Speaker 1: In the middle of July fifteen eighteen, the eastern French
Speaker 1: city of Strasbourg was in the grip of a heat wave.
Speaker 1: It had been going on for weeks, and the population
Speaker 1: had adapted accordingly. Residents changed their daily routines to avoid
Speaker 1: the hottest parts of the day, going out to run
Speaker 1: errands at dawn or at dusk, and staying in the
Speaker 1: shade for the rest of the time. On the fourteenth
Speaker 1: of July, as it approached midday, the baking sun inching
Speaker 1: ever higher into the sky, the streets were mostly empty.
Speaker 1: The only people out in the sweltering heat were those
Speaker 1: who didn't have a choice, the farmers and laborers who
Speaker 1: had to be outside come rain or shine. In a
Speaker 1: quiet cobble street, the echoes of a distant church bell
Speaker 1: could be heard striking noon. Just then, a door open
Speaker 1: and a young woman appeared in the door frame, her
Speaker 1: face fixed in an odd, vacant expression. When she stepped
Speaker 1: out onto the street, it was as if she was
Speaker 1: being called to something. She didn't even stop to close
Speaker 1: the front door before heading off briskly towards the town's
Speaker 1: central square. Nobody in the square looked twice at the
Speaker 1: young woman when she first arrived, but then something strange
Speaker 1: began to happen. The woman started to dance on the spot,
Speaker 1: her body twisting and twirling in time to some imaginary
Speaker 1: soundtrack that only she could hear. She seemed utterly oblivious
Speaker 1: to the sun beating down on her and to the
Speaker 1: curious glances of passers by who stopped to stare. At first,
Speaker 1: people were amused. This must be some kind of performance,
Speaker 1: they thought, although the lack of music struck them as strange.
Speaker 1: A few people dropped coins into a pile next to her,
Speaker 1: assuming that she was a busker, but before long began
Speaker 1: to notice some unsettling details. Despite the strange chigs she
Speaker 1: was dancing, the look on the young woman's face was
Speaker 1: anything but merry. Her features were contorted into a strange grimace,
Speaker 1: as if she was in terrible pain. As the temperature
Speaker 1: climbed above thirty degrees celsius, sweat began to pour down
Speaker 1: her face and arms, but the woman refused to stop.
Speaker 1: After more than an hour of continuous dancing, she was
Speaker 1: still going. People began to exchange nervous glances. Then a
Speaker 1: city worker approached the woman and tried to get her
Speaker 1: to pause, offering her water. She ignored him completely, and
Speaker 1: when he put his hands on her shoulders, her dancing
Speaker 1: became even more frenetic. She flung her arms wildly at him,
Speaker 1: forcing him to beat a hasty retreat. All afternoon she
Speaker 1: continued non stop, her legs and arms flailing about, hopping
Speaker 1: from one foot to the next. By the ear evening,
Speaker 1: every inch of the young woman's exposed skin was sunburnt,
Speaker 1: her face bright red, and her matted hair drenched in sweat.
Speaker 1: By now a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch this
Speaker 1: bizarre spectacle underneath the setting sun. It was now obvious
Speaker 1: that this was no street performance. There was something terribly
Speaker 1: wrong with this woman, and nobody seemed to know how
Speaker 1: to help her. Her name was Frau Trofia, and soon
Speaker 1: she would not be the only one you're listening to Unexplained,
Speaker 1: and I'm Richard McLean Smith. By the morning of July fifteenth,
Speaker 1: Frau Trofia had been dancing NonStop for close to twenty hours.
Speaker 1: She hadn't stopped to sleep, to eat, or even to
Speaker 1: rest for a moment. Word had spread all over the
Speaker 1: city and that the doctor was called to make sense
Speaker 1: of what was happening. When the doctor arrived, he found
Speaker 1: an even more bizarre scene than he'd expected. There was
Speaker 1: still a crowd gathered around Frautrofia, but now they weren't
Speaker 1: all just onlookers. At some point in the previous few hours,
Speaker 1: two others had begun dancing too, their faces locked into
Speaker 1: the same rictus grimace, their bodies contorting into the same
Speaker 1: strange jig, incredibly like an especially outlandish m night Shire
Speaker 1: Marlin plot. Whatever this was appeared to be contagious. At first,
Speaker 1: it looked like they were mocking Frautrofia, but their dancing
Speaker 1: went on for too long to be a joke, and
Speaker 1: for the rest of the day, the trio kept up
Speaker 1: their wild moods, ignoring all efforts to make them stop. Finally,
Speaker 1: shortly before five pm that evening, Frautropia collapsed to the ground.
