So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Dancing Plague

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

One summer day in 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea started dancing. She didn't stop. Her dancing compulsion was contagious, and spread to hundreds of people before it turned deadly.

Who doesn't love to dance? Swing by any club, wedding, or Zumba class, and it will be full of people getting their groove on. But in the summer of 1518, about 400 people in Strasbourg, France, actually found themselves compelled to dance. As in, they literally couldn't stop. One minute, they're going about their ordinary lives. The next, they're out swaying in the streets. They twirled until their feet bled and their bones were visible through their legs. Some even danced themselves to death. This horrible phenomenon was so contagious it actually became

known as the dancing plague. And people were convinced it was the result of a curse. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, I'm talking about the dancing plague of 1518. Nobody knows why, but for about two months, hundreds of people in France literally danced until they dropped. And the scariest part is, there have been dozens of similar events, some even in modern times. We'll have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. On July 14, 1518, a woman named Frau Trofea went for a walk with her husband Herr Trofea. Now, the historical record from 1518 is really vague, so we don't even know Frau Trofea's first name. Frau is basically the German version of Mrs., but for clarity, I'll call her Inez and her husband Sebastian.

Women like Inez didn't have much social standing in 16th century Strasbourg, which is the city in France where Inez lived. Girls often got married when they were teenagers, then they were expected to spend their entire lives cooking and cleaning for their husbands. So it's safe to say Inez and Sebastian's relationship is probably more like one between a servant and a master than actual partners. Anyway, on this particular day, they're walking down the street and Sebastian tells Inez to do something. And I'm not sure what it is he asked for, but whatever it is, Inez refuses. And it's not enough for her to just say no. For Inez, this is the last straw. She lashes out in maybe the most creative way I've ever heard of. She's so angry,

she starts dancing. And okay, this sounds like a wild way to deal with your frustrations, but for some reason, Inez suddenly starts jumping around. She's kicking and waving her arms in the air as though she's dancing to music, even though there isn't any. People react the same way they always have whenever someone does something bonkers. They stare. A few people point and laugh, and they basically assume Inez is trying to make a scene and that she wants to embarrass her husband. Sebastian must think so, too, because he's furious. He starts screaming at Inez in front of everyone,

and he says that she needs to stop immediately. Except Inez can't. Even if she wants to, it's like some unseen force has taken over her body. The dancing is totally involuntary. And sure, she could just be saying that she can't control herself, but there were a bunch of eyewitnesses. They all said Inez was grimacing and wincing, like she was really unhappy to be dancing and possibly even in pain. Even though Inez says she can't control her movements, apparently some of the onlookers say that she's lying. But if Inez is faking it, she'd have to be really stubborn because a full hour goes by and she still doesn't stop.

It's unclear if Sebastian gives up and goes home, but it seems like he must have at some point because Inez keeps on dancing until it's been two hours, then three, and then four. By early evening, Inez is still dancing. And finally, everyone starts to wonder if this compulsion is real. One by one, they leave her alone. Meanwhile, the sun sets, it gets dark, and Inez is still swaying and spinning, which if you think about it is kind of sad. I mean, I have this mental image of Inez exhausted in the middle of the street, just dancing by herself. This goes on for hours past dark. Then finally, sometime during the night,

she collapses and passes out. I'm not sure if Sebastian or someone took her home, but it sounds like Inez spent the night sprawled out on the cobblestones, like she was out cold for a while, and she doesn't wake up until early the next morning. Keep in mind, Inez hasn't had anything to eat or drink in about a day, and this is mid-July in France. She's got to be hot, dehydrated and starving. But Inez literally can't grab breakfast or a cup of water because the minute she opens her eyes, she gets up and starts dancing again. So this whole situation was already weird, but now

it's truly unheard of. Like nobody thinks this is a prank or a tantrum anymore. And Inez looks more miserable than ever. Her feet are literally swollen and bleeding. But as painful as it is, people can't bring themselves to look away. The whole second day passes with crowds of people staring at Inez until once again she collapses. She sleeps through another night, but sure enough, as soon as the sun rises and the roosters crow, her feet hit the ground.

She's right back to kicking and swaying. Which at this point, Inez has been dancing for almost 48 hours. It's past the point of absurdity, and it's starting to look like a serious problem. Inez could get really sick or injured and that's not even the worst of it. So the records get really vague at this point and I'm not a hundred percent clear exactly how this happens but after a few days Inez ends up with a couple of dancing partners. I'm assuming she's on day three or four of her compulsion. Maybe she's swaying through a crowded town square or marketplace, the streets are packed, and even though this has been going on

for a while, people still stop what they're doing to stare. But at some point, someone drops their shopping basket or they wander away from their spouse and they start kicking and spinning with Inez. In other words, this dancing compulsion or whatever strange thing is happening to Inez is actually contagious. By the end of the week, there are something like 34 people, all dancing until they drop. So this isn't an isolated incident anymore. Something is seriously wrong. But there is just no good explanation. Even if it was a prank, almost three dozen people, I mean, they can't all be in on it.

