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Mass hysteria is a very real phenomenon with very hard to identify causes. Whether an entire town can't stop dancing or people suddenly start worrying about minor marks on their windshields, these seemingly unbelievable events have had some surprising (and sometimes devastating) effects. In this episode of The List Show, Erin McCarthy (@erincmccarthy) takes us through seven incidents of mass hysteria throughout history. The Atlantic's fascinating story on the mystery seeds: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/unsolicited-seeds-china-brushing/619417/ In case you forgot, The List Show is a trivia-tastic, fact-filled show for curious people. Subscribe here for new Mental Floss episodes every Wednesday: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpZ5qUqpW4hW4zdfuBxMSJA?sub_confirmation=1 Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 7 Incredible Mass Hysteria Events | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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0:00
A world where people can't stop themselves from dancing is an amazing premise for a Britney
0:04
Spears video, but in reality, it wasn't so glam. Hi I'm Erin McCarthy and this is The List Show
0:10
Today we're going to chat about puzzling events that caused mass hysteria, including
0:14
the Dancing Plague of 1518. Do try to contain yourself
0:23
If you haven't heard of the Dancing Plague before, think of it as the world's most horrific flash mob
0:28
In July 1518, a woman identified only as Frau Troffea stepped outside and began dancing
0:34
and dancing, and dancing. Nothing stopped her for the better part of a week
0:38
Eventually she was shipped off to the shrine of St. Vitus, sometimes considered the patron
0:42
sate of dancing, in order to be cured. By then, more than two dozen other people from the town of Strasbourg, in what is now
0:48
France, had joined her in the bizarre choreography. Local leaders decided that the only cure was for them to just dance it out
0:55
So officials set up stages, hired musicians, and even professional dancers to help the
0:59
ailing citizens get it all out of their systems. It seems this made it worse
1:04
At the height of it all, more than 400 people were afflicted with the dancing plague
1:09
Some people even died of overexertion. Then in September, the mysterious illness left as suddenly as it came
1:14
Curiously, it's just one of several dancing plagues throughout history. Another infamous incident took place in 1374, spreading to several towns along the Rhine
1:22
River in modern-day Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Even today, we don't know for sure
1:26
what caused this strange epidemic. At the time, demonic possession was considered a strong contender
1:31
And so was the flipside—religious fervor. More contemporary historians have speculated that it may have been caused by the ergot fungi that grew on rye. When consumed in things like
1:40
bread, it can cause spasms, hallucinations, convulsions, and more. But the theory that
1:45
has gained the most traction to explain the dancing plague was developed by medical historian
1:49
John Waller, who believed that the outbreak was a type of hysteria brought on by extreme stress
1:54
Both the Strasbourg incident and the earlier event along the Rhine were prefaced by periods
1:58
of famine and death. For another incident perhaps brought about by a time of high stress
2:03
let's think all the way back to 2020. People across the world started receiving mystery packages
2:08
of seeds in the mail. Materials accompanying the packages often identified their source as China
2:12
and frequently mislabeled the contents as some type of jewelry. Texas's agriculture commissioner
2:17
Sid Miller, advised recipients to treat them like they're radioactive. He also speculated that the
2:23
contents of the packages could release a new virus of some kind. Chris Heath detailed the
2:27
whole saga in a piece for The Atlantic, which we've linked to below. As he laid out, the most
2:32
likely explanation for the mystery seeds originally centered around what's known as a brushing scam
2:36
E-commerce merchants conduct phony transactions with accompanying positive reviews to increase their ranking on various retailers. They have to send people something to receive the necessary
2:45
tracking information and often use inexpensive substitutes in place of the purportedly more
2:49
valuable shipments something like a bag of harmless seeds labeled as gold earrings The explanation seemed simple enough but when Heath looked into it further he found something surprising All of the supposedly mystery packages he investigated dated back to actual orders customers had placed and then forgotten about It doesn rule out
3:05
the possibility of a brushing scam for some orders, but it does raise the question of
3:09
why such outlandish theories arose for what often turned out to be a simple case of delayed
3:14
shipping and faulty memory. For more on the tricks of the mind, check out our video all
3:17
about the Mandela Effect. Would-be explanations offered for the seeds had included everything from bioterrorism to
3:23
