It Could Happen Here - That Time the CIA dosed a French Town with Acid: Spooky Week #1

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

A look at the poisoning of the town Pont Saint Esprit, and how some mysterious bread turned hundreds of residents temporarily mad. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast welcome to spooky week a week where we are not really any spookier, honestly, than the average things happening, because everything happening is terrifying, and ghosts and ghouls are a lot more fun. Anyway, hang up. In this podcast, don't listen.

Go watch Herbert West Reanimator. Have some fun. But if you decide to keep listening to podcasts for some reason, we have a bunch of spooky content for you this week. How was that? How was that introduction, Sophie? Ooh, bad. Ooh. Spooky, scary, terrified.

Get going. Do your thing. Yeah, my thing. So, yeah, we're doing spooky week, which we're very excited about. But, yeah, everyone I've told about Spooky Week, they're like, oh, so it's just a regular week for the show. I'm like, yeah, pretty much. No, no, it's more fun.

But in a few ways, it is actually going to be more fun because the spooky mind-bending tales. Spooky, come on, Harrison. Commit to the goddamn bit. Yeah, spooky mind-bending tales. Spooky, come on, Harrison. Commit to the goddamn bit. Yeah, spooky mind-bending tales actually do have some more fun than just the solely depressing ones. I mean, this was the first theme week

that we all agreed upon months ago. This was the first theme week, yeah. I was like, can we do something around spookiness near Halloween? And everybody unanimously said yes. Yes. This is the first theme week. We have been promising nut week coming up eventually.

Yeah. It will happen. We won't talk about things that made us nut, or will we talk about the legumes? Mostly legumes. Okay, that's fair. But anyway, we should start off our first our first spooky tale um so i'm going i'm going to tell a very very spooky tale of a of an entire french

town going going mad over the course of a single week oh yeah probably probably with the help of psychoactive drugs and a certain three-letter agency you know what i think we're gonna get to do garrison i did somebody online i did get a few messages for that you can't be racist against the french they're like the british or americans i did get a few messages saying that your french accent was very racist to the french. There is a certain number. It's like the Germans. There's a certain number of genocides after which people get to make fun of your country,

and it's not racist. And that number is, let's say, three. Honestly, the worst part of this story is that we're probably doing critical support for France. I mean, in a way. We'll see. Honestly, I'm going to be kind of more critical support for France. I mean, in a way. Well, we'll see. Honestly, I'm going to be kind of more critical support to the CIA by the end of this

one. Yeah, that is the most critical support can be. So anyway, our very spooky tale begins in 1951 in a small, charming French village called Pont Saint-Esprit, which is how I'm going to say it. Pont Saint-Esprit!

Yeah, there you go. There we go. So not much happened in this little picturesque little town on the south side of France. You know, on the day we start, it's just like a regular summer day. People are going about their routine, going to their jobs. Kids are playing in the street, enjoying some delicious freshly baked bread. But suddenly, strange things begin happening. And I'm going to start off with some of the more mild, mild, mild effects here.

So on August 15th, first dozens, then hundreds of people began first just complaining of nausea. And some people with some stomach and abdominal pain. They're coming up. Less often noted, there was a few instances of vomiting and diarrhea. Only about 30% of people had diarrhea.

That is a weirder thing. That's a lot of diarrhea. Yeah, that is on a a town-wide basis. 30, sorry. Yeah, that's a significant strain on the sewage system. 30% of the people affected, which is going to be like a few hundred. If I was taking drugs with a group of friends and a third of them had diarrhea, I would say we might need to go to a hospital. This is a sign that we have taken

someone that perhaps what we got was tainted there is there is yeah we'll be talking about what actually what the actual drugs being used here are going to be but unless we were taking like emanatas or something where that's not an uncommon side effect but yeah yeah first first nausea a little a little bit of vomiting, stomach pains, cramping. Hospitals began reporting people experiencing alternating warm and cold waves over their entire body. The British Medical Journal recalls abundant sweating and a disagreeable odor. Which I'm guessing the odor is just because there's all those sweating people in the same cramped hospital room. Sweating people shitting themselves in a cramped hospital. In the summer heat.

So, anyway. and they're french so a lot of escargot sweats that's all i'm saying i don't want to get more messages saying that i have to stop by saying that he's going to do it more by the way do we know that the diarrhea was the result of of whatever substance or maybe it's just the wine shits. Again, French. We don't, there's no way to tell. There's no way to know. So yeah, patients began complaining about weird pains and pressure around their neck, which, yeah.

And one of the most reported symptoms was insomnia, in some cases lasting several days. Quoting the British Medical Journal, the first symptoms appeared after a latent period of 6 to 48 hours. The digestive disorders quickly became worse, with burning sensations throughout the entire digestive tract.

Some experienced sensations of burning at the anus. A state of giddiness persisted. I mean, who's not giddy when your anus is burning, am I right? I right i do like this is like this is like the like the clear side that there's like some some psychoactive drop going on because like your anus is burning and yet you're very psyched you are on board yeah uh yeah it's like that sign from that uh what is that from uh rejected by what was that cartoonist? My anus is bleeding, but you're down.

