Haunted Cosmos - Mass Hysteria (S7, E3)

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

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This episode is brought to you by Jake Muller Adventures, a thrilling Christian audio drama. Some of the strangest events in history have been blamed on something called mass hysteria. Odd symptoms suffered by a group of people without any obvious cause. But is it right to blame high strangeness on what is supposed to be a merely psychological condition? Or is it better to question the high strangeness of mass hysteria itself? Dancing plagues, biting nuns, the Jersey devil? Are these figments of a collective imagination or something more? Join us as we hear the stories and dissect what they might teach us about the mind, the soul, and community.

Screams came from every direction, echoing down the roads of Ponce de Sperry, like a tidal wave of woe. It was a dark August night in southern France, a night of apocalypse. One man stood in the open window frame of a second-story apartment. wearing only his night robe, he cried out in manic ecstasy. I'm ready. I'm ready to fly. I'm a plane, a plane. On the street below, police shouted at the man to step back inside, but he ignored their petitions. The man launched himself into the air with wide eyes and arms outspread like wings. He laughed gaily as he fell to the earth.

When his body hit the cobblestone street, the police turned their faces away. On the fringe of the scene, ladies whimpered and fainted. He died on impact. Elsewhere, a boy, possessed by some awful power, crept into his mother's room. Thinking her a monster, he wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed. She woke with a breathless start and saw her own son bearing down with a look of complete and desperate malice in his wide eyes. Despite the inhuman strength that compelled him, adrenaline helped her loosen his grip, and she ran from her house weeping. She did not stop until she reached one of the town's two doctor's offices. There, she saw how serious the sickness had become.

Lines of men and women in states of total psychosis stood outside. Inside people struggled to hold the stricken townsfolk down on the beds. Some seemed to speak in tongues with angry or terrified voices. Others shouted in pain about the snakes crawling in their bellies or the invisible fire burning their skin all over. The woman grabbed a nurse and told her that her son was infected. The nurse could offer no help. She told the mother to return home and lock her doors, that the doctor would see him as soon as he could.

It was the mass poisoning of 1951 in Ponce St. Spree. For 10 days, starting on the 16th of August, over 250 people hallucinated the most gruesome and hellish horrors any of us could imagine. In the end, 50 people were committed to asylums, and up to seven people died. Subsequent investigations determined that an outbreak of ergo fungus had infected the people through their breast, But not everyone accepts this as the definitive explanation. What could drive so many to share the same unprecedented fears? What else might it have been? In addition to the fungus, some have supposed it to be yet another in a long line of mass hysteria episodes, specifically in remote France.

Because of course this was not the first bout of collective insanity to strike that country. And some of the other cases make one wonder if there could be something still deeper at play in that jewel of Western history. Along the northeast border of France lies the city of Strausburg. Today it stands as a postcard of busy modernity. But we should not let its current glamour fool us, for its beginnings are ancient and humble. In fact, Strausburg is one of the oldest continuously existing cities in all of Europe. Founded by the Emperor Nero in 12 BC as a military outpost,

Strausburg was first named Argentortem. It bore this name until people in the 5th century lazily settled on calling it what it literally was, Strausburg, Fortress on the Roads. From the year 362 until 1262, Strausburg was governed by a continuous line of bishops appointed by Rome. For those eight centuries, Strausburg proved itself an important player on the world stage.

Its population grew and flourished, its pedigree improved. In those years, it earned a reputation for standing at the cutting edge of politics, theology, education, and philosophy. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, its loyalty to the empire that founded it was not destined to last forever. In 1262, the people revolted against the rule of the church and placed the care of Strausburg into the hands of its resident bourgeoisie. Thus, Strausburg became a free imperial city.

It functioned as a self-governing city state subordinate only to the direct authority of the Holy Roman Emperor himself. It is during this period of self-governance that we find, another story of high strangeness and supposed mass hysteria. For in the midsummer of 1518, a horrible something plagued the otherwise tranquil hills of eastern France. It all started with a single woman known to history as Fraud Trafeia. On July 14th, Trafea stepped out of her timber frame home and into the popping colors of a medieval morning. The tragedy did not wait long to overtake her. Like the fleeting and involuntary temptation to jump when looking down a sheer cliff, an alien but powerful sensation, swept the woman off her feet. Had she possessed the gift of foresight,

Trofeo would have immediately broken out and screams at the anticipation of what was to come. As it was, she could not see the future, and met this force at first with a curious gaiety. It was novel to her. Her youth and naivete found her chuckling at first. It was an uncontrollable urge to dance. With delicate and feminine grace, one foot slid up onto its toe, while the other lifted into the air as if pushed by a gentle wind. Before she fully apprehended what was happening, and before neighbors and townsfolk paid her any mind, she was dancing as she had never before.

Again, she thought it fun. In those days, the world was more whimsical. She assumed this sensation was something all adults were familiar with, so innocent. But after only a few minutes, without any control over herself and without any remaining desire to experience this curiosity, her cheerfulness vanished.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop. Her husband, just as concerned as his now helpless twirling wife, begged her to stop. Unaware that she was at the mercy of the dance, he found himself embarrassed by the behavior. Every time he begged, however, his wife's response grew more convincing, I can't stop. What started as a game was now far from it. The girl was visibly frightened, tired, sweating, panting for breath. Neighbors looked on. As each new person observed Trafea,

They began by chuckling, but that didn't last long. It became evident the girl was not playing a joke. Thus, she danced, changing style as the day waxed and waned. Finally, once the sky went fully dark, she collapsed onto the ancient Roman road running through the middle of Strausburg. It was like a switch one second she danced, the next she lay in a deep sleep. Her body twitched and her feet were already swollen. They oozed from broken blisters.

Nobody understood what to make of it. Nobody ventured a guess. After some 14 hours of watching the poor girl dance in pain, everyone was sad, scared, and uncomfortable. Steadily, each person in the audience just turned and quietly made for home. Last of all, Trefea's husband gently picked her up and carried her back to her cottage, where he set her to bed. He hoped it was over. The next morning, right when dawn broke over what promised to be a lovely July day, Trafea pulled herself from the bed and began her dance on bruised feet. It was as if she had not woken herself up. Her expression was one of shock. She stared down at her legs, perplexed and pleading. Tears immediately poured

down her flushed cheeks. Again, an audience formed and watched helplessly. They listened to the cracking joints. They listened to the cries for help. They listened to the rhythmic thudding of feet on the earth. They could do nothing. But they also could not turn away. They too were under a kind of spell. At this point, the timeline grows uncertain. It was a either four or six days that everyone watched her dance, and at the end of that time, convinced her affliction was not going away and would eventually kill her, they devised what plan they could to try and save her life. Boreft of natural explanations, they surmised that their only hope lay in the supernatural. They forced her into a wagon bound for Severn, 30 miles away. There

stood a shrine honoring St. Vetus, the patron saint of dancers and entertainers, waiting for religious pilgrims. A martyr from the time of Diocletian, it was customary to celebrate his feast day with hours of dancing. This connection led the people of Strausburg to wonder if Trafea had been cursed by Vetus's spirit with a dancing plague as punishment for some hidden impiety. Of course, they likely thought this a mad notion themselves, but after watching the young woman suffer so long, they were eager to try something, anything. What's more, an appeal to God could only help. With her respects to St. Vetus paid, they left the writhing and crying girl in the care of monastic attendance, hopeful she would be healed and Straussberg would return to normal. Of course, their hopes proved false.

And it was at this point that the influence she suffered did something nobody could have predicted. It spread. Some of the onlookers who had studied poor Trafea began to mimic her, not only in motion but also in compulsion. Unable to control themselves, their bodies were carried off into the rogue wave. of misery that had already stolen the liberty of their friend. If we pause and imagine the scene, it's impossible not to feel the utmost pity. A brightly lit summer day in the beautiful region of Alsace.

The times light and golden and hopeful. It was the crest of Christendom in Europe. And within the city walls one finds to his horror, jigs of mirth and cheer performed by tortured, agonizing people begging for relief. There was no prayer one could offer. No saint one could successfully appeal to. no medicine to ingest, ceaselessly.

