Mass Hysteria

Youtube has the documentary The Town That Caught Tourette's"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-v5FriLrk

Also, not long ago, I saw a program that explained one of the more mysterious cases mentioned in FT mag, where a medical team fainted while treating a woman in a California hospital. It was claimed at the time to be mass hysteria, but the medical team vehemently denied it.
The explantion was quite intriguing. I'll see if I can find it.

edit - here it is:
http://www.travelchannel.com/video/a-to ... al-mystery

edit edit - while I'm here, an episode of "secrets of the dead" about the Salem witch hysteria.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D34Q19JeMo

It makes the argument that the initial hysteria was caused by ergot poisoning, which I'm not sure if I agree with, but it's interesting nonetheless.
 
Mr Rickard contributed an FT article publicising his latest tome when it was first released. Sounds really interesting, but I have so much to read...
 
I think this is a genuine example.

A Kenyan student was killed when an electrical explosion at the University of Nairobi triggered a mass stampede as students fled the campus over fears it was being attacked.

More than 100 students were injured as they jumped from windows and ran over each other attempting to get clear of the campus' residence halls.

The incident underlines growing tensions in the country following an Islamist attack on another university that killed 148 people.

"I could see the students jumping and one of them landed on his head," said third-year student Felix Muriuki.

Others said there were three loud blasts, plunging the dormitory into darkness, which heightened the panic among the students. ...

http://www.independent.ie/world-new...-100-injured-in-campus-stampede-31136098.html
 
Derren Brown started a rumour about a deadly spider and within a week found that the locals where all talking about. Some were even claiming to have seen it. The prank ended with Derren and a pal making a spider out of pipe cleaners and the like. They placed it above the entrance to a arcade and began pointing at it. A crowd soon gathered with many onlookers believing they had seen it move.
 
A total of 181 elementary and middle school students of Al-Shalail Village girls’ school in southern Madinah refused to attend classes on Wednesday and Thursday after nine students claimed jinns had made them sick.

The Department of Education in the region had sent a team to investigate the claims, according to a report in a local publication.

Sources said the students had fainted and experienced spasms at the start of the second semester, prompting many parents to believe jinns were present at the school. ...

http://www.arabnews.com/news/747496#.VV0aQmnwnw4.twitter
 
I wonder if they've seen that film The Falling? Has that put the phenomenon back in the public consciousness? It's set near the same part of the world.
 
It may be the school's heating system. Too hot, not enough air.
 
My thoughts too, it's been unseasonably warm, and schools tend to put the heating on at a set temperature, which is possibly too high for the current warm conditions
 
I remember when I was in the cub scouts, I was 8 or 9... we all had to stand to attention in the centre of the hall while somebody rambled on with an overly-long speech/presentation. We weren't allowed to move, and directly overhead us was a row of rather savage gas heaters running at full blast. We were being toasted alive.
Anyhoo, it wasn't long before I went all wobbly and had to be carted off outside, where I fainted.

Sooo...I know from personal experience what too much heat can do. I have a very low tolerance for heat - it might be my Viking genes or something.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I remember when I was in the cub scouts, I was 8 or 9... we all had to stand to attention in the centre of the hall while somebody rambled on with an overly-long speech/presentation. We weren't allowed to move, and directly overhead us was a row of rather savage gas heaters running at full blast. We were being toasted alive.
Anyhoo, it wasn't long before I went all wobbly and had to be carted off outside, where I fainted.

Sooo...I know from personal experience what too much heat can do. I have a very low tolerance for heat - it might be my Viking genes or something.
Click to expand...

In our school any kid that fainted in assembly was left in the wilderness to die.

It was the only way to keep the bloodlines strong.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I remember when I was in the cub scouts, I was 8 or 9... we all had to stand to attention in the centre of the hall while somebody rambled on with an overly-long speech/presentation. We weren't allowed to move, and directly overhead us was a row of rather savage gas heaters running at full blast. We were being toasted alive.
Anyhoo, it wasn't long before I went all wobbly and had to be carted off outside, where I fainted.

Sooo...I know from personal experience what too much heat can do. I have a very low tolerance for heat - it might be my Viking genes or something.
Click to expand...

With your Viking genes, the only hall you should have been standing in would be Valhalla, with feasting and ale, under the watchful, one eyed gaze of Odin. Then in the morning you could have seen your enemies driven before you, and heard the lamentation of their women.
 
davidplankton said:
With your Viking genes, the only hall you should have been standing in would be Valhalla, with feasting and ale, under the watchful, one eyed gaze of Odin. Then in the morning you could have seen your enemies driven before you, and heard the lamentation of their women.
Click to expand...
 
