The Claim
Hundreds of people have danced themselves to the point of collapse and even death throughout history, and no one knows why.
The Dancing curse, Dancing plague, or St. Johns Dance as its sometimes known, is a phenomenon that has occurred throughout history across many cultures, were people have suddenly started dancing for such long periods of time that many have actually died from exhaustion.
When the Dancing curse occurs, it affects men, women and children of all ages who for some unknown reason begin to dance erratically, seemingly unaware of how physically stressful it is, and have even danced themselves to death.
This isn’t something that’s isolated to one country, as the Dancing curse has been well documented across many countries throughout Europe with the earliest records going as far back as the 7th century. These strange fits of dancing happened many times over the next few centuries, sometimes involving thousands of people, until the dancing curse suddenly stopped during the 17th century and hasn’t been seen since.
Normally people dancing isn’t anything strange, but the thing about this dancing curse is that it seemed to effect areas across Europe all at the same time, and also appeared in outbreaks. The first major outbreaks happened between 1373 and 1374, when numerous incidents popped up in England, Germany and the Netherlands. These incidents often happened all at the same time which makes it especially odd, because if it were organised the amount of work to get people dancing all at the same time in 3 different countries during the 11th century would be almost impossible, and for seemingly nothing.
One particular incident that stands out was on 24 June, 1374 when a dance involving thousands of people started in Germany before spreading into several countries, and travelled as far as Italy and Luxembourg. Over the next few years major incidents happened frequently in France and Germany, with smaller outbreaks across most of Europe.
After these peak years of the Dancing curse, following incidents were much more isolated and the years between them further apart. In 1428 in the town of Schaffhausen in Switzerland, a monk danced himself to death after joining in with some local peasants, and later the same year a group of women went into a fit of dancing in Zurich, who were apparently so involved in their dancing that they seemed to ignore anyone who spoke to them until they each collapsed from exhaustion.
The biggest loss of life from the dancing curse happened in 1518 in Strasbourg when a local woman named Frau Troffea started to dance in the street for seemingly no reason. Four days later she had 33 people dancing with her, and by the end of the month more than 400 people were dancing in the group. Reports from this incident differ depending on the source, but most seem to agree that around half of the people involved died from heart attacks.
At the start of the 17th century, the Dancing curse seemed to stop suddenly across the whole world and there hasn’t been a single recorded incident since, something that just adds to its strangeness.
The reason that so many incidents have been recorded over the years as the Dancing curse and not just “people dancing”, is due to the characteristics of the people who are effected by it. When people begin to dance in one of the “cursed” groups, they seem to be in a state of almost unconsciousness, and dance erratically instead of trying to perform particular dance moves. They do not respond to being spoken to and also never speak when dancing, seemingly unable to from the trace like state they are in.
As of yet no one anywhere has any sort of explanation for the phenomenon, and have come up with all kinds of crazy explanations. Everything from mushroom poisoning to being possessed by demons have been used to explain the source behind it, and treatments over the years have been just as wild. People have been imprisoned and even exorcised, by to no avail as people don’t seem to snap out of the curse until they pass out and wake up again.
As for the Dancing curse being a social event this seems highly unlikely as the level of organisation would be huge, something that would cost a huge amount and all for nothing. Also people would not share the characteristics of the trance like state that people were in while dancing. In a time when people lived off a handful of different foods all their lives and struggled to get by on a daily basis, it seems almost impossible that regular peasants would travel the continent to convince people to dance themselves to death across so many countries, and all without a shred of evidence.
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