Have you ever felt dead on your feet, dead tired, like a walking corpse?

What if, after a good night's sleep, you still felt dead, not tired anymore, just dead,

empty, no longer alive?

You try to tell anyone who will listen that you're dead, but they just tell you you're crazy.

Nothing matters anymore.

Cue up for the funeral, strangers, because it's time to give yourself the TLC you need and just

RIP.

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan.

I'm a writer and an actor who is often dead tired, but so far as I know is still alive and kicking.

This week, we'll meet a handful of people who woke up one morning to discover they were dead.

No amount of common sense would convince them otherwise.

Now, I'm not just talking about a goth existential crisis here. I am talking about people who literally believe themselves to be

deceased, and the condition that befalls them is called Kotard's syndrome. Just a quick note before we

jump in, this episode touches on discussions of depression and suicide,

so please take care if those are triggers for you.

In the 1870s, Parisian neurosurgeon and psychiatrist Jules Kotard received a visit from a 43-year-old patient he would come to call Mademoiselle X.

Mademoiselle X had been a patient at the Von Vesilm, just outside Paris.

What she was initially admitted to the hospital for, I don't know, and it bears mentioning that back in the old days, it seems, people were not only admitted to psychiatric hospitals for relatively minor things. Can we say hysteria, folks? But also, people regularly spent many years in psychiatric hospitals sometimes their entire adult lives.

She probably told someone she never wanted to marry and they were like,

this bitch is crazy and had her committed. At any rate, Mademoiselle X told Dr. Kotard

that she believed she had no insides at all. She was just skin and bones, no brain, no guts, no nerves, no heart.

She also didn't believe in God or the devil, which I guess in the late 19th century meant you

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