This Paranormal Life - #155 The French Village That Went INSANE: Paranormal or Poison?

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

One quiet August night in the early 1950s, French village Pont-Saint-Esprit was changed forever. From a sleepy village, home to just 4000 people, to the site of a bizarre and mysterious international cover up.Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is there a cryptid that can move faster than the speed of light? If there are infinite parallel universes, how do I get to one where I made better life choices? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Yo! Hey! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life, the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we investigate a different tale, case, or claim and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not. That's right. As always, you're joined by myself, Mr. Kit Grimm-Ovena, this guy across from me, Mr. Rory Pars.

How are you doing today, Rory? I'm doing fantastic. And, you know, just speaking about parallel universe versions of ourselves, you know, it is conceivable, guys, that somewhere out there there there is a podcast called this parallel life wow and it's just us hosting a show where we did everything right for once it's hard to believe i know you guys love this show but uh it is a train wreck and it's uh it's a damn crying shame um and it's like a car crash you can't look away the numbers are going up every week and that's the only explanation we have. But it's out there somewhere in the multiverse. There is two just slightly handsomer, slightly more jacked, ripped and accomplished men.

Whose dads still talk to them. And who drive, actually who just have cars. How about that? They don't even drive nice cars. They just have a car. I ride a scooter to work. All right. And not one of those fancy electric ones.

I had to steal mine off a child. Wow. Like a yeah one of those tiny little it barely reaches my knees i have to haunch over like a little clown oh i see it in the hallway it's a it's a trike it's not even a scooter yeah it was the guy was only four years old he's not gonna have a he's not a guy it's an infant then the infant wasn't gonna have a moped then was he he wasn't gonna have a mini cooper i had to gank his little bike right to be fair the guys who own mini coopers are quite large and might fight back yeah exactly exactly why i couldn't go for them let's stop beating around the bush let's dive straight into today's investigation today's episode actually came as a listener submission that's at this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com uh this email read hey guys love the podcast listening in from the french alps

this case has a lot to give you and has not yet told all its secrets here's an article about it wow keep it up guys proud of you brackets kit in particular signed tommy wow rude thank you so much tommy uh especially just for the kind words and just the big ups in the podcast. Appreciate you listening every week, Tommy. Super rude, but it's fine. Our story today begins in France, 1951. We are in very southern France in a tiny and picturesque town called Pont Saint-Esprit, a place with a population of only around 4,000 people. And on the 16th of August that very same year, the local postman, Leon Amunier, a young man in his late 20s, was traveling his usual route through the town by bicycle. But as he pedaled, he started to feel a little nauseous. Leon slowed his bike down and concentrated on the feeling, hoping it

would pass. But it didn't. The nausea started intensifying, if anything. Leon knew it wasn't just a stomach cramp, because suddenly his senses were failing him too. The world's becoming shaky and blurry. Oh, that's not good. As if in slow motion. I mean, I know that, you know, in Friends, you know, they might, they take a little work break, maybe a little glass of wine.

Yeah. But this is first thing in the morning on the postal route. And this isn't just like a little red wine buzz he's got on yeah this seems a lot more the world is fading around him if you got a bit of a tummy bug you might feel a little achy you shouldn't have like the space-time continuum blur and around the corners of your vision that's so that's something else for sure the cheshire cat started grinning inside his bike basket unless that indigestion is caused by the eating of a wizard's crystal right i wouldn't assume that uh that it's related to anything that you ate that's right the world became shaky and blurry around him and as if in slow motion the next thing he knew he had crashed his bicycle

and was hurtled to the ground he closed his his eyes and opened them, hoping that his senses would be restored if he could just shake himself awake. But by now, the nausea was crippling, and he had started to see the impossible. That's right, he accidentally ate a witch's crystal. Uh-oh! Evil forces coming into his belly here, guys. That's right, it isn't some dumbledore this is some medusa style hags crystal and it was past the expiry date not that that should affect a crystal but if you're gonna eat a crystal make sure it's still good yeah might as well be fresh yeah he

checks it and it's like first of september 1500 a.d oh boy That would explain the cramps. Oh, no. Because if that thing is cursed from the day it's made, think how cursed it is after another 500 years of lying around in the back of the fridge. Yeah. Over 60 years later, Leon would claim, It was terrible. I had the sensation that I kept shrinking and shrinking, and there was fire and serpents

coiling around my arms." Some passers-by in the street must have seen him fall off the bike because he started to see a crowd forming around him. And as he blinked in and out of consciousness, the last thing he remembered was being lifted into an ambulance. Taken away to get help at least. But for Leon, his day was only beginning. In a 2010 interview, when asked about the events

of 16th August, 1951, Leon said, "'I'd prefer to die rather than go through that again.'" Oh my God, what, just falling off the bike or more? No, what's the con? Okay, I was like, oh my oh my really was it that sore it was the worst moment of my life everything was rosy after that the pebbles lodged in my knee some pretty ladies saw me fall it was very embarrassing in a town of four thousands i am a laughing stock my bike bell broken the next time leon became, he was still laying on his back, but now staring

against what appeared to be a hospital ceiling. The snakes had stopped coiling around his arms, but come to think of it, he couldn't move his arms. He looked down to see that he was wearing a straitjacket. In a moment of panic, he struggled to break free, but it was impossible. Not only was he wrapped in a straitjacket, but he was chained tightly to the hospital bed. Oh my god. He couldn't move an inch. I always find it funny when people wake up in a straitjacket, that their first instinct is to be like,

because there's obviously a reason you're in that thing. And trying to get out in that fashion isn't going to do you any favors to like the people who put you there in the first place yeah you should probably just be like excuse me hey nurse um yeah i just woke up and i'm a little confused about what's going on yeah you could just maybe run me through the last few hours exactly if you come to and they're like are you sure we needed the straitjacket? I mean, he doesn't seem to. Get me the f*** out of this thing! It's like, you're not going to get out of the straitjacket. It's like, it's already a red flag that you don't know why you're in it.

