April 25, 2025 • 30 mins
One hot day in the summer of 1518, in the city of Strasbourg, a woman left her home in a strange trance and headed straight for the town square. There she began to dance, and dance, and dance. Something was terribly wrong and then, it began to spread...
Written by Emma Dibdin and Richard MacLean Smith
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
In the middle of July fifteen eighteen, the eastern French
city of Strasbourg was in the grip of a heat wave.
It had been going on for weeks, and the population
had adapted accordingly. Residents changed their daily routines to avoid
the hottest parts of the day, going out to run
errands at dawn or at dusk, and staying in the
(00:31):
shade for the rest of the time. On the fourteenth
of July, as it approached midday, the baking sun inching
ever higher into the sky, the streets were mostly empty.
The only people out in the sweltering heat were those
who didn't have a choice, the farmers and laborers who
had to be outside come rain or shine. In a
(00:53):
quiet cobble street, the echoes of a distant church bell
could be heard striking noon. Just then, a door open
and a young woman appeared in the door frame, her
face fixed in an odd, vacant expression. When she stepped
out onto the street, it was as if she was
being called to something. She didn't even stop to close
(01:13):
the front door before heading off briskly towards the town's
central square. Nobody in the square looked twice at the
young woman when she first arrived, but then something strange
began to happen. The woman started to dance on the spot,
her body twisting and twirling in time to some imaginary
soundtrack that only she could hear. She seemed utterly oblivious
(01:38):
to the sun beating down on her and to the
curious glances of passers by who stopped to stare. At first,
people were amused. This must be some kind of performance,
they thought, although the lack of music struck them as strange.
A few people dropped coins into a pile next to her,
assuming that she was a busker, but before long began
(02:00):
to notice some unsettling details. Despite the strange chigs she
was dancing, the look on the young woman's face was
anything but merry. Her features were contorted into a strange grimace,
as if she was in terrible pain. As the temperature
climbed above thirty degrees celsius, sweat began to pour down
(02:20):
her face and arms, but the woman refused to stop.
After more than an hour of continuous dancing, she was
still going. People began to exchange nervous glances. Then a
city worker approached the woman and tried to get her
to pause, offering her water. She ignored him completely, and
(02:41):
when he put his hands on her shoulders, her dancing
became even more frenetic. She flung her arms wildly at him,
forcing him to beat a hasty retreat. All afternoon she
continued non stop, her legs and arms flailing about, hopping
from one foot to the next. By the ear evening,
every inch of the young woman's exposed skin was sunburnt,
(03:04):
her face bright red, and her matted hair drenched in sweat.
By now a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch this
bizarre spectacle underneath the setting sun. It was now obvious
that this was no street performance. There was something terribly
wrong with this woman, and nobody seemed to know how
to help her. Her name was Frau Trofia, and soon
(03:29):
she would not be the only one you're listening to Unexplained,
and I'm Richard McLean Smith. By the morning of July fifteenth,
Frau Trofia had been dancing NonStop for close to twenty hours.
(03:52):
She hadn't stopped to sleep, to eat, or even to
rest for a moment. Word had spread all over the
city and that the doctor was called to make sense
of what was happening. When the doctor arrived, he found
an even more bizarre scene than he'd expected. There was
still a crowd gathered around Frautrofia, but now they weren't
(04:15):
all just onlookers. At some point in the previous few hours,
two others had begun dancing too, their faces locked into
the same rictus grimace, their bodies contorting into the same
strange jig, incredibly like an especially outlandish m night Shire
Marlin plot. Whatever this was appeared to be contagious. At first,
(04:40):
it looked like they were mocking Frautrofia, but their dancing
went on for too long to be a joke, and
for the rest of the day, the trio kept up
their wild moods, ignoring all efforts to make them stop. Finally,
shortly before five pm that evening, Frautropia collapsed to the ground.
It seemed exhaustion had finally got the best of her,
(05:03):
and everybody around her breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever
this strange fever was, it must be breaking, they thought.
But then Frau Trothia's legs and arms began to twitch weakly,
and soon they were wriggling again. Fearing she was dying.
