RedHanded - DAY 12: Cotard’s Syndrome (ShortHand’s 13 Days of Halloween)

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--The dead live among us: walking, talking corpses who appear normal, but are rotting from the inside out. Or at least, that’s what sufferers of Cotard’s syndrome will have you believe.Cotard’s is a rare condition in which the affected (and very much alive) person is certain that they are already dead and decaying, with their blood frozen in their veins. The delusion is so great that some stop eating, and starve to death. Here’s the ShortHand.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Grab a coffee and discover Vegas-level excitement with BetMGM Casino. Now introducing our hottest exclusive, friends, the one with the multi-drop. Your favorite classic television show is being reimagined into your new favorite casino game, featuring iconic images from the show. Spin our new exclusive because we are not on a break. Play Friends, the one with Multi-Drop, exclusively at BetMGM Casino.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, Please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm John Robbins, comedian and host of Wondery's How Do You Cope podcast. I'm also, Plot Twist, an alcoholic. I've written a book, Thirst, 12 drinks that changed my life, published by Penguin. Thirst is a book about alcohol. It's mystery, it's terror, it's havoc, it's strange meditations.

But John, I hear you cry. Isn't that a rather odd book to write for a sober man who more than anything wants to stop thinking about alcohol? Well, yes, but I had to go back to find out why the one thing I know will kill me still calls out across the night. It's the story of what alcohol did for me and what alcohol did to me.

If that's of interest to you or someone you know, thirst, 12 drinks that changed my life, is available to pre-order now online, and from all good bookshops. Scams are everywhere, on your phone, in your inbox, even on your television screen. So what is it about scams that has pop culture so obsessed? Maybe it's because it can happen to anyone. Or maybe it's because we're all deeply fascinated by the psyche of someone who can

lie with ease and cheat with no guilt. Listen to scam influencers now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello there's spooky listener. It's October, our favorite time of the year. And so to celebrate and give you all of the, a well-deserved treat. We're bringing you the 13 days of Halloween. Short-hand edition. Usually, every single week over on Amazon Music, we release brand new episodes of our bite-sized sister show, Shorthand. It's like Red Hand's little friend. Where we delve into

all sorts of fascinating topics. From hell in different religions, Haitian voodoo, the death of Edgar Allan Poe, Qatar's syndrome, Japan's suicide forest, and so much more. And this hallow From the 19th of October to the 31st of October, we are going to be pulling out 13 of our most terrifying episodes of shorthand to drop straight into your red-handed feed every single day. But beware. Each episode will only be available for 24 hours. So get listening or abandon or hope. Enjoy. Hello.

I'm alive, and I know it. Me too. Some people don't. No, they don't. The day was, unfortunately, like every other, a 14-year-old, Haley Smith. It's a truth, known universally, that being a teenage girl is genuine hell on earth. and, to make things even worse, Haley's parents were getting a divorce. The schoolgirl from Alabama sat in her English class, desperately trying to focus on the lesson.

Just as it seemed like her world was falling apart, a disturbing feeling washed over her. Something was wrong, terrifyingly wrong. This was uncharted territory, a feeling so foreign that you and I could never. even imagine it. Unable to shake whatever it was, Haley made a beeline for the school nurse. There was nothing physically wrong with Haley. There was no elevated heart rate. Her palms weren't sweating.

She didn't have a migraine. The nurse was freaked out. This was way beyond her expertise. Haley decided to go home. And as she walked, she realised there was only one place she could go that might have some answers. The graveyard. But since it wasn't close by,

and with nowhere else to go and no one to turn to, Haley tried to sleep it off. Days later, the sinister sensation came back with a vengeance. And now Haley knew for sure what it was. She yearned for someone to understand. Haley wasn't depressed. She didn't want to die. She was already dead.

