Speaker 1: Thinking sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of things,
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Well, Hi everybody, my name's
Speaker 1: Devin and I'm joined as always by Joe Steve. Oh
Speaker 1: not Joe and Steve. Just Joe Steve. Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: my name isn't and Steve, so yeah it's not. I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been a little it's a little weird when you
Speaker 1: keep introducing me as and Steve and Steve and people
Speaker 1: say hoh, hi and Steve. Well, and you know, put
Speaker 1: us three in a room and uh, you've got thinking sideways.
Speaker 1: The podcast not to mention synergy of synergy. In this
Speaker 1: room here we are the definition of synergy. So the
Speaker 1: mystery we're gonna talk about tonight is the dancing plague
Speaker 1: of eighteen. As luck would have it, there are actually
Speaker 1: a lot of dancing plagues in our history, including one
Speaker 1: in the seventies and the seventies and again entire seventies. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was not a dancing plague. That was a plague
Speaker 1: of dancers. Yeah, yeah, And actually there there was a
Speaker 1: case that's kind of relevant to this in like even
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve. Really, where was that The East
Speaker 1: coast of America. Sorry, it occurs to me not everybody
Speaker 1: is listening in America. But right now we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the dancing plague of fifteen eighteen. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably the most famous one. Yeah. Um, and it
Speaker 1: starts if if you go to if you type in
Speaker 1: dance plague, and this is the one that comes up,
Speaker 1: you know, even though there's been lots of others. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it took place in what was then the Holy
Speaker 1: Roll Roman Empire but is now kind of on the
Speaker 1: border of France and Germany Strostburg. Yes, exactly, words words.
Speaker 1: I can't say. I'm so bad with German pronunciation. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I keep picking stories that have German
Speaker 1: pronunciation in them for punishment. It's probably it you actually
Speaker 1: secretly want to, you know, spit up, step up your
Speaker 1: pronunciation of German. That's that's maybe it's just kind of yea.
Speaker 1: Our story starts with fraud Trofa. She's a young woman. Um.
Speaker 1: I would say she's the patient zero of this particular
Speaker 1: dancing plague. In July, she takes to the streets and
Speaker 1: starts dancing quote fervorently, fervently, fervently, pervent fervently, fervently. Okay,
Speaker 1: the same word, pronouncing it wrong, Yeah, fervently, ferventally. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me. I'm not the one for pronunciations. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not even a German word for Christ. So for the
Speaker 1: she danced for um four to six days apparently not
Speaker 1: not a great handle on how many actual days she
Speaker 1: danced for, but four to six um. And in the
Speaker 1: beginning she was alone, but by the end of the
Speaker 1: week thirty four others started boogying with her in the streets,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the month, four hundred boogiears
Speaker 1: were accounted for what was the population of Strasbourg at
Speaker 1: this time. We don't know, really awful, Yeah I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think we were even doing sensuces.
Speaker 1: We they I don't think they were doing sensus. So
Speaker 1: a dozens of these people died as a result of this,
Speaker 1: either from exhaustion like you would you know, kind of think,
Speaker 1: or heart attacks or seizures strokes, excuse me, strokes. So
Speaker 1: there's a fairly strong evidence that this did actually happen.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're reputable historic documents, including physicians notes, cathedral sermons,
Speaker 1: local and regional chronicles, notes issued by a city counts
Speaker 1: local city council that are all real, that all mentioned
Speaker 1: this plague. In fact, historian and professor at Michigan State
Speaker 1: University John Waller goes so far as to say that
Speaker 1: the event took place is undisputed, and he wrote a
Speaker 1: book about it. To This book is spelled Dance Till
Speaker 1: You Die or A Time to Dance, Yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: to or something like that. I don't know, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Accounts show that people weren't just shaking or
Speaker 1: trembling or convulsing, but actually dancing, dancing um, moving their
Speaker 1: arms and legs on purpose. I don't know what it
Speaker 1: looked like. I don't know that I'm doing the twist,
Speaker 1: definitely not doing that. But they were apparently actively moving
Speaker 1: their arms and legs. So it wasn't just like people
Speaker 1: like spreading out. It was voluntary. It was involuntary. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is what I heard is this, and many of
Speaker 1: these people were really not happy about their status as dancers.
Speaker 1: People reportedly were writhing in pain, screaming for help and
Speaker 1: begging for mercy. At the same time, however, apparently they
Speaker 1: were experiencing altered states of consciousness, almost like a trance state.
Speaker 1: This helps to explain how they could have physically maintained
Speaker 1: dancing for so long the trance, Yeah, because you kind
Speaker 1: of think, you know, who could dance for six days?
Speaker 1: I mean you well, you know, it's just in general,
Speaker 1: like who can dance that long? Suffering? Like the patient
Speaker 1: zero for out trophia was apparently she would. She danced
Speaker 1: until she was exhausted and then just sort of fell
Speaker 1: to the ground and fell asleep, and then when she
Speaker 1: woke up up started dancing. And I don't know what
Speaker 1: she did for food and water in the meantime, no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I've never seen anything saying, okay,
Speaker 1: well we force fed or food or water down and
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything said how they got suss it
Speaker 1: might have maybe townspeople just brought in, like you know,
Speaker 1: cakes and glasses of water or something like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, something something to eat, something, I mean, if
Speaker 1: these people are dancing, that doesn't mean they can't eat.
