An episode of the What The Ghost? podcast presented by Georgie Barker.
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Release Date
2020-08-06
Guest Voice
- Sasha Sienna as Georgie Barker
Recording
In this week’s episode of What The Ghost?, Georgie explores the mystery of the Dancing Plague, also called, “The Devil’s Dance.” In 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea was seen dancing to music no one else could hear. After some time, a few people seemed compelled to join her. The dancers did not stop, not for food or water, only sleeping when they passed out from exhaustion and then, when waking up, getting right back to dancing. Frau Troffea only stopped when she literally danced herself to death a week later. More and more people kept joining the flash mob, and by the end of the month, long after Troffea was dead, some four hundred people were dancing uncontrollably in the streets.
Georgie talks about how this was not an isolated incident, citing the disappearance of the children of Hamlin as a possible case. She also mentions claims of more recent sightings of possible dancing mania. She finds it odd that none of the witnesses can ever remember what the dance actually looked like, and speculates that perhaps some supernatural force causes the witness to forget the choreography.
Georgie offers some possible explanations for the dancing plague, including ergotism and mass psychosis due to the stress of living in Europe during the Middle Ages. Georgie suggests the truth might be a combination of the two, but even then there are still some holes in the story. She warns the listeners to watch out before going on the dance floor, because they might not be able to stop.
A few times throughout the podcast, Georgie pauses to thank her sponsors, despite her obvious contempt for having to do so. She praises the Bedcetera mattress (the only mattress that’ll keep the nightmares away!), Urban Survival’s Basic First Aid Kit (Because it’s an urban jungle out there), and the dating website SparksFly.com which, instead of having users fill out surveys, accesses the user’s browser history to match them with potential dates. The website is giving What The Ghost listeners a month’s free trial, but they do not need to enter a code to redeem it, because the guys at SparksFly.com “already know who you are!” She ends the ad with their slogan, “Privacy is just another word for loneliness!”
Trivia
- Dancing Mania was a real phenomenon in the Middle Ages. While scientists have speculated on the cause, no one knows for sure what caused it. The 1518 case was the most famous outbreak.