Boo_ep006

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:02]:
What follows may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Kat [00:00:07]:
The world is full of stories. Stories of mysteries, of curiosities, of oddities. Join Cat and Jethro Gilligan Toth for the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected, as they lift the lid and cautiously pl. Here inside the box of oddities.

Kat [00:00:36]:
Kat is gonna be so mad at me for telling this story.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:40]:
What story?

Kat [00:00:41]:
She's gonna be so mad. A couple weeks ago, I'm already mad.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:45]:
What are you talking about?

Kat [00:00:46]:
Porcupine got hit by a car just down the road from us. And Cat, being the sensitive animal lover that she is, and I love that about her, but after she couldn't resuscitate the animal, she was doing, like, mouth to mouth. She took it up to dispose of the animal in an appropriate and dignified manner. I think it was like a Viking funeral, wasn't it? Really? What happened was she just got some tools and went down and cleaned him up off the road and then threw the tools in the trunk of my car and we forgot it. Well, she forgot to tell me about that. Fast forward to a couple days ago. We go to Quebec. We live in Bangormy. We live in the hometown of Stephen King.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:28]:
That's right. We love you.

Kat [00:01:29]:
And we're gonna keep mentioning that until he tweets us out.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:31]:
Glum, glum, glum.

Kat [00:01:34]:
So we decided to go to Quebec. And at the international border crossing, they pull us over for a random check. And we had to spend about 45 minutes trying to explain to them why we had a shovel and a bloody tarp in our trunk why we were trying to get across the border with these accoutrements in the trunk of our car.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:55]:
This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened either.

Kat [00:01:59]:
No, it's not.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:59]:
It's not the last time. I went to meet you in D.C. and the nice man who was going through the luggage after the X ray went off said, is there a reason why you have this knife? And I was like, ah, dang. Yeah, sorry.

Kat [00:02:19]:
Yeah, it was just like a Leatherman, right? Just a little.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:23]:
It wasn't a Leatherman. It was something like that switchblade.

Kat [00:02:25]:
But yeah, it was not a switchblade.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:28]:
The other side was a combination. So one side works for the shiving and the other side is like, hey, for the grooming.

Kat [00:02:36]:
Yeah, the shiving and the grooming and the grooming and the shiving.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:39]:
Right, yeah.

Kat [00:02:40]:
So anyway, we talked our way out of it. It took us much longer than it should have because neither one of us knew how to say bloody. Tarp in French. Anyway, welcome to. What is the name of the show again?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:53]:
The Box of Oddities.

Kat [00:02:55]:
That's right. That's what we're doing. The Box of Oddity. We enjoy this. This is what we do. We sit around at the house. Usually we have a little place up in Maine, and we sit around the house playing cribbage.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:07]:
The home of Stephen King.

Kat [00:03:09]:
Stephen King, by the way. Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:10]:
Have you read Carrie? So good.

Kat [00:03:13]:
And while we're just playing cards and stuff on the lake, we will just tell each other weird things that we have discovered on the interwebbles.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:21]:
It's my favorite thing.

Kat [00:03:22]:
We decided, hey, you know what? Maybe there's other people that are interested in this weird crap. Yeah, like we are. So we started the podcast, the Box of oddities. The boxofoddities.com. you can find us on social media. But if you just go to theboxofoddities.com you'll find all those links as well as episodes and things of that nature. So should we start?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:49]:
Yes.

Kat [00:03:49]:
You got the big blue head.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:51]:
Is that how we're doing it?

Kat [00:03:52]:
You wanna do something different today?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:54]:
We can. I mean, what do you want to do? I don't. I don't even think the big blue head is in here anymore.

Kat [00:04:00]:
It's right over here. It's behind the monkey paw.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:07]:
That's. He's kidding. We don't have a monkey paw in here. Well, that's gross.

Kat [00:04:11]:
Not anymore. Sold it on ebay. You want to spin the blue head, or do you want to do something different?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:17]:
No, we'll do something different.