So if you've ever wondered what it's like, like to be dead, or you're just fascinated by the mysteries of the mind, then keep listening. Because the story we have for you today is that of Catard syndrome, aka Walking Corp Syndrome, in which people are convinced that they are just that. Here's the shorthand. In 1880, Dr. Jules Katard was visited by Mademoiselle X, who sounds like a dominatrix, but she was actually just a middle-aged woman who was depressed. She was depressed and also she was convinced

that she was made of skin and bones only. Mademoiselle X was totally convinced that she had no brain, no nerves, no organs and was cursed to internal damnation. In what must have been the fastest evaluation ever, Katar had confirmed that Mademoiselle X did have all of her organs and there were no other physical ailment. that he could find.

So Dr. Katar just couldn't really do anything else for her. Especially since Mademoiselle X, who was convinced that her stomach was dead, starved herself to death before Katar's psychiatric treatment could start. In a nutshell, Katad syndrome is a rare mental disorder where the affected and very much alive person thinks that they are dead, decaying, or have missing body parts. and feeling emotionally dead inside is one thing. We've all been there.

We're not talking about a psychedelic trip gone wrong or an existential crisis. Katar's syndrome manifests in a delusion so unshakable that no amount of logic or medical proof can break through. The syndrome usually unfolds in three stages, although it can come on suddenly and unexpectedly. First up is the germination stage, a deep nihilistic depression. sometimes accompanied by extreme hypochondria.

For that, let's look at the story of Esme Weijin Wang. In 2013, Wang, a writer from San Francisco, fainted on a flight home from London. For hours, she drifted in and out of consciousness. When she got back home, she went to doctor after doctor, but no one could explain what had triggered this episode. And this left Wang, who did have a history of psychosis, on edge. As her anxiety spiraled, her thoughts became scattered.

She started to lose her grip on reality. In a desperate attempt to ward off a psychotic break, Wang buried herself in self-help books, reorganised her workspace, bought five yearly planners, and one morning before the sun rose. She shook her husband awake and said, I'm dead. She cried through tears of relief.

And you're dead too, she told her husband. Finally, everything made sense. Wang was certain that she hadn't fainted on that flight a month ago. She had in fact died. And in her mind, so did her husband and dog Daphne. In her book, The Collected Schizophrenia's, colon essays, Esme describes life with walking corpse syndrome. While waiting for an electroconvulsive therapy consultation,

a guy checked her out, and Esme writes, Yes, I thought, as our eyes met, you may think I'm hot, but I'm also a rotting corpse. Sucks to be you, sir. And this brings us to the second stage, the blooming stage. Now, whoever named the stages of Catars had a dark sense of humour indeed. Well, presumably, it was Dr. Katar. Because nothing says blooming, quite like feeling like a rotting corpse. During the blooming stage, a delusional feedback loop can take place.

the catards sufferer believes that they are dead so they start doing things that make them feel even deader people with catards may stop eating because the food pyramid means nothing to the walking dead in one reported case a woman thought her body parts were rotting so she avoided washing altogether fearing that she'd vanish down the drain people who suffer from this condition may even beg their families

to bury them now or throw them a funeral some may even hang out in graveyards to feel closer to death I know you're not going to be able to answer this question but even if they're not eating yes presumably they still have to we so I mean obviously this is a very very sphere form of psychosis so it's not going to be rational at all

but that's quite odd yeah I mean you must have organs you're weeing I think it comes back to that line that they will believe this in the face of all logic and evidence to the contrary. I'm going to really upset you with something. I'm sorry. My friend Molly is staying with me and one of her friends is a counsellor.

She deals a lot of people with OCD. Like, can't leave the house OCD. And what she does is she will go to her client's house and she will lick the toilet bowl to show them that it's fine. Oh, my God. Yeah. I am upset. I knew you would be.

I'm dead. I've died. I've dead. I've given you Catard syndrome. Listen to this shorthand. West Rudy gets infected with Catard's syndrome. Oh, my God. I'm so upset.

But I understand the logic. Yeah. I understand the logic. Can't handle. Would you rather lick a toilet bowl or the soul of your shoe? Is it my shoe? Yeah. Is it my toilet?