Speaker 1: It seemed exhaustion had finally got the best of her,
Speaker 1: and everybody around her breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever
Speaker 1: this strange fever was, it must be breaking, they thought.
Speaker 1: But then Frau Trothia's legs and arms began to twitch weakly,
Speaker 1: and soon they were wriggling again. Fearing she was dying.
Speaker 1: One onlooker rushed forward to give her some water. No
Speaker 1: sooner had frow Trothia managed a few small SIPs, She
Speaker 1: steadily got back to her feet, and the dance began
Speaker 1: once again, more manically than ever. This time, the horrified
Speaker 1: crowd could only watch on as blood from her feet
Speaker 1: began to seep through the straps of her sandals, creating
Speaker 1: streaks of bloody footprints on the stony ground. It was
Speaker 1: as if she was no longer in control of her
Speaker 1: own body, compelled to keep moving by some hidden, all
Speaker 1: powerful puppet master, as if her mind had been given
Speaker 1: over to the King of the fairies. Soon after, concerned
Speaker 1: city officials appeared on the scene and forced the crowd
Speaker 1: to disperse. Terrified that more citizens might suddenly catch the
Speaker 1: dancing fever, they cordoned off the square in a desperate
Speaker 1: effort to prevent anyone else from being able to see
Speaker 1: the dancers, but it was too late. Over the course
Speaker 1: of the next few days, dozens more people across Strasbourg
Speaker 1: began spontaneously dancing. When their alarmed relatives and friends tried
Speaker 1: to intervene more reason with them, the victims were completely unresponsive,
Speaker 1: locked in the same bizarre trance as Frautrophia. Doctors ordered
Speaker 1: friends and family to physically restrain the afflicted just so
Speaker 1: they could examine them, but it was impossible to even
Speaker 1: get close to them, and in any event, the examinations
Speaker 1: when they could conduct them, proved pointless. The physicians were
Speaker 1: completely baffled with things threatening to get out of hand.
Speaker 1: Officials implored the doctors to come up with a theory
Speaker 1: as to what was happening. Though they had no concrete proof,
Speaker 1: it seemed reasonable to assume that the frantic flailing of
Speaker 1: the victims arms and legs had a medical explanation. With
Speaker 1: this in mind, the doctors suggested that the victims simply
Speaker 1: be left alone to effectively dance the sickness out of
Speaker 1: their systems. It was a dubious idea, but it was
Speaker 1: the only one they had. Officials began putting plans together
Speaker 1: to manage the ever growing number of inflicted, believing the
Speaker 1: disease would be best dealt with outside. Specific areas of
Speaker 1: the city became designated as dancing zones, such as the
Speaker 1: open air grain market, the guild hall, and a local
Speaker 1: fair ground. Officials also took the extraordinary decision to try
Speaker 1: and make everything seem as normal as possible, hoping that
Speaker 1: whatever this strange virus was, it would be less effectively
Speaker 1: transmitted if it was harder to discern. To that end,
Speaker 1: the areas were completely cleared out so stages could be
Speaker 1: erected for the afflicted to dance on, and musicians were
Speaker 1: even hired to accompany them. What resulted, however, was a
Speaker 1: grimm tableau, like a hyernomous bosh painting come to life.
Speaker 1: The dancing zones became scenes of surreal, nightmarish chaos. The
Speaker 1: afflicted jerked and twisted endlessly under the baking sun, their
Speaker 1: faces aching with distress. They groaned and cried out in pain.
Speaker 1: Some screamed out for God to save them, but the
Speaker 1: ones who were silent were the more disturbing to watch.
Speaker 1: They looked terrified, as though stuck in a nightmare they
Speaker 1: couldn't wake up from. All the while, groups of perfectly
Speaker 1: healthy musicians accompanied them with a muddled chorus of drum
Speaker 1: beats and pipes. As an ever growing crowd of horrified
Speaker 1: townspeople turned up to stare. It was, as one eyewitness
Speaker 1: described it, as though the dancers created the impression of
Speaker 1: people attempting to keep their legs and feet from burning,
Speaker 1: as if they were poised above a fire. City officials
Speaker 1: also hired professional dancers to perform alongside the victims to
Speaker 1: try and keep them dancing or prop them up when
Speaker 1: they grew too exhausted to stand, convinced that would help
Speaker 1: eradicate the virus. Over the next few weeks, more and
Speaker 1: more victims followed in frou Trophia's footsteps. First, they were
Speaker 1: seized by the uncontrollable urge to die, which they did
Speaker 1: non stop for a period of hours or days, and
Speaker 1: depending on their age and physical condition, they would inevitably
Speaker 1: dance themselves into exhaustion. After six days of almost non
Speaker 1: stop dancing, Frautrophia finally collapsed into unconsciousness and her limbs
Speaker 1: stopped moving. The following day, another dancer keeled over and died.