Kat [00:04:20]:
Sorry, blue head.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:21]:
We've used you just fine.

Kat [00:04:23]:
Tossed you away.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:23]:
That's enough. The sound is horrible.

Kat [00:04:26]:
Smoking like a shotgun shell in the sand.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:29]:
Well, we've got.

Kat [00:04:33]:
We already spun the pig fetus in a bottle, so we can't do that again. Unless you want to.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:37]:
No, no, let's. Let's. Let's do something different. How about the. The little box that I have filled with tiny, tiny knives?

Kat [00:04:45]:
What do you want to do with that?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:46]:
We'll just spin it.

Kat [00:04:47]:
All right.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:48]:
Oh, this isn't working the way I'd planned. All right, how about you go first?

Kat [00:04:52]:
Okay, I'll go first. All right. There is this guy. His name is Orlando Sorrell. Orlando Sorrell is a really interesting and unusual guy. Orlando Sorrell. When he was 10 years old, he was doing what most kids do. They're out playing baseball, having a good time.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:14]:
Wait, how old?

Kat [00:05:15]:
10. He was 10.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:16]:
Okay. It just seems like a much older name.

Kat [00:05:18]:
It Does.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:19]:
Yes. Doesn't Orlando Sorrell sound like an old man?

Kat [00:05:21]:
It kind of does, yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:22]:
Anyway. Okay, go ahead.

Kat [00:05:24]:
So he was playing baseball, and he was struck in the side of the left side of his head with a baseball really hard. Knocked him out. But he got up and he finished the game, and he figured, well, you know, I guess I'll be okay. And he did not seek medical attention, despite the fact that, you know, he'd been hitting the side of the head with a baseball. And he had these headaches. Eventually, the headaches went away. And according to mental floss, Sorell found that he had a special talent called calendar calculating. After his head injury, you can throw out any date. You could say October 14, 1722. He'll tell you not only the date, but what the weather was like that day in his hometown or in his home.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:10]:
Like, he can tell you what the day of the week is.

Kat [00:06:13]:
I can tell you the day of the week. Yeah. If you say, you know, tell me about February 26, 1902, he'll say, for example, I don't know what it is because I didn't get hit in the head with a baseball. But he said, he will say, well, it's like a Tuesday. It was Tuesday. And then you ask him, well, what was the weather like in Virginia, which is where he lives? And he can tell you what the weather was like in Virginia now. Well, that's the. The thing is that he never studied calendars. He did not study any kind of algorithms, weather charts, nothing. He just knows it. He says he can just see the answers floating in front of him.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:55]:
That's so weird.

Kat [00:06:56]:
The condition is called acquired savant syndrome. Okay, now, we all know savants. We've seen Rain Man. People who have remarkable skills that are not. There's no way to really explain these things.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:07:15]:
Yeah, that's amazing.

Kat [00:07:16]:
And perhaps there are other areas in their lives where they can't take care of themselves quite as well, maybe socially or whatever the case may be.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:07:26]:
Okay, so they become extraordinary in one area, but become kind of deficient in another.

Kat [00:07:34]:
Yes, but acquired savant syndrome is triggered when there is an injury to some part of the brain, and it's often, I guess, the left hemisphere. I guess that somehow it makes a connection in the left hemisphere of the brain. The rewiring of that intact tissue somehow releases dormant potential in an individual. What, according to mnn.com mothernaturenetwork.com is where I picked that little bit of information up from. So it's all in there.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:03]:
Wow.

Kat [00:08:04]:
Theory. Is it's all in there. But sometimes a good whack in the head will release it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:12]:
Wow.

Kat [00:08:13]:
And there's so many really amazing examples of this. Here's one. A guy named Jason Padgett. An article he wrote for Junkie.com before his accident, he was a futon salesman.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:26]:
Okay.

Kat [00:08:27]:
After his accident, a number theorist.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:31]:
Okay. Well, I don't even know what a number theorist is.