Dozens of living puppets bounced in pools of their own blood. Bones slipped from joints. Others broke altogether. Yet still, the dancing did not stop. It was a pandemonium of sound and flesh. As more fell under the sway of the wicked waltz, the city elders grew desperate.

They were willing to do anything to stop the dancing, or at least to stop its spread. Local clergy declared it a curse laid upon them by St. Vetus, while alchemists speculated that it was a natural disease caused by overheated blood. The rulers, torn between these opinions, devised a plan they hoped would work for either cause. The cure for the disease would be the disease itself. The people were ordered to dance themselves out of the dancing.

This was not entirely unreasonable on the surface. While many of the afflicted showed no signs of stopping, a precious few had danced and then eventually recovered. The rulers surmised that if some could be healed by letting the dancing run its course, then maybe all could. Guild halls were rearranged into dance floors. Stages rose in public markets. Musicians were hired to play drums and pipes to encourage greater zeal in the dancing. Healthy people, those still in control, were paid to dance alongside the sick, exhorting them to continue and lifting them up whenever they stumbled.

Unfortunately, this didn't work. Instead, it deepened the despair. Within a month, as chronicled by the Imland family, more than 400 townsfolk had been seized by the plague. Still, no relief came. A new plan was therefore hatched, one that inverted the original. Stages were dismantled, music ceased, and dancing was banned by the council, at least until the plague went away. Then news came from Severn.

Trafea, patient zero, had finally been cured. In response, those still afflicted were hauled away to join her by the wagon load. A wooden icon of Vetus was erected in the town center, and any who missed the wagons were corralled toward it. The dancers were told to look to the image of the old saint for succor. They were given crosses to hold. Their feet were anointed with holy water, incense burned in heavy clouds, and Latin prayers were recited over them. At last, as more were sent to Severn, more word returned, reporting full recovery.

More were sent. Until slowly, and with none of the questions answered, the phenomenon stopped. For over a month, hundreds of people in Strausburg had danced uncontrollably and involuntarily, even to their own physical detriment. At its height, as many as 15 people per day died as they danced, their final hours filled with confusion, pain, exhaustion, and no hope of relief. But what was this? According to Paracelsus writing eight years later,

it was an elaborate trick by the town's women to embarrass their husbands. It began with Trafea and spread as others witnessed her success. This explanation, though, rings a little hollow. At any rate, it was not only women who danced and died. Others believe it was a type of mold that grows on old rye bread and when consumed causes convulsions and hallucinations, the ergo fungus I mentioned earlier. Yet this effect lasts only a short time as the mold ultimately cuts off blood flow to the extremities. If this had been the culprit, many days of dancing would have been impossible. The best explanation modern historians offer is mass hysteria. This dancing plague had occurred before, more than once actually, and always in the same general

region of France. Clearly, the scientists say, the peasants heard these stories, and given the despondent poverty they endured, gave themselves over to despair and danced to death simply because they could. To that, I have just one question. One stubborn point. If it's true that this was all mass hysteria born from stories of previous dancing plagues, then what caused those earlier dancing plagues? Well, after waiting a shockingly long time for Ben to finish drinking from his cup into the microphone. Welcome to this episode. Easy for you say. Drinking for loudly. If I recall, collect it.

First question for you, Ben, should we put a stop to women and or France until we figure out what's going on? Yes to both. And nuns. Like, should we shut down nuns until we figure out what's happening? I don't get the whole nun thing. Like the... You know what really grinds my gears?

Nons. The monks make more sense. The monks come in, beat the nuns. mercilessly. I don't mean that makes sense. They're just beating them with iron rods. Crazy. Crazy. It's wild.

I definitely would have not thought of doing the same thing. Never. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Please get it. Okay. Welcome to this episode of Hon. Cosmos.

We are, this actually is one of my, one of, to me, one of the more interesting ones in a while that we've done. Dude, so true. Because it's just so

flipping weird. I've always wanted to do a mass-stera thing. Yeah, and there's a lot of them in history. Yeah, there are. They're ours. Yeah, there are. Yeah, they're ours. I heard of one from, I think it was like Taiwan.

It almost made it into the show. But I wanted to focus on nuns and French women. But I heard of one from Taiwan that was like this one kid in school started laughing. Yeah. Couldn't stop. He couldn't stop laughing. Whole school shuts down because all the kids are laughing. And you know how they knew it wasn't mass hysteria?

Because I was there telling jokes. We weren't there. we weren't there. Because if they saw even milliseconds of our patois, our banter, any content. Any content. Any of our content. They would have been laughing for months.

Yeah, it was amazing. No mass hysteria, just normal behavior. No mass hysteria is pretty cool. In this episode, we're going to be exploring mass hysteria. What is it? Yeah, what is it? Is it in itself a kind of high strangeness? Or is it so like, is it natural, but it's so deep into stuff that we just don't know yet,

that it may as well be high strangeness. And then also we're going to finally answer the question that's been at the forefront of everyone's mind since the beginning of time. Really the human spirit. Why do women do what they do? Ladies, what are you doing? All my ladies out there, all my sisters,

appreciate y'all. Okay, so we've already, like, we've gotten the negative reviews. Got to chuckle out of Evan. We've gotten the negative reviews to Hon. Cosmos, the one-star views because of the accents that we do.

Oh, so you are saying that not everyone I loves the accent. No, which is funny. You know what I did notice? Would you like us in the guine? No one ever says, I'm triggered that you spoke in a British accent. I'm American. But they do when we use a Japanese accent.

So why are you all so racist? What about, what about, does anyone get triggered when I do this? Wingapo. Yes. I can see. See? No, I'm Native American.

We can do it. I can feel the grass and it's telling me. Wait, hang on. That a white man was here. But really what he's doing is he's picking up a Zen Alp. Or a Zen Alp. A Zen that's been used. The white man has been.

A herd of buffalo approach. Many miles off. Look, yonder. I get, I'm new sketched Japanese accents. Look. Okay. Green salamander. A murder of crows comes over the ridge line.

It's like when. Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? It's like when Legolas stands up and he says, a red sunrises. Blood has been spilled this night. I just love the idea of Tucker. I don't know what just made my mind go to this. But imagine,

you know the guys on Instagram that pretend to be Tucker Carlson and they're like, go to the hobbit? So funny, yes. Sartreman is telling us, interesting. If they did that for all Disney movies, like the question, can you paint with,

all the colors of the wind, begs the question, something. Something funny. That vibe was like the Jordan Peterson thing. Yeah. What does it? You asking if that happened begs the question,

what do you mean by happen? One of the best Jordan Peterson moments. So this whole bit was to, so that I could now say, we've offended everybody, one star reviews with our ethnic impersonations, our accents. Now we are going to offend an even larger group,

all women, everywhere because you will notice in this episode with one big exception that with just an exception two two exceptions a lot of it is the women except for

let me give the exception especially when you put them all together in a convent and you just say just exist here with no with with with not enough men telling you what to do look quite frankly look if you ask me I think that most of the women I know in my life.

Even the non-Christian women that I know would say that a convent is a bad idea. Let's just say that if you leave enough women alone for long enough, they'll all descend into mass hysteria within. They'll start meowing. Eight to 25 minutes. I mean, they're going to be meowing. They're going to be biting. Acting like dogs.

You walk in there. And they were taking mouthfuls, dude. Yeah, they were. They weren't just biting. They were taking flipping mouthful. of people. Look, say what you will. Say what you will about those monks

beating them with rod. Come on. Like, you're getting, his self-defense. But like, if you had a, a person, person. Yeah, anybody. Toddler.

Biting that. Actually, so my wife used to work with kids with autism. Yeah, I mean. And no, there was no beating with rods. No, I mean the biting, though. Yeah. You got to be careful.

It was a big deal. They had people go to the hospital all the time. Yeah. Because these kids would bite chunks out of the, out of the, out of the arm. And I was like, what do you do? Like, if a kid in this situation,

lock jaw, dude, and you can't shake him. Yeah. What do you do? And she said that the protocol is, and this is full, I mean. She said it. She's an expert. Yeah. Has it agreed.