Speaker 1: The cause was a massive heart attack brought on by
Speaker 1: the sheer physical toll of the dancing. And still more
Speaker 1: people continued to join the throng of tormented dancers, and
Speaker 1: those who hadn't yet been affected were in their own
Speaker 1: grip of terror, petrified at the thought that they would
Speaker 1: be next. By now, the medical consensus was that the
Speaker 1: dancing was being caused by overheated blood on the brain.
Speaker 1: Due to the heat, weve, but rumblings had begun suggesting
Speaker 1: that perhaps there was a much darker explanation. By the
Speaker 1: end of that summer of fifteen eighteen, some four hundred
Speaker 1: people had fallen victim to the dancing plague of Strasbourg.
Speaker 1: Dozens had danced themselves to death, and though the physicians
Speaker 1: were stumped as to what was happening, for the town's
Speaker 1: religious leaders, the explanation was becoming increasingly clear. Back in
Speaker 1: two hundred ninety CE, the Roman emperor of the day
Speaker 1: was Diocletian, but his empire was crumbling as a new
Speaker 1: god had begun to challenge the old powers. That year,
Speaker 1: in the shadowed corners of Sicily, a boy named Vitus
Speaker 1: was born into a prestigious Roman pagan family at the
Speaker 1: age of seven. Vitus is said to have been convinced
Speaker 1: to become a follower of Jesus by the family nurse,
Speaker 1: who also baptized him Secretly. His father, Hylas, a local senator,
Speaker 1: was quick to notice a change in his son. He
Speaker 1: refused to bow before the household gods. He murmured quietly
Speaker 1: to himself when they sat down to eat, and whenever
Speaker 1: they went for a walk, Hilas would catch his son
Speaker 1: gazing wistfully up to the sky. In three hundred three
Speaker 1: c E, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict against Christians, who
Speaker 1: were steadily growing in number. The edict demanded that all
Speaker 1: Christians renounce their faith or faith severe punishment. Terrified of
Speaker 1: what it might mean for his son, Hilas insisted that
Speaker 1: Vitus comply, But as the story goes, the boy refused,
Speaker 1: even when Hylas resorted to beating and imprisoning him. In fact,
Speaker 1: each punishment seemed only to strengthen Vitus's conviction. Then strange
Speaker 1: things began to happen. Hylas's arm would seemingly become temporarily
Speaker 1: paralyzed whenever he raised it to strike the boy. Then,
Speaker 1: a magistrate sent to interrogate Fightus on behalf of the
Speaker 1: emperor died unexpectedly. One morning, while out walking in a
Speaker 1: market with his nurse, Fitus found himself drawn to a
Speaker 1: blind beggar. The young boy placed his small hands on
Speaker 1: the blind man's face, and the man gasped, blinking rapidly,
Speaker 1: when he felt a sudden flood of light rush into
Speaker 1: his eyes. It's a miracle, he said, I can see. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at the Emperor's palace in Nicomedia, in what is present
Speaker 1: day Turkey, Diocletian's son was in the grip of something terrifying.
Speaker 1: He writhed about in his bed in a horrifying seizure,
Speaker 1: as foam flecked his lips. The emperor's advisers stood over
Speaker 1: the boy and gave their ominous assessment. There was no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. The Emperor's son was possessed by a demon.
Speaker 1: So when the Emperor learned of a peculiar boy in
Speaker 1: Sicily who was said to have extraordinary healing powers, he
Speaker 1: sent for him immediately. As the legend goes, it took
Speaker 1: Vitus only a matter of minutes to cure the emperor's
Speaker 1: son and bring an end to his and his father's torture,
Speaker 1: but it would come at a great cost. Though grateful
Speaker 1: for Vitas's help, Diocletian was unwavering in his edict against Christians.
Speaker 1: When he demanded that Vitus renounce his faith once again,
Speaker 1: the young boy steadfastly refused. Vitus was swiftly imprisoned and
Speaker 1: then beheaded by five hundred CE, Vitus was being widely
Speaker 1: recognized as a saint. Then, sometime in the fourteenth century,
Speaker 1: in the Rhine Valley in Germany, some farmers began suffering
Speaker 1: from a mysterious affliction characterized by uncontrollable dancing and twitching.
Speaker 1: But when they began praying to Saint Vitus, the affliction stopped.
Speaker 1: And with this association came its dark inversion. If Saint
Speaker 1: Vitus could stop the dance, could he not also start it?
