HYSTERIA HISTORY..

THE REAL TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

- JAMES MOORE

Boogie man: In July 1518, a woman called Frau Troffea started throwing some shapes on the streets of the city of Strasbourg in modern-day France - and didn’t stop.

Before long, other people had started dancing frantically. Some 400 were affected, often doing it for weeks on end, with some dying of fatigue. Then, suddenly, it all stopped. Theories include mass stress following a famine.

Feline funny: Back in the Middle Ages, a series of mass hysteria incidents occurred among groups of nuns. In one case in Germany a nun started biting her fellow nuns and then the others started joining in. Over in France a nun began meowing and before long all the nuns in the convent were, puzzlingly, imitating cats.