You're down for it, yeah. Yeah, you're 110%. Was that a John Mulaney impression? No, no, no. Who did Rejected? Because that was bad. It wasn't a John Mulaney impression, Sophie. Oh, okay.

That's just your poisoned millennial brain. Don Hertzfeld. Yeah, great artist. Yeah, great artist yeah great artist uh so these pale and limp patients still quoting the british medical journal these pale and limp patients showed inconspicuous trembling of the extremities and they complained of disorders of the visual accommodation and especially being unable to read so this this is the more mild. French, so. This could be a long one here. So this is,

for many people affected, this is where the symptoms stopped. After suffering from insomnia for a while with mild disorders of the visual accommodation and stomach pains and, you know, stomach pains and, like, weird, like, neck things, after they were able to sleep, that was the sign of their recovery. It's like the ability to sleep again after the insomnia wore off. But in around 50 of the cases reported, the effects were much more intense.

I'm going to continue from the medical journal first and then get into some of the more colorful reporting around the incident. Quoting the medical journal again, vivid visual hallucinations appeared. In particular, themes of visions of animals and of flames. All of these visions were fleeting and variable. In many of the patients, they were followed

by dreamy delirium. Yeah, that's about right. That's actually a pretty good description of like LSA, LSD, those kind of like, movies always get it wrong because you're not usually not like, you're not seeing some sort of like visual like cartoon world. It's these kind of like fleeting impressions

of visions and things in the corner of your eyes. Yeah, that's a pretty good description. Especially on lower, like it is unclear what exactly they were on because there definitely can be the more cartoon elements. Oh, I mean, you can get full open-eyed hallucinations, especially the Shogun chemicals will do that. But I don't get it so much with like LSD, LSA.

And LSA, if you want to shit yourself, eat some Hawaiian baby wood rose seeds. Get them from Home Depot and have yourself a horrible night. Home Depot and have yourself a horrible night. So, the delirium seemed to be systematized with animal hallucinations and self-accusation. Weird, weird terms from the medical journal.

Yeah, that's weird. Self-accusations. Yeah, I think they're trying to get at ego death, but they don't have terms for it yet. Either that or that, like, sometimes you're hallucinating you get like overcome like guilt like oh i did this terrible thing or yeah yeah yeah everybody's angry at me or whatever like continuing from the medical journal uh so self-accusation and and it was

sometimes mystical or macabre uh in some cases terrifying visions were followed by fugues which is a an old term for like fugues. It says fugues. Yeah, fugues. It's pronounced fugue. It's like extreme disassociation. Yeah, you're kind of zombified a little bit. Yeah, and two patients threw themselves out the window.

Oh boy. Beef. The delirium was of a confusal kind, which could be interpreted for some moments by a strong stimulation. Every attempt at restraint increased the agitation. Well, yeah, that's... That is how restraining... I've had to restrain a number of people, and it does not

calm anyone down. People don't like to be restrained. Especially when you're tripping hard. Yeah, this sounds like a real bad time. Not the thing to do. In severe cases, muscular spasms appeared. The duration of these periods of delirium was varied. They lasted several

hours in some patients, and in others they persisted overnight. So, we're going to get a little bit darker, and then we're going to have more fun. We observed four fatal cases. Three men and one woman. Three of these people were old and in bad health

One of the men was only 25 years old And had been in good health previously They died in a muscular spasm In a state of cardiovascular collapse I think this is probably mostly due To how the doctors were handling these patients Yeah, that sounds right I mean, obviously your blood pressure and whatnot can elevate

When you're hallucinating But I think it also has a lot to do with the way they were being handled. Yeah, you're right. The disorder has developed more quickly in children, but also left them more quickly. An interesting feature of some of the cases was that the delirium was the first sign to be noted. So people came up on different ways, right? Some of them first had weird body feelings. Some of them first started just seeing stuff.

Some of them first had weird body feelings. Some of them first started just seeing stuff. One other interesting tidbit that we're not going to spend much time talking about, but like around two weeks after this initial incident, some symptoms started to reappear either through like a secondary poisoning or it was like some kind of like acid flashback. Yeah, it must. It must because I've I've done a fuckload of acid. I've never had a flashback. I did at one point. I mean, I have like done some damage.

And so I have permanent tracers. But it's not like... My guess is they got... I think the idea that there are like acid flashbacks that are vivid hallucinations has been pretty heavily debunked. My guess is they got redosed. Yeah, I don't know. I might fight you. It could be PTSD. Yeah.

It could be that it was traumatic enough that like they're dealing with PTSD and kind of that's what's happening. I don't know. And I think I definitely have seen enough reports that would see acid flashbacks definitely actually being a thing in some cases, especially in the early days of studying these types of drugs in the 60s. The CIA reported a lot of stuff around acid flashbacks, around the people that they tortured. But I guess if it's tied to torture, that could just be PTSD stuff. It could be PTSD. It's also I mean, one thing you have to know, and I don't know what kind of dose these people are getting. The CIA would dose people.