Speaker 1: As the religious leaders of Strasbourg looked about their town,
Speaker 1: the explanation for the dancing plague, as it would come
Speaker 1: to be known, was simple. It wasn't just the dancers
Speaker 1: that were sick. It was all of them. The entire
Speaker 1: society sick with the sin of debauchery, and now Saint
Speaker 1: Vitus was punishing them for it. With nothing to lose,
Speaker 1: the city council embraced the theory and swiftly ordered the
Speaker 1: dancers to be confined to their homes out of public view.
Speaker 1: Once this was done, they went on a mission to
Speaker 1: rid Strasbourg of any activity that could be considered sinful.
Speaker 1: They imprisoned sex workers and gamblers, and banned known drunkards
Speaker 1: from taverns in their efforts to purify the city. When
Speaker 1: this failed to do anything, a period of enforced penance
Speaker 1: was initiated, during which all forms of music and dancing
Speaker 1: were banned in public. All present victims of the dancing
Speaker 1: plague were rounded up and taken to stay at the
Speaker 1: shrine of Saint Vitus on a mountaintop just outside the city.
Speaker 1: One by one, they arrived, hopping and jerking at the
Speaker 1: hillside shrine, their feet blistered and bleeding. Each was sanctified
Speaker 1: with holy oil and water, and given a cross to
Speaker 1: wear around their necks and a pair of red shoes
Speaker 1: gently placed on their ravaged feet. Then, every day, beside
Speaker 1: a wooden figure of Saint Vitus, the local priest conducted
Speaker 1: a mass exorcism, crying out to Saint Vitus to relent
Speaker 1: with his punishment and grant absolution. Then something extraordinary happened.
Speaker 1: The victims began to recover. They regained the ability to
Speaker 1: control their movements, and although they were still sometimes gripped
Speaker 1: by the sudden urge to dance, the episodes lasted for
Speaker 1: minutes rather than days. Finally, by the end of September
Speaker 1: fifteen eighteen, the dancing plague including for Frau Trofia, who
Speaker 1: had survived. The whole ordeal was all but over. In
Speaker 1: the five centuries that have passed, there has never been
Speaker 1: a conclusive explanation for what happened, but there's been no
Speaker 1: shortage of theories. Some have tried to explain it away
Speaker 1: as a purely sociological phenomenon. The dancers were members of
Speaker 1: a religious cult. Some suggested enacting some kind of ritual,
Speaker 1: but this doesn't tally with any of the eye witness accounts.
Speaker 1: The afflicted seemed distressed and desperate, and were clearly dancing
Speaker 1: against their will to the point where their feet bled
Speaker 1: and their bodies collapsed. No cult could sustain that kind
Speaker 1: of power. Another possibility is that the victims were all
Speaker 1: poisoned by some kind of toxin. Ergot is a type
Speaker 1: of toxic fungus that grows on damp rye, which grew
Speaker 1: plentifully in the field surrounding Strasbourg. Eating at once isn't
Speaker 1: a problem, but long term poisoning can cause hallucinations and
Speaker 1: muscle spasms. If the city's bread supply was contaminated by ergot,
Speaker 1: this might have caused widespread poisoning, but this theory doesn't
Speaker 1: really hold water either. Hallucinations and spasms don't tally with
Speaker 1: an insatiable urge to dance. In order to really understand
Speaker 1: what happened during the Dancing plague, it's important to understand
Speaker 1: what was happening in Strasbourg before it started. The early
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds had been a terrible time for the city.
Speaker 1: Multiple harvest failures had caused wheat prices to soar, leaving
Speaker 1: many people on the brink of starvation. A number of
Speaker 1: terrifying new diseases had also begun to spread widely during
Speaker 1: this period, including syphilis and the bubonic plague. Homeless shelters, hospitals,
Speaker 1: and orphanages were besieged, and the streets were full of
Speaker 1: people begging for food. In short, people were desperate, grief stricken,
Speaker 1: and struggling to see any light at the end of
Speaker 1: the tunnel. One moralizing book written by city chancellor Sebastian
Speaker 1: Brandt about twenty years before, titled Das Narrenschiff The Ship
Speaker 1: of Falls, also seemed to have seeped into the public imagination.
Speaker 1: In it, he wrote that dance and sin are one
Speaker 1: in kind. All of this created the ideal conditions for
Speaker 1: a mass psychogenic illness, more commonly known as mass hysteria,
Speaker 1: a situation that occurs when there's a rapid onset of
Speaker 1: similar or identical symptoms among members of a group. Importantly,
Speaker 1: mass psychogenic illness only occurs in the context of some
Speaker 1: plausible threat, which provokes anxiety and panic within the group.