This is like the protocol is you grab the back of their head and push them harder into your arm. Oh. So that it makes their teeth hurt. And then it like. Yeah. And then they go, oh. And they spit out the chunk of your arm. Yeah.

Wow. So the damage has been done. So we're. We're off to a good start here in this episode. So anyway, we're talking about Massa's area today. What is it? You know, and then also we're going to see if we can find some biblical parallels that may or may not match up to these stories, but just on the women thing.

Very interesting. It is a, I just want to get this out of the way. It actually is Wikipedia confirms this. No, it's true. We're not just joking. That in a non-purely sociological way, although I'm sure that has something to do with it, women are more susceptible to mass hysteria than men, and they can't pinpoint like a,

and this is why. Women, children, and adolescence. Yeah, like a purely biological reason to say like, and this is why. It's just as interesting. Okay, look, I'm going to, we're probably going to reveal it to some degrees that we are more based than some of the Honod Cosmos listeners.

Let me just put it that way. Yeah, we're very conservative in this episode. I am wildly right wing. Yeah. Some people know this, some don't. Many do. many people, you know, particularly love how right wing that I am so much so that they protest my existence and call me names. So, anyway, Brian and I both have received death threats.

Many death threats. You know, for right wing conservative views that we firmly believe that. That I want to take this opportunity to apologize to absolutely nobody. So, but anyway, I will. say I do think that there is a biblical explanation for why, for why women are more susceptible to mass hysteria. Yeah. And it comes back to how the scriptures speak to the duties of women, the office of the wife, and also the duties of the husband in light of these things. A husband is told that he's to treat his wife gently in an understanding way.

Because she's the weaker vessel. Yeah. We're told that the husband is the head of his wife. And in a way that the wife is not the head of him, that she is to submit to him. in a way that he's not called to submit to her in the exact same way. And so I think this shows that there is something about the frame of the woman that does tend towards mass hysteria or at least,

and it's not that only women engage in these things, but that she is more likely because of her nature. Paul indicates that it could be. It could be that women in their nature are more easily deceived because he mentions the fact that it was Eve who was deceived and not at

Adam wasn't. Adam sinned. He sinned in a more high-handed way. He sent high-handedly. Eve was deceived. She was tricked. So that is something, too. You know, we tend to flatten the weaker vessel thing. Yeah. And basically until it means nothing. It's just some physical women tend to be physically less strong than men. Yeah, but hey, I know a woman that's stronger than Evan. Who? That's the Naxalt fallacy. Not all extra-alphal. Oh, yeah. No, generally women are weaker than men physically, yes. But also. hated Evan over there. I know.

I'm sorry. Evan just caught a straight. Her name's Olga, by the way. The woman who's stronger than she's a train. She's six foot nine.

She's six foot nine. No. But also emotional stability. Women tend to have less of a ability to compartmentalize things, which is actually good for them because of their duties

with household nurturing and wanting to bring in and all this stuff. But it does mean that, you know, in terms of gifting and men and women working together. Husbands lead their wives.

And women tend to be more mirroring and more consensus building, which is a lot of these things are actually features of her design and what God told her to do. So they're not bad things. They're just their things that are true. So I do think that explains some extent

of why genuinely women do seem more susceptible to mass hysteria than men. And so ladies, let me take this opportunity. Let me take this opportunity. Just to say, from the bottom of my heart. Calm down. And hang on.

I'm not done. Get a hold of yourselves. Okay. Hang on, hang on. Just, and it's like you're feeling, you're feeling a lot of stuff. But women love it when you tell them to calm down

because it tells them that they have been worked up and that they need to calm down. It affirms them. Yeah, and most of the time when you tell, like, man, this is a tip for you. If your wife, sister, like anybody in your life who's a lady has ever, like, worked up, you can always just say, you really need to calm down. And it usually helps immediately. They realize they've lost their

cool and they thank you. There's no collateral. There's no collateral. There's never anything negative that will happen to you because you say that. Okay. Now, anyway, what were you going to say? Well, I was going to say, I just wanted to have that moment with, with the listeners. And now that you said that, what I'm about to say is going to sound less sincere. Okay. But before you start thinking that we're going to title this episode, the high strangeness of women. Yeah, which we're not. We do want to know that it is not only women.

There's the children thing. Yeah. And that kind of makes sense, you know. Yeah. But also men fall into the mass delusion, mass hysteria stuff quite frequently as well, just not as frequently. And you even see that in the cold open with guys, you know, jumping out the window saying, I'm a plane.

I'm a plane. And a kid choking his mom. I guess it's a kid, though. Yeah, he was a child. And then there was plenty of men. Oh, the men were who succumbed to the dancing plague. And also the men who were supposed to be in charge in a lot of this stuff, they're like, I don't know, let's execute this guy.

Yeah, you can look at Footloose, a modern equivalent. Okay. Mass hysteria if I've ever seen it. Really? Led by Kevin Bacon. And that's a man. And he's a man. He actually has the most masculine name of all time.

Kevin. Bacon. Kevin is like, first and last name. You meet a Kevin. You know what you're good. Dude, you know. You don't need to know anything about this Kevin. Yeah.

Every Kevin in the world is straight. I don't know, actually. I saw a reel the other day that said, I think said that Kevin was like a potential gain. Okay, like demographically, Kevin's at our church are like 70% more likely to be an elder. That's true. Because two of our Kevins are elders.

Yeah. Hey, sound off in the comments if your name is Kevin. And also like and subscribe if your name is anything. Is it is not Kevin. Hey, can I ask you a question? then are there any biblical equivalence or like am I my jump in the gun here to ask you. No, you're good. You can jump in it. Like are there some, we've, we've spoken to some biblical explanations for maybe like some,

we haven't gotten deep into the mechanics yet. We'll talk more about where mass hysteria comes from. Spiritual, physical, there's interplay here. But are there biblical examples that you can think of? The ones that I was thinking. Because I actually, I'm like drawing a, I'm drawing a blank here. Oh, dude, get ready. I was thinking. I'm going to feel so dumb. Of all the time. You are, no, you're not. When he says it. You're not, but I think you'll be pleased. Is it the pigs? No. No, it's not the pigs. Running off that clip.

It's every time in the Old Testament when God says, I'm going to place the fear of Israel in this opposing army. I'm going to confuse them. I'm going to throw them into confusion. And then they all kill each other instead of actually fighting Israel. Like Gideon with the Midianites. That's a good example. Right? Isn't that kind? It's not like a one to one because we can't pretend to know. Yeah, there's less dancing. There's not no dancing. But there's not no dancing. I imagine. I'm speculating. But there's less. But it's this idea that like look at it from the Midianites perspective. Okay.

All right? I often try to. Don't. Look at it from the Midianites. They're chilling in the camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next thing you know, they hear a couple dozen guys yell, for the Lord and for Gideon. Yeah, yeah.

Like it sounds like a whisper. It's a camp. A bolt from above. Hundreds of thousands of people. Yeah. And there's this one little corner where they're going like, for the Lord and for Gideon. And then there's some barrel or some jars they throw in. Yeah.

And next thing you know, ah, lights. All the Midianites descend into a complete panic. Yeah. A delusional panic. It is literally a delusion. And they kill each other. That seems like if you look at it from their point of view,

it probably looked similar to some of these mass hysteria cases. Yep, yep. Especially the one that we'll be talking about in the hot clothes. But I'm not going to give that away yet. Ooh, dude, that's foreshadowing right there. That's foreshadow. Oh, dude, that shadow is four. What?

Nah, that one didn't work. It worked. It didn't work in my head. So mass hysteria, let's talk about some physical. Yeah. Is that, is that cool with you? We talk about some physical reasons that people could have this.

This is your show. Okay. In that case, let's talk about some physical. Let's talk more about women. I'm kidding. Yeah. No, no, no, no.