Kat [00:08:34]:
I don't. See, that's the thing. I don't even know. But it sounds fancy.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:37]:
It really does.

Kat [00:08:38]:
What happened was, according to him, he got mugged. He said these people punched and kicked him and said, give me your goddamn jacket. And they beat him up and they took his jacket, but they kicked him in the head repeatedly.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:51]:
Bullying's not okay.

Kat [00:08:52]:
No.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:53]:
Nor is thievery.

Kat [00:08:54]:
No. He said the next thing he remembered. He doesn't remember the ambulance ride over or anything. He doesn't remember any of it. First thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital. And everything, as he said, seemed a bit funky. I was on a lot of pain medication, so I assumed that it was.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:11]:
That, sure, fair enough.

Kat [00:09:13]:
Yeah. But the next day, things still looked strange and just not normal. He said when he looked around, he could see the motion of objects, but it wasn't smooth anymore. Instead, it was jarring. It was like one frame would follow by another. Like if you're watching a video and it's being paused repetitively, but moving to the next frame, but there's a pause in between. And he said in between the movements of each object, he could see this visual trail in real time where the object was and where it was moved. Kind of like that scene from Donnie Darko.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:54]:
Donnie Darko?

Kat [00:09:54]:
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought of. He says that that little trail tells him all sorts of cool things, like how fast the object is moving, what its velocity is. The faster goes, the further apart the object frames are.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:10]:
Sure.

Kat [00:10:10]:
Seeing like this makes him super hyper aware of the geometry of things. And because of that, he's become a numbers theorist. Isn't that crazy?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:21]:
That is insane. And the idea that it's all in your brain as well and it just hasn't been unlocked is fascinating slash terrifying.

Kat [00:10:33]:
Well, you hear stuff.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:34]:
What else is in there?

Kat [00:10:35]:
I know everything is in there, apparently.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:39]:
I like that.

Kat [00:10:41]:
There was another theory. Not a theory. There's another story of a woman who had a stroke, pretty catastrophic stroke. And when she woke up, she spoke German fluently.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:53]:
I've heard about that. There have been a couple of cases where that kind of thing happens. And the Idea that it just. The information comes from somewhere. It comes from somewhere, but where?

Kat [00:11:07]:
Yeah. She had never spoken German. She could barely speak her own language, from what I understand, much like many of us here in the United States. Sure, that's a joke for all of you people listening overseas. But, yes, there was no way that she could have known this. And not only did she speak it fluently, but with a very specific accent from a very specific region.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:28]:
Wow.

Kat [00:11:29]:
Of Germany. They were able to pinpoint. Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:32]:
That kind of brings up the idea of, like, reincarnation. And maybe there are. And this is just me riffing here. Maybe your energy retains the information, but only the stuff that you learn in this life is the stuff that you're expected to work with here. But the rest is still in there from your past businesses.

Kat [00:11:57]:
Sure. There was another example of that, and I can't think of. This was not a choir savant syndrome. This was.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:06]:
Was an accident. He started smashing his own head, hoping he'd get smart.

Kat [00:12:10]:
No, no.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:11]:
But based on. I'm considering.

Kat [00:12:13]:
Yeah. A quick whack to the noggin with a croquet mallet. And I am a piano virtuoso. Well, there's a guy that they think maybe that might have happened to. He. He's. He. He doesn't have the acquired savant syndrome. He is a blind savant. He was born this way. His name is Derek Parifazzini. And you may have seen there was a documentary on him on PBS years ago. He can hear a song once and play it exactly that way. Just exactly the same. He hears it one time, boom, he plays it. You say a song, even if he's never played it before. If he's heard it once, he can play it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:53]:
That's amazing.

Kat [00:12:54]:
And they say he plays in a very distinctive 1920s blues musician song style.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:00]:
Interesting reincarnation.

