Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Some Really Interesting Cases of Mass Hysteria
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
- 0:04Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
- 0:12Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry
- 0:16Speaker 1: over there. Stuff you should know. I'm just so sick
- 0:20Speaker 1: of my voice right now. I just looked over almost
- 0:22Speaker 1: a check to see if Jerry was there. Even though
- 0:25Speaker 1: this room is so small, She's always visible, right. I
- 0:28Speaker 1: don't know why I did that. How are you okay?
- 0:33Speaker 1: It's a dude, it's my voice. Man, it's driving me crazy.
- 0:37Speaker 1: So wound up and caffeinated, and we just talked about
- 0:40Speaker 1: dark money. Oh yeah, maybe we should have recorded that
- 0:44Speaker 1: last Maybe he could have just done power lifting for
- 0:48Speaker 1: the rest of the day. Jim, what do uh? So
- 0:53Speaker 1: we did an episode. I'm not done talking about power lifting. Okay,
- 0:56Speaker 1: go ahead, I'm just kidding. I don't want to interrupt you. Uh.
- 1:00Speaker 1: November we did an episode on collective hysteria? Yes, not
- 1:05Speaker 1: too long ago. What is collective hysteria? Yeah? And it
- 1:08Speaker 1: was a good one. Was that a shot at me
- 1:09Speaker 1: just now? Because I interrupt you a lot? Was what
- 1:12Speaker 1: a shot that? You don't want to interrupt me because
- 1:14Speaker 1: I interrupt you? It's part of the show. Okay, I
- 1:18Speaker 1: don't mean to, and I feel badly when I noticed it.
- 1:22Speaker 1: How do you notice it? I would say six tenths
- 1:27Speaker 1: of the time, So three fifths is another way to
- 1:29Speaker 1: put that. I can live with that. Um, it was
- 1:32Speaker 1: a good episode, but we did not cover There are
- 1:35Speaker 1: a lot of cases of mass hysteria, and we only
- 1:37Speaker 1: covered a small portion. Yeah, we're not gonna go in
- 1:39Speaker 1: depth about what mass hysteria is. If you want that,
- 1:42Speaker 1: go listen to that episode, which is a good one
- 1:44Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. Yeah, we should talk about it
- 1:47Speaker 1: a little bit, sure, because I think there's stuff in
- 1:49Speaker 1: here that we didn't even cover about the overall thing,
- 1:52Speaker 1: or at least it didn't seem familiar to me. So
- 1:55Speaker 1: it's also called mass psychogenic illness, collective delusions, uh, conversion disorder.
- 2:01Speaker 1: What else? Um, no, no no, no, no, no, no, no no.
- 2:07Speaker 1: You need to duplicate that though with like tin Josh
- 2:09Speaker 1: is doing it at once. That's a good right there.
- 2:11Speaker 1: Maybe Jerry could do that, she says she can't. It's
- 2:15Speaker 1: a real thing, though, and basically it is when um,
- 2:18Speaker 1: people have physical symptoms of something without there being a
- 2:24Speaker 1: physical cause. Not only that, so that's a psychosomatic illness.
- 2:29Speaker 1: For a mass psychogenic illness, the psychosomatic illness is catching. Yes,
- 2:35Speaker 1: it's an epidemic, an infection of imagined illness, that's right,
- 2:42Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. Oh, it's amazing. I mean not
- 2:45Speaker 1: when you're going through it and you're suffering, because the
- 2:47Speaker 1: people who are suffering are actually experiencing suffering. Yeah, like
- 2:51Speaker 1: there there. It might be made up, it might be
- 2:53Speaker 1: all in their heads, but to them it's quite real. Yeah,
- 2:56Speaker 1: but it is sociologically and psychoical, logically, psychicologically speaking, I'm sick, people,
- 3:04Speaker 1: so I apologize if I'm not talking good m uh.
- 3:10Speaker 1: Psychologically speaking and sociologically, it's just like utterly fascinating. Um.
- 3:16Speaker 1: One thing that happens is is usually triggered by some
- 3:18Speaker 1: sort of stress, uh, some sort of emotional trigger. Yeah,
- 3:22Speaker 1: and it usually happens in very close knit communities. Um,
- 3:27Speaker 1: often among young women. They're very susceptible to it, apparently,
- 3:31Speaker 1: perhaps isolated communities. Yeah, and then communities of people who
- 3:35Speaker 1: are fairly high on the totem pole and that they
- 3:39Speaker 1: don't have a lot of social status necessarily or a
- 3:42Speaker 1: lot of say in their own lives. Um. And they, Uh,
- 3:47Speaker 1: this is a means of saying there's something very wrong
- 3:50Speaker 1: in my world. Yes, that's people who study these things.
- 3:54Speaker 1: That's what they've come up with. Like I've got no voice,
- 3:56Speaker 1: but I can break out in a rash. I can
- 3:58Speaker 1: bark like a dog and make you do it too, exactly. So, uh,
- 4:03Speaker 1: the outcome supposedly for this, for getting over this is
- 4:06Speaker 1: better in children than adults, even though more children are
- 4:09Speaker 1: stricken with it, it seems like than adults. But that
- 4:12Speaker 1: makes total sense, like a kid's more likely to follow
- 4:14Speaker 1: along with the crowd. But then also be like, what
- 4:17Speaker 1: were we just having a rash about? Let's go play Nintendo?
- 4:21Speaker 1: So let's all go play Nintendo because it's I wish
- 4:26Speaker 1: I had an old any Yes, like the original one
- 4:29Speaker 1: and a copy of Mike Tysones Punch Out. That's all
- 4:32Speaker 1: you need. Yeah, I was into the whatever that first
- 4:37Speaker 1: Mario game was where it was the big world? Mario Brothers?
- 4:41Speaker 1: Was that a super Mario Brothers? And then Metroid? Did
- 4:46Speaker 1: you play Metroid? I don't think so. I didn't play
- 4:48Speaker 1: a ton of Yes, but I played what was the
- 4:52Speaker 1: first really? Not Sega? Was it the first PlayStation that
- 4:56Speaker 1: had Street Fighter? No, I think street Fighter. I can't
- 5:01Speaker 1: remember what it was. I'll remember is that there was
- 5:04Speaker 1: Genesis maybe head street Fighter. No, I wouldn't say of Genesis.