We do have, you pointed this out in the preparation for this episode that people have what's called mirror neurons. Yeah. And I remember learning about these in AP psychology. Wow. Back in 11th grade. I had never heard about it until like two days ago.

Mirror neurons are neurons, neurons at fire when you watch somebody else do something, kind of as if you're doing it. Yeah. And then I actually, I hope I'm explaining this correctly because I'm drawing on 11th grade AP psychology right now. I got you. And it's one of the ways that we learn how to do something imitatively. We watch somebody do something, monkey see, monkey do. Ben, have you heard of the Jake Mueller adventures? What's that? A Christian audio drama. Zombies, vampires, global conspiracies, and faith at the center. I was up all night on the edge of my seat. Is it fully immersive, sound effects and cast and everything?

Yes, full cast, cinematic sound. It's like you can hear the danger coming. Ooh, so kind of similar to Hanna Cosmos, but know your mom jokes and more drama? No mom jokes yet. But yeah, tons of drama. So it's kind of like your mom then. Not quite. Check it out at jakemulleradventures.com slash haunted for 10% off.

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Josh, my guy! What the heck? How did you just appear? Head to valentecreative.com slash NCP to talk with Josh about your brand and website. Oh, oh, this is an ad that we're doing right now? Wait, wait, how did he teleport into this room? Ben, I wish I could tell you, but this is an ad. You have to go to valentecourative.com slash nCP and reach out today.

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For more information and to get a sample pack, check out Gratototatoll.com. Don't forget to use the code Cosmos 15. That's all caps. Cosmos 1-5 for 15% off your order. Bing. Yeah, so you see and then you do what you're seeing. You imitate. You mirror. Right.

But it's more than that because it's like not just that you do it. It's that they fire as if you are doing it. Yeah. This is the distinction. So the thing that I saw was you can think of the mirror neuron. And actually the picture that I saw was of a guy holding a little baby monkey. And in the first frame, he sticks his tongue out at the monkey. And in the next frame, the monkey sticks his tongue out at him.

Yeah. I don't know why they used a monkey because you could just do that with a child. Because my kids will do that. My kids will do almost anything. And that, from what I understand, that's like a low. common denominator tier of mirror neurons that basically everyone experiences and can relate to. The level that they're saying where it may be connected to mass

hysteria is when they're saying that when you observe it, you feel like you are doing it. Yeah. So your brain is telling you you're doing that thing. It's a part of you. Like when I watch Alex Honnold, free solo, half dome. Yeah. Or free solo that Chinese.

building. Yeah, yeah. Wing-ting-Tong, I think it was called or something, the Wing-Ting-Ting building. I think it was called General Sals Building. That's what it was. Yeah. That's what it was. When he was climbing the sweet and spicy General Sals building.

The egg drop. There was a part of me that was like, like I was, your hand starts sweating. I'm getting clammed up. Yeah. I'm getting clammed up. Yeah. I'm like feeling like I'm about to fall off like a cloud. Of a sweet and spicy, delicious building.

Crunchy, crispy. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, and I think we can all identify with that. Mm-hmm. Is that mirror neurons?

I think, yeah. Yeah. So I think that's good of it. It's part of it. Is where you're, so that'd be a kind, again, this is all Wikipedia. We, which is a primary source now. Wikipedia is just as good as, like, I mean. Here's the thing.

Has it ever been wrong? I'm going to, I am going to tie this back to women. Okay. Okay. But for a very, I think a very legitimate reason. Not that anything you said wasn't legitimate. But the, that was good. One of the, one of the besetting sins of the female, generally.

There are so many good clips in this episode. Is, is a toxic form of empathy. Yeah, no, I was going to bring it up. I'm glad you did. So where if a woman sees someone hurting, a man's instinct is to rescue. A woman, generally speaking, a woman's instinct is to go and sit with them and hurt with them. And that's the nurturing. Like, it's a corruption of something.

that is good. It's good. A good instinct, but it's taken way too far. And that is kind of like the mirror neuron thing where you see, you observe someone doing or experiencing something. And it's as if you are experiencing it yourself. It's like the meme where it's like, oh no, someone cried, rip up the constitution. You know what I mean? Yes, exactly. Oh no, a child is crying. Yes, we, yes. No more borders. So it's like the mirror neuron thing that would connect to mass hysteria can be the empathy thing where, where, you know, you see, uh, frau trafea dancing. Isn't that like German? Frau? Fraule. Yeah, Fraulein is German for woman. Okay. Yeah, but back then, they're same thing. Frankish. Frankish. Yeah, it's Frankish. Yeah. And so I think back then it was just like

the woman named Trafea. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, you see her, she's hurting. She's in pain. And the mirror neuron thing is, like you are also doing that. Yeah. And then because your brain is telling you you are doing it, your body eventually catches up and you start doing it. Women like to look in mirrors a lot. Ergo

they have more mirror neurons. Therefore, like such as the Iraq, they dance. 100%. I think that all track. Goodness, I better myself. Can I tell you that speaking of Fraulein, I have a character I do for my wife, one of the many

ethnic characters I do. I know some of them. Which one is this? This one is detrique. And sometimes he just flirts with her in like kind of a vaguely, like German sort of accent. How do you flirt with someone in a German way? I want to. I can't do any of it.

Okay. But I do. Hey, stay tuned for the next season of the Graveyard shift where you'll get to see how awkward it can get around Brian and Lexi when we interview her. Oh, she's in it. Yeah, she's in it. Yeah. Look, I don't do any ethnic impersonations there, but. But you could have.

But leave us five-star reviews to offset the people. Like, leave us five-star reviews that say five-star review because of the accents. Yeah, more accents. Like, we need more of that. Yeah. So is it time for the next story before we continue to discuss or what's the... Well, do you want to talk about the Urgot or... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I call it Urgot. So I, you want to know the only reason I call it ergo? Let's hear it. It's because I've only heard about it in reference to French stories. And it seems like a French... A Frenchie, a Franceman. A Frenchie kind of way. When you hear me read the next story, I do try to like split the diff between

using like a full French pronunciation because I took a lot of French. I speak some French. And then like an American, I'm trying not to lose total credibility with all my boys, like with all the bros by pronouncing it too French. Yeah, yeah. But I think I slipped a couple times. Yeah, totally. So speaking up.

I do want to talk about ergot poisoning. Yeah, like subscribe and comment if you appreciated the fact that I was able to just say Ponsant-E-S-Pri so easily in the cold. Yeah, yeah. It was like, was it P-N-P-N-T? P-O-N-T. P-O-N-T. Was it P-O-N-T? Was it the bridge?

Because P-O-N-T-P-E-C-E-C-E-B-E-E-B-E-E-W-E-W-E-E-W-S-E-E-E-E-RG-E-E-E-E-E-Rgettmosinthew. Okay, okay. It's the saint, the spirit of the saint-Bridge or something like that. I think that's what it means. Spirit of St. Bridge. We all get that. Anyway, the ergot poisoning theory is interesting, but it doesn't actually, like, people do this for multiple historical mysteries,

where they're like, oh, I got ergot poisoning. Yeah. Because it's a fungus that grows on the grain on rye. It can happen. It really does cause psychedelic. It causes, like, convulsions. It has LSD in it, so it really, it messes you up. Yeah, like people are hopped up on drugs, anybody who's eating bread.

The problem. any time. The problem is that it constricts the blood flow to your limbs, so you can't move. You convuls for a while. Within a pretty quick time period. And then you stop being able to move. So the fact that it went on for days and days and days for these people, that literally wouldn't make it. Maybe it would be impossible. Maybe they took

a little bit. Carbo loaded. Sure. They danced a little bit. They wore it all off. Could be. Could be. I don't know. The other way in if you're a doctor. Or if you have access to AI and can ask it. Like comment and subscribe if you're a doctor. The other thing that it could be is

I read this thing called Tarantella. Okay. And it was this belief that if you get bit by a wolf spider in northern Italy, it makes you dance. And then it became the Tarantella dance. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not kidding.