Kat [00:13:02]:
Yeah. And. And they've pinpointed it to one musician and his name escapes me at this point, but they say that he plays just like this guy, this blues slash jazz pianist from the mid-1920s, which I'm.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:17]:
Guessing he wasn't obsessed with before his savantism kicked in.

Kat [00:13:22]:
No.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:23]:
Yeah. No.

Kat [00:13:23]:
He just sat down at a toy piano and started playing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:26]:
That's unbelievable.

Kat [00:13:27]:
It really is. That's a little bit different. The acquired savant syndrome is what we're talking about now. This is a really cool example. This is the last one I'm going to share with you. Guy named Derek Amato. Two different Dereks. Interesting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:40]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:13:40]:
Derek Amato, when he was a teenager.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:44]:
Amato's.

Kat [00:13:45]:
Nobody knows what Amato's is.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:46]:
I'm so hungry right now.

Kat [00:13:48]:
Amato's is a local pizza chain here in Bangor, Maine, home of Stephen King.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:52]:
Stephen King. Have you read Bag of Bones? It's the most realistic depiction of love that you'll ever read.

Kat [00:13:58]:
Derek Amato, he was out horsing around, as teenagers will do around the pool.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:05]:
Sure.

Kat [00:14:05]:
And a friend threw a football, and he dove for the football, and I guess he just missed the football by inches. He was stretching really, to catch it, and he missed the football, but he cracked his head against the side of the pool, slammed, and actually slammed into the concrete floor. It was such bone jarring force. He said that it felt like an explosion.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:30]:
Lordy.

Kat [00:14:31]:
He pushed himself up to the surface. He grabbed his head. He thought that the water streaming down his cheeks was blood gushing from his ears. Fortunately, it wasn't. Popular Science did an article on him. He collapsed in the arms of his friend. According to this article, his friends took him to the hospital.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:55]:
Yeah. Good.

Kat [00:14:56]:
They were both high school buddies. He drifted in and out of consciousness, and he was insisting that he was a professional baseball player. And he was late for spring training in Phoenix.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:08]:
Oh, my gosh.

Kat [00:15:09]:
Which was weird.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:10]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:15:11]:
Amato's mother then took him back to the emergency room. Doctors diagnosed him with a very severe concussion. And they sent him home with instructions for his mother to keep waking him up every few hours to make sure that he was going to be okay. It was weeks before he. With the full impact of Amato's head injury, head trauma became apparent. He lost like 35% of his hearing in one ear.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:38]:
Oh, my goodness.

Kat [00:15:39]:
He had headaches. He couldn't remember things. These are all things that you would expect with a traumatic head injury. But the most dramatic consequence appeared four years ago. Four days after his accident. Four days after he woke up, he's kind of bleary eyed, hadn't been sleeping really well. He went over to his buddy's house, one of the ones that was there during his accident, and his friend had a makeshift music studio. And he was sitting around and Amato spotted a cheap electric keyboard. Never played keyboards ever in his life.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:13]:
Sure.

Kat [00:16:14]:
Without thinking, he just kind of got up and he went over and he sat down in front of it and he started tinkling about. And to his astonishment and everybody else's, he just started playing beautifully like he was a concert pianist. He had never played before.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:32]:
Did he. Did he have, like this urge to play?

Kat [00:16:35]:
Yes.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:36]:
Was it like he didn't make any Sense. But he was just like, I must play that piano.

Kat [00:16:40]:
Yes, that was it. He almost couldn't control himself.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:42]:
Wow.

Kat [00:16:43]:
He played for six hours straight. Oh, well into the next morning. He just, you know, obviously couldn't explain that. He would wake up the next day after this, and he. His fingers were moving like he was playing piano in his sleep. And he started writing down the notes that his fingers were playing against his leg. And they were songs. They were beautiful songs.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:09]:
Songs that already exist or songs that he made up in his brain parts.

Kat [00:17:12]:
New songs that had never existed.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:14]:
Oh, my gosh.

