. In the case of the

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Speaker 1: people of Strasbourg, they'd lived under constant threat from famine, disease,

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Speaker 1: and social upheaval for years. Even for the lucky ones,

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Speaker 1: those who still had a roof over their heads, enough

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Speaker 1: food on the table, and whose loved ones were all

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Speaker 1: still alive, daily life was still fraught and filled with

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Speaker 1: reminders of just how bad things could get under these conditions.

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Speaker 1: It's possible that Frau Trophia essentially became patient zero. Her bizarre,

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Speaker 1: uncontrollable dancing spread like the symptoms of a physical illness

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Speaker 1: among the unsettled residents. Of Strasbourg, resulting in the dancing plague.

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Speaker 1: But mass hysteria is only half the story. The idea

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Speaker 1: of a dancing plague in itself didn't come from nowhere,

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Speaker 1: but from a very specific superstition that had existed in

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Speaker 1: Europe for centuries. The vast majority of people in sixteenth

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Speaker 1: century Europe were strongly religious, believing not only in a

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Speaker 1: Christian God, but also in a variety of related saints

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Speaker 1: and deities. One of these was the aforementioned Saint Vitus,

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Speaker 1: who became known as the Saint of entertainment and dance,

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Speaker 1: who legend said, punished sinners by cursing them to dance relentlessly.

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Speaker 1: This superstition is so widely known that it even inspired

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Speaker 1: medical terminology as an auto immune condition called Sydonym's corrier,

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Speaker 1: involving frantic and uncontrollable jerking movements in the hands and feet.

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Speaker 1: The alternative name for this affliction is Saint Vitus's dance.

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Speaker 1: Surrounded by distress and misfortune, the people of Strasbourg had

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Speaker 1: every reason to believe that God and all of his

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Speaker 1: saints were angry with them, so it wasn't much of

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Speaker 1: a leap for a few people to also start believing

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Speaker 1: that Saint Vitus had cursed them personally. If this is

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Speaker 1: indeed what happened, then the city council couldn't possibly have

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Speaker 1: chosen a worse response. By erecting stages in multiple spaces

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Speaker 1: and encouraging the afflicted to continue dancing as crowds of

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Speaker 1: spectators watched on, they ensured maximum exposure to the emotional virus.

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Speaker 1: In effect, these public dancing zones were daily psychological super

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Speaker 1: spreader events. Even if people were going out of their

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Speaker 1: way to avoid seeing the dancers, it was almost impossible.

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Speaker 1: They were in the most public areas of the city,

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Speaker 1: from the Guildhall to the grain Market, and because the

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Speaker 1: afflicted were so inescapable, so visible, the townspeople had no

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Speaker 1: choice but to reflect on the possibility that they could

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Speaker 1: be next. This fear would have been especially pronounced for

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Speaker 1: anybody who was naturally anxious or prone to self recrimination.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the authorities were only following the medical advice

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Speaker 1: they'd been given. This was two centuries before the emergence

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Speaker 1: of psychiatry, and doctors unfortunately had no concept of social

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Speaker 1: contagion or collective trauma when they recommended that the victims

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Speaker 1: be encouraged to dance until they were satiated. They were

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Speaker 1: thinking only about the effect on the individual, not on

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Speaker 1: society as a whole. There have been no other recorded

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Speaker 1: incidents of a dancing plague since that strange summer of

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Speaker 1: fifteen eighteen, but mass psychogenic illness is now broadly accepted phenomenon.

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Speaker 1: It's been widely recorded in other forms, from mass spouts

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Speaker 1: of illness to supposed multiple demonic possessions, and even epidemics

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Speaker 1: of uncontrollable laughter. Has once occurred in East Africa in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. The psychological contagion theory is the closest

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Speaker 1: will likely ever get to an explanation of what happened

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Speaker 1: for now, The dancing plague at Strasbourg was a bizarre

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Speaker 1: and haunting occurrence that remains to this day unexplained. This

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Speaker 1: episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLain Smith.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, as ever for listening to the show. Please

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Speaker 1: subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so.

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Speaker 1: You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok

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Speaker 1: dot com. Forward slash at Unexplained podcast. Unexplained as an

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Speaker 1: AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All

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Speaker 1: other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also

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Speaker 1: produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and

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Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.

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Speaker 1: to share. You can find out more at Unexplained podcast

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Speaker 1: Podcast d.

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Speaker 2: A, then then then then on the