October 25, 2021 • 58 mins
A look at the poisoning of the town Pont Saint Esprit, and how some mysterious bread turned hundreds of residents temporarily mad.
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my Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Well,
come to spookke You Week, a week where we are
(01:49):
not really any spooky or honestly than the average things happening,
because everything happening is is terrifying and like ghosts and
Google's are are a lot more fun. Anyway, what are
you hang up in this podcast? Don't listen? Go watch
Herbert West Reanimator have some fun um. But if you
decide to keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we
(02:09):
have a bunch of spooky content for you this week.
How was that? How was that introduction? Sophie? Oh bad? Right?
Get going? Do your think? Yeah? My my thing? So, yeah,
we're doing We're doing spooky Spooky Week, which is very
excited about. But yeah, every everyone I've told about Spooky
(02:31):
Week they're like, oh, so it's just a regular week
for for the show, Like, yeah, pretty much it's more fun,
but it is in a few ways. It is actually
gonna be more fun because this the spooky spooky mind
goddamn bit. Yeah, spookoky mind bedding kails actually do have
(02:53):
do have some more fun than just the solely depressing ones.
I mean, was this was the first theme week that
we all agreed upon. This the first like, can we
do something around spooky nous near Halloween? And everybody youtly
said yes, yes, this is the first theme week. Um,
we have we we have. We have been promising Nut
(03:15):
Week coming up. Eventually we're going to tease about things
that made us nut or where we talk about the
legumes mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair, Um, but anyway we
should we should have start off our first, our first
spooky tale. Um, so I'm going I'm going to tell
a very very spooky tale of a of an entire
(03:37):
French town going going mad over the course of a
single week. Hell yeah, probably probably with the help of
psychoactive drugs and a certain three letter agency. You know what,
I think we're going to get to do. Garrison, somebody,
(03:58):
you can't be racist against the French. They're like the
British or Americans. I didn't get a new messages saying
that your French accent was very racist to the French.
There is a certain number. It's like the Germans. There's
a certain number of genocides after which people get to
make fun of your country and it's not racist. And
that number is, let's say three. Honestly, the worst part
(04:23):
of this story is that we're probably doing critical support
for France. I mean in a way. Well, honestly, I'm
gonna be kind of more critical support to the CIA
by the end of this one. Um. Yeah, that's that
is the most critical support can be. So anyway, our
(04:46):
very spooky tale begins in nine in a small, charming
French village called Pont Saint a Spray, which is how
I'm gonna say that. Yeah, there you go. Um. So,
not much happened in this little, picturesque, little little town
on the south side of France. You know. Uh. On
the day we start, it's just like a regular summer day.
(05:06):
People are going about their routine, going to their jobs,
kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly
baked bread. Um. But suddenly strange things begin happening. Um,
and I'm gonna start off with some of the more mild,
mild mild effects here. So on in August fifteen, first dozens,
then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nauseau,
(05:31):
you know, and some people with some like stomach and
abdominable pain. They're coming up less often, less often noted,
there was a few instances like vomiting and diarrhea. Um.
Only about thirty percent of people had diarrhea. That is
that is a weirder, weirder thing. Yeah, that is on
like a town wide basis three significant sorry, yeah, that's
(05:55):
a significant strain on the sewage of the people affected.
It's just going to be like a few hundred versus
I was taking drugs with a group of friends. The
third of them had diarrhea. I would say, we might
need to go to a hospital. We have taken some
of that. Perhaps what we got was tainted. There is
there is Yeah, well, well we're talking about what actually
(06:16):
what the actual drugs being used here are going to be,
but something where that's not an uncommon side effect. But yeah, yeah, first,
first nausea, a little a little bit of vomiting, stomach pains, cramping, um.
Hospitals began reporting people experiencing alternating warm and cold waves
over there in body. Uh. The British Medical Journal recalls
(06:38):
abundant sweating and a disagreeable odor, which I'm guessing the
odor is just because there's all those sweating people in
the same cramped hospital room in the summer, in the
summer heat. Yeah, so anyway in their fringe, so a
lot of scargo sweats. I don't want to get more
messages like that. I have to stop to do it more.
(07:02):
By the way, do we know that the diarrhea was
the result of whatever substance or maybe it's just the
wine ships Again, we don't we there's no way to tell.
So yeah, patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure
around their neck, which yeah, um. And one of the
one of the most reported symptoms was insomnia, in some
(07:25):
cases lasting several days. Uh. Quoting the British Medical Journal,
the first symptoms appeared after a latent period of six
to forty eight hours. The digestive disorders quickly became worse,
with burning sensations through the entire digestive tract. Some experienced
sensations of burning at the anus, a state of giddiness persisted.
(07:47):
I mean, who's not giddy when your anus is burning?
Am I? Right? I do like like this is like
this is like the like the clear side that there's
like some some psychoactive job going on because like your
anus is burning and yet your very born. Yeah, it's
like that sign from that what is that from a
rejected by what? What? What's the cartoonist? Like myanus is bleeding,
(08:09):
but like you're down, you know, you're down for it. Yeah, yeah,
you're you're John Millenney impression. No no, no, it wasn't
a John Lillinny impression. So that's just your poison, the
millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah, great artist, Yeah, great artist.
(08:32):
So these pale and limp patients, still quoting the British
Medical Journal, these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous trembling
of the extremities, and they complained of disorders of the
visual accommodation and especially being unable to read. So this
this is this is the more mild. This could be
(08:55):
a long one there. So this is for many people affected,
this is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering for insomnia
for a while with you know, mild disorders of the
visual accommodation UM, and you know, and the stomach pains
and like weird like neck things. After they were able
to sleep. That was the sign of their recovery. Is
(09:17):
like the ability to sleep again, Afric the insomnia war off,
but in a in around fifty of the cases reported,
the effects were much more intense. Um. I'm going to
continue from the from the medical journal first and then
get into some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Uh.
Quoting the Medical journal again, Vivid visual hallucinations appeared, in
particular themes of visions of animals and of flames. All
(09:41):
of these visions were fleeting invariable in many of the patients.
They were followed by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's that's about right.
That's actually pretty good description of like l s A LSD.
Those kind of like the movies always get it wrong
because you're not usually not like you're not seeing some
sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's it's these
kind of like fleeting impressions of visions and things in
(10:02):
the corner of your eyes. Yeah, it's a pretty good
especially on lower like it is unclear what exactly they
were on because then they definitely can be the more
cartoon lag. I mean, you can get full open eyed hallucination,
like especially the shogun chemicals will do that, but I
don't get it so much with like LSD L s
A L s A. If you want to shoot yourself
that is that is some Hawaiian baby wood row seats
(10:24):
from home depot and have yourself a horrible right. So
the delirium seems to be systematized with animal hallucinations and
self accusation. It's weird, weird terms from them from self accusations. Yeah,
it's I think I think they're trying to get at
ego death, but they don't have terms for it yet,
(10:47):
either that or that like sometimes you're hallucinating it like
overcomingly guilt like oh I did this terrible thing or yeah, yeah,
everybody's angry at me or whatever like can continuing from
the Medical Journal self accusation and and it was sometimes
mystical or macabre in some cases terrifying visions were followed
by fugus, which is an old um for like fugues.
(11:08):
It says, it says fugues. Yeah, it's it's like it's
it's like it's like extreme. It's extreme dissociation. Yeah, yeah,
you're kind of a little bit. Yeah and two and
two patients threw themselves out the window. Um. Yeah. The
delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be interpreted
for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt at
(11:30):
restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's it restraining. I've
had to restrain a number of people and it does
not calm anyone down, especially especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah.
This sounds like a real, real bad time. Not the
thing to do. In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The
(11:51):
duration of these periods of delirium was varied. They lasted
several hours, several hours and some patients and in others
they persisted overnight. So that and then here it's it's
we're gonna get a little bit darker and then we're
gonna have more fun. Um. We observed four fatal cases,
three men and one woman. Three of these people were
old and in bad health. One of the men was
(12:12):
only twenty five years old and had been in good
health previously. They died in a muscular spasm in a
state of cardiovascular collapse. I think this is probably mostly
due to how the doctors were handling these patients. I mean,
obviously your your blood pressure wanto can elevate when you're hallucinating.
But yeah, I think it also has a lot to
do with the way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right. Um,
(12:33):
the disorder has developed more quickly in children, but also
left them more quickly. An interesting feature some of the
cases was that the delirium it was the first sign
to be noted. So it depends people come up came
up on different ways, right, Some some of them first
had weird body feelings, some of them first started just
seeing stuff. Um. One other interesting tidbit that we're not
going to spend much time talking about, but like around
(12:55):
two weeks after this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear,
either through like a secondary poison egg or it was
like some kind of like acid flashback. Yeah it must,
it must, because I've done a buckload of acid. I've
never had a flashback. Um I did at one point.
I mean I have like done some damage and so
I have permanent tracers. But it's not like my guess
(13:17):
is they got I think the idea that there are
like acid flashbacks that are vivid hallucinations has been pretty
heavily debunked. My guesses they got redosed. Yeah, I don't know.
I might fight you good. It's like it could be
that it was traumatic enough that like they're having they're
dealing with PTSD and kind of that's what's happening. But
I don't know, And I think I definitely have seen
enough reports that would see acid flashbacks definitely actually being
(13:40):
a thing in some cases, especially in the early days
of studying these types of drugs and like the sixties,
like the CIA reported a lot of stuff around acid
flashbacks around the people that we tortured. But I guess
it's it's tied to torture. That could just be PTSD.
Stuff could be PTSD. It's also I mean, one thing
you have to know, and I don't know what kind
of dose these people were getting with the CIA, with
dose people, they were sometimes of people doses people do
(14:02):
not take, like you do not take that much, like
hundreds or thousands or millions of yeah, ridiculous irresponsible doses. Yeah.
So now now we're going to get to some of
the some of the more fun descriptions here, which we
can actually kind of like based on our experiences can
actually kind of see like what was actually going on
in these people's heads. Um, So basically we had at
(14:23):
least dozens and dozens of people tripping very very hard. Um.
The local postman was doing his rounds on his bicycle
when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations.
Quoting him, it was terrible. I had the sense, I
had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire
and the serpents coiling around by arms. Yeah, that guy
had some other stuff going on. Yeah, because the very
(14:47):
first acid trip was on a bicycle when Heinrich Kaufman
like made it, dosed himself. He started coming up I
believe it was in Amsterdam, like riding his bicycle, which
is like, well, this is lovely. Yeah, I've made something cool.
Why is the postman riding a bicycle to deliver packages?
And because it's fifties, it's not there to France. I
(15:16):
mean that's I'm sorry post So Yeah, the mailman fell
off his bike and was taken to the taking into
a hospital in a nearby town. He was putting a
straight jacket and he shared a room with three teenagers
who were also tripping and the teenagers would change to
their beds to keep them under control. Yeah, that's that's
how it sounds horrible. Flashbacks to this, to being chained
(15:37):
to a bed tripping, Yeah, that's bad. Some of my
friends trying to get out the window. They were thrashing
wildly screaming, and the sound of the metal beds and
jumping up and down, the noise was terrible. I would
prefer I would prefer to die then go through that again,
which you know, totally terrible. This sounds like like the
worst acid trip you could go. That sounds like about
(15:58):
the worst way you could have a trip go. It
sounds awful. So back in the French town, a little
girl screamed as she was being chased by man eating tigers.
