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One of the oldest and best known cases of mass hysteria is "The Dancing Plague," which struck the French city of Strasbourg in 1518.
In July, one woman began dancing in the streets. She couldn’t stop until she collapsed from exhaustion, but after resting, she went straight back to dancing.
She carried on for days, and soon more than 30 people had joined her. They danced in a compulsive frenzy, seemingly unable to stop unless their bodies gave out.
The town officials decided to bring in musicians and professional dancers to help the afflicted continue dancing, believing this would help.
However, the situation worsened and the condition spread to more than 400 people. The "plague" eventually ended in September that year, as mysteriously as it had begun.
Many people claimed to have noticed a “rotten” smell from the Coca-Cola they’d been drinking. Suppliers removed the remaining bottles from the schools and investigations began.
News stories spread, the sale of Coca-Cola was temporarily banned, and more incidences began popping up across the country. More than 100 people were hospitalized with symptoms of the 'poisoning.'
Another bizarre and well-known case was the so-called "laughter epidemic" that occurred in Tanzania in 1962.
Rumors about this incident claim that a contagious laughter spread from the village of Kashasha, causing victims to laugh non-stop for months.
This mysterious illness spread and affected thousands of people in nearby villages.
The incident lasted for a year in a series of relapses until it eventually faded away.
Experts speculate that the cause of this instance of hysteria might have been stress due to the country’s recent independence. There were heightened expectations for the younger generation to succeed with the new freedom their parents had won for them.
A school in Belgium became the site of a PR disaster for Coca-Cola in June 1999, after an outbreak of illness among the students was linked to the soft drink.
However, the level of sulfides found in the drink would need to be approximately a thousand times greater to cause any kind of illness.
The levels of sulfides in the Coca-Cola consumed by the students was only enough to cause an unpleasant odor. It was concluded that this mass poisoning was, in fact, a mass manifestation of an imagined threat.
Soon videos of the girls fainting and convulsing had spread on YouTube, as well as national news stations.
They presented with severe headaches, numbness, nausea, fainting, and convulsions. Some 240 students were admitted to hospital, where doctors struggled to find the cause of their illness.
All of the physical symptoms experienced by the girls were caused by panic and a shared conviction that the vaccine would make them sick.
In 2014, adolescent girls in the town of El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia were given the HPV vaccine. Shortly afterwards, they began to experience some strange symptoms.
It was eventually determined, however, that the vaccine was safe and there was no organic cause for the symptoms. The incident was deemed a “mass psychogenic reaction.”
After this, more than 600 cases were reported across the country. Parents and students were convinced that the HPV vaccine was to blame for the spreading illness.
It started with a few students reporting symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, and headaches, shortly after drinking Coca-Cola. Within a few days, more than 30 students from local schools had gone to the emergency room and many were hospitalized as a result.
In reality, the condition was far less humorous than it sounds. The affected people exhibited a range of symptoms including pain, fainting, respiratory problems, and bouts of compulsive laughing and crying.
It’s believed that mass hysteria usually occurs during periods of extreme stress. In this case, the local people were suffering a period of famine and diseases such as smallpox and syphilis were a widespread threat.
Let’s take a look at some cases where communities failed to separate fact from fiction! Click through the following gallery to get started.
Dancing plague, contagious laughter, and other weird epidemics
Mass hysteria: A human phenomenon
LIFESTYLE Curiosities
There’s an incredible world of information at our fingertips these days, but this can have its downsides. In the age of social media, it’s easy for misinformation to spread like a virus causing fear and panic. We’ve all seen alarming headlines on our news feeds heralding the next end-of-the-world fad, but we can usually trust ourselves to judge which ones are worth worrying about.
Let’s take a look at some cases where communities failed to separate fact from fiction! Click through the following gallery to get started.