- 5:08Speaker 1: This dude I had new in college had a street
- 5:10Speaker 1: Fighter and uh, Mortal Kombat. Yeah, Mortal Kombat was definitely.
- 5:15Speaker 1: It might have been Super Nintendo or did you play
- 5:20Speaker 1: Golden Eye? Oh? Yeah, man, that was the first great
- 5:24Speaker 1: first person shooter. It was so well done. Yeah. But
- 5:28Speaker 1: I just remember listening to Dr Dre's The Chronic and
- 5:30Speaker 1: playing Street Fighter and that was Mortal Kombat for a
- 5:34Speaker 1: year solid. And I think I went to school and
- 5:37Speaker 1: made grades in the classes. In the classes, man, I
- 5:42Speaker 1: need a nap. You want to talk about semes hysterias? Yes,
- 5:47Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about nuns in the Middle Ages? Yeah?
- 5:51Speaker 1: So in in uh, the in medieval times, not the restaurant, no,
- 5:58Speaker 1: but maybe there too. Um, if you had a sister
- 6:03Speaker 1: or a niece or a an aunt or somebody who
- 6:06Speaker 1: was a rightful heir to the estate that you wanted. Oh,
- 6:11Speaker 1: there weren't mental asylums at the time, so you couldn't
- 6:14Speaker 1: commit them, but you could have them sent to a
- 6:17Speaker 1: convent or a nunnery. Wow. So like a brother could
- 6:20Speaker 1: do that to a sister. Oh, yes, yeah, so you
- 6:24Speaker 1: could take you could usurp that that inheritance that was
- 6:28Speaker 1: rightfully there's Or if you had a daughter who was um,
- 6:32Speaker 1: unattractive or possibly disfigured, Uh, you could say, I don't
- 6:38Speaker 1: want the world to see you, I'm gonna send you
- 6:40Speaker 1: a comment or a nunnery. And it sounds pretty bad,
- 6:42Speaker 1: and in a lot of cases it was. But it
- 6:45Speaker 1: also was a good deal for a lot of young
- 6:47Speaker 1: women because they would get a high quality education. They
- 6:52Speaker 1: could pursue creative interests like drawing and painting and sewing
- 6:57Speaker 1: or whatever floated their boat outfits. Shore were sure, Um,
- 7:01Speaker 1: so it wasn't it wasn't all bad. But I was like,
- 7:05Speaker 1: why did did anybody get sent to convents? And that
- 7:09Speaker 1: was why to either get rid of them or to
- 7:11Speaker 1: give them an education that they otherwise wouldn't have had.
- 7:14Speaker 1: But these these places were very strict and tight knit,
- 7:17Speaker 1: and so they were ripe for mass psychogenic illnesses. Yeah,
- 7:21Speaker 1: I bet if you like your daughter like kissed a
- 7:22Speaker 1: boy that you didn't like, you could you know, if
- 7:25Speaker 1: you're worried about that. After the convents, after the nunnery Uh,
- 7:29Speaker 1: so we're gonna talk about a couple of cases with nunneries.
- 7:32Speaker 1: But uh, in medieval times there were more than one
- 7:36Speaker 1: hundred cases of mass hysterias breaking out. It happened a
- 7:39Speaker 1: lot those one in Spain and the fifteen hundreds where
- 7:43Speaker 1: nuns bleeded like sheep and had convulsions, one in France,
- 7:47Speaker 1: and four one where they yelped like dogs. Okay, uh
- 7:52Speaker 1: and then this one in France where uh, all of
- 7:55Speaker 1: a sudden, one day a nun started me owing like
- 7:58Speaker 1: a cat. Yes, caught on, caught on like wildfire. Apparently
- 8:03Speaker 1: in this convent. By within a few days, all of
- 8:07Speaker 1: the nuns were mewing and it was loud, like the
- 8:11Speaker 1: neighbors could hear it. Yeah. And not only mewing, but
- 8:14Speaker 1: it became a mewt in Unison. It became structured with
- 8:18Speaker 1: their mewing. So for a few hours a day they
- 8:20Speaker 1: would all get together and meow. That's right. Which imagine
- 8:25Speaker 1: just like stopping by on your travels because you you
- 8:29Speaker 1: heard this one convent has really good roasted turkey. Leg
- 8:32Speaker 1: you show up and you enter into a giant room
- 8:37Speaker 1: filled with nuns all me owing in Unison. Yeah, that
- 8:40Speaker 1: one might have been some guy's idea of a good time,
- 8:42Speaker 1: because you know, you just kind of make a face
- 8:46Speaker 1: and go help yourself to a turkey leg and kick
- 8:48Speaker 1: back and watch the weirdos meow. Well, here's one of
- 8:51Speaker 1: the problems though. In medieval times in France, cats were
- 8:54Speaker 1: not well regarded. They were thought to be of the
- 8:56Speaker 1: double uh, and so if you're meowing like a cat,
- 8:59Speaker 1: it's a nun It not good. They also believed in
- 9:01Speaker 1: demonic possession and um, so they brought in some soldiers
- 9:05Speaker 1: who said we're gonna whip you and beat you and
- 9:08Speaker 1: unless you stop me owing. And it worked and they
- 9:10Speaker 1: stopped me. Right. But that's that's a really important point
- 9:16Speaker 1: that there is a widespread belief that you could become possessed,
- 9:20Speaker 1: so in that it provides this platform that removes individual responsibility,
- 9:27Speaker 1: and that is the basis of this, for the person
- 9:31Speaker 1: to really experience it and take it away from an
- 9:34Speaker 1: act of their own will power and rather be a
- 9:37Speaker 1: sufferer of some weird illness. Is a belief that something
- 9:41Speaker 1: like this could possibly happen, and so they were possessed.