One onlooker rushed forward to give her some water. No
(05:25):
sooner had frow Trothia managed a few small SIPs, She
steadily got back to her feet, and the dance began
once again, more manically than ever. This time, the horrified
crowd could only watch on as blood from her feet
began to seep through the straps of her sandals, creating
streaks of bloody footprints on the stony ground. It was
(05:48):
as if she was no longer in control of her
own body, compelled to keep moving by some hidden, all
powerful puppet master, as if her mind had been given
over to the King of the fairies. Soon after, concerned
city officials appeared on the scene and forced the crowd
to disperse. Terrified that more citizens might suddenly catch the
(06:12):
dancing fever, they cordoned off the square in a desperate
effort to prevent anyone else from being able to see
the dancers, but it was too late. Over the course
of the next few days, dozens more people across Strasbourg
began spontaneously dancing. When their alarmed relatives and friends tried
(06:33):
to intervene more reason with them, the victims were completely unresponsive,
locked in the same bizarre trance as Frautrophia. Doctors ordered
friends and family to physically restrain the afflicted just so
they could examine them, but it was impossible to even
get close to them, and in any event, the examinations
(06:55):
when they could conduct them, proved pointless. The physicians were
completely baffled with things threatening to get out of hand.
Officials implored the doctors to come up with a theory
(07:17):
as to what was happening. Though they had no concrete proof,
it seemed reasonable to assume that the frantic flailing of
the victims arms and legs had a medical explanation. With
this in mind, the doctors suggested that the victims simply
be left alone to effectively dance the sickness out of
(07:38):
their systems. It was a dubious idea, but it was
the only one they had. Officials began putting plans together
to manage the ever growing number of inflicted, believing the
disease would be best dealt with outside. Specific areas of
the city became designated as dancing zones, such as the
(07:58):
open air grain market, the guild hall, and a local
fair ground. Officials also took the extraordinary decision to try
and make everything seem as normal as possible, hoping that
whatever this strange virus was, it would be less effectively
transmitted if it was harder to discern. To that end,
(08:19):
the areas were completely cleared out so stages could be
erected for the afflicted to dance on, and musicians were
even hired to accompany them. What resulted, however, was a
grimm tableau, like a hyernomous bosh painting come to life.
The dancing zones became scenes of surreal, nightmarish chaos. The
(08:41):
afflicted jerked and twisted endlessly under the baking sun, their
faces aching with distress. They groaned and cried out in pain.
Some screamed out for God to save them, but the
ones who were silent were the more disturbing to watch.
They looked terrified, as though stuck in a nightmare they
(09:05):
couldn't wake up from. All the while, groups of perfectly
healthy musicians accompanied them with a muddled chorus of drum
beats and pipes. As an ever growing crowd of horrified
townspeople turned up to stare. It was, as one eyewitness
described it, as though the dancers created the impression of
(09:26):
people attempting to keep their legs and feet from burning,
as if they were poised above a fire. City officials
also hired professional dancers to perform alongside the victims to
try and keep them dancing or prop them up when
they grew too exhausted to stand, convinced that would help
(09:47):
eradicate the virus. Over the next few weeks, more and
more victims followed in frou Trophia's footsteps. First, they were
seized by the uncontrollable urge to die, which they did
non stop for a period of hours or days, and
depending on their age and physical condition, they would inevitably
(10:08):
dance themselves into exhaustion. After six days of almost non
stop dancing, Frautrophia finally collapsed into unconsciousness and her limbs
stopped moving. The following day, another dancer keeled over and died.
The cause was a massive heart attack brought on by
(10:29):
the sheer physical toll of the dancing. And still more
people continued to join the throng of tormented dancers, and
those who hadn't yet been affected were in their own
grip of terror, petrified at the thought that they would
be next. By now, the medical consensus was that the
dancing was being caused by overheated blood on the brain.
(10:52):
Due to the heat, weve, but rumblings had begun suggesting
that perhaps there was a much darker explanation. By the
end of that summer of fifteen eighteen, some four hundred
people had fallen victim to the dancing plague of Strasbourg.
(11:15):
Dozens had danced themselves to death, and though the physicians
were stumped as to what was happening, for the town's
religious leaders, the explanation was becoming increasingly clear. Back in
two hundred ninety CE, the Roman emperor of the day
was Diocletian, but his empire was crumbling as a new
(11:36):
god had begun to challenge the old powers. That year,
in the shadowed corners of Sicily, a boy named Vitus
was born into a prestigious Roman pagan family at the
age of seven. Vitus is said to have been convinced
to become a follower of Jesus by the family nurse,
who also baptized him Secretly. His father, Hylas, a local senator,
(12:01):
was quick to notice a change in his son. He
refused to bow before the household gods. He murmured quietly
to himself when they sat down to eat, and whenever
they went for a walk, Hilas would catch his son
gazing wistfully up to the sky. In three hundred three
c E, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict against Christians, who
(12:25):
were steadily growing in number. The edict demanded that all
Christians renounce their faith or faith severe punishment. Terrified of
what it might mean for his son, Hilas insisted that
Vitus comply, But as the story goes, the boy refused,
even when Hylas resorted to beating and imprisoning him. In fact,
(12:49):
each punishment seemed only to strengthen Vitus's conviction. Then strange
things began to happen. Hylas's arm would seemingly become temporarily
paralyzed whenever he raised it to strike the boy. Then,
a magistrate sent to interrogate Fightus on behalf of the
emperor died unexpectedly. One morning, while out walking in a
(13:13):
market with his nurse, Fitus found himself drawn to a
blind beggar. The young boy placed his small hands on
the blind man's face, and the man gasped, blinking rapidly,
when he felt a sudden flood of light rush into
his eyes. It's a miracle, he said, I can see. Meanwhile,
(13:35):
at the Emperor's palace in Nicomedia, in what is present
day Turkey, Diocletian's son was in the grip of something terrifying.