A woman sobbed about how her children had been grounded
into sausages. Oh great, and specific a large men founded
(16:23):
off terrific beasts by smashing its furniture and using the
wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy, Good for you.
Husband and wife right around chasing each other with knives. Again,
probably something else going on there. My guesses we're not
just talking the acid and that, because I have again
(16:44):
been on acid a lot around knives and other weapons.
I have never chasing someone. I've never chased someone around
with knives like a couple who was on the verge
of a knife chick. I think I think the important
part here is that like in this French town, like
acid wasn't a thing yet, Like like like lucinogenic drugs
weren't a thing right, even like even like mushrooms weren't
(17:05):
popular around this time, no one knew what what the
hell was going on. Like they just think that they're
just basically losing their minds, like they're like there's there's
no other explanation for what's happening to them. And let's
just say that the most shocking thing that has come
out so far as that when Robert was on acid,
he wasn't chasing people with knives. That seems like it's honest,
Like depending on your acid trip, you wouldn't want to
(17:27):
chase some with a knife, Like it's not that's not
the kind of we would we would like during this
we would we would take a bunch of drugs and
grab my a K forty seven and hike out into
the woods and we would shoot down a fir tree
and we would drag it back to a clearing and
we would bury it standing up, and we would drape
it in pig and testines and put a pig's heart
on it, and when we cover it in gasoline and
(17:48):
light it with firecrackers and dance around it like the
pagans of old. But there was nothing aggressive about no.
You you you very rarely would want to hurt somebody
on acid. And my experience like you generally a generally
are at least like way more compassionate in a lot
of ways. Um. But if you have no idea what
acid is and you're just you're in the nineteen fifties
and you're losing your mind and you're seeing weird things that, yeah,
(18:10):
I can see how this would maybe cause some other
types of behavior you just think that is angry at you,
like like like it's like they're not they're not dosing
themselves either, like they're being dosed right like they don't.
It's very different where like you're deciding to go with
a trip versus this is happening to you, and you
have great decision. I think for basically anyone in this position,
the logical assumption would be, oh, the devil has taken
(18:32):
over our town and our minds have we have been
infested with demons? Like that's what else are you going
to assume? You're not gonna be like, oh, this drug
that's just barely been invented and that nobody really knows
about yet except for weird nerds. It must be some
version of that that I've taken accidentally. No, you're going
to your blood. So one interesting time. But before we
(18:53):
before we go and break um, even some of the
local animals had been affected by whatever poison the town. Um.
There there was there was one dog in particular that
kept chewing on rocks until its teeth chipped away. I
don't like this. And and ducks were behaving very odd. Um,
it's described they were. They were walking around erect and upright,
(19:13):
like penguins in a line, and they're just like weird,
weird behavior from ducks. Kind of thing I've heard so
far that kind of makes me want to dose our
ducks scared. We are not We're not wasting acid on
the ducks. I mean, there's a lot of things you
could give ducks. We're not. We're not giving ducks asset.
(19:34):
That's not a thing about giving ducks drugs is they're
all monsters. That is true. They are monsters and rapists,
every one of them. Yeah, ducks. So anyway, a reoccurring
theme was that people were running around wildly and being
very fearful of like monstery animals and encroaching flames. Um
it sounds like the ducks were having a good time
though their ministry of silly walk shit, Like, I don't
(19:57):
know what all these people are bummed about. This is
rad okay. So when when you first said that, I
heard dogs, and I was like, that is the most
terrible I ever heard. Ducks is much funnier. It's like
duck standing like very upright, like penguins walking around in
the line. I think ducks might enjoy it. I think
dogs are a little too aware of what's going on.
Grison dog. The stone thing was about the dog, Yeah,
(20:20):
the dog scar Yeah. I just don't know that the
dogs enjoy because, like I've seen dogs accidentally eat large
amounts of pot and whatnot and they get weird. They
they're they're pretty scared. They're pretty they're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know what is also very spooky? Yeah, capitalism
(20:41):
had all of these spooky advertisements to sell things advertisements
are also a form of mind control. Speaking of the
CIA in the fifties anyway, profoundly damaging. What's up? Guys,
Shop Blow and I'm Troy Millions and we are the
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your podcasts. We are back from the spooky advertise. Yeah anyway. Um. So,
I think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot
of these people have very similar types of experiences around
(23:54):
like snakes um which we're talking about later, and like
flames is like with this many people trapping and no
one has the tripping as I think it's really easy
for an idea or a fear to spread from one
person to another while they're tripping. Um. With like this
many people, I think if someone says something, it's gonna
start happening to someone else. And it's kind kind of
kind of this like cascading effect where they're all developed
(24:14):
these very similar fear is because it's almost like being
spread like an infection. Um. So there was there was
a one man convinced that red snakes were devouring his
brain and he jumped out a window. Oh did he
live this? He did live. Um, I'm not guessing a
lot of these. It's it's like France and the fifties,
So I'm guessing most of these buildings are not super
(24:35):
They're they're not super high up now, No, they're like
fall enough foot or two. Although here we have another one.
Another mad reportedly left for a window, yelling, look everyone,
I'm a dragonfly. Men. The men broke. The men broke
both legs, but he stood up and continued running, looking
(24:56):
d king Sigma stigma behavior. Yeah, absolute, this is a
new kind of man. Just drapped. Look everyone, have a
dragonfly breaks both legs, he keeps running. Based on the
(25:16):
information you've provided us, I can't say he's not a dragon. No,
he is an absolute, absolute king. Good for I hope
he had a great life. Yeah. Another one saw his
heart escape through his feet and beseeched the doctor to
try to put it back into place. You don't want
(25:37):
to have that happen. That doesn't sound fun. You want
to keep that somewhere around the middle of your body.
Someone sprinted down the lane, claiming that he was being
chased by bandits with donkey ears. A nearby river, a
man was convinced that he was a circus tight rope
walker and attended to balance his way across the cables
of a suspension bridge. How do you know it doesn't
(25:57):
say the report does not tell you sound like he's
not in the death report. Yeah, he's therefore, and therefore
another another person did try to die in the river.
He tried to jump into the river, only to be
saved by his friends. And he was screaming, I am dead,
I am dead, and my head is made of copper,
(26:18):
and I have snakes in my stomach and they are
burning me. It's such a weird description of like tripping
and saying like my head is made of copper. I'm
trying to think of, like what was going on? What,
like what what series of events did did he spiral
down in his brain to have that sentence I did?
I'm not quite sure it's it's it's definitely I can
(26:41):
definitely see it happening. I just I just can. I'm
trying to think, like we're exactly what what happened to
get to that point. It's really real interesting. I think
some of these are hard because again, it's like these
people just think literally think they're going insane or that
like this stuff is just actually happening to them. Like
you were, like when when you're tripping on acid, you
already kind of have the feeling that there is moments
(27:01):
where you feel like this is like this is like
never gonna end, even though even though you know you
know you're on acid. These people don't know that, right,
Like these people don't have the reassearnce like no, I
took acid, I'm on a drug, this is gonna be over.
They think this is gonna last forever, right Like they
think this this is just the world now, Like this
is just one of those Robert Anton Wilson, who is
a thinker I enjoy a lot, writes a lot about
(27:22):
how to calm people down when they've taken too much,
and most of his advices around talking about like okay,
well how long ago did you take it? Hey, Well,
that the good news is that this is going to
end here. You know, it's only gonna last this long,
like you're you're through this point. Oh, this is the
this is the second hour, freakies, and by the third
hour you'll be fine again and enjoying it. Like it's
all about making keeping in people's minds like this is
(27:43):
going to pass. So yeah, you're right, like this is
the fucking worst way to take drugs, alright. So local newspapers, uh,
and also like in national newspapers described described this as
a among the stricken delirium rose patients thrash wildly on
their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies,
people throwing themselves from rooftops, men and women throwing their
(28:05):
clothes off and running in the streets naked, and children
complaining their stomachs were infested with coils and snakes, Which
I mean half of that sounds like, yeah, that's like
a normal good time just running around the streets naked
on acid other and I was like, yeah, that doesn't
seem pleasant with coils and snakes near stomach, but also
like flowers blossoming fund your body. I can I can
I can understand that kind of sensation. Um, but like
(28:26):
it definitely definitely wasn't all horrible and the night like
nightmares we we were. We already mentioned the giddy people
with burning anuses, um, but for like the full on
tripping folks. According to the New York Times, there's reports
of people like hearing heavenly choruses and seeing you know,
bright colors. The world look beautiful to them. Um. Apparently
the head of the farming co op wrote hundreds of
(28:47):
pages of like enlightened tripping poetry. That that guy must
be as because knowing nothing, he starts tripping, not knowing
he's tripping. It's just like time to make some fucking art,
you know what? This head state is good for writing
some ship just like went to his cabinets, wrote poetry.
(29:10):
That's fucking awesome. That's a guy. I'll bet he handled
just everything that life through it. Well, Like that says
a lot about you when you're like, oh, demons have
infiltrated my brain. I guess I'm gonna hang out in
my cabin and write some poems hundreds of pages. Wow,
(29:31):
like I could. I could hardly write ship on acid.
I cannot imagine trying to write poetry. I've done a
lot of creative stuff on acid, creative stuff. Yeah, I
just feel like specifically, like reading and typing can can
be hard at certain points, you know, if if you're
like coming down that it can be easier, but really
good for like writing, It's good for ideas that you
(29:52):
later can flesh out into writing. But yeah, so unfortunately,
you know, because this was you know, no when it
was going on, many people were taken to local asylums
in straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly
worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I
can't even be angry at them because like they don't
know what's going you know, like you have no idea
(30:12):
what's going on the whole, Like every attemptant restraint increased
the agitation line is like horrifying from the concept of
like you're tripping, you you you do, you don't know
what's going on, and people are tying you down to beds,
making you feel like you're even more stuck in this
permanent seat of delirium. It's just it just it is
the worst nightmare. Yeah, all of this is horrible. The
mayor of the town said, like, I've seen healthy men
(30:35):
and women suddenly become terrorized, ripping in their bed sheets,
hiding themselves beneath their blankets to escape their hallucinations. So yeah,
it's it's if you, if you, if you don't know
what's going on, pretty pretty pretty scary except for the
poetry guy. Good for him, Yeah, good for him. Um. Yeah.
So by by the time the effects had subsided for
(30:55):
everyone affected, which is around like a few days after
the initial reported like nausea, like, you know, it didn't
affect everyone at the same time. You know, some people
got dosed later on. It's it's unclear what exactly because
it's of the fifties, we didn't have a great idea
of the exact timeline of events of like when the
first effects were felt and like how all the spaced out.