My toilet because I clean it at least twice a day. So I'll do that. But I don't clean the soles on my shoes. No, who would? Exactly. I'm not mental. I've just got Qatar's syndrome. I'm not mental. I'm dead.

That takes us up to the final stage of Katad syndrome, where the delusion now deeply entrenched. can take an even more morbid turn. Take Saruti's boyfriend Richard Chase, the infamous vampire killer, who is a pretty likely candidate for Catard syndrome. We did his case ages ago on the two-parter, but here's a little recap.

Richard Chase was a spree killer who terrorised people in Sacramento in the late 70s. He thought his arteries had been stolen and his blood was turning into powder and in order to replenish himself, he harvested animals and then later humans, killing six people within a month and cannibalizing their remains. Then, of course, there's the tragic story of Per Olin, frontman of mayhem.

A band that makes Slipknot look like the backstreet boys. We've also covered his story and the church-burning, bloodthirsty chaos that followed in our episode on the Norwegian black metal scene. You should go listen to it if you haven't. It's perfect for this season. Now, Per, known by his stage name, Dead, was hardcore into death core. He wore corpse paint, and not in like a kiss cosplay way,

and he even buried his clothes in coffins to scent them with dead fungus fumes. He carried around a plastic bag with the dead crow in it. Before going on stage, he would even inhale the rotting air from this bag in order to sing with, quote, the stench of death in his nostrils. His antics were extreme, even for the death metal scene. Dead was severely depressed and in April 1991, he took his own life at 22 years old. Since his death, there has been speculation and pretty reasonable conclusions that dead suffered from Katard syndrome. Before Per Olin was dead, childhood bullies nearly took him there themselves, beating him so badly that he was declared clinically dead and had to be revived.

According to Stein occultus Johansson, who took over as the vocalist after Dead's suicide, Dead had visions that his blood had frozen in his veins. Katad's syndrome is sometimes thought to be comorbid with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but it can also be triggered by psychological and physical trauma. So Per Olin may never have fully recovered from his schoolyard beating. You know those crue? creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories

are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries

should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. All right, should we talk about the Signal Awards?

Sure. Sure. That is the level of information. enthusiasm. We would love you guys to have for us too. Because if you remember, we made the podcast series, Flesh and Code with Wondry. We were super excited like the minute they brought that story to us. Because if you haven't listened to Flesh and Code, it's essentially about following people who essentially fall in love with their like AI companions. It's about Russian interference and all sorts of crazy things and about how these AI companions are to be

trusted, whether this is a good thing, how it was impacting on a larger scale, and the ramifications when a replica that was the company at the heart of it took away the erotic role play function and didn't go well. Spoilers. So we loved making it. We spent what 18 months making that show and we worked so, so hard on it. And so we are going to ask a very small favour of you guys, shockingly to us. Flesh and Code has been put up for the listener's choice category of the Signal Awards 2025. So we would love you guys to please help us out and basically try to get some more eyes and ears on Flesh and Code because it was a real labour of love for us. What you guys need to do is go to the Signal Awards website and vote for Flesh and Code. Again, it's in the

listener's choice category and you can find us under documentaries. That's the category you're looking for and then under limited series and specials. Voting is open until the 9th of October so you really don't have much time, like, literally go do this now. And we would just be so incredibly grateful because if we did win the listeners' choice for Flesh and Code at the Signals Award, then it would just mean the world to us. Thank you. Then there's a story of Warren McKinley, an ex-soldier from Braintree, Essex. Warren joined the British Army as a teenager in 1999. He was later based at the Royal Air Force, Honington, in Suffolk, where he worked as a recovery mechanic.