He writhed about in his bed in a horrifying seizure,
as foam flecked his lips. The emperor's advisers stood over
the boy and gave their ominous assessment. There was no
(13:56):
doubt about it. The Emperor's son was possessed by a demon.
So when the Emperor learned of a peculiar boy in
Sicily who was said to have extraordinary healing powers, he
sent for him immediately. As the legend goes, it took
Vitus only a matter of minutes to cure the emperor's
(14:17):
son and bring an end to his and his father's torture,
but it would come at a great cost. Though grateful
for Vitas's help, Diocletian was unwavering in his edict against Christians.
When he demanded that Vitus renounce his faith once again,
the young boy steadfastly refused. Vitus was swiftly imprisoned and
(14:41):
then beheaded by five hundred CE, Vitus was being widely
recognized as a saint. Then, sometime in the fourteenth century,
in the Rhine Valley in Germany, some farmers began suffering
from a mysterious affliction characterized by uncontrollable dancing and twitching.
(15:03):
But when they began praying to Saint Vitus, the affliction stopped.
And with this association came its dark inversion. If Saint
Vitus could stop the dance, could he not also start it?
(15:25):
As the religious leaders of Strasbourg looked about their town,
the explanation for the dancing plague, as it would come
to be known, was simple. It wasn't just the dancers
that were sick. It was all of them. The entire
society sick with the sin of debauchery, and now Saint
Vitus was punishing them for it. With nothing to lose,
(15:47):
the city council embraced the theory and swiftly ordered the
dancers to be confined to their homes out of public view.
Once this was done, they went on a mission to
rid Strasbourg of any activity that could be considered sinful.
They imprisoned sex workers and gamblers, and banned known drunkards
(16:07):
from taverns in their efforts to purify the city. When
this failed to do anything, a period of enforced penance
was initiated, during which all forms of music and dancing
were banned in public. All present victims of the dancing
plague were rounded up and taken to stay at the
shrine of Saint Vitus on a mountaintop just outside the city.
(16:32):
One by one, they arrived, hopping and jerking at the
hillside shrine, their feet blistered and bleeding. Each was sanctified
with holy oil and water, and given a cross to
wear around their necks and a pair of red shoes
gently placed on their ravaged feet. Then, every day, beside
(16:54):
a wooden figure of Saint Vitus, the local priest conducted
a mass exorcism, crying out to Saint Vitus to relent
with his punishment and grant absolution. Then something extraordinary happened.
The victims began to recover. They regained the ability to
(17:14):
control their movements, and although they were still sometimes gripped
by the sudden urge to dance, the episodes lasted for
minutes rather than days. Finally, by the end of September
fifteen eighteen, the dancing plague including for Frau Trofia, who
had survived. The whole ordeal was all but over. In
(17:35):
the five centuries that have passed, there has never been
a conclusive explanation for what happened, but there's been no
shortage of theories. Some have tried to explain it away
as a purely sociological phenomenon. The dancers were members of
a religious cult. Some suggested enacting some kind of ritual,
(17:55):
but this doesn't tally with any of the eye witness accounts.
The afflicted seemed distressed and desperate, and were clearly dancing
against their will to the point where their feet bled
and their bodies collapsed. No cult could sustain that kind
of power. Another possibility is that the victims were all
poisoned by some kind of toxin. Ergot is a type
(18:20):
of toxic fungus that grows on damp rye, which grew
plentifully in the field surrounding Strasbourg. Eating at once isn't
a problem, but long term poisoning can cause hallucinations and
muscle spasms. If the city's bread supply was contaminated by ergot,
this might have caused widespread poisoning, but this theory doesn't
(18:42):
really hold water either. Hallucinations and spasms don't tally with
an insatiable urge to dance. In order to really understand
what happened during the Dancing plague, it's important to understand
(19:06):
what was happening in Strasbourg before it started. The early
fifteen hundreds had been a terrible time for the city.