But this whole instant arrassed lasted around like a few
(31:17):
days for like everyone, everyone totaled. Um. It was supported
that anywhere between like three hundred and five hundred people
had felt the effects, um, you know, around fifty feeling
very very extreme like open eye like hallucinations of objects
that aren't even there, like like very extreme hallucinations. Um.
And and four people did die in connection to the poisoning.
UM at least where people died. It's again it's unclear
(31:40):
for exact numbers for a lot of this stuff. UM.
An investigation into the sudden outbreak of the madness was
probably underway. Town officials wanted to get to the bottom
of this as quickly as possible. Do you want to
figure out what was happening? Yeah? Um? And the blame
fell onto a single batch of bread what so among
(32:04):
the common denominator among those affected that they all allegedly
consumed bread from one specific baker. He was accused of
using er got contaminated rye flower, and he was arrested
and a temporary imprisoned. UM. Also, a nearby miller that
he got the flower from was also arrested and given
some of the blame. UM. The funny part is that
(32:28):
around this time, the French government had a very top
down grain distribution system that originally controlled everything about where
the grains were milled, where they were sent, and what
bakers could use which flower, so bakers had no choice
and what type of flower to use or what kind
of grain they could use in baking. It was all
decided by other people. Bread is like real big deal
(32:49):
and pretty pretty pretty important. Yeah, for the record, just
like air got poisoning. There are a lot of cases
of like different like dancing manias and whatnot in like
the medieval in midi e. Full Europe, or like whole
towns will be well, everyone will start like dancing or
like hallucinating, and you know, they always came down as
like these people assumed apocryphal of stories about like demon
(33:09):
possessions or whatnot. And now a lot of the suspicions
like oh yeah some aragod gotten No, yeah it was
it was it was just or poisoning. It seems like
one of the rougher trips to go on. I'm not
super clean, it's no. I mean I've done l s A,
which I think is similar similar to yeah, they're tripp
to means that are like really rough and it's I
(33:31):
would not don't don't do l s A. No, Hawaiian
baby would row seeds for if you're going to take
L s A, then actually like synthesizing, which is a
felonate um. But you can just buy Hawaiian baby wood
roase seeds and eat them and you will have maybe
(33:51):
the worst trip of your life. Great advice from the
from the pod. Um so yeah, on on on on
the on the on the rye and ergot topic, The
past growing season was especially wet and ergot fun guy
did grow across the country's rye fields. Um. But the
amount of ergot on the rye and the amount of
rye used in baking was thought to not be enough
(34:12):
to induce any any type of poisoning. UM. In fact,
that the last time or like orgot poisoning had struck
France was back in was back in eighteen sixteen, so
almost like a century and a half before this incident.
And there was a century if it's the fifties, right,
little less than a century no, so the last instant
was eighteen sixteen. This was no no so a century
(34:36):
and a half ago. Um. And no other towns anything,
and no other part of France was affected by anything
similar to this. Um So the ergot thing is kind
of iffy um it. But the organ explanation was the
only thing that doctors investigators could come to would do,
like you know, the their their limited knowledge around brain
altering substances, and just pressure from town officials to get
(34:58):
to the bottom of this so that they had something
to blame and people could like move on. Um. But
you know, as a result, not much evidence really backs
up there backs up, there got claim and a lot
of experts today kind of deem it bunk um it
doesn't There's and and there's a bunch of like, um,
there's this thing hike key on that the Greeks would
take that was like this Greek hallucinatory thing that they
(35:19):
think it was because they were putting grain and wine
and it might have been air got poisoned, but also
like people enjoyed it. And so there's a lot of
debate over whether or not it could have been argot
But I don't know, Um, I don't know what else is.
There are other other theories about what it might Boy
is it the CIA? Where can they get to it? So, yeah,
(35:42):
it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts
of ergot rye would only be in one batch of grain,
used in a single batch of bread from just one
bakery and one small town. Doesn't doesn't really make sense. Um.
Other explanations um that people have come to includes like
mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been
mostly disproven. Yeah, that seemed like mercury poisoning. No, but
(36:02):
there is a guy who likes to drink some mercury,
you know boy. So yeah. So there's a lot of
other theories around, like fungicides being used, but those have
been kind of disproved by some people, but others still
point to them as possible explanations. But but there is
one other theory that we will focus on that features
two of my favorite things, LSD and the nineteen fifties CIA.
(36:26):
Because if you're gonna pick a c I A, they
had the most fun, the most right, like, you know
who else has a lot of fun? Garrison who is
also the nineteen fifties c I A whoms our sponsors,
Oh really to happen here is sponsored only by the
fifties CIA, only the one from the fifties. Yeah, when
(36:49):
you order any of our product products, they will come
to your house and inject you with seven thousand hits
of LSD. Hey free, Hey, that is that sounds like
a great deal on a You're saving a lot of money.
You are saying that that is a lot of free
a lot of acid for the amount of money you're spending.
You won't do more acid. That's for sure. That that's
(37:09):
acid for life. You want do it again? Yeah you might,
you probably, probably you won't have to do it. You want?
You want to do any expenses ever again? Yeah you'll,
You'll survive, You'll just be a very different person by
the end of the Yeah, you you won't survive your
body with someone. At the end of that trip, someone
else will wake up. So speaking of waking up, here
(37:31):
products conquer your New year's resolution to be more productive
with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized daily episode,
time management and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam teaches you how
to make the most of your time, both at work
(37:51):
and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need
to get more done with your day. Just as lifting
weights keeps our body as strong as we age, learn
new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen
to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts, Hey Leath
the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit, you
(38:11):
might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a mission
clearing my aunt Best's name and making sure justice was
finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash of
new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself
and my friends in danger, though it wasn't all bad,
(38:32):
I'm going to be real Ify Tig, I like you.
But now all signs point to a new serial killer
in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you
better believe I'm gonna win. I'm Tig Torres and this
is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the
hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit, a tag Torre's mystery
(38:55):
out now, and then tune in for all new thrills
in the season two, dropping weekly starting February. Subscribe now
to never miss an episode. Listen to Leave the Lit
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. When P. T. Barnum's Great American
Museum burned to the ground in eighteen sixty five, what
rose from its ashes would change the world? Welcome to
(39:16):
Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange,
the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season will
be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex
and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Side Show.
So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of
the stage and learn about the people who were at
(39:37):
the center of it all in a place where spectacle
was king. We will soon discover there's always more to
the story than meets the eye. So step right up
and get in line. Listen to Grim and Mild Presents
now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at Grim
and Mild dot com. Slash Presents SO nineteen fifties c
(40:07):
I a UM Wild Time in two US A nine.
Hank p. Albarelli is an an American writer and journalist
released a book called A Terrible Mistake, which focuses on
the suspicious death of a CIA scientist named Frank Olson,
who worked on the CIA mind control experiments during the
late forties and early fifties. While researching the book, Albarelli
(40:29):
claims to have come across a number of old CIA
and White House documents referencing the pont St De Sprite incident,
and he claims that the village was the target of
a CIA experiment on the mass effects of LSD and
that around the time that Frank Olsen wanted to sever
his ties with the Army and CIA. Frank started talking
about his participation in the experiment, which may have led
to the government off in Olson. So I know that
(40:51):
is a lot and it is slightly more than justice speculation.
We're going to get into the evidence here shortly. UM.
But by now it's pretty well known that throughout the forties, fifties,
and sixties, both the U. S. Army and the CIA
tried to use hallucinogetic hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD as
both an offensive weapon and as a way to make
like psychic super soldiers. The programs like MK Ultra and
(41:11):
k Naomi, Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, UM, lots of lots
of these things were trying to find different ways of
using LSD for like offensive and defensive means. UM. Some
of the interest was promoted by it was was prompted
by reports of the Soviet Union doing experiments with drugs
around the same time. Also stuff around like you know,
hYP like like like like psychic powers and hypnosis. This
(41:35):
was very popular around this time for for lots of
different intelligence agencies. UM. But so albare Eli uncovered report
from nineteen forty nine by the director of the Edwood
Arsenal which many which which was where many US government
LSD experiments were carried out. And this report stated that
the army should do everything, everything is post everything, everything
(41:56):
possible to launch so called field experiments using this drug. Later,
in his to us A nine book, Albrely claims that
he found references to a government document with the label
RETTU SPRI and f Olsen files s O span slash
France Operation File inclusive Olsen Intel files. Hand Carrie to Bellan,
(42:17):
tell him to see to it that these are buried. Um,
this document does exist like we we were like we
we we we do have this label on on this document. Um,
but like the actual contents of documents are are gone.
But this is this is this is this is just
a label that is being referenced as so the document
(42:38):
label references Frank Olson and David Bellan. So Bellan was
the executive director of the Rocketeller Commission, created by the
White House in the mid seventies to investigate abuses carried
out worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So Albrely believes
that the that the French town Lst incident Um, which
is like the Ponce St Spre, which is the name
(42:59):
of the town and the Ethelson files mentioned in the
document would definitely show that if the document hadn't been buried,
as it was said in the in the label the CIA,
it would show that the CIA was experimenting on the
townspeople by dosing them with what he thinks was LSD UM.
Now there is also a bit more to it than
that um. Using Foya's he got ahold of another CIA document,
(43:19):
a two page report from my team fifty four detailing
a conversation between a CIA agent and a representative of
the San DAWs Chemical Company. So this the San Das
base was the place where Albert Hoffman invented LSD in
night Um and it was it was it was only
a few hundred kilometers away from pont st A Spree,
the town where this happened, So the chemical company was
(43:42):
actually pretty pretty close relatively to like europe um and
it was also the only place where LSD was being
made at the time. And they were providing both the
Army and the CIA with a lot of a lot
of acid. But you mean they're also giving it like
they're also giving it to universities. They gave lots to
Timothy Learia. Initially they were they were, they were they
(44:05):
were giving a gut to a lot of different universities
and people, but including the US government. So the c
I A. The CIA agent wrote um in this report
that was like he was detailing a dinner he had
with this representative of the chemical company, and he reported
that after having several drinks, the scientists started talking about
the pomp sat desprite incident. The send off official burned
(44:28):
out the pomp sat a spirit secret was that it
was not the bread at all. Continued to send off
official for weeks. The French tied up our laboratories with
analysis of the bread. It was not the grain ergot,
It was a die ethyl laminated Sorry it's it's the
last part of the LSD. Yeah, the die ethel lemonide
like compound. So yeah, surgic diethyl acid is what LSD
(44:52):
stands for. So yeah, he the side just said that
it was. It was like it was like basically an
LSD like compound. Um. So that's that was the that
was reported detail like a dinner that a CIA agent
had with this scientist. Um. And that document was uncovered
and that was it was from like the fifties. Now
(45:12):
this this this next part has a little bit less
proof to it because there's no documents backing this up.
But l Brelli also claims that Dirk is diggig to forward.
CIA researchers reached out to him and revealed that revealed
some details of some possible details of the method of
the poisoning. They told him that the village was subjected
to an air blitz of pull rized LSD. I'm sorry,
(45:39):
that's fucking based so to force the people taking the
substance through the air. According to the researchers, this manner
of of this manner of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful, um,
forcing the CIA to move onto phase two, which was
contaminating local food. So apparently the air if if the
(46:00):
air blitz was a thing, it didn't work super well. Um.