Because it's a type of spider? Yeah. Well, no. So they thought that like a wolf spider in particular. Okay. Apparently is really common in northern Italy, which whatever. Sure. It would explain Italians.

Yeah. I'm going to leave that just as vague as I can. that if you get bit by it, one of the side effects could be that you succumb to the tarantella. Yeah, and then the dance. And then the side effect is that you dance. Okay.

And the answer for the dance is to do the dance, a specific dance. To stop it. That the church came up with that would stop it. I thought maybe that the cure was that you had to go bite a spider. No, but that'd be sick. The spider bites you and you have to bite one back. It's kind of like real-life Spider-Man, though.

Like you get bit by a spider and then a radioactive spider, and you get kind of powers. It's just the powers are a bummer. Why is there no movie where a man, a radio-wiked, man bites a spider? There could be. And that spider that gains the power of like procrastination. And they call them man spider.

You're welcome. This is cinema. Yeah, the ergot poisoning thing. I think it has some weaknesses in terms of an explanatory. Didn't they try to explain the Roanoke with ergot poisoning? Did they?

I think that's one of the theories. I could see that. I think ergotism, like they... There's so many explanations for Roanuck that I can't keep track. Yeah. So it is, it's one of those explanations that are a little too convenient. And I just, honestly, the way that I think about it is that it is much more likely the psychological phenomenon of mass hysteria. The mind is a powerful thing.

I don't actually even think it's super spiritual. No, me neither. And demons. I think... First time on Hanukasmos. It was a... I actually think people are just quite capable of working themselves up. Have you ever seen a toddler?

Yeah. And then do anything? And people are also really good at transferring their workupness to others. Absolutely. Yeah. Especially, and I cannot emphasize this enough. Especially women. This is a real thing.

Women. There's actually a study that like. And if that's making you feel like worked up ladies, can I just tell it like what I'm saying? It vindicates us. You're kind of proven my point. No, there actually has been sociological studies done on women's interaction on social media and how like women don't have a calming effect on one another when one of them is losing their mind, is like kind of losing it.

Or panicking. And instead, like women tend to descend to the most emotional person in the room. Really? Whether nurturing them with sympathy or succumbing to their level of crazy via toxic empathy, whereas men tend to have a social practice of calling the one up. Yeah. And saying like stop acting like that. Hey, you know, you're embarrassing.

Usually by calling your names. Yes, exactly. Which is perfectly fine. That is just like a noticed trend. If you're hanging out the boys and one of them's acting kind of dumb, like you just start calling him names until he stops. And they'll eventually just be so sad that they stop talking altogether. Yeah. And it happens to me all the time.

And it's a blessing. It is. It's a huge. It's a bless. It's my boys loving me. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this next story where I pronounce a lot of French words.

I do just want to say a lot of this would have been prevented. I'm not, not by indigo sundry soap, actually, believe it or not. No. But just by knocking it the heck off. Well. But indigo sundry soap does help you. Indigo sundry soap could have cleaned up the mess. After they beat the nuns.

Exactly. And after they got all bitten up by the nuns, they could have cleaned up with indigo. So get into Ghosundry soap if you like what we're doing here at Hanna Cosmos. Yeah. Because it really is the solution to many problems. Yeah. Smelling bad. Not having good hygiene. Low tea.

Buying big box soap full of terrible chemicals from people that really don't like you that much. Yeah. Instead, you should buy some homemade soap literally made by hand, the hands of Christians. Some of our friends, the colliers. Yeah. They call your family. They just had another baby. Support them.

And if you ever find yourself in northern Italy, getting bit by a wolf spider, be sure to scrub the wound thoroughly. First of all, Indigo Sentry soap. Like and subscribe them. Yeah, and comment. So with that said,

let's talk about some nuns. Let me take you some more nuns. Well, this is the first time we're talking about nuns. We haven't talked about nuns yet in this episode? Not in the cold open. I just talked a lot about nuns forgetting that the cold open

didn't have nuns in it. It's all right. You guys were wondering, like, what do the nuns have to do with anything? That was all for shadow. We really familiarize ourselves with the script. It's just that I'm so immersed in the script by the time we record. Right. It's all one.

That it all merges together. We're about to tell you why we've been talking about nuns biting people so much. Yeah. So if you're still listening, we really appreciate the patience. We'll see you soon. It was the early 1730s in Faverny, in the Burgundy region of East. France. Over 100 years prior, the Abbey of Faverny had reignited the zeal of many Catholic Christians in the region through the alleged occurrence of a Eucharistic miracle. The story goes that

amid the doubt foisted upon the people by the Protestant Reformation in Europe, the monks of the abbey exposed the Eucharistic elements so that the people could adore them. They hope this gift, allowing the people to actually look upon the elements of the supper, would dissuade any from apostatizing to the theology of John Calvin. Unfortunately, a fire broke out and burned for over 24 hours, destroying much of the abbey. Normally, this would have called for the greatest lamentation, but something happened during the fire that turned the tragedy into a triumph. Villagers and clergy, civil leaders and wealthy merchants, all who watched the blaze consume their church, were thunderstruck by the sight of the glowing

monstrance containing the Eucharistic host hovering above the flames untarnished. When the fire ended, the monstrance gently descended onto the burned subfloor where the altar had so recently stood. This miracle, later confirmed by Pope Pius I, 9th, turned Faverny into a place of immense spiritual significance. As such, the priests, monks, and nuns who dwelt there were upheld by the church and the people as pillars of the faith. Then the 1730s came and all. All of that changed. The Abbey followed the Benedictine rule for monastic life. The nuns who had begun residing in Faverny in 1137 woke to what they expected to be a normal morning.

They observed the early offices, and the day's work commenced. But around noon, a change came over some of the nuns. They began to meow like cats. One of them was considerably worse than the rest. Though her name is lost to history, she left her mark by meowing evidently against her will. she crawled on all fours like a beast, hissed, and swatted at any who came too close. Over time, her condition spread to other women in the convent. Before the day ended, a horde of otherwise austere nuns behaved no differently than frightened alley cats cornered by a predator.

The next day, the behavior worsened. Though the nuns had been able to sleep, this only made the morning more strange and terrifying. The meowing, hissing, and crawling, all of it continued. Now, however, many of them were periodically thrown into violent convulsions. Multiple monks were needed to restrain the frantic self-destruction of even a single woman. Others, who did not convulse, descended into trance-like states that made them appear vegetative. They could not respond to any external stimulus, even when that stimulus amounted to slaps from other nuns across the face. Whenever such a woman emerged from her trance, the cat-like behavior resumed exactly,

where it had left off, only worsened. The women were terrified, and so was everyone else. The church intervened more formally after days of decline and eventually treated the episode as a case of mass possession. Clergy began to perform exorcisms. They separated the afflicted women. Some were sent to other convents while others were moved to isolated rooms. Civil authorities treated the situation as a societal emergency

and barred any affected woman from contact with the laity. Eventually, with these measures in place and the exorcism seeming to bear fruit, the strangeness subsided. It is remembered either as a comical blight on the otherwise untarnished reputation of Favrani, or as a victorious triumph of spiritual light against demonic forces seeking to drag it down. Either way, it left no lasting negative physical impact. The same cannot be said, however, for many other cases of so-called mass hysteria among the nuns of France. In 1632, Ludin France was a picturesque model of Christendom, hiding great turmoil just beneath her surface. In an effort to consolidate the power of the monarchic and papist rule of the city,

King Louis Xirteenth ordered Ludon's walls demolished. The Catholics, led by the prominent Cardinal Richelot, supported the king's decision. The Protestant Huguenots, who made up no small portion of Ludon's citizenry, wanted to keep the walls in the event that state tyranny forced them. into a defensive position. Thus, factions already boiled in the French town, but the drama was not limited to this. Most controversially, the Catholic priest, Urbin Grandier, whose parish was in Ludon, sided with the Huguenots. This was not due to any sympathy for the Protestant cause. Rather, Grandier was not fond of the beloved Cardinal, and therefore wasted no opportunity to oppose him.

