psychoceramics: Contagious insanity

["Andrew C. Bulhak" <acb @ yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au>]

(from the book _Eccentric & Bizarre Behaviors_ by Franzini and Grossberg,
previously mentioned on this list by Mitchell Porter, p.140 
("Folie `a Deux"):)

"Reports of socially induced bizarre group behavior go back at least
as far as the fifteenth century, when a nun in a German convent suddenly
began biting the other nuns.  Victims of the nipping nun bit back, and soon
this dental diversion spread from convent to convent throughout Germany, 
Holland and Italy. ..."

"... In 18th-century Colonial America, groups of Swiss and German Lutheran
immigrants produced a number of mass-delusional religious cults.  In one
typical group, a charismatic leader claimed to be God the Father, another
the Son and a third the Holy Ghost.  After a power struggle, God exposed
the Son as Satan in disguise.  The unfortunate Son was chained in a pit in
the forest, where he was covered with pillows and stomped on until he 
suffocated.  The Holy Ghost suffered a similar fate, strangled in his bed.
After committing many other crimes, the ringleaders were brought to trial
and hanged."

"In the early 19th century a nun in a large French convent suddenly began
meowing like a cat.  Soon other nuns began to imitate "the meowing nun"
until finally all the nuns met regularly every day and meowed for several
hours."



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