Multiple harvest failures had caused wheat prices to soar, leaving
many people on the brink of starvation. A number of
terrifying new diseases had also begun to spread widely during
this period, including syphilis and the bubonic plague. Homeless shelters, hospitals,
(19:32):
and orphanages were besieged, and the streets were full of
people begging for food. In short, people were desperate, grief stricken,
and struggling to see any light at the end of
the tunnel. One moralizing book written by city chancellor Sebastian
Brandt about twenty years before, titled Das Narrenschiff The Ship
(19:56):
of Falls, also seemed to have seeped into the public imagination.
In it, he wrote that dance and sin are one
in kind. All of this created the ideal conditions for
a mass psychogenic illness, more commonly known as mass hysteria,
a situation that occurs when there's a rapid onset of
(20:18):
similar or identical symptoms among members of a group. Importantly,
mass psychogenic illness only occurs in the context of some
plausible threat, which provokes anxiety and panic within the group.
The existence of this threat is what makes the spread
of mass hysteria possible. Just as being sleep deprived or
(20:42):
malnourished can suppress your immune system and make you more
susceptible to getting ill, feeling constantly anxious and threatened can
make you more psychologically suggestible. In the case of the
people of Strasbourg, they'd lived under constant threat from famine, disease,
and social upheaval for years. Even for the lucky ones,
(21:06):
those who still had a roof over their heads, enough
food on the table, and whose loved ones were all
still alive, daily life was still fraught and filled with
reminders of just how bad things could get under these conditions.
It's possible that Frau Trophia essentially became patient zero. Her bizarre,
(21:27):
uncontrollable dancing spread like the symptoms of a physical illness
among the unsettled residents. Of Strasbourg, resulting in the dancing plague.
But mass hysteria is only half the story. The idea
of a dancing plague in itself didn't come from nowhere,
but from a very specific superstition that had existed in
(21:50):
Europe for centuries. The vast majority of people in sixteenth
century Europe were strongly religious, believing not only in a
Christian God, but also in a variety of related saints
and deities. One of these was the aforementioned Saint Vitus,
(22:13):
who became known as the Saint of entertainment and dance,
who legend said, punished sinners by cursing them to dance relentlessly.
This superstition is so widely known that it even inspired
medical terminology as an auto immune condition called Sydonym's corrier,
involving frantic and uncontrollable jerking movements in the hands and feet.
(22:37):
The alternative name for this affliction is Saint Vitus's dance.
Surrounded by distress and misfortune, the people of Strasbourg had
every reason to believe that God and all of his
saints were angry with them, so it wasn't much of
a leap for a few people to also start believing
that Saint Vitus had cursed them personally. If this is
(23:01):
indeed what happened, then the city council couldn't possibly have
chosen a worse response. By erecting stages in multiple spaces
and encouraging the afflicted to continue dancing as crowds of
spectators watched on, they ensured maximum exposure to the emotional virus.
In effect, these public dancing zones were daily psychological super
(23:26):
spreader events. Even if people were going out of their
way to avoid seeing the dancers, it was almost impossible.
They were in the most public areas of the city,
from the Guildhall to the grain Market, and because the
afflicted were so inescapable, so visible, the townspeople had no
choice but to reflect on the possibility that they could
(23:49):
be next. This fear would have been especially pronounced for
anybody who was naturally anxious or prone to self recrimination.
Of course, the authorities were only following the medical advice
they'd been given. This was two centuries before the emergence
of psychiatry, and doctors unfortunately had no concept of social
(24:10):
contagion or collective trauma when they recommended that the victims
be encouraged to dance until they were satiated. They were
thinking only about the effect on the individual, not on
society as a whole. There have been no other recorded
incidents of a dancing plague since that strange summer of
(24:31):
fifteen eighteen, but mass psychogenic illness is now broadly accepted phenomenon.
It's been widely recorded in other forms, from mass spouts
of illness to supposed multiple demonic possessions, and even epidemics
of uncontrollable laughter. Has once occurred in East Africa in
the nineteen sixties. The psychological contagion theory is the closest
(24:56):
will likely ever get to an explanation of what happened
for now, The dancing plague at Strasbourg was a bizarre
and haunting occurrence that remains to this day unexplained. This
episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLain Smith.