They were sometimes giving people doses people do not take. Like you do not take that much acid recreationally. Like hundreds or thousands or millions of hits. Yeah. Ridiculous amounts. Ridiculous, irresponsible doses. Yeah. So now we're going to get to some of the more fun descriptions here, which we can actually

kind of, based on our experiences, can actually kind of see what was actually going on in these people's heads. So basically, we had at least dozens and dozens of people tripping very, very hard. The local postman was doing his rounds on his bicycle when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations. Quoting him, It was terrible. I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking

and the fire and the serpents coiling around my arms. Yeah, that guy had some other stuff going on. Yeah, because the very first acid trip was on a bicycle. When Heinrich Hoffman made it and dosed himself, he started coming up, I believe it was in Amsterdam, riding his bicycle. He was just like, well, this is lovely. I've made something cool. Why was the postman riding a bicycle to deliver packages in mail? Because they're in France.

Because it's France. We do not have the vehicles. It's the 1950s. It's not. The wheel only came to France in 1924. I mean, I'm sorry. So yeah, the mailman fell off his bike and was taken to a hospital in a nearby town.

He was put in a straitjacket and he shared a room with three teenagers who were also tripping. And the teenagers were changed to their beds to keep them under control. It sounds horrible! It's the worst way to trip. I can see having flashbacks to this, to being

chained to a bed while tripping. Yeah, that's a bad thing to do. Some of my friends tried to get out the window. They were thrashing wildly, screaming, and the sound of the metal beds and jumping up and down. The noise was terrible. I would prefer to die than go through that again. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally terrible. This sounds like the worst acid trip. Yeah. That sounds like about the worst way you could have a trip go. It sounds awful. Um, so back in the French town,

uh, a little girl screamed as she was being chased by man eating tigers. Oh my goodness. A woman sobbed about how her children had been ground into sausages. Oh, great. Oh, no. So graphic and specific. Yeah.

A large man fatted off a terrific beast by smashing his furniture and using the wood as weapons. Good for you, buddy. Good for you. A husband and wife run around chasing each other with knives. Again, probably something else going on there.

My guess is we're not just talking the acid in that because I have, again, been on acid a lot around knives and other weapons. I've never chased anybody with them. I've never chased someone around with knives on acid. That's a couple who was on the verge of a knife chase before the acid.

I think the important part here is that in 1951 in this French town, acid wasn't a thing yet. Hallucinogenic drugs weren't a thing. Even mushrooms weren't popular around this time. No one knew what the hell was going on. They just think that they're just

basically losing their minds. There's no other explanation for what's happening to them. Can we just say that the most shocking thing that has come out so far is that when Robert was on acid, he wasn't chasing people with knives? Depending on your acid trip, you wouldn't

want to chase someone with a knife. That's not the kind of headspace you're in. We would, like, during the winter solstice, we would take a bunch of drugs and grab my AK-47 and hike out into the woods. And we would shoot down a fir tree and we would drag it back to a clearing and we would bury it standing up. And we would drape it in pig intestines and put a pig's heart on it. And then we'd cover it in gasoline and light it with firecrackers and dance around it like the pagans of old but there was nothing aggressive about no you you you very rarely would want to hurt somebody on acid in my experience like you generally generally are at least you're like way more compassionate in a lot of ways um but if you have no idea what

acid is and you're just you're in the 1950s and you're losing your mind and you're seeing weird things then yeah i can see how this would maybe cause some other types of behavior to happen. You just think that like God is angry at you. Yeah, because like they're not dosing themselves either. They're being dosed, right? It's like they don't – it's very different where like you're deciding to go on a trip versus this is happening to you and you have no decision i think for basically anyone in this position the logical assumption would be oh the devil has taken over our town and our minds have we have been infested with demons like what else are you going to assume you're not going to be like oh this drug that's just barely been invented and that nobody really knows about yet except for weird nerds it must be

some version of that that i've taken accidentally no you're going to assume like demons are in your blood. So one interesting tidbit before we go on break. Even some of the local animals had been affected by whatever poisoned the town. There was one dog in particular that kept chewing on rocks until its teeth chipped away. I don't like this. And ducks were behaving very odd. I don't like this. And ducks were behaving very odd.

It's described that they were walking around erect and upright like penguins in a line. And they're just like very weird behavior from ducks. That's the scariest thing I've heard so far. That kind of makes me want to dose our ducks, Garrison. We're not wasting acid on the ducks. No. I mean, there's a lot of things you could give ducks. We're not giving ducks acid.

That's not happening. The nice thing about giving ducks drugs is they're all monsters. That is true. They are monsters and rapists. Yeah, every one of them. Yeah. All of the male ducks. So anyway, a reoccurring theme was that people were running around wildly and being very fearful of, like, monstery animals and encroaching flames

sounds like the ducks were having a good time though the ducks were having a great time doing their ministry of silly walk shit like I don't know what all these people are bummed about this is rad okay so when you first said that I heard dogs and I was like that is the most terrifying thing I've ever heard ducks is much funnier it's like ducks standing like

very upright like penguins walking around in a line. I think ducks might enjoy it. I think dogs are a little too aware of what's going on. Garrison did say the stone thing was about the dog. Yeah, but the penguin scary thing is ducks. Yeah, I just don't know that the dogs enjoy it. Because I've seen dogs accidentally eat large amounts of pot and whatnot. And they are not happy.