On the 23rd of May 2005, Warren and a friend were riding their motorbikes home from work when his riding companion lost control. Warren swerved to dodge him, but was thrown from his own bike and into a tree. He suffered a broken back, pelvis and damage to his frontal lobe, the executive suite of your brain which controls high-level decision-making. Warren recovered in a military hospital

where he was surrounded by veterans with missing limbs and stories of death. And this triggered something in his psyche. Warren became convinced that he had died in that motorcycle crash, but for reasons unknown to him, his spirit had refused to move on. He was a dead man walking. Soon enough, the dead man refused to eat. Here's the thing about Catars. Someone could be withering away, fainting, losing weight, stomach howling,

but the delusion is so powerful that the mind rejects physical cues like hunger and if you're trying to crack the code and be like why don't you show them their pulse or like me being like why don't you explain to them they have to have a bladder because they're weeing the syndrome doesn't respond to any ordinary

proof of life metric if you point out to a catard sufferer that they're walking, talking or even that they went to the bathroom then they'll just tell you that dead people do all of that as well in their eyes you're the idiot who's misinformed A doctor could show a Qatar's syndrome suffer a concrete proof

that they're alive with a pulse or a blood test but they will just reject the science and insist that corpses can bleed and that they're living in an afterlife. It's the kind of mental gymnastics that would make any conspiracy theorist proud. Telling someone with Katad syndrome that they're not dead

is like telling you the sky isn't blue or that fire doesn't burn. And there's an old saying you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. So maybe Flat Earthers and Katard's patients have that in common. The human brain is very good at clinging to false beliefs like their gospel. And this calls for a quick segue,

the three Christs of Yipsolanti. In the 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokic wanted to see if delusional people could be reasoned out of their delusions. He rounded up three patients with paranoid schizophrenia. each one convinced that they were the one true Jesus Christ. Initially, they all argued over who was the holiest. After two years of living together, these three people's delusions hadn't changed at all.

Each self-proclaimed Messiah simply concluded that the other two were obviously mental, or controlled by machines or something. I can't remember where I heard this story, but for some reason it's in Stephen Fry's voice in my head, so maybe he said it. there was a man living in a psychiatric hospital convinced that he's God, right? And one of the workers goes in to his room and they're like, okay, God, I have a question.

How do you explain the problem of evil? How do you explain suffering in the world? And this patient just goes, I never talk shop. So, what is really going on in the deluded, catard syndrome riddled brain? In a 90 study on the syndrome, 69% of patients denied their own existence. But interestingly, 55% also believed that they were immortal. This paradox suggests that Katad's syndrome is tied to issues

with the affective sense of self. Philosopher Andre Billion proposes that Katar's syndrome is a response to depersonalization, which happens when someone loses their sense of mindness, the feeling that their experiences aren't, truly their own. Boberdom has that. Billion's theory also draws upon the understanding

that different layers of the brain must work together to create a unified sense of self. And these are split into the affective, core, sensory motor and narrative selves. Another leading theory is that Katars is similar to something

known as Capgras syndrome. Capgras, also called a delusion of doubles, is a psychiatric disorder in which someone believes an imposter has replaced a friend or relative. Capgras usually starts with damage to the fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain that helps us recognize faces and respond to social cues. When this part is damaged, you may end up with something called prosperaphasia or

face blindness. Apparently, Brad Pitt has hinted that he might have this, though he hasn't been officially diagnosed. But Capgras syndrome goes beyond a difficulty in recognizing faces. With this condition, the part of the brain that links emotions to familiar faces is damaged too. So imagine coming home to a stranger in your dining room. The stranger insists that they're your sister, but her face looks off, almost like she's wearing a very lifelike prosthetic mask.

So you'd start checking for signs and looking for cracks in her disguise. As paranoia takes hold, you become convinced that your sister has been replaced by a doppelganger or an identity thief. so the first brain impairment makes you doubt that your sister is really your sister the second impairment then impacts your ability to believe or reject this belief both catards and capgras likely result from a two-part impairment in the brain area is responsible for introspection perception emotion and facial recognition however when this emotional disconnect happens people may try to understand it in different ways based on their personality or a pre-existing disorder

For example, someone with severe depression might internalise the disconnect and think something is wrong with them, therefore denying their existence and developing Katarth Syndrome. On the flip side, someone more prone to paranoid thinking might look outward and start blaming their environment, and therefore they're more likely to develop something like Katrass Syndrome. There are still a lot of questions around Katad Syndrome, with only 200 known cases worldwide.

