The story of the dancing plague sounds like something straight out of fiction.
On a summer’s day in the town of Strasbourg during the year 1518, a woman began dancing wildly in the street. The day turned into night, the night turned into morning, and she was still dancing.
Within a week, 34 others had joined her, dancing as though they were possessed, without stop, for no apparent reason. And within a month, the number of dancers had reached 400. Religious sermons were called to address the issue.
Physicians were called in to document the event and try to find a solution. And all the while, the dancing worsened. Many became ill or died as a result of exhaustion, strokes, or heart attacks. The authorities eventually decided that the only way the dancers would recover is if they danced it out of their systems.
Gild halls and a grain market were opened to the dancers, and a wooden stage was even constructed for them. Musicians were even brought in to keep those affected moving. Numerous theories have been proposed for the cause of the bizarre event, including poisoning, epilepsy, typhus, mass psychogenic illness, and even secretly coordinated religious rituals, but to this day we still have no answer for this truly unbelievable historical event.
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