Yeah. You said there were snakes on your arms for some reason. They'll bite you if you don't let me out of here. It was only then he noticed the sound, an overwhelming, horrible screeching noise. He scanned the room from his lying position to see that he wasn't alone in this room. There were three other men on three other beds, all straitjacketed, all chained to their beds. But they were violently trying to break out. None of them learned. Using every muscle in their body. Like, the thrashing wildly doesn't seem to be working too well for John over there, but I'm going to give it a go because I feel like if we combine our energies,

something might happen. These guys can't get out, so I assume I'm the one of four that can. Leon said, They were thrashing wildly, screaming, and the sound of the metal beds jumping up and down. The noise was terrible. Most disturbingly of all from Leon's account was that they weren't even trying to escape Rory. He said they were trying to jump out the window. This is crazy. From his hospital bed, Leon still didn't know what had happened or why he and these men had been affected. But he now knew he wasn't alone. Something had happened to the people

of Pont Saint-Esprit. And over the coming days, it would only get worse. Like place yourself in Leon's position. Like chaos of going from being completely fine to falling off your bike and being like, I don't know, I feel dizzy, I guess. Yeah. To the next moment you are conscious to be apparently in one flew over the cuckoo's nest. That is zero to a hundred. I can't tell whether I would be more or less comforted by realizing that there's other people chained up as well maybe worse i think it's worse because that ramps up the whole situation you're like it's not just me and something weird is happening it's like this is affecting a whole

group of people yeah that it's almost like this isn't a mistake they didn't like wrap me up by accident thinking i'm someone else it's like, they think I'm one of these, whatever these are. Yeah. That means that the, the chill voice thing, it ain't going to work because your brothers over there are flopping like magic carps.

All right. They're not letting any of you sons of bitches out of these chains. I do like to imagine at some point in the day after maybe eight to nine hours of screaming and thrashing, they're like, guys, day after maybe eight to nine hours of screaming and thrashing they're like guys let's put on our poshest voice as possible and like talk about poetry for like 10 minutes just see if that works just being like say gilbert is your straight jacket confining you at all oh no i don't mind

it at all i feel rather cozy in here say nurse would you mind loosening my arm for a moment you know the second he gets out he's just like freed from the straitjacket. All the chains drop off. He's like, oh, thank you, Barry. Yeah! Starts stabbing everyone. It's like, they let you out. You were free to go.

You didn't have to be crazy. You weren't crazy when you got here. Big mistake, f***ers. I'm institutionalized. They're're like it's been two hours you're like the worst part is they're obviously not gonna let the rest of us go now because steve just blew it for all of us he just blew it for all of us 30 minutes later steve is like brought back in in the in the straight jacket didn't work guys you've got another plan god damn that was the plan dave's like i think we've got to go window window's the only way out baby like finding nemo

they'll have to get out and worm their way into the canal hard cut to him like broken ribs just faced on still in the straight jacket by the way but in the garden in fact because of the noise inside the hospital leon could be forgiven for not being able to hear the world outside the window if he had he would have realized what was happening inside the ward was happening everywhere even as darkness fell over the town there was no escape from the screaming and chaos in the street because one effect of this mysterious condition meant that no one could sleep. One man started smashing all the furniture in his house because he was seeing demons invade his home that no one else could see.

When he was finally tied down by passersby using thick leather straps, he reportedly chewed through them, destroying most of his teeth. A husband and wife, in a bout of some sort of mania, grabbed kitchen knives and started trying to kill each other. A little girl ran through the streets, screaming and running, claiming that tigers were chasing her and everywhere people thought the town itself was burning one man thought snakes were eating his brain so he jumped out of an open window oh my this is crazy allegedly another man jumped from a window broke both his legs stood up and kept running wow this reminds me a little bit of a case we investigated where the dancing

plague took over a town a little less sinister version of this one where um well up until a point where everyone danced themselves to death literally whereas this time it seems to be some sort of mass hysteria where people are hallucinating and seeing just basically hell engulf this town exactly right i mean it is somewhat similar in the sense that it's gone from the totally mundane to just falling off a bicycle and feeling a little queasy to suddenly some people literally leaping to their deaths one man attempted to run and jump straight into the river before others stopped him. He was yelling, I am dead. My head is made of copper. I have snakes in my stomach. They are burning me. People were ripping their beds open and trying to hide inside them.

One guy believed he was in the circus and tightrope walked across a cable on a suspension bridge. Okay, we get it. Another man began convulsing and immediately started writing out hundreds of pages of euphoric poetry. And as soon as he was done, that's right, he tried to jump out of the window. Of course, his head is a snake. All of this is too strange to believe. Yeah. But it was only 60 years ago.

I mean, unlike the dancing plague we've covered in a previous episode, which was, I think, a couple of hundred years ago, and other instances of mass hysteria like that have gone back hundreds of years, very few in recent times, this one is within living memory. So we have highly detailed primary sources.