It's so disturbing and it's spreading so rapidly that people start referring to it as an epidemic. And they've even given it a name, the dancing plague. Up next, city officials try to keep the outbreak in check. Now back to the story. Sometime in July 1518, a whole bunch of people started dancing in Strasbourg and they couldn't stop. The records are pretty vague, so I don't know who they were or how many, but they all seem to be in the same situation as Inez. They're dancing all day and collapsing at night just to get up the next morning and start it all over again. And there are more of them every single day. Now people are leaving their homes and their jobs.

Mothers are refusing to feed their kids. Bakers leave bread in the oven to burn. Society is breaking down because the streets are packed with people who can't do anything but sway and twirl. On July 25th, so not even two weeks since Inez first developed symptoms, a whopping 50 people are dancing in the streets, and the numbers only seem to grow from there. It's spreading, just like a plague, which terrifies the people of Strasbourg. At this point, anyone could get infected. Luckily, they have someone looking out for them. They're called the 21, which is a group of wealthy

nobles who serve as a sort of town council. I'm not sure where their name comes from, but the 21 has been ruling the area around Strasbourg for centuries. And they're not happy about this weird phenomenon. So the 21 pool their resources to hire the best doctors they can find to solve this dancing plague. But the physicians turn around and give a medical opinion that's just baffling, even by 16th century logic. They say the victims of the dancing plague have, quote, overheated blood, end quote. Now, they're basing this off this outdated medical idea called humoral theory. It basically says that if you do something

wrong, your blood could get too hot and maybe that would make you start dancing. It's total nonsense. But the doctors insist that the only way to stop the dancing is to encourage more dancing. Like basically they're saying the victims just need to get it out of their system and then everything will go back to normal. The weird thing is, there's nothing in the medical research from the time to suggest that this will work. But the 21 doesn't have any better ideas, so they just go with it. So first, the 21 builds a dance hall and a stage in the middle of town.

They hire all these musicians to play music day and night. They even bring in these professional dancers to join the people caught up in the plague. Which, all this sounds kind of fun. And honestly, in fact, some people even faked the dancing plague just so they could join this giant rager at the center of town. But for the real victims who couldn't just stop whenever they wanted, this situation causes a pressure cooker. Remember, prior to this point, a lot of the dancers would at least take a break overnight. But now it's like this rave is going 24-7. People go days without stopping. And some of them wear out their legs and feet until you can literally see their bones poking through their skin. Like this is disturbing. When people finally collapse, sometimes after days of nonstop partying,

they're in a real bad state. They're dehydrated, flushed, drenched in sweat, and they're not going home to sleep it off. Which means a few people pass out and they're just lying there in these hot stuffy dance halls without receiving any kind of care. Meanwhile, their condition just gets worse and worse until finally they die of heat exhaustion. The dancing plague has just turned fatal. You'd think the 21 would stop the party right then and there, but they actually think this will start working at some point. Meanwhile, the whole thing gets so bad that people are literally carting bodies off the dance floor

while others are still twirling around the corpses. Eventually, the 21 admits this isn't going to work, so they decide to go in the opposite direction. They ban all music and dancing in Strasbourg. But it doesn't really matter because the infected people are still at it. They keep grooving while the city officials take down the stages and board up the dance halls. The victims' families do their best to hide their sick loved ones from view, but so far as anyone can tell, Strasburg is doomed. According to a local family, there are 400 people who have been caught up in the plague. And this other merchant named Lucas Rem says that 15 victims are dying every day. That's over a hundred a week. So a lot. At that rate, every infected

person will be dead in a month. Luckily, the 21 has a final ace up their sleeve. Remember Frau Trofea, the woman I've been calling Inez? She's the one who started the whole play, but she isn't a big part of the story after that point. That's because about a week after she started dancing, she actually left town to go try and get help. So there was this belief in 1518 that if you had an irresistible urge to start kicking and swaying, you might actually be possessed. There was even something known as the evil dance, which basically means Satan has cursed you. And if you're a medieval Catholic, what better way to remove a

satanic curse than to pray to a saint? In Inez's case, town officials wondered if she shouldn't appeal to this one third century martyr named Saint Vitus. Supposedly, Saint Vitus had the power to cast out the devil, but there was something else that made him special. According to legends, he also had the power to curse sinners with a holy compulsion to dance. In other words, if you do something that really crosses the line, Vitus might zap your feet and suddenly you won't be able to sit still. Obviously, this is a little far-fetched, but the Strasbourg officials are desperate. They've tried everything to the point that they're convinced this has to be some sort of demonic or saintly curse.