Speaker 1: They can just like you know, people can just walk
Speaker 1: up and hand and hand them something to chow down
Speaker 1: on and they could eat it while they dance, unless
Speaker 1: it's I mean, you know, if it's involuntary. Involuntary though,
Speaker 1: and they're just like, yeah, they have no control. I
Speaker 1: guess they're out of luck. Yes, she just hand feed them.
Speaker 1: You have to shove a little cake in their mouths
Speaker 1: or something like that, or some beef turkey and that
Speaker 1: sounds messy. Yeah. I was gonna say, this is where
Speaker 1: we got pieing in the face. Some of it ends
Speaker 1: up in their mouths. Dirty dancing, it is. So, I
Speaker 1: guess the only the real question of this isn't did
Speaker 1: this happen? Like most of our mysteries are did this happen?
Speaker 1: This one is why did this happen? Or more accurately,
Speaker 1: why did that happen? Well, I'll tell you why it happened.
Speaker 1: Dance fever, dance fever, dance dance revolution exactly. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I got to tell you my theory right now. It
Speaker 1: was like, uh, these people really wanted to be good dancers.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you really want to get good
Speaker 1: at something, you've got to do a lot of it practice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that's your entire theory, is that they wanted to
Speaker 1: be good dancers, so they were practicing. Yeah, ok, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not much worse than our first theory. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a good theory. I like this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was actually the theory of the time with the physicians.
Speaker 1: The local physicians diagnosed this woman and then all the
Speaker 1: subsequent other people with which was hot blood, which is
Speaker 1: a weird diagnosis. Quite understand this, and they said, wow,
Speaker 1: she's got a fever. Obviously her blood is just really
Speaker 1: hot running through her vein. Although usually they would have
Speaker 1: prescribed blood letting at this point because that was kind
Speaker 1: of popular thing that was that was actually probably killed
Speaker 1: more people that have helped. But yeah, um, but it
Speaker 1: was popular, it was popular. They prescribed more dancing. Actually
Speaker 1: for her, they said, you should just dance it out,
Speaker 1: just walk it out, just walk it out, actually right
Speaker 1: out the prescription. I have no idea. The local physicians
Speaker 1: quote ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that
Speaker 1: the plague was a natural disease caused by hot blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sad. Supernatural and astrological they were ruled out on
Speaker 1: the scene, which means that we can't say it was
Speaker 1: demon possession. They knew, like if anybody was going to
Speaker 1: know if it was dem in possession, they would have known. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably was demonic possession. I think probably well, I
Speaker 1: assure you guys were like devotees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1: And do you remember the musical episode? Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a great episode, but I remember what it turned out
Speaker 1: to be. It turned out there was a demon that
Speaker 1: it comes down and this demon caused people to burst
Speaker 1: out into song, you know, and so maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: was probably what it was. Yeah, a similar demon dancing demon.
Speaker 1: Steve is not amused. I can't. I can't believe that
Speaker 1: we're talking about Buffy. You can't believe it. Well, Buffy
Speaker 1: is like you know what she is? Well, but it
Speaker 1: does It doesn't make me think about the actual dancing
Speaker 1: in the demonic possession. It does make me think about
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that in the reading and the
Speaker 1: research that I was doing. Is where Is? I want
Speaker 1: to say, Hadis is not the place but in the
Speaker 1: Caribbean where people are quote prone to quote unquote demonic possession.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? Places where they
Speaker 1: they'll be zombiefied for a while. It possession though, but
Speaker 1: it's like well spirits, it's spirits will take them over,
Speaker 1: is what they say. Yeah, probably some people believe that,
Speaker 1: But there's apification in Haitia is when you can actually
Speaker 1: give people this drugs from it's made from a local
Speaker 1: plant and apparently it it puts you under and then
Speaker 1: you basically into a sort of a trance and you're
Speaker 1: you can be enslaved to to whoever administered the drug
Speaker 1: to you, right and well. And and these people are
Speaker 1: known for, you know, being possessed and doing all these things.
Speaker 1: One of the things they do all the times, they
Speaker 1: do those kind of wild erratic dances, and it may
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it makes
Speaker 1: me think about what it might have looked like to
Speaker 1: watch these people in this plague. Yeah. Well, actually that's
Speaker 1: an interesting theory, you know, because when you think about
Speaker 1: the zompification in Haiti. If you administer this this naturally
Speaker 1: occurring drug to people and enslave them to your will
Speaker 1: and just say okay, go out in the streets and
Speaker 1: just dance your ass off, you know, and maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's maybe it was some guy who was doing
Speaker 1: something like that. Maybe it was some guy drugging people
Speaker 1: and making them dance. I mean, you think you'd want
Speaker 1: to go to the drug them and make them go
Speaker 1: go to the A T. M And get some cash
Speaker 1: out to give to you or something like that, because
Speaker 1: there were so many a t M s at that time.