In fact, on the New York Times website you can literally wind back the clock to 1951 and read about this event in detail. Their reporter even wrote that it wasn't only humans that were affected. They saw a dog jump into the air, run around in

circles, then start eating and crunching rocks until its teeth started to chip apart and it fell over dead this is insane the weirdest part for me is that there doesn't seem to be any correlation between what the people are doing because as you said like some people are just having a terrible time and trying to jump into rivers or jump out windows but then you have these people writing pages and pages of poetry or maybe the weirdest one for me is someone trying to climb into their own bed their own mattress

what the hell does that even mean what do you think's in there if i tried to do that i it wouldn't i wouldn't get very far i guess of course these days we've like memory foam you're not getting anywhere in that thing. Yeah, you can't let the memories get out. They're trapped in there for a reason. I guess back then you had springs. It doesn't make any sense. At this point in the story, one of the most terrifying speculations

is that this immediately goes one of two ways. Our temptation is to say that these people are hallucinating. Yeah. The other possibility is to say that these people are hallucinating yeah the other possibility is to say that these people have somehow tapped into some other level of consciousness that was maybe already there this is like a kind of fairy realm right where you know the ghosts of disembodied snakes really are crawling over the ground yeah we don't know what the mechanism was here my my eyes could be snakes right now but we don't have the ability to see it this whole room could be on fire i should

go in the mattress we should podcast from the mattress people are starting to make a lot of sense imagine just like ripping open the mattress to find like 200 residents of a southern france town it's the portal to narnia but we don't know if the madness that has taken over these people is causing them to hallucinate right or if some sort of paranormal vision is causing them to understandably freak out yeah there's a lot of ways to view this guys and that's how that's how you move from learning about a paranormal instance to getting your mind blown clean out of your head with a paranormal shotgun that's right because yeah it's easy to say oh these guys were hallucinating because maybe something in the water something got into the crops and the potatoes are wonky you know something like that but how about this maybe you're

hallucinating right now this looking at the looking at this world listen maybe the real world is full of snakes and i've got a copper head you think of that you at home need to get out a little paranormal toothbrush and scrub that third eye open yeah because you're using your shitty little 2d peepers when there's a whole other dimension waiting to be seen there's a 99 chance that nothing is real nothing in this room is real this ipad right here yeah is if i take it and broke it over my friggin knee it wouldn't even don't it wouldn't even make a dent well oh it's it's smashed to pieces actually yeah but in the same way you smash a dream to pieces that it doesn't even really matter well it's a weird analogy because like a dream falling

upsetting i also i don't know if i had stuff backed up to the cloud which is pretty annoying because because that's that's quite real actually because that's to do with your work. Yeah, there's a bunch of pictures of my cousin's kid as well on there and stuff. Like things you... Yeah. Just... And actually... As long as the warranty for the dream is activated, then there's no consequence to life.

This is what we're saying, people. You know, this guy jumped out of a window. Sure. Broke both his legs. Sure. Yeah. It's France. Universal this guy jumped out of a window. Sure. Broke both his legs. Sure. It's France. Universal health care. You can experiment a little.

Sure. You think your legs are snakes? Break them. Even if there's a 1% chance your legs are snakes, kill the snakes. And then if you find out later they weren't, hey, you know, live and learn. I feel like we've slightly moved past the point of um giving testimonies about what was seen that day but i just have one more i really need to get out i definitely please not only did dogs fall over and die but ducks were seen to stand up straight start flapping their wings and march

like penguins together before falling over dead Ducks are seeing these crazy third eye visions. Yeah. Wow. I wonder if those are the only two instances that were witnessed of animals going crazy or if it's a duck and dog kind of virus. I think the idea was it happened to all animals. It seemed to be the gist.

Kind of interesting as well because I guess that's also, it's like a different class of animals. It's like if it was dogs and cats, we kind of get it. Yeah. But for it to happen of interesting as well because i guess that's also it's like a different class of animals it's like if it was dogs and cats we kind of get it yeah but for it to happen to birds as well seems very bizarre yeah that's super weird also very exciting because i don't know this could be the first case of a possessed animal on this paranormal life have we had that before uh we've done phantom kangaroos i think that's as close as we probably got to that afflehampton ghost monkey ghost monkey but it was always just ghosts you know yeah they're always

kind of like haunted animals not really like animals possessed but unless you you're kind of edging into cryptids this is super weird but what i want to see more is like testimonials from people whose dog went from being a beautiful, cute, adorable little member of the family to a little demon baby. Exactly. Patches started writing page after page of poetry before launching himself out of the top floor window. Despite the satanic content, it was weird enough given that he couldn't write up to that date. satanic content. It was weird enough given that he couldn't write up to that date. The town of Pont Saint-Esprit was in chaos and the word spread quickly that hundreds of people were in danger. Help began to pour in from all over France. Doctors, scientists, researchers,

psychologists, anyone who could help was trying. But how could they help the townspeople if they had no idea what caused this in the first place? I was so worried you were going to say, but how could they help the townspeople if they were even madder? That's right, they caught it day one. Oh, old copperhead, PhD. He jumped straight into the river once he got the train down from Paris. It seems like whatever happened to these people, it's over with. And this weird mental state isn't infecting other people.

If doctors are able to come into the town and examine patients. Yeah. The acute symptoms which affected the townspeople of Pont Saint-Esprit, that did last for several days right and one of the factors that made it even more confusing and disturbing was that it wasn't like the hallucinations came and went but actually once those subsided people were going into seizures and then having dreadful after effects that were endangering their lives even further so the thing was very protracted but i know what you mean that the medical professionals didn't seem to be at risk of catching whatever this was. It seemed to be located in this town alone.

So late at night, one of the doctors who has traveled in from Paris is studying the case by candlelight, looking at their notes. What have they witnessed and experienced in the afflicted during the day? They're leafing through huge old medical textbooks trying to glean a clue about the symptoms. Can they find any record of anything like this in history of such a bizarre disease? And they did find one clue. There was a French medical record from 1816, over a hundred years previous, of a bizarre and little understood outbreak called St. Anthony's Fire, where hundreds of people in the streets went insane and suffered from terrifying hallucinations, but it had disappeared into medical history shortly afterwards. But the researcher was able to trace St. Anthony's Fire back in time, almost 1000 years. Wow.