They get weird. Yeah, they're pretty scared. They're not weird. They are. They're pretty scared. They're not having a good time. They're pretty scared. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what is also very spooky? Capitalism.

Yeah, capitalism and all of these spooky advertisements to sell you things. Advertisements are also a form of mind control, speaking of the CIA in the 50s. Anyway. They're profoundly damaging. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast we are back from the spooky advertisement yeah anyway um so i think another another reoccurring factor for why a lot of these from the spooky advertisements. Yeah, anyway. So I think another

reoccurring factor for why a lot of these people have very similar types of experiences around snakes, which we'll talk about later, and flames is like, with this many people tripping, and no one knows what tripping is, I think it's really easy for an idea or a fear to spread from one person to another while they're tripping.

With this many people, I think if someone says something, it's going to start happening to someone else, and it's kind of this cascading effect where they all develop this very similar fear is because it's almost like being spread like an infection. So there was one man convinced that red snakes were devouring his brain,

and he jumped out a window. Oh, no. Did he live out a window. Oh no. Did he live through this? He did live. Yeah, I'm guessing a lot of these, it's like France in the 50s, so I'm guessing most of these buildings are not super high up. They're not super high up, no. They fall in a foot or two. Although here, we have another

one. Another man reportedly leapt from a window yelling, Look everyone, I'm a dragonfly! The man broke both legs. But he stood up and continued running. Fucking rad. King. Sigma. Sigma behavior. Yeah, absolute.

Absolute sigma behavior. That was Chad shit. This is a new kind of man. New kind of dude just dropped. The a new kind of man. New kind of dude just dropped. The rarest kind of man. Look everyone, I'm a dragonfly. Breaks both legs and keeps running. Based on the information you've provided us, I can't say

he's not a dragonfly. No, he is an absolute, absolute king. I hope he had a great life. Another absolute king. I hope he had a great life. Another one saw his heart escape through his feet and beseeched a doctor to try to put it back into place. You don't want to have that happen.

That doesn't sound fun. You want to keep that somewhere around the middle of your body. Someone sprinted down the lane, claiming that he was being chased by bandits with donkey ears. Okay, fair enough. At a nearby river, a man was convinced that he was a circus tightrope walker and attempted to balance his way across the cables of a suspension bridge. How'd he do?

Oh, no. It doesn't say. The report does not tell you. Sounds like he did great. Yeah, like he was right. Yeah, he's not in the death report. Yeah. So clearly he lived through it.

Therefore. Another person did try's not in the death report. Yeah. So clearly he lived through it. Therefore. Another person did try to die in the river. He tried to jump into the river only to be saved by his friends. And he was screaming, I am dead. I am dead. And my head is made of copper. And I have snakes in my stomach. And they are burning me.

Such a weird description of tripping and saying like my head is made of copper i'm trying to think of like what was going on what like what what series of events did did he spiral down in his brain to have that sentence i just i'm not quite sure it's it's it's definitely i can definitely see it happening i just i just can i'm trying to think like what exactly what would happen to get to that point it's real interesting i think some of these are hard because again it's like these people just think literally think they're going insane yeah or that like this stuff is just actually happening to them like you like when you're tripping on acid you already kind of have the feeling that you there is moments where you feel like this is like this is like

never gonna end even though even though you know you know you're on acid these people don't know that right like these people don't have the reassurance they're like no i took acid i'm on a drug this is going to be over eight hours or so it's gonna they think this is going to last forever right like they think this this is just the world now like this is just one of those robert anton wilson who is a thinker i enjoy a lot writes a lot about how to calm people down when they've taken too much and most of his advice is around talking about like okay well how long ago did you take it? Hey, well, the good news is that this is going to end here. It's only going to last this long.

Like you're through this point. Oh, this is the second hour freakies. And by the third hour, you'll be fine again and enjoying it. Like it's all about making – keeping in people's minds like this is going to pass. So yeah, you're right. Like this is the fucking worst way to take drugs all right so local newspapers uh and also like in national newspapers described uh described this as uh among the stricken delirium rose patients thrashed wildly on their beds

screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies people throwing themselves from rooftops men and women throwing their clothes off and running in the streets naked, and children complaining their stomachs were infested with coils and snakes. Oof. Oof. Which, I mean, half of that sounds like, yeah, that's like a normal good time, just running around the streets naked on acid.