Although actually about to have Sophie Bias a plane. We'll
talk about this later, but um, the c A did
do more air blitzing um of of acid in New
York City. Actually, they would ride around in cars um
(46:21):
in like poorer and poorer more like multicultural areas, UM
shooting LSD out of the back of the car to
see what would happen to FA, I mean take out
the racism and that really is a dream job, just
driving around cities air dosing people with acid and random
smoking cigarettes. Probably. So with the conclusion drawn that it
(46:43):
was one of the town's bakeries being the source of
the poisoning, Albrel says it was possible that LSD was
put in or onto the bread um. So yeah. And
also lots of the scientists, lots of the scientists dispatched
to investigate the reasoning after it took place, where actually
from the Sandaws Chemical company. Um. They studied the situation
(47:04):
for like two or three weeks UM and gave the
explanation that would later be kind of disproven, uh, that
it was got poisoning, which they they told the town
officials and the British medical journal. Um what what? What
no one knew at the time was that one the
existence of LSD in the first place, UM, and two
that San DAWs was the company making it and giving
these drugs to the U. S. Army and to the CIA. UM.
(47:26):
And apparently apparently Albert Hoffmann himself went to the town
to investigate this incident UM. So yeah. And one last
thing on like the physical evidence side of things UM.
Albarelli also found an undated White House document that appeared
to be part of a larger file that had been
sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission, uh, containing the
names of two French nationals who had been secretly employed
(47:48):
about the CIA, and made direct references to the quote
pont Saint Sprit incident um. Also it was linked the
document linked former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief
of the Fort Derek's Special Operations Division. So those are
all places that they were experiencing with this similar kind
of thing. Um we we we have mentioned the Rockefeller
(48:09):
Commission a few times now for remember the names uh,
Frank Olsen, the guy one of the CIA researchers on LSD,
and David Bellan where they were they were? They were
on the label of that missing document. So but Bellin
was the executive director of the White House Commission to
investigate the CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the
Rockefeller Commission. It was formed by President Ford in nineteen
(48:30):
seventy five to investigate abuses and other activities by the
CIA and a few other intelligence agencies that were operating
within the States. Um. So the Rockefeller Commission revealed not
only like the reason why we know, but M Kaeltro
was because the Rockefeller Commission this is this is how
we know this was a thing. Um. So it not
only revealed stuff about like programs around m k Ultra,
(48:51):
but also revealed the details of the CIA dosing their
own scientist Frank Olsen with LSD and possibly killing him. Um.
There's also so like, there's like a Netflix series about
this called Woodwords, haven't. I haven't actually watched yet, so
I don't know how good or accurate it is, but
they did. They did make a series a few years
ago about the death of Frank Olson. Um and all
of the weirds got yourself surrounding both his job and
(49:13):
and and and and his death. Um. We do love
the CIA, folks. So the The commission also concluded that
the head of the CIA's LSD program, doctor Sydney ghost Leap,
destroyed all of the drug programs records in nineteen seventy
three to hide the details of possibly illegal actions, and
(49:33):
he was personally involved in the torture of Frank Olsen. Um.
Twenty years after Mr Olsen's death and ten years after
the elistic experiments were halted, a doctor Godlieb ordered the
destruction of all the records of the program, including a
total of one hundred and fifty two separate files. This
came shortly after other reports that that that records were
being destroyed by Richard helms the the then Director of
(49:56):
Central Intelligence. So it's undoubtedly true that the CIA was
up to up to some ship involving LSD around around
the exact time period of this French Town incident. Yeah,
it's certainly not like you're not coming out of nowhere
suggesting the CIA may have dosed all these people, but
they set it to a bunch of folks. If they
(50:16):
didn't do it here, they've done similar ships. It's also
it's also worst mentioning at this point that like this
is like the point where the CIA is also running
this like enormous heroin network out of France, as like
if they basically basically had this whole they have this
deal with the French where they're like, okay, so the
French mob can like basically move all the heroin they
want and exchange they'll like stop the communists and taking
(50:38):
control of the point of Marseillas. And so this is
this is all also going on like at the same
time that they're doing the LSD stuff. It's great. Yeah,
so's there's some storians that think the LSD theories not
hold enough water. Um. Stephen Kaplan, it's the US historian
specializing in the French food history and the author of
the two book Cursed Bread, which follows this incident. Um.
(51:00):
He says that he is h I've numerous objections to
this paltry evidence that this that this against the CIA.
First of all, it's clinically incoherent. LSTI takes effects in
just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants, where the inhabitants
showed symptoms only after thirty six hours or more. For
the more, LSD does not cause the the digestive elements
or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. Um. And
(51:20):
So to both those claims, I say they're not necessarily true. Um.
It's it's it's unclear how soon the delirious effects took
place for some people. They were they forced effect felt Um.
So the whole thing about like the effects only taking
effect after thirty six hours, that's not that's not necessarily true. Um.
And Also LSD can definitely have nauseating or digestive effects.
(51:43):
Yet so that's that's that's that's not that's yeah, and
and but but like there were other types of symptoms
that are not common for what we think of as
like modern LST. Again, this is the nineteen fifties, and
we don't know what they were actually on it did
It's maybe not. It may not be what we think
of as like LSD. Now it could be slightly that
you know that this is a whole class of psychoactive
drugs that's unclear what they were all actually being dosed with. Yeah,
(52:07):
who the funk knows what they were being given and
who the funk knows what the actual like dose amount was. Yeah,
we no no idea. It's also you know, I think
it's leary was the origin of the phrase that like
the things that determine what happens on a trip or
set setting in dose, so your mindset, where you take
it and who you take it around and the dose
and the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms could
(52:27):
be to the fact that like other people taking acid
have never taken it this way and without knowing what
acid is like. So Kaplan's other objections revolve around like
the delivery system. He says it's absurd this idea of
transmitting a very toxic drug by putting by putting it
in the bread as for pulver as to get for
(52:47):
ingestion through the air. That technology wasn't even possible at
the time. Most compelling lee why would they choose the
town of pont Sta Spree to conduct these tests. It
was half destroyed by the U. S. Army during fighting
with the Germans in the Second World War. It makes
no sense. And and to that, I say, that makes
it the perfect town for the CIA to funk with me. Yeah,
(53:08):
they generally would choose to dose someone with acid because
it sounded funny, Like. I think the fact that this
town was already kind of like only half inhabited and
half destroyed by the by the Second World War, that
makes it the perfect town to funk with like. And
also they also, the CIA and the government very much
did have the means to try to distribute stuff via
(53:28):
the air, because we can see other we can see
other documents around the time of them doing this too,
specific areas of of New York City. They also tried
to poison the entire New York Subway with LSD in
the fifties, but that was shut down by higher ups
in in the central intelligence. Um. Fortunately, God, what a
time that would have been. But but cap But but
(53:49):
Caplan isn't sure or got the responsible either. Um. He
says that inhabination would not have worked because it doesn't
make sense that only one sack of grain would have
been affected. Um and he says if it was, the
effects would have been way more widespread. He rules out
LSD in the grounds and the symptoms of people suffered,
although similar don't quite fit what we modernly think of
the drug. Also, I don't I don't think Captain's ever
(54:11):
taken LSD, so I don't think I think it probably
not being air got. But I don't think you know
as much, yeah, he all he also he also He
also points out that LSD probably wouldn't have survived the
fierce temperatures of the Baker's oven, although Albarelli counters that
it could have been that LSD could have been added
after the fact to the surface of the break. You
could just drop it on, you could you just drop
it on with like with like liquid blodders, which also
(54:33):
explain how the effects were so different from person to person,
because one person maybe having a whole drop of LSD
where somebody maybe only have like a tiny little like
you know, spec of like speck of like like moist liquid.
So I can explain some things. But you know, this
is still pretty much a mystery. You know, it's very clear,
this very much, very well could have been some kind
of hidden LSD c I a experiment UM, or the
(54:56):
CIA could have just been, you know, interested in studying
what happened the town since they were also doing studies
into psychoactives substances at the time. Um, it could be
either or UM. And that's where its spooky because you'll
never know. So, yes, that is that. That is the
spooky incident of a French town basically thinking that they
(55:16):
lost their minds. And then you know they love to
see it, do we. It's it is a little funny.
It is definitely a little funny. Um. It's it is
a great example of like the worst way to trip. Yeah,
that that's that's pretty high up there. Um. Anyway, critical
support to the CIA for josing random people with acid.
(55:39):
Always one of my favorite sets of stories. You you
love to see it, so yeah, tune tune in, tune
in tomorrow for more spooky, spooky story and you can
follow the spooky social media that poisons your brain at
papen here pod and cool Zone Media which yes, Twitter
(56:01):
will poison your brain. That that's justice, spooky um, spooky
way worse for your brain than surprise. C I A
asked to be honest. The acid wears off. Give us
(56:25):
over attention. We need everything you've got fast. Waiting on
Reparations would beat the podcast. Tune in every Thursday politics
and wordplay. We fight for the people because they got
us in the worst way. From the Hill Cooper, the
Bombay to Kanya, from the left on Clay to what
the neo kanse every Thursday the heavy conversation and to
break us off with some break because we're waiting the reparations.
(56:48):
Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The art
world it is essentially a money laundering business. The best
fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know they
don't even know or suspect that their fakes. I'm Alec
Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and
(57:12):
forgery in the art world. I just walked in and
saw this bright red painting presuming to be a Rothko.
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made, a lot of money. I'm listening to what
they're paying for these things. It was an incredible mans
of money. You knew the painting was fake. Um. Listen
(57:39):
to Art Fraud starting February one on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
(57:59):
On the pod cast nine O two one o MG,
visit Jenny Garth and Tori Spelling for a rewatch of
the hit series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh.
From the very beginning, we get to tell the fans
all of the behind the scenes stories to actually happen,
so they know what happened on camera obviously, but we
can tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera.
Listen to nine O two one O MG on the
(58:20):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Raffie is the voice of some of the happiest songs
of our generation. Baby So who is the man behind
Baby Beluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When
we start with young, all good things can grow from there.
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new Dad and host of Finding Raffie,
(00:22):
a new podcast from My Heart Radio and Fatherly. Listen
every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back
the hit podcast How Men Think, and that's good news
for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone.
It's real talk, straight from the source. How Men Think
(00:43):
podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the
minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation
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that revolves around the underworld and criminals and entertainers to victims,
crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game.
Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilstit activities. We just discussed
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she played gamester games. You are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes.
Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts, but don't take
(01:27):
our award for it. Find Against the Chronicles podcast and
my Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. Well,
come to spookke You Week, a week where we are
(01:49):
not really any spooky or honestly than the average things happening,
because everything happening is is terrifying and like ghosts and
Google's are are a lot more fun. Anyway, what are
you hang up in this podcast? Don't listen? Go watch
Herbert West Reanimator have some fun um. But if you
decide to keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we
(02:09):
have a bunch of spooky content for you this week.
How was that? How was that introduction? Sophie? Oh bad? Right?