But his reasons mattered little. The people only saw factions forming, not only in the civil sphere, but also in the church. Finally, the straw that almost broke the semblance of peace came in the form of a plague that struck Ludin in May of 1632 and wreaked havoc at once. Dozens were dead, hundreds sick, and the plague showed no signs of letting up. The populace was nervous.

The leadership was strained. Ludon was a powder keg ready to burst. Enter the Ursuline nuns of the city's convent. A priorist presided over 17. nuns in the convent, all of them young. The average age of the group was only 25. By October of that year, the plague had turned Ludin into a ghost town. Everyone wealthy enough had left long ago for their summer villas or connections in larger cities. Even the physicians had left. After all, they quickly learned that they could offer nothing in the face of this sickness. They had wives and

children to consider. The benefits of leaving weighed heavily. The common folk isolated themselves, content to stay inside their homes as much as they could until the storm ran its course. Apart from these lay people, only the clergy, the monastics of the abbeys and convents, and a few city officials remained. For their part, the nuns of Ludon shut their gates at the outbreak of the plague and admitted no visitors for the entire spring and summer. They were alone with nothing but the dark cloud of death looming over them. It was in this time that something strange began to take place. The nuns started having visions. A younger Ursula, who had lived in the convent only if,

few years, claimed to have entered a waking dream wherein her recently deceased confessor, a father, Mousson, met and spoke with her as if he were alive and well again. Other women, more senior nuns, reported similar phenomena. Soon enough, all the women claimed interactions with the dead. The convent chaplain, Jean Mignon, feared the wicked implications of this apparently unwanted necromancy. He ordered exorcisms at once in the church, of course, obliged. The exorcisms all took place in the same room. It was windowless and lit only by the red glow of embers burning in lamps along the perimeter. The women, one by one, were escorted in. In the room's center stood the exorcist and Mignon. Beside them sat a small bed and chair for the

nuns to use, should the right wear them down. From the onset of the first Rituale Romanum, it was clear that not only the nuns, but also the priests, would be worn to the bone by what was to come. shouting and cursing and barking with inhuman voices, the nuns turned to physical attacks against their would-be rescuers. They bit at them, taking as much flesh as they could with each strike and leaving the men in terrible pain and fearing infection. Each nun lunged to bite at the priest many, many times. It became a matter of personal defense.

Mignon resorted to beating the nuns back with an iron rod. Now this, coupled with the word spoken and the holy water sprinkled, brought the truth to light. Someone, the nun said, had found a familiar spirit in the demon Osmodius, and was sending the demon to afflict them with despicable acts, visions of fear and terror, and even a lust for bloodshed. The priests demanded names. They demanded the nuns tell them who summoned the demon, but the nuns didn't know. For that question, Mignon and the Exorcist were forced to ask Asmodius himself. The demon's voice was garbled and rough as it spoke through the writhing face of a nun. Between words like churning gravel, she lunged to bite more and more.

The priests proclaimed Christ until finally, after a week of exorcisms and beatings for all the nuns, the name was offered, Crandier. Despite none of the nuns knowing Crandier beyond his name, he had never visited the content, their shared voice from the underworld unanimously declared him to be the sorcerer responsible for the demon's terror. The nuns were sequestered at the order of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, whereupon, the apparently demonic possessions subsided. But this reprieve was short-lived. The biting, the barking, the unnatural strength and aggression, the deep and gravelly voice, all of these things returned for the women. Only now, freed from the locked-down convent, their spectacle attracted a crowd. The archbishop was beside himself and prayed with open hands to God, asking for

deliverance. That prayer was answered in the form of a government clerk sent from Paris named Jean Jean de la de de de Mont. arriving in Ludon with a commission to demolish the town's tower, he found complete mayhem. To start, the town militia mutinied and stopped him from accomplishing the demolition. This alone would have justified a scathing report to Paris, but he also caught wind of the debacle with the nuns. He witnessed the possessions for himself, listened to panic in the voice of the townsfolk, and acquainted himself with the accused Grandier. Thereafter, he returned to Paris, reported everything to hire officials,

and received leave to adjudicate the matter on the Parisian dime and in her name. He wasted no time in returning to Ludong and initiating an investigation. First, he arrested Grandier to prevent his fleeing the town. At first, the clerk held little suspicion for Grandier, but protocols still had to be followed. Next, he collected witness statements. It was these statements that damned the clergymen. Nuns, political rivals of Grandier, and even common folk, all began to swear up and down that the eclectic priest was well known to enter the convent at all hours of the night to perform illicit acts with the nuns.

The sheer quantity of accusations and the drama of it all boiled over until astonishingly, Crandier stood before a mob of his peers and was forced to answer for himself to the nuns who accused him in their possessed and frantic state. This, of course, did not go well for the priest, who was certainly not above reproach, but who very likely did not actually summon the demon Asmodi, to afflict a group of nuns he had ever met. Thus the local magistrate tried him and found him guilty of making a pact with the devil, of attending a witch's Sabbath, of sorcery, and even of cursing the Ursuline nuns. After hours of grueling torture, the court sentenced him to death

by hanging. Even this, however, turned into a spectacle. On the day of the execution, the man charged with dealing death, a man named L'Octance, became enraged at Grandier because of what the crowd accused him of. Lactance, therefore, strode forward and, passing by the lever meant to drop the accused from the gallows, lit the funeral pyre waiting to catch his lifeless corpse. Prondier fell into the flames and burned alive. For three days after his death, the nuns continued to exhibit the same erratic and wicked behavior. Then, finally, they all stopped at once. In the aftermath of the terrible episode at Ludin, authorities separated each nun from the rest and stationed them at other convents around the country.

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He provides website design, maintenance, and security. His mission is to promote the business of Christendom by building websites for like-minded entrepreneurs. If you or someone you know is looking for help with your website, get a consultation with Nathan by visiting cosmos websites.com. Tell him you're a listener of Hanna Cosmos to learn how you could get your first, six months of hosting and security for free. Hey guys, welcome back to the show where we commonly talk about stories that we have not told you yet as if you've already heard them. You find that's called completely.

It's a storytelling device. So now we're going to talk about dancing. No. But you have heard it. Now we're going to talk about the Jersey devil. We've also talked a lot about women already. So we can give them a break. Yeah.

Hey. ladies, can I just take this opportunity to apologize for nothing? For nothing, because we were telling the truth, you need to calm down. I just said we're not going to talk about it. No, but let's talk about, what I do want to talk about after that story is

the danger of spiritual explanations for everything when, which this is kind of a... No, it makes perfect sense that this would come from us. Pot kettle. I get it. Go ahead. Let's give them a second. and make the joke. Type your comment. Like, comment, and subscribe if you think that this is ironic. Okay, but now really like it's not always demons. That's true. It reminds me... Sometimes the nuns just need to be told to calm down. It reminds me actually that national

tragedy. Put out a cat box. It reminds me that national tragedy. Pearl Harbor. Okay. That was a national tragedy. It had nothing to do with demons. But it was a national tragedy. A lot of demons in Japan. That's true. lack of Christianity. That's true.

No. Suicide forest? Yeah. What's it called again? Evan, do you know? Kobayashi Murrow. I didn't know if you were like weeb enough to know. Kobayashi Muru, actually Kobayashi recently retired from competitive eating because he said, and I quote, I don't find food enjoyable anymore. I have lost the sense of taste.

And so now that that's already happened, I'm going to stop. And I'm like, dude, that's the time to lean in. Yeah, that's when you. You've unlocked. Yeah, you've unlocked like ultimate mode. In the words of Martina McBride, you've hit key KPI's. So, you know, you hit key KPI's. Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, the dangers of over-spiritualizing things. Yeah, like they're literally, I mean, almost certainly literally murdering a guy and like burning him to death. Yeah. Garnier Fructeis. Garnier. Garnier fructice is that this name.

I think it was Grandier. Do you pronounce D's in France? Grandier. Condea. Condeer. I actually don't know this. Crandier,

but Crandier would have an R E. at the end of an E.R. So Crandier. Now, to be fair, this was not a good guy. By his own admission,

he was promiscuous. Oh, okay. With nuns? I don't, I don't know. He always denied that. But he said, like, just with women of the town, you know.