Speaker 1: How many were there at Strasbourg at that time, probably
Speaker 1: only like five? Ye do a google on it. The
Speaker 1: next theory is that it was mass hysteria. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: remember John Waller from He's written two books on the subject,
Speaker 1: and he posits that it was caused by mass psychogenic illness.
Speaker 1: What is psychogenic? Because I couldn't ever get a real
Speaker 1: clear answer on what that means. Psychogenic diseases are psychological
Speaker 1: illnesses that stem from emotional trauma. Okay, so it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just essentially like a physical ailment that has that
Speaker 1: that isn't really real. It's not caused by a physical illness.
Speaker 1: It's caused by psychological Yeah, it's like a physical manifestation
Speaker 1: of emotional or mental stress. Okay, Okay, well yeah I
Speaker 1: can I can follow that because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who I swear I have this and then they
Speaker 1: exhibit every symptom, textbook symptom, but when the actual tests
Speaker 1: are done, they don't really have anything. So would that
Speaker 1: be a good correlation to example of it? No, that's
Speaker 1: like in their head or it could also be a
Speaker 1: hysterical something like a hysterical pregnancy is not an actual pregnancy.
Speaker 1: It's a pregnancy where a woman ye shows all the
Speaker 1: signs of it, but it's actually just her body or
Speaker 1: her brain tricking her body into thinking that she's pregnant.
Speaker 1: So that's what psychogenic is. That kind of Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, and that's kind of but it's more like
Speaker 1: your brain. You're experiencing a lot of stress. So you
Speaker 1: here's a great example. Actually, and I was going to
Speaker 1: talk about it a little bit later, but we'll just
Speaker 1: talk about it right now. Um, this this case, in
Speaker 1: two twelve on the East coast of the United States
Speaker 1: of America, twelve students, all going to the same school,
Speaker 1: developed these strange symptoms that look a lot like treats.
Speaker 1: So they're involuntary physical tics and voluntary vocal tics like
Speaker 1: you know Tret's patients but have. But it just developed
Speaker 1: overnight and in twelve people at the same time. Of course,
Speaker 1: I could have been twelve teenagers decided they wanted to
Speaker 1: and they wanted a good excuse to yell. That's true. Also,
Speaker 1: I watched some interviews with these students and it is
Speaker 1: definitely not that it is definitely involuntary. No, they're not
Speaker 1: faking it. It's involuntary twitches. It looks awful. It has
Speaker 1: totally disrupted their lives. Is a hard one to fake
Speaker 1: for real. I don't know if you've ever known anybody
Speaker 1: with it. I a coworker years ago. I have not.
Speaker 1: He was on med's for it and I was just
Speaker 1: I didn't know, and I was taught to him, and
Speaker 1: then he was at my desk talking to me and
Speaker 1: just sort of locked up and had this screwed you know,
Speaker 1: his face kind of screwed up for a second. He
Speaker 1: let go and he let out a deep breath and
Speaker 1: that he apologized, like, my meds are a little office
Speaker 1: like and I didn't know, and he explained it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and so he would do he would have weird little
Speaker 1: just he's just sitting there, typing away at his desk
Speaker 1: and just you know, he's he just kind of bunch
Speaker 1: up at the neck and his eye would just kind
Speaker 1: of twitch. I mean, it was it was very obvious
Speaker 1: what it was once you knew what it was. That's
Speaker 1: hard to fake. It's uncomfortable actual turetts, isn't You don't
Speaker 1: actually seal out swear words some people and some people do,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly you just you have these verbal ticks
Speaker 1: and oftentimes it's just like a stutter or like a
Speaker 1: stumble over words or physical So this in this instance,
Speaker 1: the school district ruled that it wasn't an environmental anything,
Speaker 1: that somehow these twelve students had all just developed this
Speaker 1: for unknown reasons. That is a great example of this
Speaker 1: kind of mental disorder. They're saying now that it's just
Speaker 1: that these twelve students have some kind of stress in
Speaker 1: their lives and this is how it's manifesting. Or fear
Speaker 1: to me, it could be something that viral in origin too,
Speaker 1: I suppose that's true. Have you ever heard of Bell's pals? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine caught that once years ago. He
Speaker 1: wakes up one day and and one half of his
Speaker 1: face is paralyzed. He couldn't move it at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, doctors have tested these kids for pretty much
Speaker 1: everything under the sun, and it doesn't seem to be anything.
Speaker 1: They think it's definitely psychological in some nature. So that's
Speaker 1: a psychogenic disorder that they think at this point that
Speaker 1: it's just some kind of stress. Another great example would
Speaker 1: be a thing that a lot of people have probably
Speaker 1: heard of, which is the laughing disease that that after
Speaker 1: there was this group of African girls who got it right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very interesting. There's a great radio lab on it.
Speaker 1: A bunch of schoolgirls in Tanzania just started laughing uncontrollably
Speaker 1: and couldn't off themselves from really yeah for like weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are examples of psychogenic illnesses. Okay, so what's what's
Speaker 1: going on in the area. That would not a great question.
