Special Bonus: The Panics

One Strange Thing: Paranormal & True-Weird Mysteries

One Strange Thing

True Crime, History

4.4 • 697 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Teenagers have been accused of latching on to each others’ behaviors forever. But how do we separate fads, social contagions, and honest-to-goodness crises? This episode, we dig into two instances of apparent mass hysteria at American high schools.

Hosted, Written, and Researched by Laurah Norton

Additional Research by Anna Luria

Produced and Engineered by Maura Currie

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Works Cited

N/A, AP, “Girls Faint From. . .” The Yazoo Herald, 1976.

N/A, AP, “Fainting Rash Stops. . “ The Vicksburg Post, 1976.

N/A, AP, “Southern School Girls. . .” Petaluma Argus-Courier, 1976.

N/A, AP, “Reasons Probed For. . .” The Daily Herald, 1976.

N/A, AP, “Girl Students Hit. . .” The Marion Star, 1976.

N/A, AP, “Fainting Spells Making. . .” Neenah Menasha Northwestern, 1976.

David Harrison, “Absentees From Byrd. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

Stuart Jeffries, “The Outbreak of. . .” The Guardian, 2007.

N/A, WSLS, “CDC Probing Strange Illness, 2007.

David Harrison, “Absentees From Byrd. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

David Harrison, “School Calls In. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

David Harrison, “School Officials: No. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

David Harrison, “Test Find No. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

David Harrison, “Twitching Arm Bothersome. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

Lauren Hellowski, “William Byrd High. . “ The Roanoke Times, 2024.

David Harrison, “Stress Caused Twitching. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

N/A, “Asbestos Removal Will. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2023.

Amanda Codispoti, “Board Paying For. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

N/A, “CDC Probing Strange. . “ The Roanoke Times, 2007.

N/A, AP, “CDC Probing Twitching. . .” The AP, 2007.

Marvin Anderson, “School Confronts Strange. . .” The Roanoke Times, 2007.

Asbestos Information

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, strangers. We're sharing one of our premium episodes called The Panics,
0:04.4	first released this past spring to give you an idea of what you can expect from our extra content.
0:09.4	If you like what you hear, well, you can find more of it and ad-free on our premium channels.
0:14.8	Twice a month, we dropped extra full-length ad-free episodes on Patreon and Apple Premium.
0:25.2	This month, we're releasing our 66th and 67th premium episodes.
0:28.1	So get on board with the cool kids and subscribe.
0:33.1	If you also want access to early and ad-free versions of our main feed episodes,
0:35.0	you can find that on Patreon.
0:43.6	I'm Lauren Norton, and this is one strange thing,
0:46.7	the show where we search the nation's news archives, for stories secret that fear can be catching.
1:05.3	Spooky stories told around a campfire are always a little more scary, with the gasps
1:10.7	jumping from one person
1:12.2	to the next, right?
1:14.3	That is the fun version.
1:16.3	Then there are the other incidents.
1:19.4	You know, the witch trials, the satanic panics, the national toilet paper shortages.
1:25.6	But one way or another, they all seem to come down to a combination of fear and panic,
1:31.3	spurred by a threat of some sort, even if that threat might be, well, imagined.
1:38.3	What's a little more complicated, though, are those situations when it's unclear whether people have a good reason to be acting the way that they are.
1:47.6	You may recall that we covered just such an incident in our premium episode, The Bus, which detailed a possible poisoning on Canadian public transit.
1:57.1	Passengers were sure that they were experiencing the effects of a chemical attack, but some scientists believe it was simply hysteria.
2:04.6	They argued that the mind is a powerful thing, and in the wake of fear stirred by the Ameritrax male attacks of 2001, the idea wasn't so unbelievable.
	...

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