By Ashley Allen Reade
The interesting yet mind-boggling phenomenon of psychogenic illness, also known as mass hysteria, has happened many times throughout history. From the Salem witch hunts to the McCarthy hearings, what’s real and what’s believed are often diametrically opposite.
Mass hysteria is defined by Dictionary.com:
a condition affecting a group of persons, characterized by excitement or anxiety, irrational behavior or beliefs, or inexplicable symptoms of illness.
Science Direct goes a bit further:
Dissociative and conversion reactions occurring in group situations have received particular attention and special labels. Epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria refers to apparently contagious dissociative phenomena that take place in large groups of people or institutions under conditions of anxiety. Typically, they are described as taking place in schools, where episodes of illness or fainting appear to spread rapidly throughout the school. Clearly, the differential diagnosis is from an epidemic of illness such as viral illness. A classic and controversial example is an episode of acute illness that took place mainly in nurses of the Royal Free Hospital in 1955 during an epidemic of polio. Their symptoms were regarded by some as being evidence of ‘atypical’ polio infection but by others as evidence of mass hysteria (McEvedy & Beard 1970). The controversy remains unresolved to this day.
It’s an interesting phenomenon and one that you might consider when wondering why the world is as it is today.
The Dancing Plague of 1518
One story that may ring familiar is the Dancing Plague of 1518, in which an entire town “caught” an illness. City officials attempted to aid them by making it easier for them to dance – they even hired a band for those who were afflicted. The legend has it that people literally danced until they died.
Watch this.
Tics from TikTok?
The platform TikTok has been notable for its rapid spread and vast influence over young people, which is why a lot of people would like to see it banned. One incident that was linked to the social media outlet was an outbreak of uncontrollable tics. According to Healthline:
In 2011Trusted Source, a few high school girls in Leroy, New York, began to experience a number of motor symptoms, including muscle twitches, facial tics, and altered speech. Before long, others developed the same symptoms. Something similar happened again in 2020 and 2021Trusted Source, when people around the world (mainly girls and women) began to show vocal and motor tic-like behaviors — mostly after watching TikTok videos of people living with tic and movement disorders.
Beliefs can be incredibly powerful and can even alter reality.
Perhaps when a new, potentially harmful trend arises and spreads like wildfire, we should be looking to psychology and history for our answers. Perhaps, then we can find a way to help the people afflicted.
What are your thoughts?
Do you see any similarities in the video to things that are occurring in the world today? How do you feel is the best way to help people suffering from a psychogenic illness? How do you prevent yourself and the ones you love from falling victim?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Ashley
Ashley Allen Reade is part of a prepping family. She has spent her entire adult life getting prepared for one event or another. She enjoys traveling, gardening, and decorating.
I definitely see similarities to today’s fear of catching and/or dying from Covid. My husband and I both had Covid and were pretty sick with it, yet neither died from it. I think our government did little to stop the mass hysteria, but rather fanned the flames. And those who suffered from the mass hysteria were not separated, but there was a strident call to exile to separate those who refused to take the vaccine. I believe there are many who still live in dire fear of Covid, still wearing mask and practice distancing in retail environments, big and small.
I saw a video several months ago about the dancing disease. It showed people jerking their arms because of ergot contamination, which could have been interpreted as dancing. It would have been expected for large nmbers to be affected, as large numbers consumed the barley.
I don’t agree with the current trend to minimize the dangers of Covid infection. In the US, mortality in symptomatic cases (not just often asymptomatic infections), decreased after the first few months to two percent. Very high, ten times more fatal than flu. Peak Prosperity showed how, once the infection invaded a cell, it often destroyed everything, including oxygen transportation, and patients suffocated from internal hypoxia. I have had long Covid for over three years and become breathless at the slightest movement. Chronic hypoxia. Many millions like me. Over a million Americans killed by Covid in the first year. Not trivial. I agree that it was bioengineered, it may very well have been deliberately released. Justice cannot be done, but I hope an attempt is made. It’s no longer very dangerous for most, but that’s true of most epidemic diseases. The Spanish flu lasted a year and a half, killed between fifty and a hundred million in that time. No accurate count, as it killed every last person in many Asian villages. And then every person in the world had antibodies. Covid has not been as dangerous, but similar in many ways.