(25:22):
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(25:43):
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(26:03):
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Podcast d.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
A, then then then then on the
In the middle of July fifteen eighteen, the eastern French
city of Strasbourg was in the grip of a heat wave.
It had been going on for weeks, and the population
had adapted accordingly. Residents changed their daily routines to avoid
the hottest parts of the day, going out to run
errands at dawn or at dusk, and staying in the
(00:31):
shade for the rest of the time. On the fourteenth
of July, as it approached midday, the baking sun inching
ever higher into the sky, the streets were mostly empty.
The only people out in the sweltering heat were those
who didn't have a choice, the farmers and laborers who
had to be outside come rain or shine. In a
(00:53):
quiet cobble street, the echoes of a distant church bell
could be heard striking noon. Just then, a door open
and a young woman appeared in the door frame, her
face fixed in an odd, vacant expression. When she stepped
out onto the street, it was as if she was
being called to something. She didn't even stop to close
(01:13):
the front door before heading off briskly towards the town's
central square. Nobody in the square looked twice at the
young woman when she first arrived, but then something strange
began to happen. The woman started to dance on the spot,
her body twisting and twirling in time to some imaginary
soundtrack that only she could hear. She seemed utterly oblivious
(01:38):
to the sun beating down on her and to the
curious glances of passers by who stopped to stare. At first,
people were amused. This must be some kind of performance,
they thought, although the lack of music struck them as strange.
A few people dropped coins into a pile next to her,
assuming that she was a busker, but before long began
(02:00):
to notice some unsettling details. Despite the strange chigs she
was dancing, the look on the young woman's face was
anything but merry. Her features were contorted into a strange grimace,
as if she was in terrible pain. As the temperature
climbed above thirty degrees celsius, sweat began to pour down
(02:20):
her face and arms, but the woman refused to stop.
After more than an hour of continuous dancing, she was
still going. People began to exchange nervous glances. Then a
city worker approached the woman and tried to get her
to pause, offering her water. She ignored him completely, and
(02:41):
when he put his hands on her shoulders, her dancing
became even more frenetic. She flung her arms wildly at him,
forcing him to beat a hasty retreat. All afternoon she
continued non stop, her legs and arms flailing about, hopping
from one foot to the next. By the ear evening,
every inch of the young woman's exposed skin was sunburnt,
(03:04):
her face bright red, and her matted hair drenched in sweat.
By now a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch this
bizarre spectacle underneath the setting sun. It was now obvious
that this was no street performance. There was something terribly
wrong with this woman, and nobody seemed to know how
to help her. Her name was Frau Trofia, and soon
(03:29):
she would not be the only one you're listening to Unexplained,
and I'm Richard McLean Smith. By the morning of July fifteenth,
Frau Trofia had been dancing NonStop for close to twenty hours.
(03:52):
She hadn't stopped to sleep, to eat, or even to
rest for a moment. Word had spread all over the
city and that the doctor was called to make sense
of what was happening. When the doctor arrived, he found
an even more bizarre scene than he'd expected. There was
still a crowd gathered around Frautrofia, but now they weren't
(04:15):
all just onlookers. At some point in the previous few hours,
two others had begun dancing too, their faces locked into
the same rictus grimace, their bodies contorting into the same
strange jig, incredibly like an especially outlandish m night Shire
Marlin plot. Whatever this was appeared to be contagious. At first,
(04:40):
it looked like they were mocking Frautrofia, but their dancing
went on for too long to be a joke, and
for the rest of the day, the trio kept up
their wild moods, ignoring all efforts to make them stop. Finally,
shortly before five pm that evening, Frautropia collapsed to the ground.
It seemed exhaustion had finally got the best of her,
(05:03):
and everybody around her breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever
this strange fever was, it must be breaking, they thought.
But then Frau Trothia's legs and arms began to twitch weakly,
and soon they were wriggling again. Fearing she was dying.
One onlooker rushed forward to give her some water. No
(05:25):
sooner had frow Trothia managed a few small SIPs, She
steadily got back to her feet, and the dance began
once again, more manically than ever. This time, the horrified
crowd could only watch on as blood from her feet
began to seep through the straps of her sandals, creating
streaks of bloody footprints on the stony ground. It was
(05:48):
as if she was no longer in control of her
own body, compelled to keep moving by some hidden, all
powerful puppet master, as if her mind had been given
over to the King of the fairies. Soon after, concerned
city officials appeared on the scene and forced the crowd
to disperse. Terrified that more citizens might suddenly catch the
(06:12):
dancing fever, they cordoned off the square in a desperate
effort to prevent anyone else from being able to see
the dancers, but it was too late. Over the course
of the next few days, dozens more people across Strasbourg
began spontaneously dancing. When their alarmed relatives and friends tried
(06:33):
to intervene more reason with them, the victims were completely unresponsive,
locked in the same bizarre trance as Frautrophia. Doctors ordered
friends and family to physically restrain the afflicted just so
they could examine them, but it was impossible to even
get close to them, and in any event, the examinations
(06:55):
when they could conduct them, proved pointless. The physicians were
completely baffled with things threatening to get out of hand.