- 9:45Speaker 1: Rather than them just me owing and going along with
- 9:47Speaker 1: the crowd or whatever, they were instead possessed at the time,
- 9:51Speaker 1: and so their responsibility was removed and therefore they could
- 9:54Speaker 1: really give themselves over to it. Yeah. I think that's
- 9:57Speaker 1: the hallmark of mass psychogenic illness. Yeah. Absolute. It also
- 10:00Speaker 1: happened in Germany, not the me owing, but in the
- 10:03Speaker 1: fifteenth century, and none bit another, none in the convent,
- 10:08Speaker 1: and then I don't know if that none in turn
- 10:10Speaker 1: bit another, but they started biting one another a lot.
- 10:15Speaker 1: And that didn't just stick around that nunnery, It's spread
- 10:18Speaker 1: all over Germany. Well, they were worried that there was
- 10:21Speaker 1: like an actual infection going on. Yeah, that would cause
- 10:24Speaker 1: you to go crazy and bite people. And not only
- 10:26Speaker 1: did it spread to Germany, chuck, it also spread to Rome,
- 10:29Speaker 1: even all the way to Rome. Yeah. Um. And then
- 10:32Speaker 1: apparently they stopped biting when they got really tired. Yeah,
- 10:36Speaker 1: that was the end of that. That seems like a
- 10:37Speaker 1: very ham fisted follow up, wouldn't you be like that
- 10:42Speaker 1: was a weird week? Yeah, they probably did. But I mean, like, yeah,
- 10:46Speaker 1: it's very interesting that mass psychogenic illnesses in and of
- 10:49Speaker 1: themselves are very interesting. But I'm also interested in the
- 10:52Speaker 1: transition back to normalcy. How do you how do groups
- 10:56Speaker 1: that go through that like work that out to get
- 11:00Speaker 1: there or do they just now I don't know, Like
- 11:02Speaker 1: you said, that'd be totally weird to be like, hey,
- 11:04Speaker 1: remember last week when we were all me owing. That
- 11:07Speaker 1: was so weird and we're all of our roasted turkey legs.
- 11:11Speaker 1: All right, maw, let's uh move on to the kissing
- 11:15Speaker 1: bug scare of eight. Uh try a toman bugs. Uh.
- 11:22Speaker 1: They looks sort of like stink bugs, but they carry
- 11:27Speaker 1: a parasite that can cause a disease called Chagas disease,
- 11:33Speaker 1: and Chagas disease wasn't described until nineteen o six or
- 11:37Speaker 1: o nine, and this kissing bug outbreak was eighteen ninety
- 11:40Speaker 1: nine in the United States. And a kissing bug is
- 11:43Speaker 1: called that because they bite you. They feast on your
- 11:47Speaker 1: blood through your lips, which has only three layers of skin,
- 11:51Speaker 1: whereas the rest of your face has about sixteen layers.
- 11:53Speaker 1: Can't or your eyelids, sure, so it's easily penetrated, and
- 11:57Speaker 1: the bug will just sit there and suck on you
- 11:59Speaker 1: while you're sleeping. But it has a little parting gift
- 12:03Speaker 1: for you afterward. When it finishes feasting on your blood
- 12:07Speaker 1: through your lips, it turns around and poops on the
- 12:09Speaker 1: whole that it made on your mouth, and I knew
- 12:11Speaker 1: that was coming, and in doing so, it can infect
- 12:14Speaker 1: you with shagas disease. Yeah, no good. If you live
- 12:18Speaker 1: in the upper one third of the United States, you
- 12:20Speaker 1: don't have to sweat it. Basically, draw a line from
- 12:23Speaker 1: the top of California all the way across the United States,
- 12:27Speaker 1: and anything below that, um, you might have kissing bugs.
- 12:30Speaker 1: So by this bug was well known to science already,
- 12:35Speaker 1: but it wasn't popularly known. So it's an exotic, weird species.
- 12:39Speaker 1: And a couple of cases of shagas disease did sprout up.
- 12:44Speaker 1: But what spread this thing and turn it into a
- 12:47Speaker 1: mass psychogenic illness was newspaper reporting. Yeah, and this was
- 12:53Speaker 1: This one's a little bit different. It seems like most
- 12:55Speaker 1: of these cases of mass hysteria were pretty confined, but
- 12:58Speaker 1: this one is a clear indication of people having uh,
- 13:02Speaker 1: maybe a mosquito bite or any a bed bug maybe
- 13:04Speaker 1: and itching at it and then seeing something on the
- 13:06Speaker 1: news and then saying, oh, no, I got bit by
- 13:09Speaker 1: the kissing bug, right, and and so part of it,
- 13:12Speaker 1: part of what it was attributed to. And actually the
- 13:14Speaker 1: guy who is the head of the entomology for the U.
- 13:17Speaker 1: S d A at the time said that this was
- 13:20Speaker 1: He called it a newspaper epidemic. And it was because
- 13:22Speaker 1: the newspaper reporting so clearly described the symptoms that a
- 13:27Speaker 1: person's imagination could create these symptoms in himself for herself.
- 13:32Speaker 1: And so they started collecting bugs. Like if somebody was
- 13:36Speaker 1: bit by a bug or even saw a bug in
- 13:38Speaker 1: their house, they'd be like, oh God, a kissing bug.
- 13:40Speaker 1: Catch it and send it off to like the U.
- 13:42Speaker 1: S d A for analysis. And the USDA got everything
- 13:45Speaker 1: from like houseflies to bumblebees, a lot of bugs from
- 13:48Speaker 1: people who were worried that they were Um they were
- 13:50Speaker 1: they'd broken out in this kissing disease. Yeah, And the
- 13:53Speaker 1: good news is, uh, it stopped when the newspaper stopped
- 13:57Speaker 1: writing about it. Everyone was like, oh, it's just a bump,
- 14:00Speaker 1: will be And it happened in the nineties and the
- 14:02Speaker 1: eighteen nineties were really really weird decade. Um, there was
- 14:07Speaker 1: a lot of death cults that sprang up around the
- 14:11Speaker 1: around the world. But um, there there was have you
- 14:15Speaker 1: ever read that book Wisconsin Death Trip? It is crazy, man.