Speaker 1: They're in the middle of a really awful famine caused
Speaker 1: by cold winters, hot summers, crop frost, and violent hail storms.
Speaker 1: Also suffering an outbreak of smallpox, siphilis, and leprosy. So
Speaker 1: the whole community is going through this, and you could
Speaker 1: kind of think that absolutely it makes sense to me
Speaker 1: that everybody would just kind of have this, or at
Speaker 1: least maybe one person has this break, right, the psychogenic
Speaker 1: break that causes her to uncontrollably dance for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: and then people see it and for the first couple
Speaker 1: of days they think, oh, there's there's frau out there.
Speaker 1: She's just being great, just being crazy, and then a
Speaker 1: couple of them are like just compelled to join her
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. They see it every day, and they're
Speaker 1: also in these stress mental states, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: their brain says, yeah, let's do that too. And the
Speaker 1: more people that join, the more people that join, you know.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's the only it's also the only
Speaker 1: one that really explains why the group would have gotten
Speaker 1: exponentially bigger over time. It was kind of like the
Speaker 1: reverse of the placebo effect too, and that is that,
Speaker 1: you know, back in those days, people were pretty superstitious,
Speaker 1: and so you see somebody dancing like that and apparently
Speaker 1: against it, well, and just you start thinking, Wow, demons,
Speaker 1: how much longer do I have to go before the
Speaker 1: demon get? You know? And then you sort of talk
Speaker 1: yourself into believing that there's a demon out there who's
Speaker 1: going to take over your body and and do this
Speaker 1: stuff to you and and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But this particular plague, I think you said this before,
Speaker 1: is not the first time it happened, Nope, nor the last.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of the biggest and best documented
Speaker 1: I think what it's the first documented case was in
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen hundreds somewhere in Yeah, it's that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's this period of time from the twelve century ish
Speaker 1: to like the seventeenth century ish where we see dancing
Speaker 1: plagues and really not since then and not before then really,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe before then, maybe we just were like
Speaker 1: odd demons and so it was just kind of a fad.
Speaker 1: Then maybe do you know why it stopped? No? Do
Speaker 1: you know why? Well, I mean I've read some stuff
Speaker 1: on it. It's okay, what's his name, saint? Is it
Speaker 1: Vitas or Vitus? Which? How do I don't know which
Speaker 1: way to pronounce. I'll go I'll go with Vitas. Gonna
Speaker 1: go with Vitas, Okay, so we'll say it's Vitas. I
Speaker 1: know that in the readings that we were doing, there's
Speaker 1: the thing about St. Vitus and heat. You're going to
Speaker 1: steal my next theory. Well, but but it actually it
Speaker 1: plays into why it's stopped. Okay. So for St. Vitus
Speaker 1: was a saint and correctly correct me if I'm wrong
Speaker 1: on how the story goes. But basically he called down
Speaker 1: dancing as a punishment. Yeah, if you if you were
Speaker 1: a sinner, he would send down plagues of compulsive dancing
Speaker 1: to anyone that angered him. Okay, and people God. What
Speaker 1: was the predominant religion at the time. It wasn't christian
Speaker 1: It wasn't Christianity fully Roman Empire. Okay, well, I I
Speaker 1: just I know that there was a shift in the
Speaker 1: direction of the church. And at that time, in that era,
Speaker 1: a lot of the worship was you worshiped the Saints,
Speaker 1: I mean God, but you still worshiped the Saints. And
Speaker 1: about the sixteen seventeen hundreds they shifted away from worshiping
Speaker 1: the saints as much. So then the knowledge about this
Speaker 1: saint calling this down on people fell out of popular knowledge.
Speaker 1: So then this reign of dancing terror wasn't something that
Speaker 1: you knew about anymore. And people are collectively forgot about.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that if you forget what a saint
Speaker 1: will do to you, that saint can no longer do
Speaker 1: it to you. I am not going to say what
Speaker 1: a saint can or can I do do you. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to fall into that trap. But I do
Speaker 1: know that people were worried about it. And it goes
Speaker 1: back to this this psychogogenic is at the right work,
Speaker 1: is that when you're in these times of stress and
Speaker 1: things are bad, and then oh, Saints, you know Vetus
Speaker 1: is setting his stuff down on us, and we're going
Speaker 1: to be plagued by him. But if you're not, that's
Speaker 1: not being preached at you all the time. You don't
Speaker 1: know that that's a potential punishment. I guess I kind of.
Speaker 1: I kind of was in the same thought process. And
Speaker 1: I didn't include this because it's not a theory that
Speaker 1: I came across that was substantiated at all. But I
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, they're in this horrible famine. Maybe Frau
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I remember we used to do rain
Speaker 1: dances like to appease the gods for whatever reason whatever,
Speaker 1: they're a great grandmother speak of. I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: do that for a little while. But that doesn't explain
Speaker 1: why it was involuntary, why it was like a trance state.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, and yeah, I mean the St. Vitus thing.
Speaker 1: You'd have to believe that that is what caused it.
Speaker 1: And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that that's
Speaker 1: what's caused it. But I just wonder if you're in
Speaker 1: that suggestible state because life sucks and do something, well,
Speaker 1: it would be easy. Oh, that lady is still doing it.