Get going? Do your think? Yeah? My my thing? So, yeah,
we're doing We're doing spooky Spooky Week, which is very
excited about. But yeah, every everyone I've told about Spooky
(02:31):
Week they're like, oh, so it's just a regular week
for for the show, Like, yeah, pretty much it's more fun,
but it is in a few ways. It is actually
gonna be more fun because this the spooky spooky mind
goddamn bit. Yeah, spookoky mind bedding kails actually do have
(02:53):
do have some more fun than just the solely depressing ones.
I mean, was this was the first theme week that
we all agreed upon. This the first like, can we
do something around spooky nous near Halloween? And everybody youtly
said yes, yes, this is the first theme week. Um,
we have we we have. We have been promising Nut
(03:15):
Week coming up. Eventually we're going to tease about things
that made us nut or where we talk about the
legumes mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair, Um, but anyway we
should we should have start off our first, our first
spooky tale. Um, so I'm going I'm going to tell
a very very spooky tale of a of an entire
(03:37):
French town going going mad over the course of a
single week. Hell yeah, probably probably with the help of
psychoactive drugs and a certain three letter agency. You know what,
I think we're going to get to do. Garrison, somebody,
(03:58):
you can't be racist against the French. They're like the
British or Americans. I didn't get a new messages saying
that your French accent was very racist to the French.
There is a certain number. It's like the Germans. There's
a certain number of genocides after which people get to
make fun of your country and it's not racist. And
that number is, let's say three. Honestly, the worst part
(04:23):
of this story is that we're probably doing critical support
for France. I mean in a way. Well, honestly, I'm
gonna be kind of more critical support to the CIA
by the end of this one. Um. Yeah, that's that
is the most critical support can be. So anyway, our
(04:46):
very spooky tale begins in nine in a small, charming
French village called Pont Saint a Spray, which is how
I'm gonna say that. Yeah, there you go. Um. So,
not much happened in this little, picturesque, little little town
on the south side of France. You know. Uh. On
the day we start, it's just like a regular summer day.
(05:06):
People are going about their routine, going to their jobs,
kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly
baked bread. Um. But suddenly strange things begin happening. Um,
and I'm gonna start off with some of the more mild,
mild mild effects here. So on in August fifteen, first dozens,
then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nauseau,
(05:31):
you know, and some people with some like stomach and
abdominable pain. They're coming up less often, less often noted,
there was a few instances like vomiting and diarrhea. Um.
Only about thirty percent of people had diarrhea. That is
that is a weirder, weirder thing. Yeah, that is on
like a town wide basis three significant sorry, yeah, that's
(05:55):
a significant strain on the sewage of the people affected.
It's just going to be like a few hundred versus
I was taking drugs with a group of friends. The
third of them had diarrhea. I would say, we might
need to go to a hospital. We have taken some
of that. Perhaps what we got was tainted. There is
there is Yeah, well, well we're talking about what actually
(06:16):
what the actual drugs being used here are going to be,
but something where that's not an uncommon side effect. But yeah, yeah, first,
first nausea, a little a little bit of vomiting, stomach pains, cramping, um.
Hospitals began reporting people experiencing alternating warm and cold waves
over there in body. Uh. The British Medical Journal recalls
(06:38):
abundant sweating and a disagreeable odor, which I'm guessing the
odor is just because there's all those sweating people in
the same cramped hospital room in the summer, in the
summer heat. Yeah, so anyway in their fringe, so a
lot of scargo sweats. I don't want to get more
messages like that. I have to stop to do it more.
(07:02):
By the way, do we know that the diarrhea was
the result of whatever substance or maybe it's just the
wine ships Again, we don't we there's no way to tell.
So yeah, patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure
around their neck, which yeah, um. And one of the
one of the most reported symptoms was insomnia, in some
(07:25):
cases lasting several days. Uh. Quoting the British Medical Journal,
the first symptoms appeared after a latent period of six
to forty eight hours. The digestive disorders quickly became worse,
with burning sensations through the entire digestive tract. Some experienced
sensations of burning at the anus, a state of giddiness persisted.
(07:47):
I mean, who's not giddy when your anus is burning?
Am I? Right? I do like like this is like
this is like the like the clear side that there's
like some some psychoactive job going on because like your
anus is burning and yet your very born. Yeah, it's
like that sign from that what is that from a
rejected by what? What? What's the cartoonist? Like myanus is bleeding,
(08:09):
but like you're down, you know, you're down for it. Yeah, yeah,
you're you're John Millenney impression. No no, no, it wasn't
a John Lillinny impression. So that's just your poison, the
millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah, great artist, Yeah, great artist.
(08:32):
So these pale and limp patients, still quoting the British
Medical Journal, these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous trembling
of the extremities, and they complained of disorders of the
visual accommodation and especially being unable to read. So this
this is this is the more mild. This could be
(08:55):
a long one there. So this is for many people affected,
this is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering for insomnia
for a while with you know, mild disorders of the
visual accommodation UM, and you know, and the stomach pains
and like weird like neck things. After they were able
to sleep. That was the sign of their recovery. Is
(09:17):
like the ability to sleep again, Afric the insomnia war off,
but in a in around fifty of the cases reported,
the effects were much more intense. Um. I'm going to
continue from the from the medical journal first and then
get into some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Uh.
Quoting the Medical journal again, Vivid visual hallucinations appeared, in
particular themes of visions of animals and of flames. All
(09:41):
of these visions were fleeting invariable in many of the patients.
They were followed by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's that's about right.
That's actually pretty good description of like l s A LSD.
Those kind of like the movies always get it wrong
because you're not usually not like you're not seeing some
sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's it's these
kind of like fleeting impressions of visions and things in
(10:02):
the corner of your eyes. Yeah, it's a pretty good
especially on lower like it is unclear what exactly they
were on because then they definitely can be the more
cartoon lag. I mean, you can get full open eyed hallucination,
like especially the shogun chemicals will do that, but I
don't get it so much with like LSD L s
A L s A. If you want to shoot yourself
that is that is some Hawaiian baby wood row seats
(10:24):
from home depot and have yourself a horrible right. So
the delirium seems to be systematized with animal hallucinations and
self accusation. It's weird, weird terms from them from self accusations. Yeah,
it's I think I think they're trying to get at
ego death, but they don't have terms for it yet,
(10:47):
either that or that like sometimes you're hallucinating it like
overcomingly guilt like oh I did this terrible thing or yeah, yeah,
everybody's angry at me or whatever like can continuing from
the Medical Journal self accusation and and it was sometimes
mystical or macabre in some cases terrifying visions were followed
by fugus, which is an old um for like fugues.
(11:08):
It says, it says fugues. Yeah, it's it's like it's
it's like it's like extreme. It's extreme dissociation. Yeah, yeah,
you're kind of a little bit. Yeah and two and
two patients threw themselves out the window. Um. Yeah. The
delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be interpreted
for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt at
(11:30):
restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's it restraining. I've
had to restrain a number of people and it does
not calm anyone down, especially especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah.
This sounds like a real, real bad time. Not the
thing to do. In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The
(11:51):
duration of these periods of delirium was varied. They lasted
several hours, several hours and some patients and in others
they persisted overnight. So that and then here it's it's
we're gonna get a little bit darker and then we're
gonna have more fun. Um. We observed four fatal cases,
three men and one woman. Three of these people were
old and in bad health. One of the men was
(12:12):
only twenty five years old and had been in good
health previously. They died in a muscular spasm in a
state of cardiovascular collapse. I think this is probably mostly
due to how the doctors were handling these patients. I mean,
obviously your your blood pressure wanto can elevate when you're hallucinating.
But yeah, I think it also has a lot to
do with the way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right. Um,
(12:33):
the disorder has developed more quickly in children, but also
left them more quickly. An interesting feature some of the
cases was that the delirium it was the first sign
to be noted. So it depends people come up came
up on different ways, right, Some some of them first
had weird body feelings, some of them first started just
seeing stuff. Um. One other interesting tidbit that we're not
going to spend much time talking about, but like around
(12:55):
two weeks after this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear,
either through like a secondary poison egg or it was
like some kind of like acid flashback. Yeah it must,
it must, because I've done a buckload of acid. I've
never had a flashback. Um I did at one point.
I mean I have like done some damage and so
I have permanent tracers. But it's not like my guess
(13:17):
is they got I think the idea that there are
like acid flashbacks that are vivid hallucinations has been pretty
heavily debunked. My guesses they got redosed. Yeah, I don't know.
I might fight you good. It's like it could be
that it was traumatic enough that like they're having they're
dealing with PTSD and kind of that's what's happening. But
I don't know, And I think I definitely have seen
enough reports that would see acid flashbacks definitely actually being
(13:40):
a thing in some cases, especially in the early days
of studying these types of drugs and like the sixties,
like the CIA reported a lot of stuff around acid
flashbacks around the people that we tortured. But I guess
it's it's tied to torture. That could just be PTSD.
Stuff could be PTSD. It's also I mean, one thing
you have to know, and I don't know what kind
of dose these people were getting with the CIA, with
dose people, they were sometimes of people doses people do
(14:02):
not take, like you do not take that much, like
hundreds or thousands or millions of yeah, ridiculous irresponsible doses. Yeah.
So now now we're going to get to some of
the some of the more fun descriptions here, which we
can actually kind of like based on our experiences can
actually kind of see like what was actually going on
in these people's heads. Um, So basically we had at
(14:23):
least dozens and dozens of people tripping very very hard. Um.
The local postman was doing his rounds on his bicycle
when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations.
Quoting him, it was terrible. I had the sense, I
had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire
and the serpents coiling around by arms. Yeah, that guy
had some other stuff going on. Yeah, because the very
(14:47):
first acid trip was on a bicycle when Heinrich Kaufman
like made it, dosed himself. He started coming up I
believe it was in Amsterdam, like riding his bicycle, which
is like, well, this is lovely. Yeah, I've made something cool.
Why is the postman riding a bicycle to deliver packages?
And because it's fifties, it's not there to France. I
(15:16):
mean that's I'm sorry post So Yeah, the mailman fell
off his bike and was taken to the taking into
a hospital in a nearby town. He was putting a
straight jacket and he shared a room with three teenagers
who were also tripping and the teenagers would change to
their beds to keep them under control. Yeah, that's that's
how it sounds horrible. Flashbacks to this, to being chained
(15:37):
to a bed tripping, Yeah, that's bad. Some of my
friends trying to get out the window. They were thrashing
wildly screaming, and the sound of the metal beds and
jumping up and down, the noise was terrible. I would
prefer I would prefer to die then go through that again,
which you know, totally terrible. This sounds like like the
worst acid trip you could go. That sounds like about
(15:58):
the worst way you could have a trip go. It
sounds awful. So back in the French town, a little
girl screamed as she was being chased by man eating tigers.
A woman sobbed about how her children had been grounded
into sausages. Oh great, and specific a large men founded
(16:23):
off terrific beasts by smashing its furniture and using the
wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy, Good for you.