Kat [00:17:15]:
Crazy, isn't it?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:17]:
It's so crazy. And also a little creepy. I'm sorry. I don't want. It feels a little like your brain's being taken over. And, you know, you have the opportunity in life to say, I want to learn how to play piano, and then you learn how to play piano. Not in my case. I fail at everything that it involves musical instruments.

Kat [00:17:36]:
You're good with a shovel and a tarp, though.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:38]:
Thank you. Thank you. It's a niche.

Kat [00:17:41]:
It is.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:43]:
So I don't know, it's. And I recognize, obviously, how amazing it is and the opportunities that it would provide, but it's also a little creepy that you didn't choose to have this in your nut, and all of a sudden, there it lives.

Kat [00:17:59]:
Yeah. You want to hear what he sounds like?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:02]:
Yes.

Kat [00:18:03]:
I have a. This is on YouTube. It's orado.com. this was. I don't know if this. I haven't listened to it all the way through. I'm just kind of dropping the needle, so to speak. So I don't know if this is an original piece of music or if this is one that, you know, that. That exists, that he's just playing. But this was. This was recorded four weeks after the first time he sat down at the piano, never having played before. Isn't that amazing?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:44]:
Yeah, it started off a little dodgy, but it got better.

Kat [00:18:47]:
Well, the. The acoustics aren't that great. It looks like he's sitting at his mom's house with a baseball hat on, so.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:53]:
Aw.

Kat [00:18:54]:
And if you want to find out more information about any of those stories, you can check out just, you know, Google Acquired savant syndrome and Psychology Today has some good stuff that's amazing about that. So there you go.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:09]:
And I'm sure that there are many, many stories. Yes.

Kat [00:19:13]:
Well, there was one. A guy sneezed in his bathroom and broke a blood vessel. But when he recovered, he became this incredible watercolor painter.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:23]:
Oh, my goodness.

Kat [00:19:24]:
But in his case, it was almost a curse because he couldn't stop painting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:28]:
Oh, no.

Kat [00:19:29]:
It was just like these beautiful paintings, but he just couldn't stop. And he would paint.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:34]:
Not only can we saw the Devil's Candy.

Kat [00:19:38]:
Yes.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:38]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:19:39]:
Everything goes back to a movie we've watched. But he would paint the walls of his house, the floors. He'd go out, paint the side of his car. He just couldn't stop. It became a bit of a curse.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:50]:
Absolutely. That sounds horrible.

Kat [00:19:52]:
Yeah. So beware of what you ask for. And be careful, nobody whacks you in the noggin with a cricket mallet.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:59]:
Right.

Kat [00:19:59]:
Or is it a mallet that they play cricket with? No, it's a paddle, isn't it?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:04]:
Cricket, yes. Earlier you said the other one. Croquet sticks.

Kat [00:20:07]:
Yeah, yeah, Croquet mallet. That would have been funnier.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:10]:
Well, you said it earlier, so I like that you moved on to a different sport. I tried. It's good.

Kat [00:20:16]:
This is the box of oddities. Your mileage may vary.

Kat [00:20:20]:
Here are five weird facts. Really quick. Number five, the medical name for butt crack is intergluteal cleft.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:28]:
That sounds lovely. Number four, dogs sweat through their paws.

Kat [00:20:34]:
Number three, people can suffer from a psychological disorder called boanthropy, which makes them believe they are a cow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:40]:
Two, bullfrogs don't sleep.

Kat [00:20:42]:
And number one, daddy long legs have penises, which technically makes them not a spider.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:48]:
Really? That's fascinating.

Kat [00:20:51]:
So again, if you would just give us a five star rating and a positive review on itunes and we would be forever grateful. We'll come to your house and we'll do your dishes.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:01]:
The five star review is really important. And please don't base your review on what we just did or the quality.

Kat [00:21:08]:
Of any of our shows.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:10]:
No, but just do it as a nice. We think you are. And look, today you look nice. So nice.