Luckily, there's a chapel dedicated to Saint Vitus. It's located about 30 miles northwest of Strasbourg in a town called Severn. Everyone hopes that if Inez goes there, the saint will either exorcise the evil spirits or lift the curse that he put on Inez. So they put Inez in a cart and take her to Severn. The whole time she's kicking and bouncing because she still can't stop dancing, even in a small space. The whole journey probably takes a few days, and eventually they see the chapel in the distance. It's not the world's most impressive building. It's pretty small and modest, but nearby there's this cave with a shrine in it. Inez is supposed to go inside, and supposedly the saint will heal her. So she gets there, and then her story just kind of ends.

Nobody ever bothered to record whether or not it worked, but most historians treat this as a no-news-is-good-news situation. Like, there's no record of Inez dying, so she probably stopped dancing at some point after her trip. But the main reason people think she probably stopped dancing at some point after her trip. But the main reason people think she probably got better is because the 21 decided to try the same tactic with the rest of the dancing plague victims. In late August, about a month after this whole thing started,

they send all 400 or so dancers off to St. Vitus' Chapel, which is way easier said than done. I mean, we're talking a journey of about 30 miles, and the 21 spends a ton of money on wagons to carry all the victims. In some cases, they're probably packing 30 people into these tiny little carts. And of course, I mean, they're dancing the whole time. On top of that, the 21 buys everyone a pair of red shoes. And that might sound like an odd fashion choice, but apparently ruby footwear was a sign of penitence. It's supposed to be pleasing to St. Vitus. These shoes just show how big of a deal the dancing plague was.

Red dye is really hard to come by in 16th century Europe, so 400 pairs of shoes is not cheap. But the 21 is willing to do whatever it takes. They just want to put an end to this disturbing disease once and for all. The whole trip probably takes a few days, and when they arrive, these priests come out of St. Vitus Chapel. They grapple with the dancers, trying to get them to hold still just long enough to shove these red shoes on their feet. Once the dancers are dressed appropriately, the priests lead them into the church. They all listen to a mass, and the victims are still bopping the whole time. It sounds weird, but they all dance in a circle around the altar,

even the clergymen who aren't infected. Apparently, it's this specific kind of holy dance that's actually a part of some exorcism rituals. When they're finished, everyone who can afford it donates a penny to the chapel, and the local monks promise to use the money to care for the poor. So not only have the dancers done what they needed to do to possibly lift the curse, they've performed a good deed. They're really hoping they're on St. Vitus' good side now. Finally, it's time.

They all step outside to see if they're going to keep dancing. Because if they don't get a miracle, they're doomed. Up next, the fate of the dancing plague victims. And now back to the story. When the 400 or so dancers finish dancing for St. Vitus and giving their pennies to the chapel, they step outside and some are cured right away. A few others notice that their symptoms get a little bit better, but it takes a few more days or weeks before they can actually hold still, which maybe this was a placebo effect?

Like maybe some of the dancers believed they'd been cured, so they were finally able to stop dancing, and others saw it and eventually followed suit. Either way, the dancing stops, finally. At this point, it's probably sometime in September 1518, not quite two months since Inez became the first victim. And to the 21 and all other people in Strasbourg, it's like a miracle has just happened. Their loved ones are cured and the city is safe. Still, there's this big mystery about where this compulsion came from in the first place. But if there's one thing almost everyone in Strasbourg agrees on, it's that they must have brought the dancing plague on themselves.

And this isn't just religious guilt talking, because the plague isn't the first time the town seems to have been cursed. It's actually the second. So 11 years before the dancing plague broke out in the summer of 1507, this huge hail storm destroyed all the local crops. The priests said it was a sign of divine wrath. They thought God was angry because the upper Rhine Valley in France, where Strasbourg is located, was basically ground zero for this huge anti-Catholic movement sweeping the country. Strasbourg is right in the heart of all of this. So when the dancing plague happens years

later, everyone kind of assumes that the locals are still getting their due. Now, it's definitely not scientific, but for more than a decade, this is the prevailing theory, until a physician named Paracelsus decides he is going to solve the mystery. Paracelsus visits Strasbourg in 1526, so eight years later, and he finds plenty of eyewitnesses to tell him what happened. In fact, Paracelsus' work is one of the main reasons we know as much as we do about the dancing plague. After he analyzes all the data, Paracelsus gives the condition a name. He calls it choreomania, meaning dancing madness, and he basically decides that the choreomania outbreak was a feminist protest.