Husband and wife right around chasing each other with knives. Again,
probably something else going on there. My guesses we're not
just talking the acid and that, because I have again
(16:44):
been on acid a lot around knives and other weapons.
I have never chasing someone. I've never chased someone around
with knives like a couple who was on the verge
of a knife chick. I think I think the important
part here is that like in this French town, like
acid wasn't a thing yet, Like like like lucinogenic drugs
weren't a thing right, even like even like mushrooms weren't
(17:05):
popular around this time, no one knew what what the
hell was going on. Like they just think that they're
just basically losing their minds, like they're like there's there's
no other explanation for what's happening to them. And let's
just say that the most shocking thing that has come
out so far as that when Robert was on acid,
he wasn't chasing people with knives. That seems like it's honest,
Like depending on your acid trip, you wouldn't want to
(17:27):
chase some with a knife, Like it's not that's not
the kind of we would we would like during this
we would we would take a bunch of drugs and
grab my a K forty seven and hike out into
the woods and we would shoot down a fir tree
and we would drag it back to a clearing and
we would bury it standing up, and we would drape
it in pig and testines and put a pig's heart
on it, and when we cover it in gasoline and
(17:48):
light it with firecrackers and dance around it like the
pagans of old. But there was nothing aggressive about no.
You you you very rarely would want to hurt somebody
on acid. And my experience like you generally a generally
are at least like way more compassionate in a lot
of ways. Um. But if you have no idea what
acid is and you're just you're in the nineteen fifties
and you're losing your mind and you're seeing weird things that, yeah,
(18:10):
I can see how this would maybe cause some other
types of behavior you just think that is angry at you,
like like like it's like they're not they're not dosing
themselves either, like they're being dosed right like they don't.
It's very different where like you're deciding to go with
a trip versus this is happening to you, and you
have great decision. I think for basically anyone in this position,
the logical assumption would be, oh, the devil has taken
(18:32):
over our town and our minds have we have been
infested with demons? Like that's what else are you going
to assume? You're not gonna be like, oh, this drug
that's just barely been invented and that nobody really knows
about yet except for weird nerds. It must be some
version of that that I've taken accidentally. No, you're going
to your blood. So one interesting time. But before we
(18:53):
before we go and break um, even some of the
local animals had been affected by whatever poison the town. Um.
There there was there was one dog in particular that
kept chewing on rocks until its teeth chipped away. I
don't like this. And and ducks were behaving very odd. Um,
it's described they were. They were walking around erect and upright,
(19:13):
like penguins in a line, and they're just like weird,
weird behavior from ducks. Kind of thing I've heard so
far that kind of makes me want to dose our
ducks scared. We are not We're not wasting acid on
the ducks. I mean, there's a lot of things you
could give ducks. We're not. We're not giving ducks asset.
(19:34):
That's not a thing about giving ducks drugs is they're
all monsters. That is true. They are monsters and rapists,
every one of them. Yeah, ducks. So anyway, a reoccurring
theme was that people were running around wildly and being
very fearful of like monstery animals and encroaching flames. Um
it sounds like the ducks were having a good time
though their ministry of silly walk shit, Like, I don't
(19:57):
know what all these people are bummed about. This is
rad okay. So when when you first said that, I
heard dogs, and I was like, that is the most
terrible I ever heard. Ducks is much funnier. It's like
duck standing like very upright, like penguins walking around in
the line. I think ducks might enjoy it. I think
dogs are a little too aware of what's going on.
Grison dog. The stone thing was about the dog, Yeah,
(20:20):
the dog scar Yeah. I just don't know that the
dogs enjoy because, like I've seen dogs accidentally eat large
amounts of pot and whatnot and they get weird. They
they're they're pretty scared. They're pretty they're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know what is also very spooky? Yeah, capitalism
(20:41):
had all of these spooky advertisements to sell things advertisements
are also a form of mind control. Speaking of the
CIA in the fifties anyway, profoundly damaging. What's up? Guys,
Shop Blow and I'm Troy Millions and we are the
host of the Earnier Leisure podcast where we break down
(21:04):
business models and examine the latest trans and finance. We
hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the
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to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean
our alumnilists expansive. Listen to as our guests reveal their
business models, hardships and triumphs and their respective fields. The
knowledge is in death and the questions are always delivered
from your standpoint. We want to know what you want
(21:25):
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and entertainment about how they got their start and most importantly,
how they make their money. Earn your Leisia is a
college business class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn
about the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works?
We got you interested in starting the truck and company
or vendor machine business? Not really sure about how taxes
or credit work. We got it all covered. The Earnier
(21:47):
Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earnier Leisure on
the Black Effect podcast network, I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. The Gangster Chronicles podcast
is a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld and
(22:07):
criminals and entertainers to victims's crime and law enforcement. We
cover all facets of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't
glorify promotilst of activities. We just discussed the ramifications and
repercussions of these activities because after all, she played gamester games.
You are ultimately rewarded with Gangster Prizes. Our Heart Radios
number one for podcasts, but don't take our award for it.
(22:29):
Find against the Chronicles podcast and I Heart Radio app
or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jake Halbern, host
of deep Cover. Our new season is about a lawyer
who helped the mob run Chicago. We controlled the courts,
we controlled absolutely everything. He bribed judges and even helped
(22:50):
a hit man walk free until one day when he
started talking with the FBI and promised that he could
take the mob down. I've spent the past year try
to figure out why he flipped and what he was
really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to
be true. There's got to be something wrong with this.
I wouldn't trust the guy. He looks like a little scum,
(23:11):
big liar, still big, and he looked like what he
was or at. I can say with all certainty I
think he's a hero because he didn't have to do
what he did, and he did it anyway. The moment
I put the wire around the first time, my life
was over. If it ever got out, they would kill
me in a heartbeat. Listen to deep Cover on the
I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get
(23:32):
your podcasts. We are back from the spooky advertise. Yeah anyway. Um. So,
I think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot
of these people have very similar types of experiences around
(23:54):
like snakes um which we're talking about later, and like
flames is like with this many people trapping and no
one has the tripping as I think it's really easy
for an idea or a fear to spread from one
person to another while they're tripping. Um. With like this
many people, I think if someone says something, it's gonna
start happening to someone else. And it's kind kind of
kind of this like cascading effect where they're all developed
(24:14):
these very similar fear is because it's almost like being
spread like an infection. Um. So there was there was
a one man convinced that red snakes were devouring his
brain and he jumped out a window. Oh did he
live this? He did live. Um, I'm not guessing a
lot of these. It's it's like France and the fifties,
So I'm guessing most of these buildings are not super
(24:35):
They're they're not super high up now, No, they're like
fall enough foot or two. Although here we have another one.
Another mad reportedly left for a window, yelling, look everyone,
I'm a dragonfly. Men. The men broke. The men broke
both legs, but he stood up and continued running, looking
(24:56):
d king Sigma stigma behavior. Yeah, absolute, this is a
new kind of man. Just drapped. Look everyone, have a
dragonfly breaks both legs, he keeps running. Based on the
(25:16):
information you've provided us, I can't say he's not a dragon. No,
he is an absolute, absolute king. Good for I hope
he had a great life. Yeah. Another one saw his
heart escape through his feet and beseeched the doctor to
try to put it back into place. You don't want
(25:37):
to have that happen. That doesn't sound fun. You want
to keep that somewhere around the middle of your body.
Someone sprinted down the lane, claiming that he was being
chased by bandits with donkey ears. A nearby river, a
man was convinced that he was a circus tight rope
walker and attended to balance his way across the cables
of a suspension bridge. How do you know it doesn't
(25:57):
say the report does not tell you sound like he's
not in the death report. Yeah, he's therefore, and therefore
another another person did try to die in the river.
He tried to jump into the river, only to be
saved by his friends. And he was screaming, I am dead,
I am dead, and my head is made of copper,
(26:18):
and I have snakes in my stomach and they are
burning me. It's such a weird description of like tripping
and saying like my head is made of copper. I'm
trying to think of, like what was going on? What,
like what what series of events did did he spiral
down in his brain to have that sentence I did?
I'm not quite sure it's it's it's definitely I can
(26:41):
definitely see it happening. I just I just can. I'm
trying to think, like we're exactly what what happened to
get to that point. It's really real interesting. I think
some of these are hard because again, it's like these
people just think literally think they're going insane or that
like this stuff is just actually happening to them. Like
you were, like when when you're tripping on acid, you
already kind of have the feeling that there is moments
(27:01):
where you feel like this is like this is like
never gonna end, even though even though you know you
know you're on acid. These people don't know that, right,
Like these people don't have the reassearnce like no, I
took acid, I'm on a drug, this is gonna be over.
They think this is gonna last forever, right Like they
think this this is just the world now, Like this
is just one of those Robert Anton Wilson, who is
a thinker I enjoy a lot, writes a lot about
(27:22):
how to calm people down when they've taken too much,
and most of his advices around talking about like okay,
well how long ago did you take it? Hey, Well,
that the good news is that this is going to
end here. You know, it's only gonna last this long,
like you're you're through this point. Oh, this is the
this is the second hour, freakies, and by the third
hour you'll be fine again and enjoying it. Like it's
all about making keeping in people's minds like this is
(27:43):
going to pass. So yeah, you're right, like this is
the fucking worst way to take drugs, alright. So local newspapers, uh,
and also like in national newspapers described described this as
a among the stricken delirium rose patients thrash wildly on
their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies,
people throwing themselves from rooftops, men and women throwing their
(28:05):
clothes off and running in the streets naked, and children
complaining their stomachs were infested with coils and snakes, Which
I mean half of that sounds like, yeah, that's like
a normal good time just running around the streets naked
on acid other and I was like, yeah, that doesn't
seem pleasant with coils and snakes near stomach, but also
like flowers blossoming fund your body. I can I can
I can understand that kind of sensation. Um, but like
(28:26):
it definitely definitely wasn't all horrible and the night like
nightmares we we were. We already mentioned the giddy people
with burning anuses, um, but for like the full on
tripping folks. According to the New York Times, there's reports
of people like hearing heavenly choruses and seeing you know,
bright colors. The world look beautiful to them. Um. Apparently
the head of the farming co op wrote hundreds of
(28:47):
pages of like enlightened tripping poetry. That that guy must
be as because knowing nothing, he starts tripping, not knowing
he's tripping. It's just like time to make some fucking art,
you know what? This head state is good for writing
some ship just like went to his cabinets, wrote poetry.
(29:10):
That's fucking awesome. That's a guy. I'll bet he handled
just everything that life through it. Well, Like that says
a lot about you when you're like, oh, demons have
infiltrated my brain. I guess I'm gonna hang out in
my cabin and write some poems hundreds of pages. Wow,
(29:31):
like I could. I could hardly write ship on acid.