Other half's like, yeah, that doesn't seem pleasant with coils and snakes in your stomach. But also, like, flowers blossoming from your body. I can understand that kind of sensation. But, like, it definitely wasn't all horrible and, like, nightmarish. We already mentioned the giddy people with burning anuses. But for, like, the full-on tripping folks, according to the New York Times,

there was reports of people, like, hearing heavenly choruses and seeing, you know, bright colors. The world looked beautiful to them. Apparently, the head of the farming co-op wrote hundreds of pages of like enlightened tripping poetry that that guy must be sick of shit because knowing nothing he starts tripping not knowing he's tripping it's just like time to make some fucking art you know what this head state is good for? Writing some shit. He just went to his cabin and just wrote poetry. That's fucking awesome.

That's a guy. I'll bet he handled just everything that life threw at him well. That says a lot about you when you're like, oh, demons have infiltrated my brain. Guess I'm going to hang out in my cabin and write some poems. Hundreds of pages wow like I could I could hardly write shit on acid I cannot imagine trying to write poetry I mean I've done a lot of creative stuff on acid creative stuff yeah I just feel like like specifically like reading and typing can can be hard at certain points you know If you're coming down, it can be easier. It's not really good for writing.

It's good for ideas that you later can flesh out into writing. Yeah. Yeah. So unfortunately, because this was no one who was going on, many people were taken to local asylums in straight jackets and tied onto beds, making things undoubtedly worse for people tripping. It's one of those things I can't even be angry at them because they don't know what's going on.

I know. You have no idea what's happening. They don't know what's going on. Nobody does. The whole every attempt at restraint increased the agitation line is horrifying from the concept of you're tripping, you don't know what's going on, and people are tying you down to beds,

making you feel like you're even more stuck in this permanent state of delirium. It's just the worst nightmare. Yeah, all of this is horrible. Yeah. The mayor of the town said like, I've seen healthy men and women suddenly become terrorized, ripping their bedsheets, hiding themselves beneath their blankets to escape the hallucinations. So yeah, it's

if you don't know what's going on, pretty scary. Except for the poetry guy. Good for him. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah, making the best of it. So by the time the effects had subsided for everyone affected,

which was around a few days after the initial reported nausea, it didn't affect everyone at the same time. Some people got dosed later on. It's unclear what exactly. Because this is the 50s, we didn't have a great idea of the exact timeline of events, of when the first effects were felt and how all the stuff was spaced out. But this whole incident lasted around a few days for everyone totaled. It was reported that anywhere between 300 to 500 people had felt the effects,

that anywhere between like 300 to 500 people had felt the effects um you know around 50 feeling a very very extreme like open eye like hallucinations of objects that aren't even there like like very extreme hallucinations um and and four people did die in connection to the poisoning um at least four people died it's again it's unclear for exact numbers for a lot of this stuff yeah um an investigation into the sudden outbreak of the madness was promptly underway. Town officials wanted to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you would want to figure out what was happening there. Yeah.

And the blame fell onto a single batch of bread. What? So among the common denominator among those affected is that they all allegedly consumed bread from one specific baker. Yep, that's how it works. He was accused of using ergot-contaminated rye flour, and he was arrested and temporarily imprisoned. Also, a nearby miller that he got the flour from

was also arrested and given some of the blame. The funny part is that around this time, the French government had a very top-down grain distribution system that rigidly controlled everything about where the grains were milled, where they were sent, and what bakers could use which flour. So bakers had no choice in what type of flour to use or what type of grain they could use in baking. It was all decided by other people. Yeah, because bread is a real big deal in France.

It's pretty important, yeah. For the record, just like ergot poisoning, there are a lot of cases of like different like dancing manias and whatnot in like the medieval, in medieval Europe where like whole towns will be, where everyone will start like dancing or like hallucinating. And, you know, they always came down as like these, people assumed apocryphalist stories about like demon possessions or whatnot.

And now a lot of the suspicion is like, oh, yeah, some ergot got into the room. No, yeah. Everybody was just kind of tripping. Ergot poisoning, it seems like one of the rougher trips to go on. It's not super clean. No, I mean, I've done LSA, which I think is similar. It's similar to ergot in a few ways. Yeah, they're tryptamines that are like really rough.

And it's, I would not, don't do LSA. No Hawaiian baby wood rose seeds for the pot? If you're going to take LSA, then actually like synthesize it out of Hawaiian baby wood rose seeds, which is a felony. Which is a felony. It is a felony. But you can just buy Hawaiian baby wood rose seeds, which is a felony. Which is a felony. But you can just buy Hawaiian baby wood rose seeds and eat them

and you will have maybe the worst trip of your life. Great advice from the pod. On the rye and ergot topic, the past growing season was especially wet and ergot fungi did grow across the country's

rye fields. But the amount of ergot on the did grow across the country's rye fields. But the amount of ergot on the rye and the amount of rye used in baking was thought to not be enough to induce any type of poisoning. In fact, the last time ergot poisoning had struck France was back in 1816, so almost like a century and a half before this incident. Not about a century, if it's the 50s, right? A little less than a century. No, so the last incident was 1816. This was 1950.

Oh, I thought you said 1860. No, no, 1860. Okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So a century and a half ago, and no other towns, and no other part of France was affected by anything similar to this. So the Ergot thing is kind of iffy.

