Episode 53 - The Dancing Plague

The day began like any other. A morning dappled in sunlight. A simple breakfast and relaxing start.

It was a slow start. And absolutely not a bad way to begin a day. You left your house before mid-morning, and made your way toward town.

You were nearly there, more than halfway certainly, when you noticed the crowd forming just outside town. It was odd, this many people gathered on a day without a market. As you approached you realized the crowd was circled around a single figure. A woman.

She was in the center of the circle alone. Not standing, no, she was dancing. Spinning and twirling and spiraling, all to the sound of music that wasn’t there… Soon, you were a part of the crowd watching her strange act, your other errands forgotten.

In the summer of 1518, in Strasbourg, Alsace (Alzas) part of what is now France; the people were beset by a strange disease. The oddest of maladies, it is one of the better documented illnesses in the region at the time due to its uniqueness. We have records of it in physician’s notes, sermons from local cathedrals, newspapers, and notes from the city council.

The plague spread quite rapidly, before fading away within about a month. We still do not know the cause, although we have theories. We do not know how or why it spread. We know only that in the month that it raged through Strasbourg, it infected over 400 people, and killed dozens of them.

It was, and is, known only as the Dancing Plague.

Dancing Mania is a social phenomenon that occurred mostly between the 1300s and 1600s in continental Europe. These were strange bouts of dancing and erratic movement that would seemingly infect people, sometimes thousands at a time across several cities. They were often harmless, although occasionally caused a panic, or worries of some kind of plague or possession.

One that was certainly not harmless was the Dancing Plague of 1518 in Strasbourg. The constant activity, combined with the heat of summer, caused many of the participants to collapse from heat stroke and exhaustion. According to one report, some would eventually succumb to those conditions or heart attacks and die from their ceaseless activity.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I am excited to invite you to join me as I pass Through the Veil, and look back to Strasbourg in July 1518, to learn a bit about the odd and deadly dancing plague.

Eventually, you pulled yourself from the crowd watching the woman dance her strange, solitary dance. You had errands to run. So off you went, still thinking about the dancer and her crowd of observers.

You went about your day. And while you certainly noticed that she was indeed still dancing when you left town for home that evening, you didn’t stop to watch.

You came back for market two days later. And were surprised to see that not only had the crowd grown, so too had the accompaniment. There was now a small stage, a musician, and even several more dancers, maybe a dozen. You noticed that many people at the market gave the whole affair a wide-berth. If anything, by the way they glanced furtively at the crowd, they were either afraid of it, or they wanted to join in.

You bought what you had come for, stuck around for a drink and a meal, and made your way toward home. More people had gathered to dance, perhaps thirty now. Not surprising really, the music and the stages made it quite a lovely spot for dancing.

Four days later, when you made your way back toward town to deliver something, you were surprised. Shocked really. The crowd of viewers was much reduced, but the group dancing… It had multiplied. Well over a hundred people were dancing, spinning, and twirling in the center of town. You felt compelled to go see, to watch.

A chill crawled up your spine as you got closer. You recognized the woman. The first one, you’d seen dancing days ago. She looked like she hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten… not for days. She was still swaying, twitching. It was hardly dancing, but still she moved. And you recognized some of the people from the market who had joined in. They didn’t look much better.

The shiver in your spine started to spread, and you realized, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad… If you just joined in for a moment… Besides, who doesn’t like dancing?

We don’t have all the details on the Dancing Plague. So many of the records are lost to time. And some reports disagree with one another, which further obfuscates an already odd tale.

So here’s what is true.

Sometime in July 1518, a woman began dancing on a street in Strasbourg. She lasted six days before she collapsed. During that time, 34 others had joined her dancing, and within a month, 400 dancers made their way through the city. The majority, but not all, of the dancers were women, mostly young.

Records from the city at the time indicate that many of the dancers eventually collapsed, succumbing to heat or exhaustion. Some, but not all, sources detail fatalities - in one report’s case, claiming that the dancing plague killed around fifteen people per day at its peak.

We also know, from records of the local nobility, that as the plague grew worse, they consulted physicians who quickly ruled out supernatural causes. They instead claimed it was some natural affliction caused by what they called hot blood.

They believed, the only possible remedy to this was, naturally, expelling all the energy the hot blood was causing. They encouraged more dancing.

They opened two large halls for the dancers to keep them out of the elements, constructed a stage, and provided grains for food throughout the month.

Eventually, they hired musicians to play night and day to inspire the afflicted. Obviously, this did not go well, as more and more people became afflicted, and so more were beginning to collapse from heat-exhaustion, heart attack, and stroke.

Then, it simply faded away. Those who collapsed and survived recovered fine with hydration and rest. Others seemed to just stop.

A few theories have been presented over the years as to the cause of the dancing plague.

My personal favorite is mass demonic possession, but as you can probably imagine, that one has not gained much traction recently.

Somehow, demonic possession to force people to dance is not necessarily the strangest of the theories presented.

One is that the event was a mass psychogenic illness occurrence caused by the elevated stress conditions present in the region at the time. They were suffering a powerful drought, a bad crop, and all manner of other ruthlessness. Especially given that the majority of the participants were young women, it is thought that the prevalence of trials for witchcraft could have elevated the stress levels even higher than they already were in a region steeped in superstition.

Another suggestion for a cause is food-poisoning caused by ergot fungi. Ergots are a variety of fungi that commonly grow on grains in the wheat family, which would have been common in the region. Eating a great deal of ergot-contaminated food results in a number of particularly unpleasant symptoms, which I won’t go into here, but included among them are twitching and limb-movement along with trance-like states and hallucinations.

Ergot fungi produce a psychoactive called ergotamine, which is the substance from which LSD was originally synthesized.

Some historians think this is an unreasonable explanation, claiming that it wouldn’t explain other dancing mania across regions with varied climate and crops; and that having that many people react in the same way to a psychotropic chemical would be so rare as to be nearly impossible.

Whatever the cause of the dancing plague, whether demon, stress, or mass acid trip; it was a strange and terrifying phenomena for those who lived it. It was a time of great fear and unrest. Whether this was a response to that stress or not, it clearly became yet another frightful thing, unexplained and without understanding.

We don’t know much about the dancing plague of 1518. Much of it is clouded in retellings and reinterpretations. Much of the stories about it are rooted in superstition, claiming it was a curse, possession, or that those dancing were being pulled into Hell itself.

The cause, like the details, are lost to time. I suppose that makes it far more interesting.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, the oddities of history, and magic.

Music this week was: Firefly Village by Steven O’Brien

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.