This episode is brought to you by Jake Muller Adventures, a thrilling Christian audio drama.

Some of the strangest events in history have been blamed on something called mass hysteria.

Odd symptoms suffered by a group of people without any obvious cause.

But is it right to blame high strangeness on what is supposed to be a merely psychological condition? Or is it better to

question the high strangeness of mass hysteria itself? Dancing plagues, biting nuns, the Jersey

devil? Are these figments of a collective imagination or something more? Join us as we hear the stories

and dissect what they might teach us about the mind, the soul, and community.

Screams came from every direction, echoing down the roads of Ponsain-Tespri, like a tidal wave of woe.

It was a dark August night in southern France, a night of apocalypse.

One man stood in the open window frame of a second-story

apartment. Wearing only his night robe, he cried out in manic ecstasy. I'm ready. I'm ready to fly.

I'm a plane, a plane! On the street below, police shouted at the man to step back inside,

but he ignored their petitions. The man launched himself into the air with wide eyes and arms

outspread like wings. He laughed gaily as he fell to the earth. When his body hit the cobblestone

street, the police turned their faces away. On the fringe of the scene, ladies whimpered and fainted. He

died on impact. Elsewhere, a boy, possessed by some awful power, crept into his mother's room.

Thinking her a monster, he wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed.

She woke with a breathless start and saw her own son bearing down with a look of complete and desperate malice in his wide eyes.

Despite the inhuman strength that compelled him, adrenaline helped her loosen his grip,

and she ran from her house weeping.

She did not stop until she reached one of the town's two doctor's offices.

There, she saw how serious the sickness had become.

...