In the summer of 1518, something strange took hold of the streets of Strasbourg.
It began with one woman—Frau Troffea—who stepped into the road and started to dance. There was no music. No celebration. No festival. And yet she kept moving… for hours. Then days. Within a week, dozens had joined her. Within a month, hundreds were caught in the same uncontrollable rhythm.
This week on the podcast, we dive into the bizarre and unsettling case known as the Dancing Plague of 1518—a phenomenon that left people collapsing from exhaustion, heart failure, and stroke. Authorities hired musicians. They built stages. They believed the cure was more dancing. But why were people dancing in the first place?
Was it mass hysteria brought on by famine and stress? Ergot poisoning from contaminated rye bread? Religious fervor tied to the cult of St. Vitus? Or something we still don’t fully understand?
We’ll explore the historical records, the medical theories, and the haunting details of one of Europe’s strangest outbreaks—an epidemic not of disease, but of movement.
Because sometimes the most terrifying mysteries aren’t about what hunts you…
They’re about what takes control of you.