Speaker 1: And like Joe said, when when am I? When am I? When?
Speaker 1: When's my card? Oh? I'm being pulled on the dance floor.
Speaker 1: You know, the conception of saints is vengeful does appear
Speaker 1: to have gone away? Yeah, I mean we still have
Speaker 1: our saints and everything, but we don't we don't really
Speaker 1: see them as vengeful. And I'm not sure exactly when
Speaker 1: that when that sort of turned. I know that it's
Speaker 1: the same thing happened with angels. You know, if you
Speaker 1: look at the Old Testament, angels were not they were
Speaker 1: not nice. They were not sweethearts, like they were God's
Speaker 1: hit man. They were they were badass, and he didn't
Speaker 1: want it. He didn't want to meet an angel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now that it's totally reverse. Now angels are wonderful.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, good fairies. They are good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So while we're talking about saints, since you totally steamrolled
Speaker 1: my next theory, my last theory, I guess we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about St. Anthony's fire that. No, it's actually ergotism,
Speaker 1: which is how we've decided we're going to say this word. Um.
Speaker 1: Ergotism is what you get after you eat ergo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it's I think it's ergo, but
Speaker 1: it might be ergo. Okay, what of our listeners, would
Speaker 1: you look it up and send us an email right now,
Speaker 1: right now? While recording and we talked about this as
Speaker 1: a possible answer for the Mary Celeste. If you guys
Speaker 1: will recall I do recall, so I don't think our
Speaker 1: listeners probably recall this. Yeah, yeah, we did. We totally
Speaker 1: we did. Our listeners may or may not recall that
Speaker 1: this is something that you get. Ergo is a mold
Speaker 1: that grows on rye bread when it's stored improperly, and
Speaker 1: they didn't exactly have good good options and hey, you
Speaker 1: remember that famine thing exactly, so you're gonna eat whatever
Speaker 1: you can. It's also a psychotropic mold that can cause delirium, hallucinations,
Speaker 1: and seizures, among other things. Yeah, but apparently from whatever
Speaker 1: the symptoms of ergotism are are basically kind of spat.
Speaker 1: You just sort of spass out. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: really dance, You're just gonna twitch and spas. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a problem. It'll also a problem for me is why
Speaker 1: more and more people would be suffering from it instead
Speaker 1: of a big outburst to begin with and less and
Speaker 1: less people, which is what you would kind of assume
Speaker 1: if everybody was eating gross bread. Uh, you know, actually
Speaker 1: have an idea on that. What's your idea on that? Okay,
Speaker 1: so Fraul was dancing and everybody's kind of coming around
Speaker 1: and watching her, and then somebody else joins in the dance.
Speaker 1: And the local was that the city commission or whatever
Speaker 1: they were they set up. They turned the whole thing
Speaker 1: into like a giant dance hall when they decided to
Speaker 1: let them dance it out musicians. Ok So, so what
Speaker 1: happens when you do that? People gather to check it out.
Speaker 1: So then there's somebody industrial says, you know what, all
Speaker 1: these gonna set up a food car and all these
Speaker 1: people are gonna buy my food, and just happens to
Speaker 1: have a whole stash of bread that is infected and
Speaker 1: laced with it. And now people are standing around watching it,
Speaker 1: and then they're afflicted with arctism, and then they start
Speaker 1: dancing and more come to watch, and that guy's just
Speaker 1: taken all the bready can and serving it to everybody.
Speaker 1: I could see how exponentially that would help encourage the
Speaker 1: growth of the epidemic. If that's what cost it, If
Speaker 1: the organtism is what made it happen. But like you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, organism is twitching. It's it's not full body
Speaker 1: where it sounds like. Mostly it's in the extremities and
Speaker 1: you're not jumping up and down in quote unquote dancing
Speaker 1: the boogie woogie. Yeah, of course, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: this this happened like many many years ago, like five
Speaker 1: years ago. So, and as we all know, tales have
Speaker 1: a way of growing and the telling, so they might
Speaker 1: have just been spazzing out of it and then somebody
Speaker 1: described it as dancing at some point. You know, the
Speaker 1: historic documents that we have very clearly state dancing, not
Speaker 1: teasing or spasm ing. They specify that it's dancing full
Speaker 1: on with legs and arms and everything. And some of
Speaker 1: the other accounts that I read about, now this one's specifically,
Speaker 1: but I think it was an earlier one. I think
Speaker 1: it was a monk that was writing about it and
Speaker 1: was saying that people were doing it and they were
Speaker 1: falling down and dying because they would fall and they'd
Speaker 1: break a rib or I can't remember the exact phrasing
Speaker 1: of it, but it was something about breaking their loins. Basically.
Speaker 1: I think that breaking bones in their legs or everything
Speaker 1: is so tender that muscles are tearing inside and they're
Speaker 1: falling and it sounds like internal bleeding at that point.