It turned out, around the year 1000 AD, medieval peasants all over Europe were going mad, starting to hallucinate, feeling that their skin was burning, and in some accounts their limbs were actually falling off. At the time it was considered a spiritual disease and believed that it was caused by something like demonic possession. Because St. Anthony was famous for his power over the forces of evil, it was said that he could use the power of God to cure people of this illness and it became named after him. So there were similarities but it didn't exactly add up. I mean how could this be demonic possession? There had to be a more logical answer.

Right. Something must link all the instances of St. Anthony's fire over the last thousand years. What do they all have in common? Until the doctor got it. Mother of God, it was the weather. What? The demonic possession, the madness and hallucination always followed an unusually rainy season not only that but throughout history all the people affected

all ate rye bread they survived largely on rye bread these medieval peasants they didn't have money for much else okay it made perfect sense perfect sense. And even in 1951, many people in France relied heavily on bread for many of their meals. The theory went that a very wet season meant that a type of fungi started to grow on the rye or wheat before it was harvested, something called ergot. Crucially, ergot has surprising mind-bending properties. It's believed, for example, that the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece, which we should definitely talk about at some point, involved drinking something made from this type of fungi.

Wow. It caused a divine spiritual experience. Unfortunately, the type that caused St. Anthony's fire was far more deadly, making your limbs fall off. Whoa! Not even, like, dreaming that your limbs are falling off? It actually just destroyed your body? There's, like, kind of medieval paintings of, like, peasants in the street

all walking around with, like, all of their limbs black and missing. That's insane. Very creepy, very weird. And the silver bullet that tied all of this evidence together, Rory, what do ducks eat? What do ducks love? What can they not get enough of? My god. Bread. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't get any simpler than that. Their f***ing beaks are falling off in the pond. These guys are tripping little duck balls. As soon as the doctors and researchers discovered this hypothesis, it spread like wildfire. The press, including the New York Times, stated this as fact. The number one

most likely cause. And it was good enough for the locals, who were happy just to move on with their lives in the aftermath of this incident. This is crazy. This is some full metal alchemist bullshit right here, which is, i don't know if you've seen it popular anime uh where it establishes that the law of alchemy is based on the law of equivalent exchange all right if you want to perform some incredible feat spiritually using alchemy so like like running across a rooftop or something yeah well maybe a little more extreme than that like you know bringing hopping over like walking a tightrope over a river or something that's not even alchemy that's just being a skilled well you said like an

incredible feat but yeah as in like maybe like bringing the dead back to life oh wow that's gonna cost you something that you have it's gonna cost you a body part you know if you want to pull that off these guys to have these peasants to have the trip of a lifetime to see the face of god to fly like a duck through the sunsets of hell they're gonna have to lose their limbs once once you come to you're like you're just a stub and you're like it was worth it it's worth it i saw i saw the ends of the fibers of the universe you know that is a creepy yet fascinating take rory that that could be another paranormal element to this that whatever processes are happening here are so taxing on the human body the human body is so little designed to withstand this kind of mainlining the universe into your brain yeah that whenever you come to your body is falling apart it's kind of like in uh i'm so sorry for

bringing this up on the podcast but indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull oh spoilers for a terrible film uh when they get to the end and they you know are talking to the the crystal skulls and they're like well what do you want to know and they're like well we want to know the secrets of the universe they're like lol okay and as soon as they start beaming it into these people's heads they're like we human brains aren't physically capable of containing those secrets. It's too much knowledge. It's trying to unload a 200 gigabyte file onto a floppy disk. It melts and it leaks out of the computer. You're trying to run Skyrim on a calculator. It's not going to happen.

Yeah. Which come to think of it, I'm pretty sure was also the premise of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. When they opened the Ark of the Covenant. indiana jones and raiders of the lost ark when they opened the ark of the covenant pretty much every indiana jones movie is indiana jones finding the thing that you're looking that every the bad guys are looking for them just ganking it off of him because they've been following him for the whole movie and then them opening it up or getting the secret which turns out to kill everyone which again i think happened with the Holy Grail itself. Someone drank from the cup.

They followed Indiana Jones till he found the Grail. Then he stole it. And they all melted. Or whatever the hell happens till you turn to bone. It's the same thing every time. You could see why they thought the Crystal Skull would work. Because as a blueprint, it's the same movie. It's true.

And all you've added is Shia LaBeouf, who is an absolute star. Which on the face of it should be a guaranteed A+. Yeah. I haven't seen that movie in a long time. Me neither. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats.

But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Fast forward 50 years. It's 2009. Investigative journalist Hank Albarelli is poring over leaked CIA documents for anything interesting he can find, anything that could be a clue or lead to a groundbreaking story, when suddenly he saw something weird, a line that caught his eye. Regarding Pont Saint-Esprit and F. Olson files,

S.O. Spann France Operation File Inclusive Olsen Intel Files Hand carry to Belline Tell him to see to it that these are buried Whoa. What was in these documents? And why did they need to be buried? Hank was even more shocked because he recognized two names.

Frank Olsen and Belline. Rory, we've even talked about Frank Olson on this very podcast. Really? Because Frank Olson is a very important name in the history of MKUltra. Whoa! For those who won't remember, we covered it in a previous podcast, I don't remember when, Frank Olson worked for the CIA as a biological warfare scientist and eventually died from being a guinea pig in a secret cia mind control program called mk ultra for the listeners what they need to know right now is mk ultra was a real very f***ed up very real real CIA mind control experimentation program. Yeah, but don't do too much research into it, because that episode's around the corner, all right?