Mystery 'body possession' epidemic sweeps through Malaysian schools, causing teachers and pupils to collapse while 'being pinned down by evil spirits'
  • Students claim they are seeing evil spirits such as female vampiric ghosts
  • The incident of mass hysteria saw 20 students sent home from one school
  • One teacher also complained of being physically pinned down by a spectre
  • Religious leaders have been invited into schools to remove the 'bad spirits'
By Corey Charlton for MailOnline

Published: 15:53 GMT, 18 April 2016 | Updated: 16:11 GMT, 18 April 2016
Schools in Malaysia have been struck by a mass hysteria 'epidemic' in which students claim they are having visions of female vampiric ghosts and are being physically pinned down by evil spirits.

Called 'body possession phenomenon', one bizarre incident saw 20 female students sent home from a single school after complaining of being overwhelmed by it.

Yesterday reporters attempting to speak with students at one school were not allowed entry but heard screams coming from inside classrooms.

More than 100 students at schools in Kota Baru (pictured), Malaysia, have been affected by the phenomenom

Education chiefs in the Kota Baru region are now using shamans and religious leaders to try and clear the schools of the supposed 'bad spirits', the Straits Times reported.

The latest school to be struck by the hysteria was SMK Pengkalan Chepa 1, which avoided spreading it by sending five female students home for the day.

Those affected by the bizarre hysteria claim to be overwhelmed by bad spirits and see spirits such as the pontianak, a type of female vampiric ghost popular in Malaysian folklore.

Pontianaks are said to be the spirits of women who died while giving birth who return to prey on men.

Teacher Norlelawati Ramli, 32, even claimed she felt something pinning her down after she tended to a student who was complaining of seeing demons.

Wiru Sankala, a traditional medicine expert, told the website the hot weather and earlier reports of the hysteria were perpetuating the problem.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ls-simultaneously-collapse.html#ixzz46Dl33HQf
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
 
SameOldVardoger said:
Mystery 'body possession' epidemic sweeps through Malaysian schools, causing teachers and pupils to collapse while 'being pinned down by evil spirits'
Click to expand...

anak%20pontianak%201958%20ramon%20estella.jpg


Blood of Pontianak (1958), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051421/
 
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Children have visions of 'man in black trying to kill them' in mass 'demonic possession'
ALMOST 100 schoolchildren in Peru are suffering from seizures and experiencing visions of a man in black trying to kill them in what is being called a mass case of “demonic possession”.

Experts have struggled to explain the strange goings-on which include widespread convulsions, seizures, visions and fainting at the school - which is apparently built on a Mafia graveyard.

Shocking video footage shows children who are barely conscious, repeatedly screaming and appear to be delirious.

As many as 80 pupils at Elsa Perea Flores School in northern Peru's Tarapoto have been experiencing the supposedly contagious 'condition' since last month. ...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/671655/Possessed-children-demonic-possession-Peru

Vid at link.
 
Not quite a Foile-a -deux more folie en familleor at the least a folie-a-trois as two of the kids realized something was wrong.

Members of a family found in some form of Pyschiatric distress, the father still missing. Seems odd that it's a classic Folie case as they are hardly isolated, have cars, access to Facebook etc.

They might have stumbled onto something nasty or got involved with some nasty people making their fears realistic.

ANYONE following the ongoing saga of the Tromp family has been wondering what on earth is fuelling their behaviour.

Is it mental illness? Some sort of environmental poisoning situation involving a farm-related toxin? Or is someone, as parents Mark and Jacoba Tromp fear, really out to get them?

The couple vanished on Tuesday during an ill-fated roadtrip to the Jenolan Caves in NSW with their three adult children, Ella, 22, Mitchell, 25 and Riana, 29.

Mark Tromp, 51, remains missing after bolting from the car in which the family were travelling while Jacoba, 53, was placed under psychiatric care in Goulburn, where daughter Riana is also being treated after being found in a “catatonic state” on Tuesday.

Mrs Tromp was transferred to the same facility as her daughter after being found in a disoriented state in Yass — some 240km from where she was last seen — yesterday.

The case bears many hallmarks of a rare psychiatric condition known as folie à deux, a French term meaning “madness of two” which almost always occurs in close-knit families, between husband and wife and between siblings.

The syndrome can be shared by more than two people — folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie en famille or even folie à plusieurs — which translates as “madness of many”.

The term was originally coined to describe the case of a French married couple, Margaret and Michael, who began exhibiting paranoid and delusional behaviour......


http://www.news.com.au/national/is-...x/news-story/7b349973f3af4588002f9b21bce007d6

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...n/news-story/017d3344a04a5cfabf9467f1aa38a48c

 
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The father probably did a runner when they all turned weird on him.
Worrying.
 
Genuinely Fortean:

The Town That Caught Tourettes

 
I was wondering the same thing lately about mass hallucination.

If Hallucination is essentially just the term for seeing (or hearing/feeling/smelling) something other people don't perceive...what happens with mass or group hallucination? If there are 3 people in a room and two see an apparition and the third doesn't, is it still rational to say its the two who are hallucinating and not the one? Is it a democratic thing? How many people must perceive a thing before we are allowed to say the one who doesn't is having an episode?
 
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