I cannot imagine trying to write poetry. I've done a
lot of creative stuff on acid, creative stuff. Yeah, I
just feel like specifically, like reading and typing can can
be hard at certain points, you know, if if you're
like coming down that it can be easier, but really
good for like writing, It's good for ideas that you
(29:52):
later can flesh out into writing. But yeah, so unfortunately,
you know, because this was you know, no when it
was going on, many people were taken to local asylums
in straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly
worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I
can't even be angry at them because like they don't
know what's going you know, like you have no idea
(30:12):
what's going on the whole, Like every attemptant restraint increased
the agitation line is like horrifying from the concept of
like you're tripping, you you you do, you don't know
what's going on, and people are tying you down to beds,
making you feel like you're even more stuck in this
permanent seat of delirium. It's just it just it is
the worst nightmare. Yeah, all of this is horrible. The
mayor of the town said, like, I've seen healthy men
(30:35):
and women suddenly become terrorized, ripping in their bed sheets,
hiding themselves beneath their blankets to escape their hallucinations. So yeah,
it's it's if you, if you, if you don't know
what's going on, pretty pretty pretty scary except for the
poetry guy. Good for him, Yeah, good for him. Um. Yeah.
So by by the time the effects had subsided for
(30:55):
everyone affected, which is around like a few days after
the initial reported like nausea, like, you know, it didn't
affect everyone at the same time. You know, some people
got dosed later on. It's it's unclear what exactly because
it's of the fifties, we didn't have a great idea
of the exact timeline of events of like when the
first effects were felt and like how all the spaced out.
But this whole instant arrassed lasted around like a few
(31:17):
days for like everyone, everyone totaled. Um. It was supported
that anywhere between like three hundred and five hundred people
had felt the effects, um, you know, around fifty feeling
very very extreme like open eye like hallucinations of objects
that aren't even there, like like very extreme hallucinations. Um.
And and four people did die in connection to the poisoning.
UM at least where people died. It's again it's unclear
(31:40):
for exact numbers for a lot of this stuff. UM.
An investigation into the sudden outbreak of the madness was
probably underway. Town officials wanted to get to the bottom
of this as quickly as possible. Do you want to
figure out what was happening? Yeah? Um? And the blame
fell onto a single batch of bread what so among
(32:04):
the common denominator among those affected that they all allegedly
consumed bread from one specific baker. He was accused of
using er got contaminated rye flower, and he was arrested
and a temporary imprisoned. UM. Also, a nearby miller that
he got the flower from was also arrested and given
some of the blame. UM. The funny part is that
(32:28):
around this time, the French government had a very top
down grain distribution system that originally controlled everything about where
the grains were milled, where they were sent, and what
bakers could use which flower, so bakers had no choice
and what type of flower to use or what kind
of grain they could use in baking. It was all
decided by other people. Bread is like real big deal
(32:49):
and pretty pretty pretty important. Yeah, for the record, just
like air got poisoning. There are a lot of cases
of like different like dancing manias and whatnot in like
the medieval in midi e. Full Europe, or like whole
towns will be well, everyone will start like dancing or
like hallucinating, and you know, they always came down as
like these people assumed apocryphal of stories about like demon
(33:09):
possessions or whatnot. And now a lot of the suspicions
like oh yeah some aragod gotten No, yeah it was
it was it was just or poisoning. It seems like
one of the rougher trips to go on. I'm not
super clean, it's no. I mean I've done l s A,
which I think is similar similar to yeah, they're tripp
to means that are like really rough and it's I
(33:31):
would not don't don't do l s A. No, Hawaiian
baby would row seeds for if you're going to take
L s A, then actually like synthesizing, which is a
felonate um. But you can just buy Hawaiian baby wood
roase seeds and eat them and you will have maybe
(33:51):
the worst trip of your life. Great advice from the
from the pod. Um so yeah, on on on on
the on the on the rye and ergot topic, The
past growing season was especially wet and ergot fun guy
did grow across the country's rye fields. Um. But the
amount of ergot on the rye and the amount of
rye used in baking was thought to not be enough
(34:12):
to induce any any type of poisoning. UM. In fact,
that the last time or like orgot poisoning had struck
France was back in was back in eighteen sixteen, so
almost like a century and a half before this incident.
And there was a century if it's the fifties, right,
little less than a century no, so the last instant
was eighteen sixteen. This was no no so a century
(34:36):
and a half ago. Um. And no other towns anything,
and no other part of France was affected by anything
similar to this. Um So the ergot thing is kind
of iffy um it. But the organ explanation was the
only thing that doctors investigators could come to would do,
like you know, the their their limited knowledge around brain
altering substances, and just pressure from town officials to get
(34:58):
to the bottom of this so that they had something
to blame and people could like move on. Um. But
you know, as a result, not much evidence really backs
up there backs up, there got claim and a lot
of experts today kind of deem it bunk um it
doesn't There's and and there's a bunch of like, um,
there's this thing hike key on that the Greeks would
take that was like this Greek hallucinatory thing that they
(35:19):
think it was because they were putting grain and wine
and it might have been air got poisoned, but also
like people enjoyed it. And so there's a lot of
debate over whether or not it could have been argot
But I don't know, Um, I don't know what else is.
There are other other theories about what it might Boy
is it the CIA? Where can they get to it? So, yeah,
(35:42):
it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts
of ergot rye would only be in one batch of grain,
used in a single batch of bread from just one
bakery and one small town. Doesn't doesn't really make sense. Um.
Other explanations um that people have come to includes like
mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been
mostly disproven. Yeah, that seemed like mercury poisoning. No, but
(36:02):
there is a guy who likes to drink some mercury,
you know boy. So yeah. So there's a lot of
other theories around, like fungicides being used, but those have
been kind of disproved by some people, but others still
point to them as possible explanations. But but there is
one other theory that we will focus on that features
two of my favorite things, LSD and the nineteen fifties CIA.
(36:26):
Because if you're gonna pick a c I A, they
had the most fun, the most right, like, you know
who else has a lot of fun? Garrison who is
also the nineteen fifties c I A whoms our sponsors,
Oh really to happen here is sponsored only by the
fifties CIA, only the one from the fifties. Yeah, when
(36:49):
you order any of our product products, they will come
to your house and inject you with seven thousand hits
of LSD. Hey free, Hey, that is that sounds like
a great deal on a You're saving a lot of money.
You are saying that that is a lot of free
a lot of acid for the amount of money you're spending.
You won't do more acid. That's for sure. That that's
(37:09):
acid for life. You want do it again? Yeah you might,
you probably, probably you won't have to do it. You want?
You want to do any expenses ever again? Yeah you'll,
You'll survive, You'll just be a very different person by
the end of the Yeah, you you won't survive your
body with someone. At the end of that trip, someone
else will wake up. So speaking of waking up, here
(37:31):
products conquer your New year's resolution to be more productive
with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized daily episode,
time management and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam teaches you how
to make the most of your time, both at work
(37:51):
and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need
to get more done with your day. Just as lifting
weights keeps our body as strong as we age, learn
new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen
to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts, Hey Leath
the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit, you
(38:11):
might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a mission
clearing my aunt Best's name and making sure justice was
finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash of
new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself
and my friends in danger, though it wasn't all bad,
(38:32):
I'm going to be real Ify Tig, I like you.
But now all signs point to a new serial killer
in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you
better believe I'm gonna win. I'm Tig Torres and this
is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the
hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit, a tag Torre's mystery
(38:55):
out now, and then tune in for all new thrills
in the season two, dropping weekly starting February. Subscribe now
to never miss an episode. Listen to Leave the Lit
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. When P. T. Barnum's Great American
Museum burned to the ground in eighteen sixty five, what
rose from its ashes would change the world? Welcome to
(39:16):
Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange,
the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season will
be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex
and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Side Show.
So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of
the stage and learn about the people who were at
(39:37):
the center of it all in a place where spectacle
was king. We will soon discover there's always more to
the story than meets the eye. So step right up
and get in line. Listen to Grim and Mild Presents
now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at Grim
and Mild dot com. Slash Presents SO nineteen fifties c
(40:07):
I a UM Wild Time in two US A nine.
Hank p. Albarelli is an an American writer and journalist
released a book called A Terrible Mistake, which focuses on
the suspicious death of a CIA scientist named Frank Olson,
who worked on the CIA mind control experiments during the
late forties and early fifties. While researching the book, Albarelli
(40:29):
claims to have come across a number of old CIA
and White House documents referencing the pont St De Sprite incident,
and he claims that the village was the target of
a CIA experiment on the mass effects of LSD and
that around the time that Frank Olsen wanted to sever
his ties with the Army and CIA. Frank started talking
about his participation in the experiment, which may have led
to the government off in Olson. So I know that
(40:51):
is a lot and it is slightly more than justice speculation.
We're going to get into the evidence here shortly. UM.
But by now it's pretty well known that throughout the forties, fifties,
and sixties, both the U. S. Army and the CIA
tried to use hallucinogetic hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD as
both an offensive weapon and as a way to make
like psychic super soldiers. The programs like MK Ultra and
(41:11):
k Naomi, Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, UM, lots of lots
of these things were trying to find different ways of
using LSD for like offensive and defensive means. UM. Some
of the interest was promoted by it was was prompted
by reports of the Soviet Union doing experiments with drugs
around the same time. Also stuff around like you know,
hYP like like like like psychic powers and hypnosis. This
(41:35):
was very popular around this time for for lots of
different intelligence agencies. UM. But so albare Eli uncovered report
from nineteen forty nine by the director of the Edwood
Arsenal which many which which was where many US government
LSD experiments were carried out. And this report stated that
the army should do everything, everything is post everything, everything
(41:56):
possible to launch so called field experiments using this drug. Later,
in his to us A nine book, Albrely claims that
he found references to a government document with the label
RETTU SPRI and f Olsen files s O span slash
France Operation File inclusive Olsen Intel files. Hand Carrie to Bellan,
(42:17):
tell him to see to it that these are buried. Um,
this document does exist like we we were like we
we we we do have this label on on this document. Um,
but like the actual contents of documents are are gone.
But this is this is this is this is just
a label that is being referenced as so the document
(42:38):
label references Frank Olson and David Bellan. So Bellan was
the executive director of the Rocketeller Commission, created by the
White House in the mid seventies to investigate abuses carried
out worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So Albrely believes
that the that the French town Lst incident Um, which
is like the Ponce St Spre, which is the name
(42:59):
of the town and the Ethelson files mentioned in the
document would definitely show that if the document hadn't been buried,
as it was said in the in the label the CIA,
it would show that the CIA was experimenting on the
townspeople by dosing them with what he thinks was LSD UM.