Officials implored the doctors to come up with a theory
(07:17):
as to what was happening. Though they had no concrete proof,
it seemed reasonable to assume that the frantic flailing of
the victims arms and legs had a medical explanation. With
this in mind, the doctors suggested that the victims simply
be left alone to effectively dance the sickness out of
(07:38):
their systems. It was a dubious idea, but it was
the only one they had. Officials began putting plans together
to manage the ever growing number of inflicted, believing the
disease would be best dealt with outside. Specific areas of
the city became designated as dancing zones, such as the
(07:58):
open air grain market, the guild hall, and a local
fair ground. Officials also took the extraordinary decision to try
and make everything seem as normal as possible, hoping that
whatever this strange virus was, it would be less effectively
transmitted if it was harder to discern. To that end,
(08:19):
the areas were completely cleared out so stages could be
erected for the afflicted to dance on, and musicians were
even hired to accompany them. What resulted, however, was a
grimm tableau, like a hyernomous bosh painting come to life.
The dancing zones became scenes of surreal, nightmarish chaos. The
(08:41):
afflicted jerked and twisted endlessly under the baking sun, their
faces aching with distress. They groaned and cried out in pain.
Some screamed out for God to save them, but the
ones who were silent were the more disturbing to watch.
They looked terrified, as though stuck in a nightmare they
(09:05):
couldn't wake up from. All the while, groups of perfectly
healthy musicians accompanied them with a muddled chorus of drum
beats and pipes. As an ever growing crowd of horrified
townspeople turned up to stare. It was, as one eyewitness
described it, as though the dancers created the impression of
(09:26):
people attempting to keep their legs and feet from burning,
as if they were poised above a fire. City officials
also hired professional dancers to perform alongside the victims to
try and keep them dancing or prop them up when
they grew too exhausted to stand, convinced that would help
(09:47):
eradicate the virus. Over the next few weeks, more and
more victims followed in frou Trophia's footsteps. First, they were
seized by the uncontrollable urge to die, which they did
non stop for a period of hours or days, and
depending on their age and physical condition, they would inevitably
(10:08):
dance themselves into exhaustion. After six days of almost non
stop dancing, Frautrophia finally collapsed into unconsciousness and her limbs
stopped moving. The following day, another dancer keeled over and died.
The cause was a massive heart attack brought on by
(10:29):
the sheer physical toll of the dancing. And still more
people continued to join the throng of tormented dancers, and
those who hadn't yet been affected were in their own
grip of terror, petrified at the thought that they would
be next. By now, the medical consensus was that the
dancing was being caused by overheated blood on the brain.
(10:52):
Due to the heat, weve, but rumblings had begun suggesting
that perhaps there was a much darker explanation. By the
end of that summer of fifteen eighteen, some four hundred
people had fallen victim to the dancing plague of Strasbourg.
(11:15):
Dozens had danced themselves to death, and though the physicians
were stumped as to what was happening, for the town's
religious leaders, the explanation was becoming increasingly clear. Back in
two hundred ninety CE, the Roman emperor of the day
was Diocletian, but his empire was crumbling as a new
(11:36):
god had begun to challenge the old powers. That year,
in the shadowed corners of Sicily, a boy named Vitus
was born into a prestigious Roman pagan family at the
age of seven. Vitus is said to have been convinced
to become a follower of Jesus by the family nurse,
who also baptized him Secretly. His father, Hylas, a local senator,
(12:01):
was quick to notice a change in his son. He
refused to bow before the household gods. He murmured quietly
to himself when they sat down to eat, and whenever
they went for a walk, Hilas would catch his son
gazing wistfully up to the sky. In three hundred three
c E, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict against Christians, who
(12:25):
were steadily growing in number. The edict demanded that all
Christians renounce their faith or faith severe punishment. Terrified of
what it might mean for his son, Hilas insisted that
Vitus comply, But as the story goes, the boy refused,
even when Hylas resorted to beating and imprisoning him. In fact,
(12:49):
each punishment seemed only to strengthen Vitus's conviction. Then strange
things began to happen. Hylas's arm would seemingly become temporarily
paralyzed whenever he raised it to strike the boy. Then,
a magistrate sent to interrogate Fightus on behalf of the
emperor died unexpectedly. One morning, while out walking in a
(13:13):
market with his nurse, Fitus found himself drawn to a
blind beggar. The young boy placed his small hands on
the blind man's face, and the man gasped, blinking rapidly,
when he felt a sudden flood of light rush into
his eyes. It's a miracle, he said, I can see. Meanwhile,
(13:35):
at the Emperor's palace in Nicomedia, in what is present
day Turkey, Diocletian's son was in the grip of something terrifying.