But the Ergot explanation was kind of iffy. But the Ergot explanation was the only thing that doctors and investigators could come to, due to their limited knowledge around brain-altering substances, and just pressure from town officials to get to the bottom of this, so that they had something to blame and people could move on.

But as a result, not much evidence really backs up the Ergot claim, and a lot of not much evidence really backs up their backs up their claim. And a lot of experts today kind of deem it bunk. And there's a bunch of like there's this thing that the Greeks would take that was like this Greek hallucinatory thing that they think it was because they were putting grain and wine and it might have been air got poisoned. But also like people enjoyed it. And so there's a lot of debate over whether or not it could have been ergot, but I don't know. Um, I don't know what else is there

other, other theories about what it might have been if it wasn't ergot. Oh, yes, there is. Oh boy. Is it the CIA? Is it the CIA garrison? We're going to get to it. So yeah, it doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts of ergot rye would only be in one batch of grain using a single batch of bread from just one bakery in one small town. Doesn't, doesn't really make much sense that the high amounts of ergot rye would only be in one batch of grain using a single batch of bread from just one bakery in one small town. Doesn't really make sense. Other explanations that people have come to includes, like, mercury poisoning and overuse of other fungicides. These have been mostly disproven. Yeah, that doesn't seem like mercury poisoning.

No, but there is— Speaking as a guy who likes to drink some mercury, you know. Oh, boy. Merk on. So, yeah. So there's a lot of other theories around, like, fungicides being used. But those have been kind of disproved by some people. But others still point to them as possible explanations.

But there is one other theory that we will focus on that features two of my favorite things. Okay. LSD and the 1950s CIA. Because if you're going to pick a CIA, the 1950s one because if you're gonna pick a CIA the 1950s CIA is the best they had the most fun you know who else has a lot of fun Garrison

who would that be and is also the 1950s CIA whomst? our sponsors it can happen here is sponsored only by the 50s CIA only the one from the 50s. Yeah. When you order any of our products, they will come to your house and inject you with 7,000

hits of LSD. Hey, free. Hey. That sounds like a great deal, honestly. You're saving a lot of money. You are saving. That is a lot of free acid. A lot of acid for the amount of money you're spending.

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Yeah, you won't survive. Your body will. Someone else will be inhabiting it at the end of that trip. Someone else will wake up. So speaking of waking up, here's all the products. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal. Tales from the Shadows. Presented by iHeart and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to nocturnal tales from the shadows as. As part of my Cultura podcast network.

Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So 1950s CIA. Wild time. Great time. In 2009, Hank P. Albarelli, an American writer and journalist, released a book called A Terrible Mistake, which focuses on the suspicious death of a CIA scientist named Frank Olson, who worked on the CIA mind control experiments during the late 40s and early 50s. While researching the book, Albarelli claims to have come across a number of old CIA and White House documents referencing the Ponce St. Desprez incident, and he claims that the village was the

target of a CIA experiment on the mass effects of LSD, and that around the time that Frank Olson wanted to sever his ties with the army and CIA, Frank started talking about his participation in the experiment, which may have led to the government offing Olson. So I know that is a lot, and it is slightly more than just a speculation. We're going to get into the evidence here shortly. But by now, it's pretty well known that throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s, both the U.S. Army and the CIA tried to use hallucinogenic drugs, such as LSD, as both an offensive weapon and as a way to make, like, psychic super soldiers. It's programs like MKUltra, MKNaomi,

Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke. Lots of these things were trying to find different ways of using LSD for offensive and defensive means. Some of the interest was promoted by, was prompted by reports of the Soviet Union

doing experiments with drugs around the same time. Also stuff around psychic powers and hypnosis. This was very popular around this time for lots of different intelligence agencies. But, so, Al Borelli uncovered a report from 1949 by the director of the Ed Wood Arsenal, which was where many U.S. government LSD experiments were carried out. And this report stated that the Army should do everything possible to launch so-called field experiments using this drug. And later in his 2009 book, Albrecht claims that he found

references to a government document with the label, REE, Pont Saint-Esprit, and F. Olson Files, re pont saint esprit and f olson files so span slash france operation file inclusive olson intel files hand carry to bellen tell him to see to it that these are buried um this document does exist like we we like we we we do have this label on on this document um but like the actual contents of the document are gone by this is this is this is. This is just a label that is being referenced. We just know there was a thing with this title. Great. Oh, boy. So the document label references Frank Olson and David Bellin.

