The Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette
Mattoon, Ill.
Hidden History · Mind Games · Down the rabbit hole
They couldn't stop
Can fear spread from one mind to the next like a disease?
Five outbreaks. Five centuries. A city that danced, a town that smelled gas, a school that laughed, a generation that twitched, and a case the government still cannot close. Every level goes deeper.
Rule for the descent: nobody in this story was faking. Watch for what made it real.
Level one
Strasbourg · July to September 1518
The summer the city danced
In the middle of July 1518, a woman stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg and began to dance. There was no music and no festival. Chroniclers later named her Frau Troffea. She kept going for days.
Then her neighbors joined. Strasbourg was a free city of the Holy Roman Empire, and its people were hungry. Years of bad harvests had pushed bread prices up, and smallpox and a new disease called syphilis were spreading. Many believed a saint named Vitus could curse sinners with a dance they could not stop.
The city council asked its doctors. The doctors said the dancers had overheated blood and needed to dance it out. So the city cleared the grain market, built a wooden stage and paid musicians to keep them moving.
dancers the earliest sources supportdancers only later chronicles claimsent to the shrine
What made them dance?
Three explanations still get argued about. Open each clue and watch which theory it helps or hurts.
Name the trap
The nocebo effect
A placebo makes you feel better because you expect it to. A nocebo makes you feel worse because you expect it to. If you believe a saint can curse you to dance, the belief can shape what your body does.
Level two
Mattoon, Illinois · September 1944
The gas that was never there
Late on the night of September 1, 1944, Aline Kearney of Mattoon, a small railroad town in Illinois, smelled something sweet in her bedroom. Her legs went numb and her throat burned. Her husband later saw a tall figure at the window.
The next day the town's newspaper, the Daily Journal-Gazette, put her on the front page and called her the first victim. Within days police were taking reports from all over town. Armed men patrolled the streets. State police came in. Nobody found a gasser or a single trace of gas. Then the headlines changed, and so did the town.
Click through the front page. These are the paper's real headlines.
Tone: doubtpanic
Name the trap
The availability heuristic
We judge how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind. When the gasser is on every front page, every strange smell becomes the gasser.
Level three
Kashasha, Tanganyika · January 1962
The school that could not stop laughing
On January 30, 1962, at a girls' boarding school run by missionaries near Lake Victoria, three students started laughing and could not stop. Within weeks 95 of the school's 159 girls were affected. The attacks lasted hours, sometimes days, and came with crying and fainting. The teachers never caught it.
Tanganyika had won its independence from Britain seven weeks earlier. Students at mission schools lived between strict new expectations and the world they came from. When the school closed on March 18 and sent the girls home, the laughing went with them.
Run the outbreak yourself. Change one setting at a time and watch what happens to the spread.
day 0 · 3 of 159
Three girls start laughing. Press start.
3girls on January 30, 1962
95 of 159students at Kashasha affected
14schools closed in the region
about 1,000people affected over about 18 months
Name the trap
The bandwagon effect
We do things because the people around us are doing them. In a crowded dorm, the people around you are everyone you know.
Level four
Germany, the UK and the US · 2019 to 2021
The first outbreak spread by screen
In February 2019 a young German man launched a YouTube channel called Gewitter im Kopf, Thunderstorm in the Head, about his Tourette syndrome. It grew past two million subscribers. In 2020 and 2021, while millions of teenagers were stuck at home, doctors in Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States saw a wave of young patients with sudden, dramatic tics.
The new patients often had the same movements and shouted the same odd phrases as the influencers they watched. In Hannover, Dr. Kirsten Müller-Vahl's team named it in August 2021: mass social media induced illness, the first outbreak of its kind spread only through screens. Some patients improved quickly once they understood what was happening.
1962 · person to person
Each case has to see the last one. Distance slows it down.
2021 · one screen to everyone
One channel reaches millions at once. Distance stops mattering.
Not faking. Doctors call this a functional neurological disorder. The brain is healthy in structure, but the way it sends signals has gone wrong. The tics are real and the person cannot simply stop them. The cause is the software, not the hardware.
Name the trap
Social proof
When we are unsure what is happening to us, we copy what we see other people do. A feed full of tics can teach a stressed brain a new script.
Level five
Havana, Cuba · 2016 to today
The case that is still open
In late 2016 American diplomats in Havana began reporting a piercing sound, pressure in their heads, then dizziness, ringing ears and trouble thinking. The State Department pulled most of its staff from Cuba in 2017. Over the next years hundreds of American diplomats, spies and soldiers in more than a dozen countries reported similar episodes. The press called it Havana Syndrome.
This is the bottom of the hole, and it has no floor yet. Some experts think it was a hidden weapon. Others think it looks a lot like the four levels you just climbed down. Click the black bars to read what the files say.
In October 2017 the AP released a recording an embassy worker made of the sound. In January 2019 two biologists, Alexander Stubbs and Fernando Montealegre-Z, matched it to the mating call of the .
They were careful. Their paper said a cricket on the tape .
leans weapon
File · 2018
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania examine 21 embassy workers and report brain injury symptoms . Some patients had real, lasting problems.
leans no weapon
File · March 2024
Two studies from the National Institutes of Health compare about 80 patients with healthy volunteers. Brain scans show , though many patients still feel sick.
leans no weapon
File · 2023 and January 2025
US intelligence calls a foreign weapon . In the 2025 update, two of the seven agencies break ranks and rate the chance as roughly even.
reopened
File · June 12, 2026
The Director of National Intelligence , saying analysts left out evidence and leaned on a flawed medical study. A new review is underway. No new cause has been announced.
Where do you put it?
a hidden weaponcan't tellthe mind, plus ordinary causes
Slide to place your judgment.
Official status as of November 2026: under review. Not proven either way.
Name the trap
Confirmation bias
Both sides have it. If you already suspect an enemy weapon, every headache is proof. If you already suspect mass hysteria, every patient is imagining it. The evidence has to do the work.
Climb out
Back to the surface
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4