Kat [00:21:16]:
So, so nice. You can also find us on the box of oddities that is our website, of course, with all of the links.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:25]:
To our social media, the Instagrams and the Facebooks and the Twitter.

Kat [00:21:30]:
The box of oddities with cat and Jethro Gilligan Toth.

Kat [00:21:36]:
Okay, your turn.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:39]:
Okay, here we go.

Kat [00:21:41]:
What you got?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:43]:
We can't stop. We won't stop. This is actually something that we've discussed before and was one of the inspirations for this podcast in the first place. Today we are going to discuss the dancing plague of 1518.

Kat [00:22:00]:
I love this. It's so weird.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:03]:
Okay, so in July 1518, residents of the city of Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire were struck by a sudden and seemingly uncontrollable urge to dance. Yeah, by the way, I took most of this from the History Channel website and Wikipedia. Obviously I used quite a bit because it's my life. The hysteria kicked off when one woman known as Frau Trofia stepped into the street and began to silently twist, twirl and shake. She kept up her solo dance a thon for nearly a week.

Kat [00:22:42]:
Nonstop.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:43]:
Nonstop. And before long, some three dozen others had joined in.

Kat [00:22:49]:
And there was no music, right?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:50]:
There was no music. It was just the street and people dancing.

Kat [00:22:55]:
So it wasn't just that people were out there trying to keep her company. They had this uncontrollable urge to dance with her.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:04]:
It varies, okay. By August, the dancing epidemic had claimed as many as 4, 400 victims. 400 people out in the streets gyrating, twisting, shaking themselves.

Kat [00:23:19]:
Sometimes sounds like Mardi Gras.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:23]:
With no other explanation for the phenomenon, local physicians blamed it on, quote, hot blood and suggested that it afflicted simply in the same way that a fever does.

Kat [00:23:35]:
Sure. And Foreigner later wrote a hit tune about it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:37]:
Right. Check it and see I got a fever of 103 I'm dancing in the street till I gotta pee eventually, this was a theory, a way to deal with this situation. Officials built a stage and professional dancers were brought in. And they hired a band to provide backing music. They thought maybe this will get it out of their system. But it wasn't long before the marathon started to take its toll, and dancers collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Some died from strokes and heart attacks. And the strange episode didn't end until September, when the remaining dancers were whisked away to a mountaintop shrine to pray for absolution. Wow. Yeah, wow. It's one of those things that. It does not sound real. The Strasbourg Dancing Plague might sound like the stuff of legend. I mean, it is, but it's well documented in the 16th century historical records. And it's not the only known incident of its kind. Similar manias include. Well, one of the earliest incidents happened sometime in the 1020s in Bernberg, where 18 peasants began singing and dancing around in a church, disturbing a Christmas Eve service. Couldn't stop. They couldn't stop. Further outbreaks occurred in the 13th century, including one in 1237 in which a large group of children traveled to Erfurt to Ernstert, jumping and dancing all the way, and marked similarity to the legend of the Pied Piper. And that's what people would refer to, like, wow, you know, those kids that again, could not Stop dancing. Another incident in 1278 involved about 200 people dancing on a bridge over a river in Germany, which resulted in its collapse. Many people died, but many of the survivors were restored to full health at a nearby chapel in St. Vitus.

Kat [00:25:51]:
I would like to know what their explanation for their actions were.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:57]:
They couldn't. They couldn't tell you why.

Kat [00:25:59]:
When they got better, they just said, I don't know exactly. My foot was set to tapping.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:06]:
Exactly like that. Yes.

Kat [00:26:08]:
In this chest beats the heart of a dancer.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:11]:
On June 24, 1374, one of the biggest outbreaks began in Germany in a place called Achen, or maybe Aachen was the old name for Germany. I do not know the answer to this. We're just going to have to move along from it before spreading to other places, such as Cologne, Metz, Strasbourg, Ertre, and to countries such as Italy and Luxembourg. Incidents then occurred all over Europe.