Speaker 1: But you're just you're tearing your legs. I mean, you
Speaker 1: think about your feet if you dance, you know, you
Speaker 1: go to an event and you dance for an hour,
Speaker 1: and you go home, you take your shoes off. All
Speaker 1: my feet hurt so bad. Now think about if you've
Speaker 1: been doing that for twelve, eighteen thirty some odd hours,
Speaker 1: your feet are gonna be hamburger. Yeah, well, your whole
Speaker 1: body is, but especially your legs and your feet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the main problems people have with it.
Speaker 1: Why they say that it must have been a trance
Speaker 1: or altered state of mind, because there's just no way
Speaker 1: for a human to sustain that, particularly if it's voluntary.
Speaker 1: You know, it's further proof for why it was involuntary,
Speaker 1: because who does that because they've decided to do it
Speaker 1: and continues to do it that long. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think I would ask for five minutes. I
Speaker 1: don't think I would. Yeah. The whole trance thing, though,
Speaker 1: would explain why they would just push past push past
Speaker 1: the pain. Yeah, because if they were in an altered
Speaker 1: state of consciousness, they probably wouldn't even be registering the pain,
Speaker 1: recognizing the pain, or not nearly strong enough to stop right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean that that lends a little craziness to
Speaker 1: the possibility of a trance. But I still don't understand exactly,
Speaker 1: still buy how they got into this trance. It's still
Speaker 1: a little odd to me. And and the other thing
Speaker 1: that that I don't know if you guys came across this,
Speaker 1: and I'm probably gonna butcher. The pronunciation here is send
Speaker 1: in hands correa. Does that sound Does that sound like hands? Correa?
Speaker 1: Because I was looking this up, is it's a disorder
Speaker 1: and evidently it pronounces itself. For the symptoms of it
Speaker 1: are rapid, uncoordinated, jerky movements which are in the hands,
Speaker 1: the feet, and the face, which I could see how
Speaker 1: somebody could construe that is dancing. If I'm standing there
Speaker 1: in my hands and my feet and my face are
Speaker 1: kind of jerking around and spasm ng, you would think, well,
Speaker 1: you're just doing a weird dance. You're doing a dance.
Speaker 1: I'm totally dancing. Yeah. Now, this particular affliction is something
Speaker 1: that actually, this particular thing, it affects like kids mostly,
Speaker 1: it's mostly kids, and it's like it's like an autoimmune disorder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's one that usually recover from. Now I know
Speaker 1: that this particular thing comes about as an effect or
Speaker 1: after effect of rheumatic fever, which is again this is
Speaker 1: a disease that would have been possibly running rampants. It
Speaker 1: also can be an after effect of a streptococcus infection also,
Speaker 1: so yeah, and so it's like one of those things
Speaker 1: where it does sufficient nerve damage, you know, to your
Speaker 1: nervous system, and then eventually your your your immune system
Speaker 1: starts to attack itself, start to attack and starts to
Speaker 1: attack it's your nervous Yeah, and that's when you get
Speaker 1: all spastic and everything. But apparently most people recover from it.
Speaker 1: But it have been that widespread though, well, well, any
Speaker 1: idea too that it would suddenly afflict all these different
Speaker 1: people all at the same time. It's strain, but it
Speaker 1: could have been some random strain of streptococcus or rheumatism
Speaker 1: or rheumatism it's rheumantic fever. Yeah, it could have been
Speaker 1: some oddball strain it came through and everybody didn't realize
Speaker 1: what that they had. You know, let's just say everybody's
Speaker 1: gotta It's like having a small cold. You don't realize
Speaker 1: that you're really that that's sick, and so everybody's got it,
Speaker 1: and so it's on setting to them, and that's why
Speaker 1: it was so strangely pronounced at that time. But it
Speaker 1: hasn't that that version of the disease hasn't lived into
Speaker 1: our day and age and died out, which we've seen
Speaker 1: with other with other infectionous diseases like the plague, the
Speaker 1: black plague. We no longer have that because we beat
Speaker 1: it off eventually and it it's gone, and it's originally
Speaker 1: it's ogally it's a form that that took and killed
Speaker 1: so many people. That version is no longer around, and
Speaker 1: there's but the point is that I could see how
Speaker 1: that happens out. Granted, again, this afflicts mostly children, but
Speaker 1: I could construe it back in time to a different
Speaker 1: strain that could have been afflicting a I guess it
Speaker 1: just seems like they did a pretty good job keeping
Speaker 1: the records in this place, and the physicians were obviously
Speaker 1: on it. I mean, you know, they diagnosed all blood
Speaker 1: but they would have. I think they would have probably said,
Speaker 1: it's so weird. Everybody had this cold and now everybody's dancing.
Speaker 1: But everybody might not have reported the cold. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about it. You go to the physician when you're
Speaker 1: sick and you have money to pay. It's not a
Speaker 1: healthcare system. I have to have the money to go
Speaker 1: see the doctor. It's like, oh, I'm gonna go see
Speaker 1: the doctor. He's gonna at least take some of my
Speaker 1: blood out of my body. He's gonna put on again.