The Spanish Flue – please do a litte bit of research. There was more to it than just a flu. Look into how it spread and what all people hat in common – especially the soldiers – all where freshly vaccinated before being deployed. This has scientificially proven by now (there are research papers). But as many things, this was not spread through the MSM.
Millions of people died of the Spanish flu, most of them in Third World countries. Most of them had taken no vaccine for anything, and did not take aspirin either. It seems to have been so deadly because it was a new virus and people’s immune systems didn’t know how to combat it at the beginning. Possibly older people who had had an earlier flu type somewhat similar to H1N1 died much less often because of this partial tangential protection. In the case of most people, especially young people, their immune systems panicked when attacked by such a virulent, novel infection, and pulled out all stops, resulting in massive cytokine storms and flooding of the lungs, which asfixiated people only a few hours after the start of the infection. Much like Covid-19. When they were finally able to isolate the virus about thirty years ago, it was found in the lungs of a poor Eskimo woman whose body had been preserved in permafrost. No vaccine, no aspirin, she just died of an agonizingly painful disease, as up to a hundred million more did in that terrible year and a half. How many of this hundred million do you think had been given experimental American vaccines?
The cartoon video shown here supports one side of the psychology vs biology debate on these outbreaks, which ignores and flies in the face of much of the evidence that supports the theory of ergot poisoning. Ergot, or rye rust, contains hallucinogenic chemicals that are closely related to LSD, except their effects could last for weeks. Witness testimony of outbreaks speak of the mouldy rye bread distributed to the population prior to an outbreak, the feelings of spiritual illumination and unstoppable physical energy, the inevitable exhaustion and collapse of victims after days without sleep, and instances of demonIc possession. In short the affected villages were subjected to a month long bad acid trip.
One of my ancestors, Rebecca something or other, was on trial as a witch in Salem 1693; the colonial governor stepped in and ended the witch trials before the locals killed her. I don’t know if she practiced witchcraft or not, but her town’s experience appears to resemble that of the medieval dancing plagues.
I do not doubt that psychological and theological peer pressure also had a hand in the historical outbreaks, and (since mouldy bread isn’t an issue nowadays) the mass formation hysteria of today is mostly psychological.
I don’t think this is supposed to be about Covid at all. I think it relates to the “contagion” our children are exposed to in school and on TikTok, about gender and sexuality. How are 40% of kids now suddenly LBTQ?
Absolutely well spoken
I remember some of the girls in high school invented their own language called “haernt”, so they could converse in front of the boys who wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Those silly girls!
I completely agree. Especially see it in girls in my country.
Very interesting video
I’m sure there is also a demonic component in this irrational behavior
Perhaps the Climate Change Activists are far more relevant than the McCarthy Hearings. The McCarthy hearings looked for and found Communists in the U.S. government and general population. Nobody has found any evidence that Climate Change is even partially man made.
The “Asbury Revival” is another contemporary example. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology in the same vein which you can download for free online.
this is SUCH BS – as a dancer you absolutely sense that you are a less than non person even when you are super talented. this is just another attempt at making people scared of everything good and delightful. can see it now – american idol relics found…how did people lost their children to this crase of singing – millions watched – families lost their children to the sacrifical gods of hollywood….they made you scared of vitamins – now you must never ever ever ever delight in dance. REMEMBER THAT.
I think you missed the point. Nobody is saying that dancing is bad.
This is about people who had a compulsion so extreme that they danced until they literally died.
Never underestimate the Power Of Suggestion. Look at the whole Gender Bender/Trans movement. There’s no Real Empirical Science that backs any of their nonsense up. Genital Mutilation and Drugs cannot change your dNA. Yet this myth that “You are what you believe you are” persists. Reality doesn’t enter the picture. It’s Delusional Phychosis and a strong indicator of serious underlying Mental Illness. Instead of treating the Illness, Quack Doctors and Therapists are telling them it’s OK.
I’ve personally known three individuals who fully transitioned. Two, are dead, by their own hands. The third, is not a happy orell adjusted person, and has frequent psychotic breakdowns with admissions to Psych Wards. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took his life as well.
The point is, that by suggesting to someone they’re Gender Confused because they’re really the opposite sex in the wrong body, they’re creating more Gender Benders, all by the power of suggestion.
The Covid Jabs Have Created Millions of Zombies
https://vernoncoleman.org/articles/covid-jabs-have-created-millions-zombies