- 14:19Speaker 1: It's basically this really artful collection of newspaper clippings from
- 14:26Speaker 1: Wisconsin in the eight nineties and assembled it. It paints
- 14:31Speaker 1: one of the grimmest, bleakest pictures of humanity ever, of
- 14:36Speaker 1: of civilized humanity. Just the worst stuff happened to these people.
- 14:41Speaker 1: They did the worst things to one another. They just
- 14:44Speaker 1: endured so much. And it was a really really good
- 14:47Speaker 1: example of what happened in the eight nineties. Something weird
- 14:50Speaker 1: happened that decade. You should check that book out. It's
- 14:53Speaker 1: neat to just look through yet. Uh tomorrow, man, So
- 14:58Speaker 1: don't tell me anything. So speaking of the which actually, Chuck,
- 15:02Speaker 1: I want to give a plug to Cinema Jaw. So
- 15:05Speaker 1: you were on Cinema jaw like a few months back.
- 15:08Speaker 1: It's a great movie podcast, it is, and Um, I
- 15:10Speaker 1: was on it recently and their episode that came out
- 15:13Speaker 1: on Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday, and we talked about missing
- 15:16Speaker 1: persons like we did tie into our episode. Um, what
- 15:20Speaker 1: movies did you talk about? We talked about The Lady Vanishes. No,
- 15:26Speaker 1: not that one because I haven't seen it. Um, have
- 15:29Speaker 1: you ever seen The Vanishing? The original one from the eighties,
- 15:33Speaker 1: the Franco Dutch production that the superior? Right, So I'd
- 15:37Speaker 1: only seen The Jeff Bridges Keeper Southerland, which I liked,
- 15:41Speaker 1: but then I started reading up on it and I
- 15:43Speaker 1: was like, oh, this sucks. Compared to the original Dutch
- 15:46Speaker 1: version of anything before then, it's probably better. It was
- 15:49Speaker 1: so good, dude. I was watching it via YouTube on
- 15:53Speaker 1: my TV, so it couldn't have been more grainy. It
- 15:57Speaker 1: was in spoken French with Dutch subtitles, with English subtitles
- 16:02Speaker 1: have has hazardusly slapped over the Dutch subtitles, and I
- 16:06Speaker 1: was still like, oh man, this is so good. Good movie.
- 16:09Speaker 1: It was very good. Well, I can't wait to hear
- 16:11Speaker 1: that episode. Good check it out and see The Witch tomorrow. Yeah,
- 16:15Speaker 1: yeah they did. They did a review of The Witch,
- 16:17Speaker 1: and I put the phone out and just went like
- 16:21Speaker 1: I could just barely hear that they were still talking,
- 16:23Speaker 1: and when they finished, I put the phone back up
- 16:25Speaker 1: for the interview. Yeah, it's good to see horror movies
- 16:28Speaker 1: and you don't even know if you want to call
- 16:29Speaker 1: it a horror movie, but movies like that coming back
- 16:32Speaker 1: with like The Babba Duck, and it follows like people
- 16:35Speaker 1: are making good quality movies. Now. I didn't like The
- 16:39Speaker 1: Bubba Duck. Oh man, I thought it was great. A
- 16:42Speaker 1: lot of people did. It's got high ratings on Netflix.
- 16:44Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a break. Maybe we'll just
- 16:47Speaker 1: come back and talk about movies for the rest of
- 16:48Speaker 1: the show. All Right, we're back. We're so back to
- 17:07Speaker 1: talk about the Halifax slasher of ninety eight. Halifax, England,
- 17:12Speaker 1: not Nova Scotia. That's what I thought at first, Nova Scotia.
- 17:16Speaker 1: I didn't know there's two Halifax's, didn't neither Um Halifax
- 17:20Speaker 1: in November nineteen Uh, there was a woman named Um.
- 17:25Speaker 1: Two women, two women, Gerty Watts and Mary Gledhill. We're
- 17:30Speaker 1: taking a little walk after work at their mill. I
- 17:33Speaker 1: guess they were walking home and they said a man
- 17:35Speaker 1: came out and slashed us with a knife. Yeah, we're bleeding,
- 17:40Speaker 1: for God's sake, look at me. Blood, there's blood. Uh,
- 17:45Speaker 1: go find this creep. Right, that's what they told the cops.
- 17:48Speaker 1: And the cops are like, wa wa wa wa slasher
- 17:53Speaker 1: all right. So they started looking for the guy and
- 17:56Speaker 1: never found any trace of them. And it was like
- 17:58Speaker 1: kind of a thing for a little a while, but
- 18:00Speaker 1: it really became a thing five days later when another
- 18:03Speaker 1: woman came to the police station and said, look at this.
- 18:07Speaker 1: Some guys just came by and slashed my wrist. Yes,
- 18:11Speaker 1: that was Mary Sutcliffe and she supposedly fought him off
- 18:14Speaker 1: even and gave a very clear description of what he
- 18:16Speaker 1: looked like. So the newspapers are like, I think there
- 18:19Speaker 1: might be a slasher at large. And within the next
- 18:22Speaker 1: five days, several more people came forward, uh and came
- 18:25Speaker 1: to the police station or came to the newspapers with
- 18:28Speaker 1: stories about how they've been slashed by some anonymous stranger.
- 18:32Speaker 1: And Halifax was f freaked out. They compared the same
- 18:35Speaker 1: fear and panic to what was experienced during the Jack
- 18:39Speaker 1: the Ripper era. Um. People were just nervous that that
- 18:43Speaker 1: somebody was going to slash them. Yeah, the soccer hooligan
- 18:46Speaker 1: started beating people up like that guy didn't look right.
- 18:49Speaker 1: He looks like a slasher to me, that's what soccer
- 18:51Speaker 1: hooligans or a West Ham fan. Let's go take him down, um,
- 18:55Speaker 1: And it became a real problem. There's a couple of
- 18:57Speaker 1: things though. One these lashes, he wasn't a very good slasher.
- 19:02Speaker 1: These were all very superficial cuts. Uh. No one was
- 19:07Speaker 1: severely wounded at all in any of the cases. So,
- 19:11Speaker 1: but it was still confounding and people are still scared.