Now there is also a bit more to it than
that um. Using Foya's he got ahold of another CIA document,
(43:19):
a two page report from my team fifty four detailing
a conversation between a CIA agent and a representative of
the San DAWs Chemical Company. So this the San Das
base was the place where Albert Hoffman invented LSD in
night Um and it was it was it was only
a few hundred kilometers away from pont st A Spree,
the town where this happened, So the chemical company was
(43:42):
actually pretty pretty close relatively to like europe um and
it was also the only place where LSD was being
made at the time. And they were providing both the
Army and the CIA with a lot of a lot
of acid. But you mean they're also giving it like
they're also giving it to universities. They gave lots to
Timothy Learia. Initially they were they were, they were they
(44:05):
were giving a gut to a lot of different universities
and people, but including the US government. So the c
I A. The CIA agent wrote um in this report
that was like he was detailing a dinner he had
with this representative of the chemical company, and he reported
that after having several drinks, the scientists started talking about
the pomp sat desprite incident. The send off official burned
(44:28):
out the pomp sat a spirit secret was that it
was not the bread at all. Continued to send off
official for weeks. The French tied up our laboratories with
analysis of the bread. It was not the grain ergot,
It was a die ethyl laminated Sorry it's it's the
last part of the LSD. Yeah, the die ethel lemonide
like compound. So yeah, surgic diethyl acid is what LSD
(44:52):
stands for. So yeah, he the side just said that
it was. It was like it was like basically an
LSD like compound. Um. So that's that was the that
was reported detail like a dinner that a CIA agent
had with this scientist. Um. And that document was uncovered
and that was it was from like the fifties. Now
(45:12):
this this this next part has a little bit less
proof to it because there's no documents backing this up.
But l Brelli also claims that Dirk is diggig to forward.
CIA researchers reached out to him and revealed that revealed
some details of some possible details of the method of
the poisoning. They told him that the village was subjected
to an air blitz of pull rized LSD. I'm sorry,
(45:39):
that's fucking based so to force the people taking the
substance through the air. According to the researchers, this manner
of of this manner of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful, um,
forcing the CIA to move onto phase two, which was
contaminating local food. So apparently the air if if the
(46:00):
air blitz was a thing, it didn't work super well. Um.
Although actually about to have Sophie Bias a plane. We'll
talk about this later, but um, the c A did
do more air blitzing um of of acid in New
York City. Actually, they would ride around in cars um
(46:21):
in like poorer and poorer more like multicultural areas, UM
shooting LSD out of the back of the car to
see what would happen to FA, I mean take out
the racism and that really is a dream job, just
driving around cities air dosing people with acid and random
smoking cigarettes. Probably. So with the conclusion drawn that it
(46:43):
was one of the town's bakeries being the source of
the poisoning, Albrel says it was possible that LSD was
put in or onto the bread um. So yeah. And
also lots of the scientists, lots of the scientists dispatched
to investigate the reasoning after it took place, where actually
from the Sandaws Chemical company. Um. They studied the situation
(47:04):
for like two or three weeks UM and gave the
explanation that would later be kind of disproven, uh, that
it was got poisoning, which they they told the town
officials and the British medical journal. Um what what? What
no one knew at the time was that one the
existence of LSD in the first place, UM, and two
that San DAWs was the company making it and giving
these drugs to the U. S. Army and to the CIA. UM.
(47:26):
And apparently apparently Albert Hoffmann himself went to the town
to investigate this incident UM. So yeah. And one last
thing on like the physical evidence side of things UM.
Albarelli also found an undated White House document that appeared
to be part of a larger file that had been
sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission, uh, containing the
names of two French nationals who had been secretly employed
(47:48):
about the CIA, and made direct references to the quote
pont Saint Sprit incident um. Also it was linked the
document linked former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief
of the Fort Derek's Special Operations Division. So those are
all places that they were experiencing with this similar kind
of thing. Um we we we have mentioned the Rockefeller
(48:09):
Commission a few times now for remember the names uh,
Frank Olsen, the guy one of the CIA researchers on LSD,
and David Bellan where they were they were? They were
on the label of that missing document. So but Bellin
was the executive director of the White House Commission to
investigate the CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the
Rockefeller Commission. It was formed by President Ford in nineteen
(48:30):
seventy five to investigate abuses and other activities by the
CIA and a few other intelligence agencies that were operating
within the States. Um. So the Rockefeller Commission revealed not
only like the reason why we know, but M Kaeltro
was because the Rockefeller Commission this is this is how
we know this was a thing. Um. So it not
only revealed stuff about like programs around m k Ultra,
(48:51):
but also revealed the details of the CIA dosing their
own scientist Frank Olsen with LSD and possibly killing him. Um.
There's also so like, there's like a Netflix series about
this called Woodwords, haven't. I haven't actually watched yet, so
I don't know how good or accurate it is, but
they did. They did make a series a few years
ago about the death of Frank Olson. Um and all
of the weirds got yourself surrounding both his job and
(49:13):
and and and and his death. Um. We do love
the CIA, folks. So the The commission also concluded that
the head of the CIA's LSD program, doctor Sydney ghost Leap,
destroyed all of the drug programs records in nineteen seventy
three to hide the details of possibly illegal actions, and
(49:33):
he was personally involved in the torture of Frank Olsen. Um.
Twenty years after Mr Olsen's death and ten years after
the elistic experiments were halted, a doctor Godlieb ordered the
destruction of all the records of the program, including a
total of one hundred and fifty two separate files. This
came shortly after other reports that that that records were
being destroyed by Richard helms the the then Director of
(49:56):
Central Intelligence. So it's undoubtedly true that the CIA was
up to up to some ship involving LSD around around
the exact time period of this French Town incident. Yeah,
it's certainly not like you're not coming out of nowhere
suggesting the CIA may have dosed all these people, but
they set it to a bunch of folks. If they
(50:16):
didn't do it here, they've done similar ships. It's also
it's also worst mentioning at this point that like this
is like the point where the CIA is also running
this like enormous heroin network out of France, as like
if they basically basically had this whole they have this
deal with the French where they're like, okay, so the
French mob can like basically move all the heroin they
want and exchange they'll like stop the communists and taking
(50:38):
control of the point of Marseillas. And so this is
this is all also going on like at the same
time that they're doing the LSD stuff. It's great. Yeah,
so's there's some storians that think the LSD theories not
hold enough water. Um. Stephen Kaplan, it's the US historian
specializing in the French food history and the author of
the two book Cursed Bread, which follows this incident. Um.
(51:00):
He says that he is h I've numerous objections to
this paltry evidence that this that this against the CIA.
First of all, it's clinically incoherent. LSTI takes effects in
just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants, where the inhabitants
showed symptoms only after thirty six hours or more. For
the more, LSD does not cause the the digestive elements
or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. Um. And
(51:20):
So to both those claims, I say they're not necessarily true. Um.
It's it's it's unclear how soon the delirious effects took
place for some people. They were they forced effect felt Um.
So the whole thing about like the effects only taking
effect after thirty six hours, that's not that's not necessarily true. Um.
And Also LSD can definitely have nauseating or digestive effects.
(51:43):
Yet so that's that's that's that's not that's yeah, and
and but but like there were other types of symptoms
that are not common for what we think of as
like modern LST. Again, this is the nineteen fifties, and
we don't know what they were actually on it did
It's maybe not. It may not be what we think
of as like LSD. Now it could be slightly that
you know that this is a whole class of psychoactive
drugs that's unclear what they were all actually being dosed with. Yeah,
(52:07):
who the funk knows what they were being given and
who the funk knows what the actual like dose amount was. Yeah,
we no no idea. It's also you know, I think
it's leary was the origin of the phrase that like
the things that determine what happens on a trip or
set setting in dose, so your mindset, where you take
it and who you take it around and the dose
and the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms could
(52:27):
be to the fact that like other people taking acid
have never taken it this way and without knowing what
acid is like. So Kaplan's other objections revolve around like
the delivery system. He says it's absurd this idea of
transmitting a very toxic drug by putting by putting it
in the bread as for pulver as to get for
(52:47):
ingestion through the air. That technology wasn't even possible at
the time. Most compelling lee why would they choose the
town of pont Sta Spree to conduct these tests. It
was half destroyed by the U. S. Army during fighting
with the Germans in the Second World War. It makes
no sense. And and to that, I say, that makes
it the perfect town for the CIA to funk with me. Yeah,
(53:08):
they generally would choose to dose someone with acid because
it sounded funny, Like. I think the fact that this
town was already kind of like only half inhabited and
half destroyed by the by the Second World War, that
makes it the perfect town to funk with like. And
also they also, the CIA and the government very much
did have the means to try to distribute stuff via
(53:28):
the air, because we can see other we can see
other documents around the time of them doing this too,
specific areas of of New York City. They also tried
to poison the entire New York Subway with LSD in
the fifties, but that was shut down by higher ups
in in the central intelligence. Um. Fortunately, God, what a
time that would have been. But but cap But but
(53:49):
Caplan isn't sure or got the responsible either. Um. He
says that inhabination would not have worked because it doesn't
make sense that only one sack of grain would have
been affected. Um and he says if it was, the
effects would have been way more widespread. He rules out
LSD in the grounds and the symptoms of people suffered,
although similar don't quite fit what we modernly think of
the drug. Also, I don't I don't think Captain's ever
(54:11):
taken LSD, so I don't think I think it probably
not being air got. But I don't think you know
as much, yeah, he all he also he also He
also points out that LSD probably wouldn't have survived the
fierce temperatures of the Baker's oven, although Albarelli counters that
it could have been that LSD could have been added
after the fact to the surface of the break. You
could just drop it on, you could you just drop
it on with like with like liquid blodders, which also
(54:33):
explain how the effects were so different from person to person,
because one person maybe having a whole drop of LSD
where somebody maybe only have like a tiny little like
you know, spec of like speck of like like moist liquid.
So I can explain some things. But you know, this
is still pretty much a mystery. You know, it's very clear,
this very much, very well could have been some kind
of hidden LSD c I a experiment UM, or the
(54:56):
CIA could have just been, you know, interested in studying
what happened the town since they were also doing studies
into psychoactives substances at the time. Um, it could be
either or UM. And that's where its spooky because you'll
never know. So, yes, that is that. That is the
spooky incident of a French town basically thinking that they
(55:16):
lost their minds. And then you know they love to
see it, do we. It's it is a little funny.
It is definitely a little funny. Um. It's it is
a great example of like the worst way to trip. Yeah,
that that's that's pretty high up there. Um. Anyway, critical
support to the CIA for josing random people with acid.
(55:39):
Always one of my favorite sets of stories. You you
love to see it, so yeah, tune tune in, tune
in tomorrow for more spooky, spooky story and you can
follow the spooky social media that poisons your brain at
papen here pod and cool Zone Media which yes, Twitter
(56:01):
will poison your brain. That that's justice, spooky um, spooky
way worse for your brain than surprise. C I A
asked to be honest. The acid wears off. Give us
(56:25):
over attention. We need everything you've got fast. Waiting on
Reparations would beat the podcast. Tune in every Thursday politics
and wordplay. We fight for the people because they got
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break us off with some break because we're waiting the reparations.
(56:48):
Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The art
world it is essentially a money laundering business. The best
fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know they
don't even know or suspect that their fakes. I'm Alec
Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and
(57:12):
forgery in the art world. I just walked in and
saw this bright red painting presuming to be a Rothko.
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made, a lot of money. I'm listening to what
they're paying for these things. It was an incredible mans
of money. You knew the painting was fake. Um. Listen
(57:39):
to Art Fraud starting February one on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
(57:59):
On the pod cast nine O two one o MG,
visit Jenny Garth and Tori Spelling for a rewatch of
the hit series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh.
From the very beginning, we get to tell the fans
all of the behind the scenes stories to actually happen,
so they know what happened on camera obviously, but we
can tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera.
Listen to nine O two one O MG on the
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