And I don't mean ladies of the night. I mean just like citizens in the town. A lot of, a lot of these fellas had kids. Yeah. But he also was going against, the celibacy of the priesthood anyway. Yeah. He was just also fornicating while doing that,

which is always uncool. And in itself, demonic. I think we need a t-shirt because we've had like the fornicate, stop fornicating or the mothman will get you, I think. Just like fornicating isn't cool. Yeah, fornicating is bad. So Grandier wasn't a good guy,

but at the same time, he didn't call down Asmodius to possess a bunch of demons. Probably not. And there was a lot of political motivation around him being the one that was accused. So really they were just latching on to some of the convenient narratives of the day. Right. The thing that that doesn't answer, and this is actually where this is a good thing to talk about,

what that doesn't answer is, okay, so why did the nuns do this? Why were the nuns acting like cats? Was that mass hysteria? Yeah. Or was there something more spiritual there, do you think? I don't know. I honestly don't know on this. I personally think that mass hysteria is the most.

likely explanation. Yeah. I think that it makes sense, given what we know about women and social groups, and they're isolated there. Well, I'm just saying, like this is, it just, you know, go to a, hey, anyone that's ever been to college and ever walked down for, you know, Greek row at whatever town your college was in, are you going to try to tell me? Are you going to stand there and tell me?

Are you going to stand there and tell me that the sorority houses don't seem like to you as a living hell. Oh, man. It's full of drama. Like the amount of cortisol. And I'm really, like, I'm not trying to, like, just hate on ladies here. I'm married. I'm a big fan of my wife.

Huge fan. Have a daughter, lover. She's being married to a woman. She's going to be a great woman. Yeah. Huge fan. The thing is, though, she will be the first to tell you. Yeah.

That living in a closed setting. Yeah. With a bunch of ladies, a lot of whom you aren't even, like, that close to, you're just kind of, like, forced to live together, is a recipe. for disaster. Yeah, and like mature women are not like this. No, not at all. But the normative pathway by which God, you know, has appointed the maturing of the sexes is through things like marriage and childbearing and child rearing. And I can't emphasize enough that where convents historically may have started with in a more like lawful sense with women who were eligible to be enrolled

by the church were then enrolled and they were given tasks, you know, and they were supported. First 75. It became like an escape mechanism. for young women in society who just like couldn't make it. Like they couldn't make friends. They were awkward. And so it was, you know, a woman would be 18 years old.

And it's like, oh, send her off to the convent. And so she's growing up in that setting. Like it becomes very hard to mature genuinely when that's your whole life. And a lot of the women that were afflicted, a lot of the nuns that were afflicted in both stories were extremely, young, like in their points. It's genuinely

a bad idea to send young women out from the male authority of their fathers and not transferring into the authority of a husband. Yeah. Also, by the way, bad. But the college thing right now, some of the

worst things in society are happening right now because we're like, yo, 18 year old daughter, go off to college and become the worst person possible. Like, good luck. Like fornication, but also just total indoctrination into the false gods of secularism and the things that are happening in the universities today, basically becoming Marxists within a year or two. Just to be equitable on the religious side, I also think monasticism is generally a bad idea.

But for different reasons slightly. Yeah. But anyway. So that does beg the question, though, because it's in such a heavily religious setting, you know, do we think that there was any dark forces? involved? Or do we think that it was mass hysteria? I, for one, for my money, I think it was mass hysteria. I'm going to come down in a first, in a haunted cosmos first and say that I don't think that the stuff we've been talking about in this episode so far, the stories we've read, which I

totally am keeping track of which ones we've talked about so far, completely, flawlessly, that they were not overtly demonic. They were actually people sinning and being sucked into human foibles. Yeah, hey, put her there. Big dog. That's what I think. Here I stand. I can do no other. Yeah, we're very credulous here on Honda Cosmos. It's a well-known fact. We like to have our sources straight. Hey, you know what I realized? What? I actually wrote a song to Fix Women on my next album. Oh, you write music? Yeah, I do. Tell the people about it. I do. I write music. I have done both settings of Psalms. I've even done catechism questions set to music, but I write original music. and I release it under the exotic name, Brian Sauvay,

which is French. So that's an L, but is it? Charlemagne. Yeah, I mean, I'm working right now on my next album. It's almost out. And one of the songs is, I literally call it a song to Fix Women. It's called This Ones for the Darkness.

And it actually explores some of these themes. Yeah. That we've talked about in this episode. I'm doing a fundraiser right now to help cover the car. I spend, like, ridiculous amount because it's not AI-generated slop stuff. It's like real musicians, real. I write the songs.

I perform and sing them, but also I involve and bring in musicians with that, like, huge experience. A real producer. A real producer with 30 years of experience. Who does this full-time? A fiddle player, upright bass player, lots, more than six musicians,

including me, well, I think it's six for this album, playing more than 10 instruments in this album. I spend like $20, $25,000 on an album like this to make it happen. So I'm doing a fundraiser right now, Briansovay.com slash short years, because the album is called Long Days Short Years. And right now, if you support any tier, you'll get an instant download of that song.

What? Yeah, and other stuff. You could even, I might even give you my guitar. Whoa. Yeah, but that's, go check it out. Whoa, that's a big ask, but, because it's a nice guitar and I've written the whole album, multiple albums on it.

Can I just say, yeah, that I don't own a guitar. Yeah, you know. But you are the reason for the teardrops on the guitar that if I had one. Really? That would be it. Man, like tears of joy? Tears of sadness. Tears of just like, I miss my guy.

Ah, yeah, every moment we're not together. Those like a couple moments of the average week. They were not within 30 feet of each other. And can't just yell, hey. So why don't we whip up some mass hysteria to support a great work of music? Yeah. after I insult like 50% of the human population for an hour. And don't be massively delusional and don't listen to it because it is.

And actually if you don't listen to it and really love the album out of spite, you're kind of again proving my point. Yeah. Okay. So I think that maybe it's perchance time, you know, therefore. Big dog. They're on two to go into the hot clothes. Yeah.

And what a hot close it is. As what a hot clothes it is, it's going to blow your socks off. Now, as a, I guess, primer going into it, remember the biblical parallel that I pointed to. And there's multiple examples of this in the Old Testament where God tells the Israelites, I'm going to put fear in their hearts. I'm going to send them into a panic, et cetera. That, I think, is on display here. Okay. Or, or it is the example in this episode of something being called mass hysteria when in,

when in actuality, it was a genuinely preternatural or supernatural event that was terrifying. And with that, let's go into the hot clothes. Thank you all for listening to the show. We'll see you next time. In the southeastern quadrant of New Jersey lies the pine marines. The paradoxical name betrays the forest paradoxical makeup. Densely packed pine trees stretch in all directions for hundreds of miles, life and abundance. Yet all those trees grow out of a dead wasteland of sand.

The vibrant green of the pines hides a lifeless soil beneath the canopy. Despite this, the pine barons remain a remnant of one of the oldest wildernesses in the world. It is a hopeless place for anything but itself. Itsself, however, can be expected to endure. In the trees, it's dark and quiet, almost stifling. The only room to breathe comes in the form of lakes, rivers, and beaver ponds that appear sporadically throughout the barons. In hospitable, claustrophobic, nutrient-poor, nearly bereft of human touch

entirely, and yet there is undeniable beauty. How could there not be a kind of unique majesty to such a place? Very few have ever called the Pine Baron's home. Those who have, or who still do, are ridiculed as outsiders, pinees, who cannot be trusted and who have nothing better to offer society than to stay out of everyone's way. The Pineys themselves have been happy to oblige their neighbors and have adopted the derogatory name for themselves as if they had come up with it. Therefore, a stable peace has long existed between the Pineys and others, but some live on the fringe of the Barons. These families are either too concerned with maintaining their good name to move fully into the trees, or too poor to move further away from them. In these communities, there has only ever been turmoil.