- 19:13Speaker 1: He could be a bad slasher, still could improve, So
- 19:18Speaker 1: we better call Scotland Yard and they did, and Scotland
- 19:21Speaker 1: Yards sent two detectives and the detectives said, well, let
- 19:25Speaker 1: us start interviewing witnesses, and the moment they did, they
- 19:28Speaker 1: found that the witnesses stories just started crumbling. Well, first
- 19:31Speaker 1: of all, none of the descriptions matched, so they thought
- 19:35Speaker 1: at first, the dumb cops in Halifax thought, well, maybe
- 19:37Speaker 1: there's multiple slashers. Scotland Yard said, there's not multiple slashers.
- 19:41Speaker 1: There's not one slasher. They're like they would have known that.
- 19:44Speaker 1: And Nova Scotia. The final lady Beatrice Sorrel, said, uh,
- 19:48Speaker 1: they finally, I guess they put the bright light in
- 19:50Speaker 1: her eyes. And she said I did it myself after
- 19:52Speaker 1: having a row with my boy, after she discovered she
- 19:56Speaker 1: was pregnant. She had bought a new razor blade and said,
- 19:58Speaker 1: I held hold of the blade in my right hand
- 20:01Speaker 1: and slashed down my left arm, making a long cut,
- 20:05Speaker 1: and my Macintosh coat and cardigan. And I know what
- 20:08Speaker 1: you're thinking, it's a waste of a good cardigan and
- 20:11Speaker 1: Macintosh whatever that is. I think it's a raincoat. Is it?
- 20:15Speaker 1: That sounds about right? Yeah, I think so, Mac the Mac. No,
- 20:21Speaker 1: I think a mac is a raincoat because the Beatles
- 20:23Speaker 1: song eleanor Rigby the Mac he never wears a mac
- 20:27Speaker 1: and the pouring rain very strange. Man, I never realized that.
- 20:32Speaker 1: All right, so Macintosh coat. I hope it's a raincoat. Uh,
- 20:37Speaker 1: then she said. I then put the blade back into
- 20:39Speaker 1: the cut and scratched down my arm twice and put
- 20:41Speaker 1: my fingers through the cut in the cloth. I saw
- 20:43Speaker 1: that they were covered in blood. The reason why I
- 20:45Speaker 1: cut my arm was because I was in a temper
- 20:47Speaker 1: and had been reading in the papers about girls being slashed.
- 20:51Speaker 1: So she, I guess was in a temper and it
- 20:54Speaker 1: wasn't just her. Like nine of the twelve victims eventually
- 20:59Speaker 1: confessed to doing it themselves. Um, and this this, this
- 21:04Speaker 1: is a weird mass psychogenic illness, you know what I mean?
- 21:08Speaker 1: Because these people are slashing themselves. They're not like catching
- 21:11Speaker 1: something they think is is making them dizzy or whatever.
- 21:15Speaker 1: They're cutting themselves and then going to the police and
- 21:17Speaker 1: saying a slasher did it. I guess for attention. Maybe,
- 21:20Speaker 1: well they did get attention. They got attention in jail
- 21:25Speaker 1: four weeks. Still, if you're like a normal, ordinary citizen
- 21:28Speaker 1: who slashes herself for himself, um, just for attention, four
- 21:34Speaker 1: weeks in jail, it's going to be a problem. I
- 21:36Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do four weeks in jail. Um. The
- 21:40Speaker 1: thing is, Chuck is I could not find whether the
- 21:43Speaker 1: first two victims were actually slashed at They didn't show
- 21:47Speaker 1: up in as far as I know, they weren't once
- 21:50Speaker 1: that confessed, and I didn't see that they got any
- 21:54Speaker 1: jail time. So did somebody initially get attacked and it
- 21:58Speaker 1: led to the slash or scare, or did they do
- 22:00Speaker 1: it themselves or to each other? That's I don't know.
- 22:04Speaker 1: The Halifax carrier on December two said, carry on, Halifax.
- 22:09Speaker 1: The slashing scare is over. The theory that a half graze,
- 22:12Speaker 1: wild eyed man has been wandering around attacking helpless women
- 22:15Speaker 1: in dark streets is exploded. Waca waka And I wish
- 22:21Speaker 1: I people talked so much better back then. Um, I
- 22:24Speaker 1: was in a temper Macintosh man. Uh. This is not
- 22:29Speaker 1: the only slasher mass hysteria epidemic. There's one in Taipei,
- 22:35Speaker 1: Taiwan in the fifties where there's this basically this idea
- 22:40Speaker 1: that there was a slasher walking around, and this one
- 22:42Speaker 1: was more akin to the kissing bug thing where people
- 22:45Speaker 1: who had cuts on them says, you know, you'll get
- 22:47Speaker 1: a cut every once in a while and be like,
- 22:49Speaker 1: where did I get that cut on my thumb? Right now? Okay,
- 22:53Speaker 1: if you had been susceptible to this Taipei Taiwan slasher scare,
- 22:58Speaker 1: you may have gone to the police have been like,
- 23:00Speaker 1: I was slashed because and this one was a little
- 23:03Speaker 1: more legitimate to me. The the idea behind the slasher
- 23:07Speaker 1: was he would brush past you in the crowd and
- 23:10Speaker 1: you wouldn't even notice you've been slashed until later. So
- 23:13Speaker 1: that that was yeah, it was that. That's the better
- 23:17Speaker 1: of the slasher mass psychogenic illnesses between that and Halifax.
- 23:21Speaker 1: If you asked me, I wonder if Tina fe was
- 23:24Speaker 1: a part of that. You know, that's how she got
- 23:26Speaker 1: that scar. Which scar she has a scar on her face,
- 23:31Speaker 1: and uh, she was slashed when she was a kid
- 23:33Speaker 1: playing in her front yard. She by some random crazy
- 23:36Speaker 1: I didn't know that, and that's kind of all the
- 23:38Speaker 1: information that's out there. She think admitted that in an interview,
- 23:42Speaker 1: and just that was the story slashing. It's just's a
- 23:46Speaker 1: terrible crime. Yeah, it just sounds like seeking and disfigure somebody.