Speaker 1: The existence of this threat is what makes the spread
Speaker 1: of mass hysteria possible. Just as being sleep deprived or
Speaker 1: malnourished can suppress your immune system and make you more
Speaker 1: susceptible to getting ill, feeling constantly anxious and threatened can
Speaker 1: make you more psychologically suggestible. In the case of the
Speaker 1: people of Strasbourg, they'd lived under constant threat from famine, disease,
Speaker 1: and social upheaval for years. Even for the lucky ones,
Speaker 1: those who still had a roof over their heads, enough
Speaker 1: food on the table, and whose loved ones were all
Speaker 1: still alive, daily life was still fraught and filled with
Speaker 1: reminders of just how bad things could get under these conditions.
Speaker 1: It's possible that Frau Trophia essentially became patient zero. Her bizarre,
Speaker 1: uncontrollable dancing spread like the symptoms of a physical illness
Speaker 1: among the unsettled residents. Of Strasbourg, resulting in the dancing plague.
Speaker 1: But mass hysteria is only half the story. The idea
Speaker 1: of a dancing plague in itself didn't come from nowhere,
Speaker 1: but from a very specific superstition that had existed in
Speaker 1: Europe for centuries. The vast majority of people in sixteenth
Speaker 1: century Europe were strongly religious, believing not only in a
Speaker 1: Christian God, but also in a variety of related saints
Speaker 1: and deities. One of these was the aforementioned Saint Vitus,
Speaker 1: who became known as the Saint of entertainment and dance,
Speaker 1: who legend said, punished sinners by cursing them to dance relentlessly.
Speaker 1: This superstition is so widely known that it even inspired
Speaker 1: medical terminology as an auto immune condition called Sydonym's corrier,
Speaker 1: involving frantic and uncontrollable jerking movements in the hands and feet.
Speaker 1: The alternative name for this affliction is Saint Vitus's dance.
Speaker 1: Surrounded by distress and misfortune, the people of Strasbourg had
Speaker 1: every reason to believe that God and all of his
Speaker 1: saints were angry with them, so it wasn't much of
Speaker 1: a leap for a few people to also start believing
Speaker 1: that Saint Vitus had cursed them personally. If this is
Speaker 1: indeed what happened, then the city council couldn't possibly have
Speaker 1: chosen a worse response. By erecting stages in multiple spaces
Speaker 1: and encouraging the afflicted to continue dancing as crowds of
Speaker 1: spectators watched on, they ensured maximum exposure to the emotional virus.
Speaker 1: In effect, these public dancing zones were daily psychological super
Speaker 1: spreader events. Even if people were going out of their
Speaker 1: way to avoid seeing the dancers, it was almost impossible.
Speaker 1: They were in the most public areas of the city,
Speaker 1: from the Guildhall to the grain Market, and because the
Speaker 1: afflicted were so inescapable, so visible, the townspeople had no
Speaker 1: choice but to reflect on the possibility that they could
Speaker 1: be next. This fear would have been especially pronounced for
Speaker 1: anybody who was naturally anxious or prone to self recrimination.
Speaker 1: Of course, the authorities were only following the medical advice
Speaker 1: they'd been given. This was two centuries before the emergence
Speaker 1: of psychiatry, and doctors unfortunately had no concept of social
Speaker 1: contagion or collective trauma when they recommended that the victims
Speaker 1: be encouraged to dance until they were satiated. They were
Speaker 1: thinking only about the effect on the individual, not on
Speaker 1: society as a whole. There have been no other recorded
Speaker 1: incidents of a dancing plague since that strange summer of
Speaker 1: fifteen eighteen, but mass psychogenic illness is now broadly accepted phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It's been widely recorded in other forms, from mass spouts
Speaker 1: of illness to supposed multiple demonic possessions, and even epidemics
Speaker 1: of uncontrollable laughter. Has once occurred in East Africa in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. The psychological contagion theory is the closest
Speaker 1: will likely ever get to an explanation of what happened
Speaker 1: for now, The dancing plague at Strasbourg was a bizarre
Speaker 1: and haunting occurrence that remains to this day unexplained. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: Thank you, as ever for listening to the show. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so.
Speaker 1: You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok
Speaker 1: dot com. Forward slash at Unexplained podcast. Unexplained as an
Speaker 1: AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All
Speaker 1: other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
Speaker 1: produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and
Speaker 1: audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
Speaker 1: from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
Speaker 1: to share. You can find out more at Unexplained podcast
Speaker 1: dot com and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained
Speaker 1: Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward slash Unexplained
Speaker 1: Podcast d.
Speaker 2: A, then then then then on the