He writhed about in his bed in a horrifying seizure,
as foam flecked his lips. The emperor's advisers stood over
the boy and gave their ominous assessment. There was no
(13:56):
doubt about it. The Emperor's son was possessed by a demon.
So when the Emperor learned of a peculiar boy in
Sicily who was said to have extraordinary healing powers, he
sent for him immediately. As the legend goes, it took
Vitus only a matter of minutes to cure the emperor's
(14:17):
son and bring an end to his and his father's torture,
but it would come at a great cost. Though grateful
for Vitas's help, Diocletian was unwavering in his edict against Christians.
When he demanded that Vitus renounce his faith once again,
the young boy steadfastly refused. Vitus was swiftly imprisoned and
(14:41):
then beheaded by five hundred CE, Vitus was being widely
recognized as a saint. Then, sometime in the fourteenth century,
in the Rhine Valley in Germany, some farmers began suffering
from a mysterious affliction characterized by uncontrollable dancing and twitching.
(15:03):
But when they began praying to Saint Vitus, the affliction stopped.
And with this association came its dark inversion. If Saint
Vitus could stop the dance, could he not also start it?
(15:25):
As the religious leaders of Strasbourg looked about their town,
the explanation for the dancing plague, as it would come
to be known, was simple. It wasn't just the dancers
that were sick. It was all of them. The entire
society sick with the sin of debauchery, and now Saint
Vitus was punishing them for it. With nothing to lose,
(15:47):
the city council embraced the theory and swiftly ordered the
dancers to be confined to their homes out of public view.
Once this was done, they went on a mission to
rid Strasbourg of any activity that could be considered sinful.
They imprisoned sex workers and gamblers, and banned known drunkards
(16:07):
from taverns in their efforts to purify the city. When
this failed to do anything, a period of enforced penance
was initiated, during which all forms of music and dancing
were banned in public. All present victims of the dancing
plague were rounded up and taken to stay at the
shrine of Saint Vitus on a mountaintop just outside the city.
(16:32):
One by one, they arrived, hopping and jerking at the
hillside shrine, their feet blistered and bleeding. Each was sanctified
with holy oil and water, and given a cross to
wear around their necks and a pair of red shoes
gently placed on their ravaged feet. Then, every day, beside
(16:54):
a wooden figure of Saint Vitus, the local priest conducted
a mass exorcism, crying out to Saint Vitus to relent
with his punishment and grant absolution. Then something extraordinary happened.
The victims began to recover. They regained the ability to
(17:14):
control their movements, and although they were still sometimes gripped
by the sudden urge to dance, the episodes lasted for
minutes rather than days. Finally, by the end of September
fifteen eighteen, the dancing plague including for Frau Trofia, who
had survived. The whole ordeal was all but over. In
(17:35):
the five centuries that have passed, there has never been
a conclusive explanation for what happened, but there's been no
shortage of theories. Some have tried to explain it away
as a purely sociological phenomenon. The dancers were members of
a religious cult. Some suggested enacting some kind of ritual,
(17:55):
but this doesn't tally with any of the eye witness accounts.
The afflicted seemed distressed and desperate, and were clearly dancing
against their will to the point where their feet bled
and their bodies collapsed. No cult could sustain that kind
of power. Another possibility is that the victims were all
poisoned by some kind of toxin. Ergot is a type
(18:20):
of toxic fungus that grows on damp rye, which grew
plentifully in the field surrounding Strasbourg. Eating at once isn't
a problem, but long term poisoning can cause hallucinations and
muscle spasms. If the city's bread supply was contaminated by ergot,
this might have caused widespread poisoning, but this theory doesn't
(18:42):
really hold water either. Hallucinations and spasms don't tally with
an insatiable urge to dance. In order to really understand
what happened during the Dancing plague, it's important to understand
(19:06):
what was happening in Strasbourg before it started. The early
fifteen hundreds had been a terrible time for the city.