- 23:50Speaker 1: It's like throwing acid on their face or something. Do
- 23:53Speaker 1: you remember that m Saturday Night Live. Mel Gibson was on.
- 23:57Speaker 1: It was back in the eighties and it was set
- 23:59Speaker 1: in the Old West, and he was like an Old
- 24:01Speaker 1: West like gun slinger. I just think of sheriff. But
- 24:05Speaker 1: his thing was rather than guns, he threw acid. It
- 24:10Speaker 1: was like matt acid or something like that. That's fantastic
- 24:13Speaker 1: it was. And he got a gunfight with somebody, he
- 24:18Speaker 1: like throws acid on him. And they didn't show that
- 24:20Speaker 1: the acid being like throwing on the guy. It just
- 24:24Speaker 1: showed the crowd's reaction and they were all like, oh god,
- 24:27Speaker 1: that's awful. Oh that's great. Don't you hate it when
- 24:32Speaker 1: you get a scene from a movie in your head
- 24:34Speaker 1: and you can't pinpoint where it's from. I got one
- 24:37Speaker 1: right now. There's there's a scene where a guy gets
- 24:42Speaker 1: slashed and right under the eye as like a parting shot,
- 24:46Speaker 1: like these students were gonna fight and it doesn't happen.
- 24:48Speaker 1: They just slashes the guy and the princess pride. Yes,
- 24:52Speaker 1: it is. It's not the Princess Pride. King Humper didn't
- 24:56Speaker 1: get it or Prince Humper didn't gets it from somebody.
- 24:59Speaker 1: It's what I'm thinking, Well that happens. Are you sure
- 25:02Speaker 1: there's something When you're thinking, yeah, somebody Old right in
- 25:05Speaker 1: and tell me. It was like they were faced off
- 25:08Speaker 1: and we're gonna fight, and then they and the guy
- 25:11Speaker 1: had a knife I think on his knuckle. And then
- 25:16Speaker 1: at the variant, Oh, I know, Platoon got it. Tom
- 25:21Speaker 1: Barnger and Charlie Sheen he cuts had had the blade
- 25:24Speaker 1: on his knuckle and he had it right in his eye,
- 25:25Speaker 1: and he was gonna punch him, and they all talked
- 25:28Speaker 1: him down and right at the very and he just
- 25:29Speaker 1: went slash and slashed him. Well, Platoon and Princess Bright
- 25:33Speaker 1: are virtually interchangeable, the same same story. Good point. So yeah,
- 25:39Speaker 1: Platoon was a good movie. That was a big college
- 25:42Speaker 1: movie for me. I'll watched that a lot. All right,
- 25:45Speaker 1: we're rambling, so that means we should take a break in.
- 25:48Speaker 1: Jerry Old, get us back in order. I think I
- 25:50Speaker 1: said Platoon is a good movie. All right, Chuck, Let's
- 26:20Speaker 1: head on over to uh tangan Yika also known as Tanzania.
- 26:30Speaker 1: You mean Tanzania, but back in nine two was known
- 26:34Speaker 1: as Tanganyika and um in Tanga Tanganyika, there was a
- 26:39Speaker 1: boarding school, a girl's boarding school, so you can understand
- 26:43Speaker 1: what's about to happen there. And some girls started to giggle,
- 26:48Speaker 1: and apparently it wasn't like a happy giggle. It was
- 26:51Speaker 1: like a nervous giggle, you know, like anxious laughter. And
- 26:54Speaker 1: it started to spread, Yes, which is normal enough, giggling
- 26:59Speaker 1: like the church giggle you ever heard of that it's contagious,
- 27:02Speaker 1: hard to stop. And that's usually if you're in a
- 27:05Speaker 1: place where you shouldn't be laughing and you can't contain it,
- 27:08Speaker 1: and then your friends starts laughing and you can't contain
- 27:10Speaker 1: it and you have to go excuse yourself. Then you
- 27:12Speaker 1: never go back in the room. So this supposedly lasted
- 27:15Speaker 1: though for like six months, six months to a year
- 27:18Speaker 1: and a half, spreading all over the place, depending on
- 27:21Speaker 1: who you ask. Uncontrollable and contagious laughter. Uh, they had
- 27:27Speaker 1: to shut down the school, yeah, for two months and
- 27:31Speaker 1: then they're like, okay, surely it's over, and I opened
- 27:34Speaker 1: it back up, started by back up. So this one
- 27:37Speaker 1: bothered me a little bit because you can't just constantly
- 27:40Speaker 1: giggle and laugh, and it's impossible. I read this this
- 27:44Speaker 1: interview with the guy. Um, I read the same one,
- 27:47Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune interview. Yeah, so that I think he
- 27:51Speaker 1: made a pretty good point. He was saying, like, there's
- 27:53Speaker 1: very there's a lot of misinformation about this. First of all,
- 27:55Speaker 1: it's called the laughter epidemic. So people just think like
- 27:58Speaker 1: it's like the Monty Python, It's Funniest Jokes Kit or something, right, Um,
- 28:03Speaker 1: that's not the case. It was again, it was not
- 28:06Speaker 1: joyful after it was anxious laughter. And then there were
- 28:09Speaker 1: plenty of other symptoms too. There was crying, there was pain,
- 28:11Speaker 1: there was fainting. Yeah, Um, and there was definitely laughter.
- 28:17Speaker 1: And it definitely did spread, but it wasn't just like
- 28:20Speaker 1: constant laughter. Yeah, and um it did. It did last
- 28:26Speaker 1: for at least six months, and it did spread to
- 28:27Speaker 1: other villages because when these girls who were at this
- 28:30Speaker 1: boarding school away from home were sent home because the
- 28:33Speaker 1: school was shut down, they actually took it with them
- 28:36Speaker 1: to their other villages, which suggests that the stress that
- 28:40Speaker 1: um kicked this off was not just at the boarding school,
- 28:43Speaker 1: that it was larger than that. And around this time
- 28:46Speaker 1: Tanzania was had gained independence, so there was a lot
- 28:49Speaker 1: of anxiety about what the future held. So it started
- 28:52Speaker 1: at the school where the girls were apparently very challenged academically,
- 28:58Speaker 1: and then uh, it spread it through the stress of
- 29:03Speaker 1: you know what, what's the future gonna bring. That's the
- 29:06Speaker 1: that's the official line that this one linguist has come
- 29:08Speaker 1: up with. I believe it. That one's not so great now.