Speaker 1: Have you ever said this is a random aside. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen the old Saturday Night Live skip with
Speaker 1: Steve Martin where he's the barber. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a constantly ordering blood letting. That's what I always
Speaker 1: think about. Anybody liked Evin who's staring at me blankly,
Speaker 1: who hasn't seen this before just looking up on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I know it's out there and it's it's a sick Martin,
Speaker 1: but it's really funny. But it's just blood letting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what don't cure you. It's it's actually theorized that
Speaker 1: George Washington died from that. Really, yes, yeah, he got sick,
Speaker 1: but then his doctors were like draining his blood from
Speaker 1: his body, and you know it might not have he
Speaker 1: might not have died. He needed that blood. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need blood. It's weird such thing as a surplus
Speaker 1: of blood in your body. No. No, And it's also
Speaker 1: weird how far in history we think of I always
Speaker 1: think of blood letting is kind of a medieval thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the fact that it's you know, we're talking sevent
Speaker 1: hundreds and possibly eight people were still using blood letting
Speaker 1: as a treatment, it's just so archaic and weird to
Speaker 1: think that it made it that far forward. And I
Speaker 1: can't wait until like twenty years from now we're like,
Speaker 1: I was so archaic using antibiot you know. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of a lot of received wisdom is
Speaker 1: overturned all the time if you're paying attention to know,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, they said, you know, they
Speaker 1: had the USDA food pyramid, which is pure bunk. Oh
Speaker 1: it absolutely and they and they said you have to
Speaker 1: drink eight sixty nuts glasses of water a day. And
Speaker 1: now somebody just made that up. You know, Salt bad.
Speaker 1: WoT No, it turns out salt isn't bad for you.
Speaker 1: Coffee bad way. Now it turns out it's not butter's
Speaker 1: bad fat. No, it turns out fat that's not bad
Speaker 1: for you, great for you. Carbs maybe actually bad for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly that we were like, hey, just have these instead,
Speaker 1: I would low fat car Yeah. Yeah, stuff is being
Speaker 1: overturned all the time. That's true, Like blood letting. Although
Speaker 1: you know, in twenty years we're going to find out
Speaker 1: blood letting actually the most effective and fighting cancer. I'm
Speaker 1: not taking that. I'm not taking that treatment leaches their gross. Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 1: So I guess we're out of Yeah, I guess I
Speaker 1: tend to take a vote. Yeah, I guess it is
Speaker 1: time to take a vote. Yeah, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: go for the Buffy solution. It was a it was
Speaker 1: a demon that made you dance, Okay, Steve, I h
Speaker 1: The only one that I guess I could kind of
Speaker 1: possibly get behind is the psychogenic one, you know, I
Speaker 1: trance states happened, and I maybe see that being the
Speaker 1: reason I'm not sold on any I like the moldy bread, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: the irrogant like moldy bread. Yeah. I don't like to
Speaker 1: eat it, but I like you want some toast. I
Speaker 1: saw some moldy bread over there, thank you. Not interested
Speaker 1: in that. Actually, I'm actually kind of liking my theory
Speaker 1: that somebody was actually drugging people and putting them over
Speaker 1: a trance and and then making them telling them to dance,
Speaker 1: because that's definitely the most effective use of people. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: but if you're you're forte as a craftsman is to
Speaker 1: build dancing stages, it's going to pay off because the
Speaker 1: city built that stage. And he's like, I'm the number
Speaker 1: one dance contractor, I'll build it perfect. He would be responsible.
Speaker 1: We just found the culprit. Go. Yeah, so all I
Speaker 1: have to do is go back some contractor. Yeah, find
Speaker 1: the contractor of go, dig up his grave and spit
Speaker 1: on him. That'll teach him. Yeah. Well, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be that it could be that he was
Speaker 1: administering the drugs and he was not able to admit
Speaker 1: to administer to specific people. So you know, he had
Speaker 1: a few people that he really wanted to get the
Speaker 1: drug too, because you have wanted to steal their their
Speaker 1: fortune or have sex with them or something, and so
Speaker 1: all the other ones he would just say, Oh, you're
Speaker 1: a trance, why don't you go out in the streets
Speaker 1: and dance. I got some work to do. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally fair. Yeah, well, if you want to see the
Speaker 1: links from this episode, good luck. You got a dancer.
Speaker 1: Way to our weapon. Dancing is absolutely required. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is the opposite of the City of Beaumont
Speaker 1: from Footloose, That's what this is the opposite of that.
Speaker 1: So dance your way over to our website, Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. You can listen to our podcast there
Speaker 1: of course. Um, you can leave us a comment if
Speaker 1: you want there as well. Uh, you can also listen
Speaker 1: to us on iTunes, where you should definitely leave us
Speaker 1: a comment in a rating. We're loving those They're awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1: You can also, if you forget to download the episode
Speaker 1: before you leave, stream it through Stitcher on any of
Speaker 1: your mobile devices. If you want to join the conversation,
Speaker 1: check our Facebook group out. There's been some really interesting
Speaker 1: conversations happening there. There's been some fun stuff on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can always send us an email at Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: Podcast at gmail dot com. And speaking of our email,
Speaker 1: I think we have some listener mail tonight. We got
Speaker 1: a couple, oh, a couple. Well, you should probably read
Speaker 1: the first one because you'll really like the first one.