One such family, the Leeds, even succeeded in spreading its chaos across entire state lines, all because of a legend that sprang from their name. The Jersey Devil. In the pre-revolutionary province of New Jersey, a man named Daniel Leeds worked as a royal surveyor. He lived in the region of the Pine Barons, now known as Leeds Point, with his third wife and 12 children, three of whom had come from previous marriages. Daniel was a Quaker in a community of Quakers, all of whom dwelt in or along the fringe of the Pine Barons. As such, Daniel and his family found solace in their religious community, which made it easier

for them to ignore the stigma such types bore in the broader colony. Unfortunately, this social piece the Leeds family enjoyed was about to come to an end. You see, Daniel was a bit of an eccentric. He was a great surveyor and had thus made a good living, but he also had a mystic streak that revealed itself more and more in mature adulthood. In 1887, he published his first series of almanacs with the stated aim of helping his community. But before anyone could appreciate his work, it was tarnished by his inclusion of astrological symbols, something the Quakers very much frowned upon. People began to whisper about his heterodoxy and syncretism.

Some outright accused him of blasphemy and paganism. At any rate, his social standing took a hit, but he did not take the hint. He published yet more material, almanacs and otherwise, that grew increasingly esoteric. In his personal life, his wife witnessed her husband's growing fascination with mysticism, demonology, magic, and occult practices. Over time, mostly because of his writings,

these private interests turned him into an outcast among outcasts. His wife, called Mother Leeds in the story, apparently succumbed to the loneliness by taking up her husband's new practice of magic for herself, and she too was rejected. Their children, all 12 of them, were rejected. And then, as the story goes, Mother Leeds became pregnant again,

her 10th child and Daniels 13th. This pregnancy proved the final straw that broke the Leeds family. The mother, now a full-blown woman, which, again, according to the legend, failed to see that her witchcraft fed all the other woes, her loneliness, her depression, her anxiety, all of it flowed from the sorcery. But she and Daniel both projected their guilt onto this unborn child. They resented the baby for existing.

They resented themselves for letting things go so far. Mother leads, brought to her wits end, cursed her child. She exclaimed in exasperation, let the child be the devil, and thus, The fate of the family, the Pine Barons, and all of New Jersey was sealed. It was a stormy night when Mother Leeds was delivered of her cursed son. Despite all these forebodings, the birth went well as anyone could have hoped for. As lightning flashed through the window and wind, whipped rain against the wood siding, as the fire burned warm in the hearth, both mother and father forgot their wicked resentment.

They felt only relief and love, but doom would not let the bliss last. Suddenly the child transformed, its neck elongated, and its face twisted into something akin to a goats or horses. Its legs became wiry like spindles and massive hooves forced the small feet aside. Small stubs of horns pushed through the scalp, a long whipping tail uncoiled from the infant's back. Finally, leather wings unfolded, black and taut, stretching out with terrible speed. It all happened too fast. No one had even screamed when the child, now much larger than, before let out an other-worldly shriek. Mother Leeds dropped the monster in fear and disgust,

and all watched in horror as it stumbled toward the hearth, threw itself into the flames, and then flew up the chimney and out to the swim. The Leeds family never saw their 13th child, the Jersey Devil, ever again. And in this way, the legend was born. From the grief of a family came a preternatural horror that lorded its power over all the barons. In the years, decades, and even centuries that followed a handful of people claimed encounters with this devil. It either avoided them in fear or attacked them in malice. In every recorded case, however, no one was seriously injured. Still, the terror was great enough to prompt clergy to perform exorcisms in the barons to expel the creature. Parents in Leeds Point warned their children not to venture

into the pine lands without a chaperon. Travelers were constantly warned about the dark force lurking in the woods, hungry for prey. For a time it remained, a malevolent corner of local folklore and little more. Then, in 1909, something happened that transformed the Jersey Devil into something more real, something immortal. It shut down an entire section of the United States for multiple days on end. January 17, 1909, residents of Woodbury, New Jersey woke to a world painted white with snow. The sun rose behind lingering cloud cover and cast a dim gray light over everything. As townsfolk exited their homes to begin the day's work, some marked the presence of prints in the snow across yards and sidewalks and streets, but they thought little of it

until they took a closer look. The prints were not human footprints, but rather what looked like hoof prints, those of a horse or goat. But what goat had walked through yards and streets in the town square the night prior? What's more, one man who had grown up on a farm with goats and horses noted that the tracks still didn't seem right, even when attributed to these creatures. They were uneven. Some were pressed close together. Others were spread yards apart,

as if the thing had leapt some great distance for no apparent reason. Most puzzling of all, however, was that the prince were not quadrupedal. Whatever had made these tracks walked on two legs. The very next day, people in Camden, Bristol, and Burlington began calling police stations to report

a strange creature flying overhead in broad daylight. One caller described it as a giant bird with bat-like wings and a body like a kangaroo, long legs, long neck, and short stubby arms. As the sunset, the reports shifted from quirky and amusing to terrifying. This creature, apparently the same one from earlier, grew aggressive. Its leathery black wings flapped loudly before a high-pitched scream poured from the creatures this monster's mouth.

It stretched, heavy head like that of a horse, glowed with red eyes that shimmered against the light of fires and street lamps. Families heard the screaming, looked up to see the demon, and fled into their homes as circled rooftops, looking for something. Finally, on the next day, a full-blown panic overwhelmed the entire state and beyond. In Haddon Heights near Camden, New Jersey, a trolley car packed with men, women, and children, traveled through town. It was afternoon, but by no means dark.

In fact, had it not been for the cloud cover, Golden Hour would have painted. the lingering snow a delicate shade of pink. The idyllic, eastern colonial town lived up to its year-round coziness. But all at once, the calm broke at the sound of something a few passengers had read about in the morning's paper. A shriek rattled the metal walls of the trolley and caused children and mothers to cover their ears. Everyone stiffened. The trolley car abruptly stopped, and the men filed out to see the commotion. Flying awkwardly above them was the deformed Jersey Devil, a creature from the deepest pits of pandemonium. Its massive wings shook the trees on either side of the street and sent more than a few

hats flying. The horned horse head dripped with the pus of constantly peeling flesh. The eyes that shone down with a hateful red appeared to some of the men too human for anyone's comfort. It screamed again and dove, slamming its bulk into the trolley car. Against the metal roof and the screams of those left inside, the monster pulled itself back up into the air and slammed down again and again and again. and again. Finally, hearing the screaming and the crashing from blocks away, police arrived on the scene. They nearly froze and horrified curiosity at what met them on the quaint streets of Camden. None of them had believed the stories could actually have been true, but here it was, the state's own demon. They drew their sidearms and opened fire without waiting for any command to do so.

What else can man do against such an affront to nature? Unfortunately, the bullets either failed to find their target or proved, too weak to penetrate the hide. Still, the blast drove the creature away, howling and crime, ever upward and into the encroaching night. That same evening, the monster attacked a social club a few miles away from the trolley in much the same manner. Dozens of witnesses, police reports that could no longer be ignored,

and sketches from the minds of grown-ups and youths alike fueled the frenzy. The media seized the story and ran with it until major publishers across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware printed accounts of the Jersey Devil's Parade out of the Barons. By noon the next day, January 20th, hundreds of reports flooded police stations across all four states. Multiple districts adjacent to the Barons closed all public schools for the week and into the next. Factory work ground to a halt for the same length of time, leading to a miniature recession in the Delaware Valley, trekking bravely into the barons as far as they dared, packs of hunters and vigilante fathers sought to bring the monster to justice.

Of course they failed. Through January 23rd, the Philadelphia Zoo publicly offered $10,000 of a reward to anyone who could kill or capture the creature. And then, on January 24th, it all stopped. No more sightings, no more encounters, no more attacks. After hundreds of reports filled volumes of... files for a week straight the case suddenly went cold and to this day the truth of the jersey devil its origins and its attacks on the delaware valley more than a century ago have yet to receive a

satisfactory answer want more hunted cosmos then make your way over to patreon where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tombs and monthly live streams with brown Ryan and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.