Kat [00:26:43]:
So this is all a dancing plague?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:44]:
All dancing plagues, yeah. And then in Italy, there's a similar phenomenon known as terratinism. Tara. Taran. Tism. Tarantism. In which the victims were said to have been poisoned by a tarantula or scorpion, which are two very different things. And you should be able to tell the difference between them. I don't know what's going on here. Its earliest known outbreak was in the 13th century, and the only antidote that they recommended was to dance to separate the venom from the blood, which we should tell doctors about this, because if they don't know that you can just dance away your venomous bites, then, you.

Kat [00:27:24]:
Know, we're wasting our time.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:25]:
Right?

Kat [00:27:26]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:27]:
As with dancing mania, these people would suddenly begin to dance. Sometime affected by perceived bite or sting, they were joined by others, and again, groups would form, and these people just couldn't stop dancing. I don't know that I believe that these were caused by tarantula or scorpion bites, especially since, you know.

Kat [00:27:48]:
But in many cases, they danced until they died.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:51]:
Yes, 100% in various ways. Like I said, sometimes it would be a heart attack that would take them, sometimes a stroke, sometimes sheer exhaustion would kill them.

Kat [00:28:02]:
I mean, it might have been fun for the first few hours.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:06]:
I don't think it would be fun at all.

Kat [00:28:07]:
It's like a block party. It's like, hey, come on, let's go. Let's party. Like it's 1503 and they're all out. It's like a big block party, especially when they brought the band in. But when people start dying, that's where I draw the line.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:23]:
Well, one of the things with Tarantism. Some would dance, but others would participate in other activities, like tying themselves up with vines or whipping each other, pretending to sword fight, jumping into the sea. Some would die if there was no music to accompany their dancing.

Kat [00:28:42]:
Wouldn't it be cool if you could time travel Danger Mouse, you know, back to that time period and have a rave? Bring some glow sticks. Maybe that was their problem. Maybe they were all rolling and they didn't know.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:57]:
Maybe. We're actually going to discuss that, but if you want to keep talking.

Kat [00:29:02]:
I'm sorry, I'm going to shut up now.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:03]:
No, it's cool.

Kat [00:29:04]:
No, I'm just going to drink my coffee. Dunkin Donuts. American Renzo.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:10]:
Okay, so what could have led people to dance themselves, literally, to death? There's a historian, his name is John Waller, and he believes that it may concern a Catholic Saint who pious 16th century Europeans believed had the power to curse people with the dancing plague, which, if people believed that, then it might have been a hysteria kicked off by something else. But that belief is what made the actual dancing happen. Other theories suggested that the members were part of a religious cult or that they accidentally ingested ergot, which is a toxic mold that grows on damp rye.

Kat [00:29:54]:
Sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:55]:
And produces spasms and hallucinations.

Kat [00:29:58]:
Isn't that also. I'm sorry, I'm talking again. Isn't that also what many people think caused the Salem witch trials?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:08]:
Yes.

Kat [00:30:09]:
Oh, wow. And it's like, creates an lsd, like, experience.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:13]:
Yes.

Kat [00:30:14]:
Okay, I'm shutting up.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:16]:
Oh, I was just gonna wait for you to tell me more. It's fine.

Kat [00:30:19]:
No, I'm sorry. No, I'm not telling you anything. I'm not mansplaining. I'm just trying to get it straight in my pea brain.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:26]:
So the convulsive symptoms from ergot tainted rye may have been the source of the accusations spurred during the Salem witch trials. And it was a weird combination of things, because some people believe that the spasms caused by the urgot made people think that people were witches. But because those accusers were also ingesting urgot, they were suffering the hallucinations that made things, you know, swell to the extremes that they did. So it was kind of a vicious cycle that. That ended in horrible, horrible murder.

Kat [00:31:06]:
Just. Just a really, really bad trip.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:08]:
Right. And then some people believe that it's a scam, that it was all staged.

Kat [00:31:13]:
Really?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:13]:
Yep.