Yeah. We don't want you to get any spoilers. We don't want you guys to be more informed than we are, because we're not great informed. If that wasn't damning enough, David Boleyn was executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, created by the White House to investigate the abuses of the CIA throughout history. And like I say, one of the most famous abuses of the CIA in history was the

LSD mind control experiments of MKUltra. This information blew the whole case open, and the terrifying new prospect was that the CIA poisoned the villagers of Pont Saint Esprit with LSD to test its effects on human subjects. What we saw happen to these villagers does sound a lot more like the side effects of large doses of LSD rather than bread that got rained on a bit too much. Even one paranormal investigator and ufologist, John G. Fuller, wrote a book called The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, detailing the extent of what he believed was an international government cover-up.

However, even for this batshit insane theory, there was one problem. Just because they hallucinated and just because Frank Olsen was involved, doesn't mean that this was LSD. In fact, many of the symptoms suffered by the townspeople don't match LSD. For one thing, LSD isn't active for days at a time. Something more like 8 hours. It definitely doesn't cause the violent seizures and after effects that some villagers experienced after the hallucinations wore off. Normally, they would expect their subjects to have a very turbulent, hallucinatory 8 or 10 hours. Right. But then be pretty much fresh as a daisy afterwards.

Unless this case involved men in suits showing up in the village giving out like you know when you're at like train stations in london and they're giving out free diet cokes outside the station this is maybe what happened similar to there they're like hey you want some i don't know super juice it's full of vegetables and stuff and they're like yeah i guess i can have some glug glug glug this is pretty go oh my god my legs are snakes they run around for like eight hours i'm on fire i gotta write poems and then they're like oh my god i'm pretty thirsty after all that better make sure that doesn't happen again and increase my daily allowance of super juice and they start chugging it and they're like oh my god

and it all comes back again unless these doses are being administered over the days then uh then yeah which it doesn't sound like they are because you said some of these men are in hospitals in straight jackets that's right um so they're not even unless the doctors are in on it guess what's in that iv drip 200 cc's of super juice guess what straight to the jugular just as an aside if ever i'm like getting out of the tube yeah um going into central london and i see the kind of like diet coke little flag waving they got the little promotional bucket they're handing out the ice cold diet cokes but it's not someone wearing any kind of coca-cola merchandise but rather a six foot two man in black yeah i'm not taking the coke i might still okay it's free it's free diet

coke you're not gonna say no you take one sip your legs just snap into oh it's not even liquid in there it's just a circuit board a chip floating in granted diet coke and maybe the most key and damning piece of evidence against this being lsd lsd couldn't be added to bread in a way that it would survive baking right it's it's extremely volatile you know powerful in extremely small doses but as soon as that thing enters the oven it's dead there's no way it has any active component is weed the only drug you can bake into stuff there's got to be others right no one's having like a crack muffin or something like that well they are it's just not oh yeah that might just be code not a big ball of crack i don't know a lot about

weed but am i right in saying you actually can't eat weed unless it's cooked doesn't have to be cooked you can't just eat weed i don't i think yeah because you have to smoke what you yeah yeah you've got the whole i think the whole point you got to hear jesus i'm so but then you smoke crack so then could you then but i think you can eat crack don't read into it you can eat crack trust me my teeth are like the dogs they're all shot to shit you can eat crack okay judging by your voice you know you obviously eat crack it's way better when you eat it so what else could it be we now know with near certainty that the cia had some involvement whether they started all this or just investigated it but as we've discovered on previous podcasts in trying to control people's minds and develop new weapons, they have used everything from psychedelics to paranormal abilities like remote viewing

and telekinesis. After all, a more paranormal explanation might explain some of the more inexplicable aspects of this story. All the symptoms experienced by the townspeople in any other story in this paranormal life history would be recognized as possession. The seizures, the hallucinations, the violent murder attempts on their friends and family that we saw unfold overnight. Is it that no one can find the smoking gun in the hands of the CIA because they weren't using chemicals to poison people, but instead paranormal mind control techniques that we already know they were working on at the time. And finally, the local name for this event is Les Pans Maudits,

meaning cursed bread. Is it possible that this is a type of curse that someone placed in the townspeople? That's why it never spread to anywhere but this town of 4,000. Right. Yeah, because presumably a town of 4,000 isn't. Yeah, because presumably a town of 4,000 isn't responsible for cooking and selling their own bread that only stays in their town. They're probably getting some of that imported. Yeah.

At this day and age, yeah, that would be insane. It's not just all locally resourced. Are any of the above several explanations for what went on that day making sense to you, Rory? From the very logical, from the rainy season bread right through to the cia mind control techniques there's a lot i'm glad

we have a lot of options you know because i don't want to just hone in on one and say is it real or is it not real we need to investigate a lot of different options here for this case i think the more dramatic ones the paranormal mind control or the town curses, you know, in this case, it's just not grabbing me. I don't see enough reasons as to why this town would be cursed. No one pissed off a witch at the beginning. Not that we know of. Except, you know, the guy ate the wizard's crystal. That might do it.

