Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, the unscripted show that celebrates unsung

heroes, myth busts historical lies, and rediscovers the forgotten stories that changed our world.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

In the year 1374, a very strange event happened in dozens of medieval towns along

the Rhine River Valley, and it was described by dozens of physicians, chroniclers, monks,

priests, and even municipal orders trying to stop this event that was described by authorities.

Hundreds of people suddenly got the compulsion to dance.

They scarcely paused to eat or rest and dance for hours or even days on end.

Within weeks, the dancing mania engulfed large areas of northeastern France and the Netherlands,

and it only stopped after several months.

The same event happened again in the city of Strausburg in 1518.

About 400 men, women, and children participated, and there were dozens of people who died,

whether due to exhaustion or dehydration.

In between these two dancing events, another strange event happened in the Spanish Netherlands, in a nunnery.

This happened in 1491, as cases for trials of witchcraft became increase, and several nuns were declared possessed,

which caused them to race around like dogs, jump out of trees, pretending to be birds, or meow

and claw their way up tree trunks like cats. According to the records we have of this period,

other people behave like this, but it was nuns who were disproportionately affected.

And over the next 200 years, in Nunneries, all over Western Europe, hundreds were plunged into states of delirium, where they screamed and convulsed and confessed to having carnal relations with devils.

We have all these documents that attested these things happening, including trial

documents and the archives of Inquisition Records or Church Trials for Heresy. We have copious

in-depth accounts and testimonies of nuns doing some very strange things. So what was going on here?

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