Multiple harvest failures had caused wheat prices to soar, leaving
many people on the brink of starvation. A number of
terrifying new diseases had also begun to spread widely during
this period, including syphilis and the bubonic plague. Homeless shelters, hospitals,
(19:32):
and orphanages were besieged, and the streets were full of
people begging for food. In short, people were desperate, grief stricken,
and struggling to see any light at the end of
the tunnel. One moralizing book written by city chancellor Sebastian
Brandt about twenty years before, titled Das Narrenschiff The Ship
(19:56):
of Falls, also seemed to have seeped into the public imagination.
In it, he wrote that dance and sin are one
in kind. All of this created the ideal conditions for
a mass psychogenic illness, more commonly known as mass hysteria,
a situation that occurs when there's a rapid onset of
(20:18):
similar or identical symptoms among members of a group. Importantly,
mass psychogenic illness only occurs in the context of some
plausible threat, which provokes anxiety and panic within the group.
The existence of this threat is what makes the spread
of mass hysteria possible. Just as being sleep deprived or
(20:42):
malnourished can suppress your immune system and make you more
susceptible to getting ill, feeling constantly anxious and threatened can
make you more psychologically suggestible. In the case of the
people of Strasbourg, they'd lived under constant threat from famine, disease,
and social upheaval for years. Even for the lucky ones,
(21:06):
those who still had a roof over their heads, enough
food on the table, and whose loved ones were all
still alive, daily life was still fraught and filled with
reminders of just how bad things could get under these conditions.
It's possible that Frau Trophia essentially became patient zero. Her bizarre,
(21:27):
uncontrollable dancing spread like the symptoms of a physical illness
among the unsettled residents. Of Strasbourg, resulting in the dancing plague.
But mass hysteria is only half the story. The idea
of a dancing plague in itself didn't come from nowhere,
but from a very specific superstition that had existed in
(21:50):
Europe for centuries. The vast majority of people in sixteenth
century Europe were strongly religious, believing not only in a
Christian God, but also in a variety of related saints
and deities. One of these was the aforementioned Saint Vitus,
(22:13):
who became known as the Saint of entertainment and dance,
who legend said, punished sinners by cursing them to dance relentlessly.
This superstition is so widely known that it even inspired
medical terminology as an auto immune condition called Sydonym's corrier,
involving frantic and uncontrollable jerking movements in the hands and feet.
(22:37):
The alternative name for this affliction is Saint Vitus's dance.
Surrounded by distress and misfortune, the people of Strasbourg had
every reason to believe that God and all of his
saints were angry with them, so it wasn't much of
a leap for a few people to also start believing
that Saint Vitus had cursed them personally. If this is
(23:01):
indeed what happened, then the city council couldn't possibly have
chosen a worse response. By erecting stages in multiple spaces
and encouraging the afflicted to continue dancing as crowds of
spectators watched on, they ensured maximum exposure to the emotional virus.
In effect, these public dancing zones were daily psychological super
(23:26):
spreader events. Even if people were going out of their
way to avoid seeing the dancers, it was almost impossible.
They were in the most public areas of the city,
from the Guildhall to the grain Market, and because the
afflicted were so inescapable, so visible, the townspeople had no
choice but to reflect on the possibility that they could
(23:49):
be next. This fear would have been especially pronounced for
anybody who was naturally anxious or prone to self recrimination.
Of course, the authorities were only following the medical advice
they'd been given. This was two centuries before the emergence
of psychiatry, and doctors unfortunately had no concept of social
(24:10):
contagion or collective trauma when they recommended that the victims
be encouraged to dance until they were satiated. They were
thinking only about the effect on the individual, not on
society as a whole. There have been no other recorded
incidents of a dancing plague since that strange summer of
(24:31):
fifteen eighteen, but mass psychogenic illness is now broadly accepted phenomenon.
It's been widely recorded in other forms, from mass spouts
of illness to supposed multiple demonic possessions, and even epidemics
of uncontrollable laughter. Has once occurred in East Africa in
the nineteen sixties. The psychological contagion theory is the closest
(24:56):
will likely ever get to an explanation of what happened
for now, The dancing plague at Strasbourg was a bizarre
and haunting occurrence that remains to this day unexplained. This
episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLain Smith.
(25:22):
Thank you, as ever for listening to the show. Please
subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so.
You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok
dot com. Forward slash at Unexplained podcast. Unexplained as an
AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All
other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
(25:43):
produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and
audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please
subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts,
and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
(26:03):
or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
to share. You can find out more at Unexplained podcast
dot com and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained
Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward slash Unexplained
Podcast d.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
A, then then then then on the
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