Speaker 1: Oh I will, Yes, Okay, this one is from Ali Miles,
Speaker 1: who's from the United Kingdom. I'm sorry for doing that
Speaker 1: weird accent. Cheerio says high Folks. Just wanted to say
Speaker 1: I really enjoy your podcast. Not quite sure how I
Speaker 1: found it how it found its way to me here
Speaker 1: in whole England, but I think it was when I
Speaker 1: was trying to find out about the Isadel Woman a
Speaker 1: few months back. Oh, yeah, the Isel. That's yeah, I
Speaker 1: say things right all the time. We have great pronunciation
Speaker 1: on this show evidently today. Yeah, I'm really into historical mystery,
Speaker 1: so I downloaded quite a few of your shows. It's
Speaker 1: really good stuff, in particular, like the Tom and Shrewd
Speaker 1: and lead Mask episodes. I told you, yeah, my episode.
Speaker 1: What about my episodes? Well, he listened to the one
Speaker 1: the Isdell Woman, and then he has a suggestion of
Speaker 1: a show like almost everybody does. It's awesome and I'm
Speaker 1: actually really excited about this. I'm gonna try and jump
Speaker 1: on this pretty quick here, which is funny because I
Speaker 1: told him that you would probably be all over that
Speaker 1: one German words in it. Yeah, lot it actually is
Speaker 1: all in German, so we're going to do an all
Speaker 1: German podcast. So yeah, thanks for the email. Ali that
Speaker 1: we have one more, which this isn't something that we
Speaker 1: normally do, but I really like this because this was
Speaker 1: a really cool thing to do. Is we got a
Speaker 1: email from Ormand and Ormand evidently listened to a show
Speaker 1: that had just come out. We had released the episode
Speaker 1: about the Nazi Bell. Yeah. If you guys don't know,
Speaker 1: we prerecord these. Yeah, so so this is a we're
Speaker 1: a little bit ahead when we're doing this show today.
Speaker 1: And so Ormando listen and said, hey, that reminds we
Speaker 1: have another story and sent us a link to another
Speaker 1: story which I don't know if either of you, I
Speaker 1: didn't know about this. I came across you know, I
Speaker 1: saw that one. It was it was I don't know
Speaker 1: how I came across that investigating the Nazi Bell story,
Speaker 1: but that was. This one was definitely one that I
Speaker 1: checked out, and it's the Kecksberg you Fo incident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: would you you kind of know the story? What I mean,
Speaker 1: let's just talk about it briefly because it's a great
Speaker 1: follow up to the Nazi Bell. Yeah. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: Hexburg UFO incident. I didn't include it in the Nazi
Speaker 1: Bell because it's like, even though it's slightly Nazi bell shaped,
Speaker 1: it's like, it doesn't appear to be related to the
Speaker 1: Nazi bell. But but this was a UFO that crash
Speaker 1: in n in Pennsylvania, and uh, it reportedly lots of
Speaker 1: people saw the fireball and a cross sonic booms and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and it dropped fire as it went
Speaker 1: and caused fires. Are yeah, yeah, and it winds up
Speaker 1: in this patch of woods in Pennsylvania somewhere. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the locals that went out and found it
Speaker 1: and saw it, and they reported this this acorn shaped object,
Speaker 1: which is kind of sort of it don't look like
Speaker 1: that sort of a little bit like the Nazi bell,
Speaker 1: and it's got what appears to be hieroglyphics around the
Speaker 1: outside of it at the bottom. And but apparently it's
Speaker 1: this usual thing, you know, like the little him came
Speaker 1: in and sealed off the area and then black you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and trucked it away. But nothing to see here, folks. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So even though yeah, some people have tried to connect
Speaker 1: us with the Nazi Bell, I don't think they're related,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of a it's a cool, quirky, weird story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is an interesting little story. I like it too,
Speaker 1: it's just not it's just not Nazi bell like quite
Speaker 1: enough to conclude with the Nazi. But I did like
Speaker 1: how quick he was on the draw. He was he
Speaker 1: knew exactly what it made him think of. And you
Speaker 1: shot that email right over, which I love. I think
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Man. If people hear things in shows and
Speaker 1: it makes you think of something, by all means tell us,
Speaker 1: because it's hard to catch every related thread, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we worked really hard at it, but you just can't
Speaker 1: always find him. Now we've got we've got a huge
Speaker 1: office full of interns who are checking out. And you
Speaker 1: know that your cats are not interns. They type, and
Speaker 1: by type, I mean walk across your documents. Very good
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah, at yah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll
Speaker 1: have anyone is an intern. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, now,
Speaker 1: but I did do my due diligence in that story,
Speaker 1: and I did see the CAx spurg Ufo incident, but
Speaker 1: I'm still not sure they related. But still thanks for
Speaker 1: the link, because it is an interesting little story. Who
Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe we'll talk about it someday. I guess
Speaker 1: with that we're out of here. I guess it is
Speaker 1: that time. It's a quick time, but it's that time.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's it for us. So dance, dance, everybody
Speaker 1: will be on out of here. Yeah, rock on, boys
Speaker 1: and girls, great good music to this guy.