That honestly might do it. That could piss a wizard off. piss a wizard off um but yeah aside from like as we said people writing some creepy poetry there doesn't seem to be too many uh satanic links or any reason why any of this would be happening in terms of cia mind control yeah again i i just don't know what the what that would look like you know what form does that take is there a radar up in the hills shooting beams down into the town it definitely could be i mean if you look at the the mysterious incident of the of the wasn't like a colombian embassy uh where i should probably know this there was like a sonic attack did you hear that it was in the news a couple of years ago this sounds yeah really and it was like literally one day some employees in an embassy like heard a noise and the next

thing people are like their eardrums have burst people are vomiting getting violently ill and as far as we're aware no one was able to work out what happened and the the general idea was that some other government used some kind of as yet not understood sonic weapon or radio wave weapon yeah i feel like that's not uh that's not new news i feel like you know if you go into any of those like dumb clickbaity internet articles about like whatever x experiment experimental weapons that the government has been using definitely sonic weaponry is right up there um you know even even in recent years looking at like kind of yeah rays or sonic weapons that would like disorientate you as we said burst your eardrums make you feel nauseous anything like that um but i mean anything that could go to this level

to convince people that their their legs are snakes to convince ducks to walk upright it's a that's the last thing they want to do they hate that that's their torture uh i know what you mean though because we've got a couple of jigsaw piece puzzles that just won't fit. We know the CIA was there. Yeah. We know the Times people got f***ed up. We know the CIA was heavily investigating hypnosis techniques. Sure, they could have played those hypnosis techniques out of the radio to the Times people.

Yeah. But the bit that doesn't fit, like you're saying, is the sheer severity of the symptoms. What could they possibly say through the radio to the times people yeah but the bit that doesn't fit like you're saying is the sheer severity of the symptoms what could they possibly say through the radio or communicate telepathically that would cause people to believe they were dying yeah at the hands of snakes and tigers yeah well the government have a gun and the people have been stabbed and we're trying to put these two together well said what could be happening here is if the government were actually there and the declassified files say that they were when the people were experiencing this maybe we're not looking at lsd but some other

experimental forms of drugs ones that could last longer maybe ones with higher doses ones that would affect people in ways that are more similar to what we're seeing in the town. I think that could be the most plausible explanation. Does that mean that it is paranormal? That's for us to decide, I suppose. I mean, it's not normal. No.

It definitely falls under conspiracy if that is what happened. Oh, this is a good one. I think we've done it a couple of times before where we've landed on a real conspiracy that isn't paranormal. Yes. But in a sense, it is paranormal kind of by definition. Not supernaturally paranormal. paranormal kind of by definition not supernaturally paranormal but the fact that a guy thought a snake was eating his brain multiple guys thought snakes were eating their brains and you can't look me in the eyes and say that's fine because it's not every now and again i have

to load up the oxford english dictionary of paranormal just to remind myself what we're doing here yeah we shouldn't be going we shouldn't be hosting this podcast if we have a very loose understanding of the word paranormal that should be that should be pretty much decided before we start i agreed that being said i'm ready to conclude rory in the case of ponson esprit 1951 aug August 16th, the events that affected Leon Amunier. What are you saying? Is this paranormal or not? This case is absolutely paranormal. Hell yeah, bro.

This is a yes. It's a double yes. This is a yes. Two weeks in a row, double yeses. Has that ever been done? Has that ever been done? I don't even know if it has ever been done. That puts a lot of pressure on me by science or God. Not just us. That means next week I have to provide a third. Yes, dude.

Can you imagine a hat trick? A three for three? That research is going to be buck wild. All right. I'm going to have to be eating crack muffin after crack muffin. My limbs are going to be falling off. I'll be in this chair is just a head made of copper your brother's gonna wheel you in in a straight jacket and wheelchair into the recording booth you just hit record on the zoom i lean into the mic and say

yes and then my head dissolves into ash your eyes roll back into your head. And a little army of ducks comes and picks me up and escorts me out of the building. Hey, what an episode. Listen, hey, it was great. Thank you so much, Tommy, for sending that one in. What a case. You know, he called at the beginning. This case has a lot to give and has not told all its secrets. Well said, Tommy.

That was a roller coaster. Beautiful. Guys, you must have your own thoughts about said, Tommy. That was a roller coaster. Beautiful. Guys, you must have your own thoughts about this one. Maybe you know a little something. Maybe you were there that day. Hell, maybe you are a descendant of Frank Olson himself and you want to set the record straight. Send it on in to thisparanormallifepodcast

at gmail.com. Remember, everyone, that a great place to hang out with other listeners of This Paranormal Life is the This Paranormal Life Secret Society over on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter, twitter.com forward slash thisparalife, facebook.com forward slash thisparanormallife. But a little less mentioned place to hang out is the, let's give a shout out to the subreddit. Yeah, definitely. Over on our This Paranormal Life to the uninreddit yeah definitely over on our this paranormal life

to the uninitiated head over to reddit search this paranormal life you'll find it there's a bunch of people hanging out in there and if you are reddit inclined that's the place to be yeah i can't tell i i don't really use reddit a lot so it kind of confuses me a little bit i don't know if that makes me old or young these days um but you know i've frequented the um this paranormal life reddit bunch of lovely guys all chatting about the episodes cool place to hang out definitely check it out absolutely and if you just cannot wait till next tuesday to get your fix of this paranormal life if you want to get more episodes right here right now let it be known that they exist they're already over on patreon.com forward slash thisparanormallife,

where five bucks gets you access to every bonus episode we've ever done. There's approaching 30 of them, which is definitely enough to keep you going until Tuesday. You might not be able to cook cocaine in a waffle, but you can do the next best thing which is cook your mind with bonus content because this paranormal life is a drug all right and you need to take one dose weekly but sometimes you get the shakes you go you you blew your wad all at once and now you got no episodes so if you if you want to if you don't want to go cold turkey and you need a hit of that good stuff,

we got the bonus episodes for a little, but they're going to cost you a little extra. We give you the tasters for free, but the bonus episodes, they're going to cost you. If you're checking out the Patreon for the first time, we have for the last couple of years offered shout outs on the Patreon. We've had to put a pause on that, guys.