- 29:12Speaker 1: I think that's one of the off sited examples though,
- 29:16Speaker 1: of a genuine mass psychogenic illness. You know, because the
- 29:22Speaker 1: fact that it's spread from outside of a tiny boarding
- 29:25Speaker 1: school into the larger into villages outside of it, that's
- 29:31Speaker 1: that's a tense situation. It is very tense. Uh. The
- 29:35Speaker 1: West Bank fainting epidemic of that spring, about a thousand
- 29:40Speaker 1: young Arabs in the West Bank started feeling sick and uh,
- 29:46Speaker 1: Like a lot of these cases, it's like dizziness, headache, weird,
- 29:50Speaker 1: stomach pains. It's like things that you can't really put
- 29:52Speaker 1: a finger on as far as tracing it back, like well,
- 29:55Speaker 1: this must be something. Uh. And so of course because
- 29:57Speaker 1: of where it was uh. And then these were young schoolgirls,
- 30:00Speaker 1: largely we're twelve to seventeen years old. So because of
- 30:04Speaker 1: where it was in the world, Uh, Palestinian leaders started saying,
- 30:09Speaker 1: you know what, Israelis are using chemical warfare against us. Yeah,
- 30:12Speaker 1: because the first kids to fall ill had reported smelling
- 30:16Speaker 1: like a foul odor, kind of like rotten eggs. And
- 30:19Speaker 1: if you're in that part of the world, you got
- 30:21Speaker 1: kids breaking out in rashes and and uh, stomach pain
- 30:24Speaker 1: and blurred vision and they're smelling something funny. That's pretty
- 30:28Speaker 1: logical conclusion to come to. And so the Israelis countered
- 30:31Speaker 1: back with if there's any chemical warfare being used, you
- 30:34Speaker 1: guys are using it on your own people, so you
- 30:35Speaker 1: can blame us. So these kids fell ill from the smell,
- 30:41Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Palestine and Israel are like
- 30:45Speaker 1: publicly going at it, accusing one another of using chemical
- 30:49Speaker 1: warfare on their own on Arab kids. This is a
- 30:53Speaker 1: big deal. When this happened, it was a big deal,
- 30:55Speaker 1: and it could have escalated to who knows what, But um,
- 30:59Speaker 1: the fact is there was nothing going on at all.
- 31:01Speaker 1: It was another case of mass collective hysteria. They closed
- 31:04Speaker 1: schools in the West Bank. Um, no one else got sick. Uh.
- 31:08Speaker 1: They've they've searched all the buildings and the schools, and
- 31:11Speaker 1: they found no chemical residue, no mouthfeasance going on whatsoever.
- 31:15Speaker 1: They found a smelly bathroom, though, and they think that
- 31:18Speaker 1: might have been the source of the initial foul smell
- 31:21Speaker 1: that kicked it all off. A stinky bathroom. Some boy
- 31:24Speaker 1: uh went into the hurt locker. He logged out. That
- 31:30Speaker 1: was a reference to a listener mail, by the way,
- 31:32Speaker 1: I know, and somebody else wrote in the best one
- 31:35Speaker 1: in my opinion, logged out. I was like, you want
- 31:38Speaker 1: logged out for taking a poop? I gotta go log out.
- 31:42Speaker 1: Oh that's okay, I got it. Well, that's pretty good.
- 31:45Speaker 1: It is good. It does relevant. It's like that Simpsons.
- 31:51Speaker 1: I think I just logged onto my internet. Do you
- 31:54Speaker 1: remember was that Ralph? No, it was m Carl went
- 31:57Speaker 1: back when they were kids when they can't fig about
- 32:00Speaker 1: why Homer's having a mental breakdown. It's because he discovered
- 32:02Speaker 1: a dead body years ago and then repressed the memory.
- 32:06Speaker 1: And Carl's talking about the interneting on his bathing suit.
- 32:10Speaker 1: And then later on he goes, I think I just
- 32:11Speaker 1: logged onto my internet. So great. They blamed the West Bank. Uh,
- 32:21Speaker 1: fainting epidemic on stress and anxiety. Uh. And then of
- 32:26Speaker 1: course there were news reports of the toxic gas and
- 32:28Speaker 1: so that's why it's spread. And Chuck, we can do
- 32:31Speaker 1: this all day, but we're not going to. Let's bring
- 32:34Speaker 1: it home with one more so. In Portugal, in May
- 32:38Speaker 1: of two thousand and six, there was a teen soap
- 32:41Speaker 1: opera called Save by the Bell, called Morongos calm asuka.
- 32:47Speaker 1: That's my Portuguese. What do you think? Pretty good? I
- 32:50Speaker 1: mean strawberries with sugar. It was the name of the uh,
- 32:53Speaker 1: the the teen show Delicious, And in May of two
- 32:56Speaker 1: thousand six, the show aired an episode where this mysterious
- 32:59Speaker 1: illness was striking kids down left and right, and the
- 33:03Speaker 1: source of the disease was at school. It was being
- 33:05Speaker 1: spread at school. It was a virus, and all of
- 33:08Speaker 1: a sudden, kids in the real world who were watching
- 33:10Speaker 1: strawberses Sugar started to come down with a very strangely
- 33:15Speaker 1: similar disease. Yeah. Um, I don't know if we said
- 33:19Speaker 1: it was in two thousand and six. All right, well,
- 33:22Speaker 1: let's drive that home because that was a big year. Um.
- 33:26Speaker 1: Was that the year we started our show No. Two
- 33:29Speaker 1: thousands seven eight, But we've added since two thousand eight.