an insidious attack on American agriculture. Others thought that it was an attempt to disrupt
3:28
the operations of the U.S. Postal Service in the run-up to an election that would feature
3:31
lots of mail-in voting. Here we have to enter the domain of speculation, but it's hard
3:36
not to connect the dots to the events of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's easy to imagine people
3:40
with extra time and money stress shopping online, probably not even aware where the
3:44
seed seller they were patronizing was based. An order gets delayed for any number of reasons
3:49
and then shipped as jewelry, which Heath speculates was a ruse to get around seed importation controls
3:54
When the packages finally arrived, people, through uncertainty or fear, xenophobia or elevated stress levels
4:01
seemed primed to associate China with some kind of biological danger. The desire to identify a perpetrator where one might not exist at all is a theme we'll see arise in other cases of mass hysteria throughout history
4:12
In September 1944, the people of Mattoon, Illinois, were alarmed by a disturbing and
4:17
rather unusual phenomenon occurring in their community. Late at night, some citizens reported
4:21
suddenly smelling a sickly sweet odor flooding their homes. Almost immediately after, they and
4:26
their families would fall ill, or even become temporarily paralyzed. The only explanation
4:31
they decided, was that someone was pumping fumes into open windows in order to incapacitate the
4:35
people inside. This inventive villain was dubbed the Anesthetic Prowler, later amended to the Mad
4:41
gasser, which, you have to admit, is a little catchier. After one noxious incident, a tube of
4:45
lipstick and a skeleton key were discovered near the porch outside of the house. But the clues
4:50
didn't lead to anything. The small town of Mattoon was whipped into a frenzy
4:55
with armed townspeople roving the streets at night and mass slumber parties cropping up because
4:59
no one wanted to sleep alone. But even after state police were brought in to investigate
5:03
no culprit was apprehended. The official determination? The strange smell was due to
5:08
the large amounts of carbon tetrachloride used by a local diesel engine company involved
5:12
in the war effort. The company claimed no investigation had actually been conducted, they didn't have more than
5:18
a few gallons of carbon tetrachloride on site, and that none of their employees had ever fallen ill
5:23
Still, the case was considered closed, and the gassings seemed to stop
5:27
Perhaps eager to close the case without incriminating a large local employer, the state attorney
5:31
of Coles County at first discounted the factory explanation for not explaining why it didn't
5:35
affect houses right across the street. He expressed a belief that while many of the reports likely were mass hysteria, at least
5:41
a couple were legitimate. But years later, he seemed to have concluded it was all a case of public hysteria fueled
5:46
by an imaginative journalist. For what it's worth, that reporter remained unconvinced by the hysteria explanation
5:52
For something a little less sinister let turn to the Seattle windshield pitting delusion In March 1954 folks in the town of Bellingham a city in northeast Washington state began noticing tiny pockmarks on their car windshields As residents speculated about the cause theories
6:07
varied wildly from sand fleas to H-bomb test fallout. The mysterious problem began spreading
6:12
across the evergreen state. By mid-April, even Seattle was reeling from the damage
6:16
which was now concerning enough that the governor, a team of research scientists, and even President
6:21
Dwight D. Eisenhower were notified of the situation. Law enforcement conducted an official
6:25
inspection of 15,000 cars in the state and concluded that only 3,000 cars had noteworthy
6:30
damage. A police official commented that 5% of that damage was attributed to hoodlumism
6:34
The other 95%? Mere public hysteria. There may have been pits on windshields, sure, but
6:39
likely because of normal, non-nefarious wear and tear. However, due to the media attention
6:44
people turned these mundane marks into something more mysterious. By the end of April, the pitting
6:49
reports stopped in Seattle, but began picking up elsewhere. At least eight additional states and
6:54
Canada reported pits in car windshields, the glass of airplane cockpits, and even in the
6:59
roofs of greenhouses in Michigan. This new wave brought on another round of theories
7:03
One scientist picked up the H-bomb idea, but thought the marks were from remains of marine
7:07
life that had been displaced by testing. Another wondered if acid from flying bugs was the culprit
7:12
By the time summer concluded, pitmania died down and no definitive answer was ever found
7:17
It's usually concluded that people were just noticing the pits that naturally develop in
7:20
windows. Without the increased media attention, they might otherwise have gone ignored
7:25
If they say laughter is the best medicine, what are you supposed to do when laughter is the thing
7:29
that needs treatment? In 1962, a group of students at a boarding school in what is now Tanzania were
7:34