So Bellin was the executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, created by the White House in the mid-'70s to investigate abuses carried out worldwide by the Central Intelligence Agency. So Al Borelli believes that the French town LSD incident, which is like the Pont Saint-Esprit, which is the name of the town, and the F. Olson files mentioned in the document would definitely show that if the document hadn't been buried, as it was said in the label,

it would show that the CIA was experimenting on the townspeople by dosing them with what he thinks was LSD. Now, there is also a bit more to it than that. Using FOIAs, he got a hold of another CIA document, a two-page report from 1954, detailing a conversation between a CIA agent and a representative of the Sandoz Chemical Company. So the Sandoz base was the place where Albert Hoffman invented LSD in 1938. And it was only a few hundred kilometers away from

Pont Saint-Esprit, the town where this happened. So the chemical company was actually pretty close relatively to Europe. And it was also the only place where LSD was being made at the time. And they were providing both the army and the CIA with with a lot of a lot of acid but i mean they're also giving it like they're also giving it to universities they gave lots to timothy leary initially they sure did they

were they were they didn't give quite a lot to tim leary they were they were giving it out to a lot of different universities and research people yeah but including the u.s government so the cia the cia agent wrote um in this report uh that was like he was detailing a dinner he had with this representative of the chemical company and he reported that after having several drinks the scientists started talking about the pont saint esprit incident the sandals official blurted out the pont Saint Esprit secret was that it was not the bread at all, continued the Sandoz official. For weeks, the French tied up our laboratories with analyses of the bread.

It was not the grain ergot. It was a diethyl laminate. Sorry, it's the last part of the LSD name. Yeah, diethyl acid. Yeah, the diethylaminide like compound. Yeah, lysergic diethyl acid is what LSD stands for. So yeah, the scientist said that it was basically an LSD-like compound.

So that was a report detailing a dinner that a CIA agent had with this scientist. And that document was uncovered. It was from like the 50s now this this this next part has a little bit less proof to it because there's no documents backing this up but albarelli also claims that during his digging two former cia researchers reached out to him and revealed that and revealed some details of some possible details of the method of the poisoning they told him that the village was subjected to an air blitz of pulverized LSD. Holy shit.

What? They acid bombed them? I'm sorry. That's fucking based. So, to force the Tense people into taking the substance through the air. According to the researchers, this manner of distribution proved mostly unsuccessful,

forcing the CIA to move on to Phase 2, which was contaminating local food. So, apparently, if the air blitz was a thing, it didn't work super well. That's a bummer. I know. Although, actually... I was about to have

Sophie buy us a plane. We will talk about this later. But the CIA did do more air blitzing of acid in New York City, actually. They would ride around in cars in like poorer and poorer, more like multicultural areas, shooting LSD out of the back of the car to see what would happen to people. I mean, take out the racism. And that really is a dream job. Just driving around cities, air-dosing people with acid at random,

smoking cigarettes, probably. Oh, my God. So, with the conclusion drawn that it was one of the town's bakeries being the source of the poisoning, Albarelli says it was possible that LSD was put in or onto the bread. So, yeah. And also, lots of the scientists dispatched to investigate the poisoning after it took place were actually from the Sandoz Chemical Company. They studied the situation for like two or three weeks and gave the explanation that would later be kind of disproven that it was ergot poisoning, which they told the town officials and the British Medical Journal.

What no one knew at the time was that, one, the existence of LSD in the first place, and two, that Sandoz was the company making it and giving these drugs to the U.S. Army and to the CIA. And apparently Albert Hoffman himself went to the town to investigate this incident. So yeah, one last thing on the physical evidence side of things. Albarelli also found an undated White House document that appeared to be part of a larger file that had been sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission, containing the names of two French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct references to the, quote, Ponte Saint-Esprit incident. Also, the document linked a former CIA biological warfare expert and the chief of the Fort Derrick's Special Operations Division. So those are all places that they were experimenting with a similar kind of thing.

We have mentioned the Rockefeller Commission a few times now. If you remember, the names Frank Olson, the guy, one of the CIA researchers on LSD, and David Bellin, they were on the label of that missing document. So Bellin was the executive director of the White House Commission to investigate the CIA's abuses and crimes, which was called the Rockefeller Commission. It was formed by President Ford in 1975 to investigate abuses and other activities by the CIA and a few other intelligence agencies that were operating within the states. So the Rockefeller Commission revealed not only...

The reason why we know about MKUltra was because of the Rockefeller Commission. This is how we know this was a thing. So it not only revealed stuff about like programs around mk ultra but also revealed the details of the cia dosing their own scientist frank olson with lsd and possibly killing him um there's also like there's like a netflix series about this called uh woodward which i haven't i haven't actually watched yet so i don't know how good or accurate it is but they did they did make a series a few years ago about the death of Frank Olson and all of the weird, sketchy stuff

surrounding both his job and his death. We do love the CIA, folks. Uh-huh. So, the commission also concluded that the head of the CIA's LSD program, Dr. Sidney Goatlieb, destroyed

all of the drug program's records in 1973 to hide the details of possibly illegal actions, and he was personally involved in the torture of Frank Olson. 20 years after Mr. Olson's death and 10 years after the LSD experiments were halted, Dr. Goatlieb ordered the destruction of all the records of the program, including a total of 152 separate files. This came shortly after other reports that records were being destroyed by Richard Helms, the then-director of Central

Intelligence. So, it's undoubtedly true that the CIA was up to some shit involving LSD around the exact time period of this Frenchtown incident. Yeah, it's certainly not like you're not coming

out of nowhere suggesting the cia may have dosed all these people no but they did it to a bunch of folks if they didn't do it here they'd done similar shit so it's also it's also worth mentioning at this point that like this is like the point where the cia is also running this like enormous heroin network out of france as like if it basically had, basically they have this deal with the French where they're like okay, so the French mob can basically move all the heroin they want in exchange they'll stop the communists from taking control of the Pointe de Marseille

and so this is all also going on at the same time that they're doing the LSD stuff, it's great. Yeah, so there's some historians that think the LSD theory does not hold enough water. Stephen Kaplan is a U.S. historian specializing in the French food history and the author of the 2008 book Cursed Bread, which follows this incident. He says that he has numerous objections to this paltry evidence against the CIA.