- 33:36Speaker 1: That's crazy year eight man, who knew that we would
- 33:39Speaker 1: one day be veterans of a medium old veterans like
- 33:48Speaker 1: we were good around on our porch or their Confederate
- 33:51Speaker 1: pistols under our blankets. That's right. Uh So these kids
- 33:54Speaker 1: were not only at one school, they were at fourteen
- 33:57Speaker 1: different schools around the country, which was a little different
- 34:01Speaker 1: than most cases because usually it's like it starts in
- 34:03Speaker 1: this one school. But that's because the clear cause of
- 34:07Speaker 1: this was this television show that kids loved all over
- 34:09Speaker 1: the country. The yeah, was this episode of a TV show. Absolutely,
- 34:15Speaker 1: and luckily the Portuguese authorities health authorities, they did some
- 34:20Speaker 1: investigating and they figured out that this is mass psychogenic illness.
- 34:25Speaker 1: Pretty interesting stuff, and they said, what, the kids are
- 34:30Speaker 1: really stressed about our final exams? Well, they think it
- 34:33Speaker 1: started with some kids who had actual allergies and had
- 34:37Speaker 1: seen this episode and started worrying that their own allergies
- 34:40Speaker 1: were actually symptom of a disease that spread the kids
- 34:44Speaker 1: who were basically going along with it be out of
- 34:48Speaker 1: stress from exams. Yeah. The good thing about this one
- 34:50Speaker 1: is because it was two thousand six, you can go
- 34:53Speaker 1: on the internet and look at their articles. You can
- 34:56Speaker 1: log onto your internet. You can log onto your internet
- 34:58Speaker 1: and look up art articles that are like is the
- 35:00Speaker 1: strawberries with sugar virus? Real? Like people were writing into newspapers.
- 35:05Speaker 1: You know, my kid is having these symptoms, Like is
- 35:07Speaker 1: it a real thing? Did they or did they just
- 35:09Speaker 1: make this up? And it still goes on? I mean
- 35:11Speaker 1: apparently this these So there's two kinds. Basically, there's motor
- 35:15Speaker 1: um illness and then there's anxiety. And anxiety is more
- 35:18Speaker 1: like fainting, upset, stomach headache, motors where you're twitching and
- 35:23Speaker 1: mowing and stuff like that. Um. But there's supposedly hundreds
- 35:27Speaker 1: of these cases around the world every year. They happen
- 35:29Speaker 1: a lot. Maybe it'll come to your town if you're lucky,
- 35:32Speaker 1: join right in. I say, yeah me, Allen, bite the
- 35:35Speaker 1: night away, let it loose for a week. Uh. If
- 35:38Speaker 1: you want to know more about mass hysterias, go listen
- 35:40Speaker 1: to what is collective hysteria or other episode and then
- 35:43Speaker 1: uh you can search for mass hysteria also in the
- 35:46Speaker 1: search part Houston works dot com. Since I said also
- 35:49Speaker 1: it's time for your listener mail, I'm gonna call this
- 35:53Speaker 1: long overdue. I printed this one out months ago and
- 35:57Speaker 1: told Georgia that I was going to read it and
- 35:59Speaker 1: for god, it's about the fairy tales. Hedge Hedge. My
- 36:06Speaker 1: name is Georgia. I live in Stockholm. Hedge, I think
- 36:10Speaker 1: hatch hedges. Hey, hey, sure in Swedish. Uh, Stockholm Swedie. Yes,
- 36:17Speaker 1: we did another good episode on Stockholm. Singer right that
- 36:22Speaker 1: a k a. The Swedish Delight. Sure, that's what the
- 36:26Speaker 1: cops call it. He's got the sweih del My name
- 36:29Speaker 1: is Georgia and I live in Stockholm. I've been listening
- 36:31Speaker 1: to your show for a few years. I love it.
- 36:33Speaker 1: I recently listened to the Dark Fairy Tales episode and
- 36:36Speaker 1: I asked my husband about the term ashen put since
- 36:39Speaker 1: he's German and I often used Disney movies to help
- 36:41Speaker 1: teach me Swedish. Uh. He figured out that it's kind
- 36:44Speaker 1: of a play on words and implies a scullery maid
- 36:47Speaker 1: covered in ashes. Ashen is ash as opposed to cinder,
- 36:51Speaker 1: which is incorrectly used in the English name, since if
- 36:54Speaker 1: you were covered in cinders, you know severe burns. As
- 36:57Speaker 1: it is pieces of burning slag. It's true. It is
- 37:00Speaker 1: translated from the French word for ashes, which is cinda. Uh,
- 37:05Speaker 1: puto doesn't exist in German, he says, Uh, I don't
- 37:09Speaker 1: know that sounds so German to me. It sounds pretty German.
- 37:12Speaker 1: But the term for scullion or kitchen helper is ashan brutal.
- 37:18Speaker 1: I'm so glad you took German. So this is the
- 37:20Speaker 1: male form, he thinks, Ashan put it sounds like words
- 37:24Speaker 1: are just growing in your mouth, like you know those
- 37:27Speaker 1: dinosaurs you can get wet and they turn into giant
- 37:30Speaker 1: sponge dinosaurs. No, but I do know the little lead
- 37:33Speaker 1: pellets that you would like that would grow into big
- 37:35Speaker 1: snakes close enough, Those are what are growing in your
- 37:38Speaker 1: mouth when you're saying during the words. He thinks, ashan
- 37:41Speaker 1: puto is kind of a feminine version of Ashan brutal,
- 37:45Speaker 1: since German is nonsensical engendered her words. I hope this
- 37:50Speaker 1: information is still interesting to you, guys. Her in broad
- 37:53Speaker 1: dog edged hedge headge Georgia, thanks a lot. That was
- 37:58Speaker 1: extraordinarily intelligent listener mail and we appreciate it, agreed. Uh.
- 38:03Speaker 1: If you want to send us an extraordinarily intelligent message,
- 38:07Speaker 1: we love those. You can tweet to us at s
- 38:09Speaker 1: y s K podcasts. You can join us on Facebook
- 38:11Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
- 38:13Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
- 38:16Speaker 1: dot com and has always joined us at our home
- 38:18Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
- 38:26Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
- 38:28Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com