Kat [00:31:14]:
Wow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:15]:
The end.

Kat [00:31:16]:
That is so weird, because it seems to me like it very likely was kind of like an ergot poisoning Is that what it was called? That maybe just continued to, to grow and swell based on legends and, and beliefs at the time and superstitions at the time. And it became a bit of a mass hysteria.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:38]:
Yeah, yeah. The things, the certain elements just kind of fed off of each other and became this tremendous and incredibly fascinating. Well, horrible thing.

Kat [00:31:51]:
Yeah, well, it wouldn't. It's. It's fascinating because it's. It happened centuries ago. If it happened today, I think people would be. Would be panicked, don't you?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:02]:
Oh, gosh, a hundred times, yes. I mean, we get a little bit of something over in whatever country and people are freaking out automatically.

Kat [00:32:10]:
What do you think today we would say the reasoning behind it would be with today's technology.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:17]:
Oh, you mean if a dancing plague kicked off.

Kat [00:32:21]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:21]:
2017.

Kat [00:32:23]:
Right? 2018.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:24]:
2018. Still working on that. Right. My checks wrong. And. Okay, so drugs.

Kat [00:32:32]:
Drugs. Yeah, probably drugs.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:34]:
It's probably. He's got that face eating drug in.

Kat [00:32:37]:
Him, which is probably what happened back then.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:41]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:32:41]:
They just didn't understand it. They looked at it as witchcraft.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:43]:
Right.

Kat [00:32:44]:
That's fascinating. It's kind of like that. What is it? A Frenchman lumberjacks jumping disease.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:48]:
Yes.

Kat [00:32:49]:
Is that something you're going to do in the future?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:52]:
It's very similar. It may come up, but I don't know if it'll be.

Kat [00:32:56]:
That's a genetic thing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:57]:
Yes.

Kat [00:32:58]:
It's like where this particular group of Acadian French Canadian lumberjacks would just start jumping and dancing for no reason.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:08]:
I'm going to look it up. French lumberjack dancing jumping Frenchman of Maine. You can learn more about that on.

Kat [00:33:17]:
Rarediseases.Com and by the way, Maine is the stuff that our city Bangor is in, which is the hometown of Stephen King.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:25]:
That's right, Stephen King, who we love and adore. By the way, have you read Cujo? Scary.

Kat [00:33:34]:
Yeah. Okay, so that's it. That's it for today.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:38]:
Box of oddities.

Kat [00:33:39]:
The boxofodddities.com. we appreciate your patronage, whatever that means.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:46]:
Yeah. Soon we hope to have T shirts.

Kat [00:33:48]:
Yeah, we're actually looking into some merch right now and we'll let you know. And you can be the first to know by checking out the website, the boxofoddities.com. also, if you have an idea for a subject that you'd like us to research and talk about, we have an email address for you. Curator.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:07]:
Oh, you say it.

Kat [00:34:08]:
No, go ahead.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:09]:
No, I love you.

Kat [00:34:10]:
Please. I love you.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:11]:
Aww. Curator@theboxofoddities.com check us out on social media as well.

Kat [00:34:17]:
And we will see you next week for the next episode of the Box of Oddities. Cue the voiceover guy, who, by the way, his name is Lindsay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:29]:
He's a nice man.

Kat [00:34:31]:
And so let it be known that the Box of Oddities belongs to you and its fate is in your hands. Therefore, it's been recorded, requested by those of whom I report to to beseech you for assistance. The Box of Oddities is free. We ask but one thing of you to provide a five star rating and a positive review. True, that is two things, however, tis merely a five star rating and a positive review also. Subscribe to us okay, so three things is all we ask. Three things and three things only. Henceforth, the Box of Oddities commits to the telling of stories. Stories of the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected. We wish to offer our deeply felt gratitude and appreciation for your patronage. The boxofoddities.com on Facebook at facebook.com boxofodidiespodcast on Twitter OXO of Oddities and Instagram at Box of oddities podcast Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.