overtaken by a laughing fit. Now, the giggles are certainly not uncommon among school kids
7:39
But when the giggles spread to an entire school, and then to the children's parents
7:44
and then to the neighbors, and then to nearby villages, ultimately causing over a thousand
7:48
people to collapse in laughter? Well, something strange is definitely afoot. It was reported that this unstoppable epidemic continued uninterrupted for more than a year
7:57
but today most historians think that's a bit of an exaggeration. It was serious enough that it
8:02
shut the school down. And it probably did happen for a ridiculously long period of time. But it
8:07
wasn't the continuous year of laughing that it's often made out to be. The giggles started and
8:11
stopped, only to relapse or crop up in another part of town or a different village. We also now
8:16
believe that the laps were inspired not by hilarity, but anxiety. As with the dancing
8:20
disease from centuries earlier, this outbreak occurred among a very stressed population
8:25
In this case, Tanganyika had just gained its independence from British rule, and the newly
8:29
formed sovereign state was awash in change and uncertainty. Younger generations reported that
8:33
the high expectations of their elders were impacting their mental health. Look, I don't know anyone who actually likes clowns, but in 2016 as a society, we took our
8:43
coulrophobia a step too far when we started a bonafide panic about evil clowns that weren't
8:48
actually lurking behind every corner or sewer The first sighting happened in August and it was the only real one A clown named Gags was spotted in Green Bay Wisconsin Gags didn do anything illegal He just stood on a corner holding black balloons and looking
9:02
creepy. It turned out he was part of a viral marketing stunt for a low-budget short film
9:06
But the clowndemic he set in motion would long outlast the hype for the movie
9:09
A couple of weeks later, some kids in Greenville, South Carolina, reported a gaggle of scary clowns
9:14
standing at the edge of the woods, whispering menacingly. In early September, clowns were said
9:18
said to be harassing children at a bus stop in Macon, Georgia. Similar reports popped up across
9:23
dozens of other states. And yet, Nary and Evil Clown was arrested, though a few people apparently
9:28
did eventually dress up as clowns to piggyback on the hoax. There were, in fact, multiple arrests
9:33
for false reports about clowns. It got to the point where police had to issue statements reminding
9:37
people not to shoot random clowns. The New York Times dubbed it a contagion, but it's not the
9:42
first time we've been infected by it. Phantom clown sightings, the official name of this
9:46
phenomenon have intermittently gripped us since at least 1981, from Honduras to England and beyond
9:52
The sightings seem to correlate with times of social unease and moral panic, so we're probably due for another one any day now. Of course, one of the most infamous
10:00
and deadliest, cases of mass hysteria in history is the Salem Witch Trials that took place in
10:05
Massachusetts in 1692. It all started when two young girls, ages 9 and 11, had strange fits that
10:11
included uncontrollable screaming and violent spasms and contortions. A doctor was quick to
10:16
blame bewitchment, a diagnosis that seemed to spread through the village like wildfire
10:21
At least five more girls came down with the same dubious symptoms, and together they placed the
10:25
blame on three people—an enslaved woman named Tituba, a beggar named Sarah Good, and Sarah
10:31
Osborne, an elderly lady. Tituba, likely knowing that no one was going to believe her anyway
10:36
may have decided that naming names was the only thing that could possibly save her
10:40
During the trial, she declared that it was all true and that there were a number of other witches living in Salem
10:45
The hysteria set in immediately. Townspeople soon began making wild accusations. Even a four-year-old girl was accused and thrown in a dungeon for eight months
10:56
More of the accused confessed, thinking it was their only way out. It wasn't, unfortunately
11:01
By the time the hysteria settled down, around 25 people had died. There's still disagreement today about some of the exact figures
11:08
Nineteen were hanged, about five died in jail, and one man was pressed to death with stones
11:13
when he refused to enter a plea. It didn't take long for history to realize how wrong Salem had been
11:18
Just five years later, in one of the most egregious cases of too little, too late ever
11:22
one of the judges apologized for his role in the hysteria. Five years after that, the Massachusetts General Court declared the trials unlawful
11:30
And now, more than three centuries later, the last remaining guilty woman has finally
11:34
been cleared of wrongdoing. Although most victims were pardoned long ago, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who was accused but
11:39
never executed, was somehow left off the list. An eighth-grade civics class in Massachusetts took up her plight and lobbied lawmakers to
11:46
make it right, which they did in 2022. That's it for this episode of The List Show
11:52
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