You can still get bonus episodes on the $5 tier, t-shirts on the patreon we've had to put a pause on that guys you can still get bonus episodes on the five dollar tier t-shirts on the twenty dollar tier but until we catch up with the backlog of names we've got at the moment uh we're just putting that on pause they may reappear uh in the future but we will let you know at the hundred dollar tier that's right when they come back they're gonna cost you uh so if you're really curious, you can hold out for that. But there's still plenty of stuff over on Patreon. Obviously, anyone who has pledged up to this date, obviously your shout out is still coming.

The lucky ones who got in before inflation. Well done. So with that being said, special thank you to Margaret Helen Nishtad. Margaret is into Nishtad activities Oh You know most dads They like drink beer They like Watching sports maybe

Watching the big game Doing a little DIY On the house Margaret's into some Nishtad activities Okay Sure she'll watch The big game on a Sunday

Sure But the big game Is croquet. That is niche. That's absolutely niche. It is niche. And the beer? Wine.

No. Yeah. Unbelievably niche. Crates of wine. Wine and croquet. Yeah. I'm starting to think, Margaret, are you even a father? I'm starting to think that you don't even have a child, that you just have a pet.

That would be an incredibly niche dad thing to do. It would be, yeah. But another niche dad thing she's into is Paranormal Podcasts, which we love. Thank you for your support, Margaret. Thanks also to Kieran Kevlar Brooks. Kieran Kevlar Brooks from Kieran Kevlar's Books? The hottest bookshop that sells books specially designed to conceal weapons.

Oh. Like you see the ones that are hollowed out to like you could put a gun in it or a knife in it or a bottle of whiskey, God forbid. Wow. Yeah. I think he's lost more money buying and hollowing out books than he's made actually selling which is

impressive because books are dirt dirt ass cheap yeah you can just pick up but he he refuses to pick up like secondhand books oh he's going first edition first edition pristine preferably signed by the author just imagining kieran at a book signing of like some J.K. Rowling book signing and she's like, she's like, oh, nice to meet you. Have you read all my books? And he's like, I can't read. Thank you also to Jess Sortelli. When Jess is stressed, she

makes a mess. That's how she deals with it. Well, just smashes stuff? Smashes stuff. Smearing dirt on the walls. Whenever it gets the mess from the head out into the world, that solves the problem. That's a destructive attitude. It is, but it works.

And now Jess is serene as a- She did it again. She did it again. She's just smeared stuff on the walls. I notice she doesn't smash any of her stuff. It's all our stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've noticed that as well. I wanna bring it up, but I'm scared she'll smash things again. Because it's quite a stressful situation to be accused of breaking all my things.

Thanks also to Adam Burke. Adam Burke likes his steaks burnt. What, bad? Terrible. Not rare, not medium rare, burnt. And he says it like that too. They're like, how do you like your steak burnt to a crisp? Wow. And they're like how do you like your steak burnt to a crisp wow and they're like are you are you okay why you know this steak is 500 and he's like yeah now burn it for me i think

he just likes seeing things incinerated yeah that's like messed up you don't have to pay for a nice steak to you could burn you could burn some wood and that's just a fire. Maybe he's like a fireman. Maybe firemen just get so used to things being charred and toasty, it just becomes like a homely smell. Yeah, they can't go back to rare. Thanks also to Tommy Davidson. Tommy gone over here, hollows out guns and puts books in them.

Why? This is for the learned and intelligent soldier stuck in the desert bored out of his mind. To spread misinformation and propaganda at 200 miles an hour. A bullet? Magazine articles. Oh, nice. That's good. Thank you to Fred Barton and Kate Schultz.

Fred and Kate? From Fred and Kate's Wedding Cakes? Oh kate from fred and kate's wedding cakes oh wow i've eaten so many of their cakes i'm i'm not even married or even been to a wedding where one is served they're just so damn good yeah i order 500 cakes every single weekend just to chow down you gotta do something good on cheat day and And face it, we're paranormal investigators. We're not settling down. We're not going to get married. No.

I like the hunt. All right. I like to chase Bigfoot. I don't want to settle down with Bigfoot. If he wants to pull up a chair and have a slice of cake, for sure. But, you know, Bigfoot, if Bigfoot's looking for a serious thing. Actually, no, I could get into that, actually. Oh, so you are happy?

Is that a lie? Yeah. I was just thinking, you know, because I like the hunt and stuff, but also, like, I'm kind of lonely. I'm kind of lonely as shit. And it's like, I don't have a lot to do, like, on the weekends and things. So, that would actually be pretty fun to, like, just have someone to have, like, because I'm eating all the cake right now, myself. Yeah quite a big cake it's like seven tiers it's enormous and

i'm having to freeze it and there's just not enough space anymore yeah so i'm binning a lot of them so just yeah get in get in touch bigfoot you never call thanks also to matt giddens matt giddens has a whole host of flat kittens. These things are paper Mario style 2D. How did he- did he make them? They don't purr, they just kind of flap around like a piece of paper like This sounds illegal. This sounds super illegal. Well, you know the way they bred wolves into being sausage dogs? No! They bred cats into being 2D little- Flats! They bred cats to being flats. You save a lot on pet food, I'll say that much.

Yeah. That between you and me, they poop all the same. What, 3D? Their poops are almost bigger than them. Thanks also to Richard Scott Appsley. Richard's got apps leaving his phone. What?

Richard's got apps leaving his phone. What? Richard's got apps leaving his phone. He's managed to delete so many apps off of his phone. He's got apps leaving his phone. He's deleted them all. He's deleted photos. He's deleted the call button.

He's jailbroken his phone. So it's not a phone anymore. He needs to stay off the net. Alright? And stay out of the light for a little bit. Alright? Because he actually got in some deep shit. I don't think I want to know him. If you don't have a call button on your phone, I don't want

to know you. I don't know how he even got on Patreon. How are you listening to the podcast? You obviously don't have the podcast app. Richard's got apps leaving his phone. Thanks also to Charlotte Evans. Charlotte Evans has come from the heavens. That's right.