First of all, it's clinically incoherent. LSD takes effect in just a few hours, whereas the inhibitors showed symptoms only after 36 hours or more. Furthermore, LSD does not cause the digestive elements or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople. So to both those claims, I say they're not necessarily true. It's unclear how soon the delirious effects took place. For some people, they were the first effect felt. So the whole thing about the effects only taking effect after 36 hours, soon the delirious effects took place for some people they were the first effect felt um so the

whole thing about like the effects only taking effect after 36 hours that's not that's not necessarily true um and also lsd can definitely have nauseating or digestive effects oh yeah absolutely so that's that's that's not that's yeah and and but but like there were other types of symptoms that are not common for what we think of as modern LSD. But again, this is the 1950s, and we don't know what they were actually on. It may not be what we think of as LSD now. It could be that this is a whole class of psychoactive drugs. It's unclear what they were all actually being dosed with.

Yeah, who the fuck knows what they were being given, and who the knows what the actual like dose amount was yeah we have no we have no idea and it's also you know i think it's leery was the origin of the phrase that like the things that determine what happens on a trip are set setting and dose so your mindset where you take it and who you take it around and the dose and uh the fact that these are somewhat unique symptoms could be to the fact that like other people taking acid have never taken it this way where your whole town is all dosed at once without knowing what acid is like so yeah kaplan's other objections revolve around like the delivery system he says it's absurd this idea of transmitting a very toxic drug by putting in by putting it in the bread as for pulverized

to get for ingestion through the air that technology wasn't even possible at the time most compellingly why would they choose the town of Pont Saint-Esprit to conduct these tests? It was half-destroyed by the U.S. Army during fighting with the Germans in the Second World War. It makes no sense. And to that I say, that makes it the perfect town for the CIA to fuck with? Yeah, I mean, the CIA did some dosing. They generally would choose to dose someone with acid because it sounded funny. Like, they didn't give a shit.

I think the fact that this town was already kind of, like, only half inhabited and half destroyed by the Second World War, that makes it the perfect town to fuck with. And also, the CIA and the government very much did have the means to try to distribute stuff via the air because we can see other documents around the time of them doing this to specific areas of New York City. They also tried to poison the entire New York subway with LSD in the 50s, but that was

shut down by higher-ups in the Central Intelligence Agency. Unfortunately. God, what a time that would have been. But Kaplan isn't sure Urgot's responsible either um he says that ergot contamination would not have worked because it doesn't make sense that only one sack of grain would have been affected um and he says if it was ergot the the effects would have been way more

widespread yeah that does sounds he rules out lsd in the grounds of the symptoms that people suffered although similar don't quite fit what we modernly think of of the drug also i don't i don't think caplan's ever taken lsd so i don't think yeah i we modernly think of as a drug. Also, I don't think Kaplan's ever taken LSD, so I don't think he actually knows what he's talking about. I think he's right about it probably not being ergot, but I don't think he knows much about LSD. Yeah, he also points out that LSD probably wouldn't have survived the fierce temperatures of the baker's oven,

although Albarelli counters that LSD could have been added after the fact to the surface of the bread. Sure, yeah, you could just drop it on. You could just drop it on with liquid blotters, which would also explain how the effects were so different from person to person, because one person may be having a whole drop of LSD, where some may only have a tiny little

speck of moist liquid. For sure. So that can explain some things. But, you know, this is still pretty much a mystery. You know, it's very clear it very well could have been some kind of hidden LSD CIA experiment, or the CIA could have just been, you know,

interested in studying what happened in the town since they were also doing studies into psychoactive substances at the time. It could be either or. And that's where it's spooky, because you'll never know. Woo! So yes, that is the spooky incident of a french town basically thinking that they lost their minds and then you know they you love to see it do we i think it's funny it is a little

funny it is definitely a little funny um it's it is a great example of like the worst way to trip It is a great example of the worst way to trip. Yeah, that's pretty high up there. Anyway, critical support to the CIA for dosing random people with acid. Always one of my favorite sets of stories. You'll love to see it. So yeah, tune in tomorrow for more spooky tales. For another spooky story.

And you can follow the spooky social media that poisons your brain at HappenHerePod. On Twitter.com. HappenHerePod and CoolZone Media, which, yes, Twitter will poison your brain

and it is just as spooky. Goodbye. Way more spooky. Way worse for your brain than surprise CIA acid, to be honest. The acid wears off.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.