1962年坦噶尼喀，一所女校的学生突然笑个不停，后来全村都在笑

January 30, 1962, Tanganyika, which is today's Tanzania. In Kashasha, a small village by Lake Victoria, three girls at a girls' boarding school started laughing uncontrollably.

Not the happy kind—the kind they couldn't control, laughing without stopping. Some cried after laughing, some couldn't catch their breath and fainted, some rolled on the ground. Within a few weeks, out of 159 students at the school, 95 had the same symptoms. The teachers were not infected.

The country had only been independent for a little over a month at the time, and discipline at the school was strict, with many rules every day.

On March 18, the school had to close. The students returned to their respective villages, bringing the symptoms with them. Shortly after, more than two hundred people in the neighboring village of Nshamba also fell ill, mostly students and young people. Students at another school were also affected, and it closed too.

The whole thing lasted about eighteen months, with over a thousand people affected and more than ten schools suspending classes. Local and British doctors came to examine them, drawing blood, testing urine, checking for viruses or toxins, and found no physiological cause. The later conclusion was "mass psychogenic illness": under great stress, one person has an episode, others see it, and follow suit.

Similar collective episodes later appeared in schools elsewhere, smaller in scale, most passing within a few days. The one in Kashasha is the longest-lasting one known to people.

#Paranormal #网络转载 #集体癔症