We were borderline bankrupt before you showed up with your five bucks a month. All right? We shouldn't. That's a bad business. It's a terrible business't that's a bad business it's a it's a terrible business it's a bad you know how much we've been spending on new homes of the paranormal commune just to get people with a with a roof over their head pretty nice roof to be fair that's where a lot of the cash is going yeah i mean it granted it's just the roof there's no walls there's no windows

there's no anything but you know we put we put a roof over their heads and it's just the roof. There's no walls. There's no windows. There's no anything. But, you know, we put a roof over their heads. And it's got those new Tesla solar panels on top. Beautiful. The roof is state of the art. However, the walls are severely lacking. That is to say they don't exist. But, Charlotte, every bit of your support will help build those walls. Five bucks a month?

All we can afford is paper. Thank you to jesse stone jesse stone keeps a stressy home oh no jesse adopted 27 flat cats the 2d cats the 2d cats the very same and whenever they're turned perpendicular to her it It's stressful. I told you how much they poop, but suddenly, as soon as she tries to get them out of the house, they turn 90 degrees and now they're invisible. Thanks also to Cy Collier.

Cy Collier is a shy caller. I get phone calls from this guy and I swear to God, I'm like, hey, Kicker Movena here, Paranormal Investigator at large how can I help oh hey it's a side here sorry I can't hear you you need to speak up I was just wondering if you've done my shout out yet off sigh stop calling if you're gonna ask me at least have the cojones to speak at an audible volume every timecythe, we bump you back a hundred, alright?

Let that be a lesson to the rest of you. Shy callers. Thank you to Rico Scheller. Rico Scheller, the cheat code seller. Nice, dude. Whatever the game, whatever console you're playing on, he's got it. If the game is life? Yeah, he's got cheat codes for life.

He's a drug dealer. He's a drug dealer who also has guns the cheat code is you give him money and he gives you whatever weapon you want it's kind of sad thank you to edward lewis so we all know what forward is we all know what backwards is. What's Edward? Is this some f***ed up new direction you're trying to take us, Lewis? I think Edward is when you put your legs in your mouth and consume your own body. Like a Nodroboros. Like a snake eating its own tail. It absolutely is.

Until you just kind of cease to... You enter a new direction. Which isn't defined by 3D space. That's deep, dog. It's crazy. Oh, wait. No, sorry. It's northeast.

Oh. That's what Edward is. Right. Moving northeast. Sorry, I was confused. We got a little carry away. I thought you said Jedward. That's when you shit yourself live on stage.

Thank you to Reby Ferguson. We all remember Furbies. No one really remembers Reby's. You know, because Furbies were like the little fluffy babies. Adorable. Reby was like the old man version of that. The old person version of that. Which was this like little monster that could barely even open their eyes.

It was so scared and aggressive. And I think even a little bit racist at one point wow it was a terrible toy for kids as well i know rebees honestly i don't even know what the demographic was for them maybe old people you couldn't even talk to the rebe you would say something and they would just go what what? I said, are you hungry, Reby? What? Thank you to Thomas Lindsay Turner. Tom-ass has a bomb-ass. That's right, after losing both cheeks on the front line. Jesus. He was involved in an experimental military operation where they replaced his buns with bombs.

Interesting. Very poetic. Yeah, he's a walking time bomb you know at any point he can go off he has to sit on very decorative cushions anywhere he goes but he's probably the most valuable weapon that uh that any country has ever possessed and now he's ours welcome to the commune thanks also to we need to talk about ghosts well i mean you're just preaching to the commune. Thanks also to... We need to talk about ghosts. Well, I mean, you're just preaching to the converted here. Exactly.

You don't need to tell us. It comes to the right place, I guess. Tell the non-believers. But we're glad to have you here because in the commune, people are stopping believing me and Rory. Yeah. I think we've talked a lot of shit over the years and they don't really take us literally anymore. So someone to come in and talk a lot of rational sense about ghosts is

actually appreciated. Kind of like how you have someone come in and speak to the kids at school. You're like, alright, you don't respect the teachers? Well, we got this person who's here to talk about ghosts. He's got about five minutes of respect before the kids start pelting him with tomatoes. They're like, do you have any questions for this

teacher? Why don't we have any walls? Alright, detention time's over Everyone get out of here Everyone back to your roof Thanks to HeWhoComesByNight HeWhoComesByNight sounds like a really cool person But he's actually super afraid of the dark So, unless he's wearing night vision goggles

Has a super high tech industrial flashlight He's pretty useless i mean he'll he'll come by night but he's scared shitless he's not doing much yeah bad call i know his part come by day come by day like most of us and lastly but not leastly thank you so much to violet violet the pilot violet is is captain of the Skies. King or Queen of the Airways. Name literally any airfaring vessel and they can fly it. A Boeing 737? Well, not that big, obviously.

That's way too big. We're talking like a one-person kind of craft. Like a F-18 fighter jet? Oh, no. Too fast. Absolutely too fast. No, they're more of like an old school flying machine jets are i mean pretty fast by definition i mean i didn't say jet i said like flying machine like a pilot like an old school like a scarf and the goggles right the

hat so like a prop plane oh no far too old old rickety. Way too fast for a start. What's the one, you know, giant with the balloon in the hot air? What's that plane? Yeah, perfect. You don't have to fly the thing. You just get in it and doze off. So maybe not master of the skies necessarily.

You'll get there, Violet. But, you know, likes it up there. Thank you to everyone we've shouted out today and everyone we're going to shout out in the coming weeks thank you so much for tuning in hope you enjoyed this week's episode we'll be back next week with a brand new paranormal tale