Obviously, he didn't use those exact words, but the gist of his theory is that Inez was so fed up with her husband, she started dancing just to mess with him. Then other local women join in because they want to annoy their husbands too. And they all just keep it up to the point of injury, exhaustion, and death because women are just silly and stubborn and do irrational things. So Paracelsus' way of explaining this is obviously sexist. Plus, it seems like there were men and children dancing too. Like, you'd think other accounts would have mentioned if it were just women dancing. In any case, for literal centuries, nobody came up with a better explanation. At which point, like, maybe this whole thing was a hoax.

But for the most part, historians have always agreed that the dancing plague really did happen, largely because there are so many records from the time. I mean, I'm talking diary entries, letters, and even notes that the 21 took during their meetings. Plus, there's a whole other reason to take the dancing plague of 1518 seriously, which is that there have been other dancing plagues too. In fact, as many as 10 happened before the 1518 outbreak. So rewind to 1188 CE, over 300 years earlier. A bunch of people danced until they collapsed at a church in South Wales. Then, in 1374, this massive outbreak of the dancing plague spread all through the Rhine Valley in France.

It even infected people in Strasbourg. So the 1518 incident isn't even the first time Choreomania has hit the city. It's the second. But I think the saddest dancing plague story comes from Erfurt, Germany. Around 1247, about 100 children danced right out of town. They ended up hopping and twirling nearly 150 miles. That's practically like going from Detroit to Cleveland on foot. They keep going right up until they reach this village called Hamelin. By this point, they're exhausted, so they all collapse right in the middle of town and end up sleeping in the streets.

Sadly, once their parents finally find them, most of these children have died of exhaustion, and most of the survivors end up with lifelong tics and chronic anxiety. Then, 60 years after this happens, storytellers in Hamelin start spreading the legend of the Pied Piper. He's basically this vengeful musician who plays beautiful tunes that are a form of mind control, meant to lure children out of their homes and to their deaths. The legend seemed like people's way of making sense of a very real tragedy that had happened to them. Not only that, it's further proof that the dancing plague is a real thing, not just a creative feminist protest or a hoax, and it's actually very scary.

Strangely enough, though, after the incident in 1518 Strasbourg, there was never as large an outbreak in all of Europe. But the dancing plague has popped up in other places around the world. Like in 1863, thousands of people in Madagascar started inexplicably swaying and kicking. They couldn't stop dancing, and they actually believed they'd been possessed by the spirits of the dead, which would be totally terrifying. And then there were even more recent examples. They don't involve dancing, but they include other strange and involuntary behaviors.

In 1962, a bunch of students at a girls' school in Tanzania started laughing, and they couldn't stop. It became known as the laughter epidemic, and it spread to a thousand people before it ended. Just like the dancing plague, nobody could figure out why it was so contagious. So fast forward to 2009. This author and historian named John Waller decides to solve the mystery. Waller is a professor of history, and his specialty is old-timey science and medicine. The dancing plague story is right up his alley. In 2009, he publishes this book full of his theories. It's called The Dancing Plague, The Strange True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. Waller doesn't think it was a demonic curse or an act of God or a feminist protest.

Instead, he thinks the people of Strasbourg may have shared a case of mass hysteria. Now, mass hysteria can only happen in certain circumstances. Generally, you need to have a close-knit group of people who are all in the same physical location and all with the same stressful situation. Everyone's anxious. Then one starts to twitch or get severe headaches. All their friends see this and pretty soon they develop the same symptoms, almost like it's contagious. In Inez's case, her dancing seemed to be some sort of stress response triggered by her husband's expectations. Then gradually, other witnesses caught on, which still seems a little hard to believe, but if you think about the historical context, it actually makes a lot of sense. In 1518, the people of Strasbourg had just survived a deadly famine from the year before.

Plus, the bubonic plague was sweeping through the region, and then there were all the anti-Catholic uprisings. People literally thought they were living in the end times. And just because we don't hear about this stuff today doesn't mean it's not happening because the way that mass hysteria spreads is through empathy. Like if there's mass hysteria outbreak today, big news stories and internet threads would only drum up more attention and exacerbate the problem. So nowadays, if a doctor or psychologist thinks mass hysteria is at play, they'll actually take steps to keep the story quiet, which is why we should probably treat

the dancing plague of 1518 like this giant, flashing caution sign. Even if it was all in everyone's head, the fallout was very real. We're talking about maybe hundreds of deaths, and those were the days before social media or the 24-hour news. So next time you're in a crowd that's working themselves into a tizzy, or you read an internet thread of people all freaking out about the same thing, just remember not to believe everything you see.

Your life might literally depend on it. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all Audiochuck originals.