It doesn't get much funding. It did make a brief appearance in Scripps, though. You might recall in season four when a Katar's patient named Jerry wanders around Sacred Heart Hospitals spewing unsolicited life lessons from the dead. I do remember that episode. It's a good one. Despite being documented since the 19th century,

the first PET scan done on a Katars patient was in 2013. After surviving a suicide attempt, where he tried to electrocute himself in the bath, a man named Graham believed that he had killed his brain in the process and was diagnosed with Catard syndrome. A PET scan revealed his metabolic activity was so low that it was like someone who was in a vegetative state.

The default mode network was also damaged. This is a brain region that activates when we're resting and disconnected from the outside world. Experts weren't sure whether Graham's delusions were caused by his brain activity or if the delusions themselves led to the lowered brain activity. When it comes to treatment, no clear cause means no clear cure. However, quite often doctors will turn to electroconvulsive therapy. It's the oldest somatic therapy, and it is still used today.

It's a last resort for treating depression that doesn't improve with therapy or medication. And it does help people. Like, it sounds nightmarish, and I'm sure it's very unpleasant. But for some people, it does work. As depression is the most common diagnosis of Katard's syndrome, the effectiveness of ECT perhaps comes from its ability to treat the underlying depression rather than the Katars delusions themselves. But there are other solutions that are a little bit more unconventional.

Take our motorbike rider Warren McKinley. He spent 18 months living as a dead man until he crossed paths with a fellow British soldier in rehab who all also had Catard syndrome. What are the odds? As Warren and his new friend bonded over their mutual non-existence, they found a silver lining. Considering their old selves were dead, this was an opportunity to start over.

Nature would have a field day with that. Across the pond, Esme Wang, our American writer from earlier, had a similar epiphany. For her, being dead was a relief. In fact, she was almost happy about it. now she could give her life another shot but this time she'd do better however being dead quickly lost its appeal for esme who described the terrifying ordeal writing the following i was doomed to wander forever in a world that was not mine in a body that was not mine i was doomed to be surrounded by creatures and so-called people that mimicked the lovely world that i had once known but were now fictions and could evoke no emotion in me

There's a really horrible and, like, haunting Kafka quote. I was ashamed of myself when I realized that life is a masquerade party and I attended with my real face. Oh, I know. So what about Haley Smith, our schoolgirl from Alabama, that we met at the top of the show? Well, she actually had a pretty wholesome path back to the land of the living. At first, for three years, Haley actually embrace life as a corpse.

She gorged on food, figuring that corpses can't gain weight, and she watched horror films to be closer to her zombie family. Eventually, she came clean to a friend of hers and then later to her dad, who urged his daughter to see a psychiatrist. Haley credits a mix of therapy and Disney films for bringing her back to life. According to Haley, If the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty and Bambi could make her feel so good, maybe she wasn't so dead after all.

Whatever it takes, I guess. Bambi, though, fuck. Yeah. I mean, that is not a feel-good film. No, I don't think it is at all. No. I've never watched it. I don't want to watch it.

Don't. No, thanks. So, yeah. There you go, spooky short hand. For spooky month. Very spooky. imagine if I actually felt that way. So no thank you.

Don't get Katad's syndrome. Whatever you do. Or if you do, watch Aladdin. And you'll be fine, apparently. Prince Ali! Anyway, that's it, guys. We will see you next week for a different short hand. Goodbye.

Bye. How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our time. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident.

This was 100% preventable. They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us. And the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now

by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm John Robbins and on my podcast I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, how do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength and failure. Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means. means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real. Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope? Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, or listen to episodes early and ad-free

on Wondery Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life, with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations and motivational series. Thank you.