Dancing Story

 One day, in the midst of July 1518....in the Alsace region of France (up against the German border)....some local gal just started dancing.

It had been a fairly warm summer throughout the UK, and throughout most of France.  By hot....yeah, it probably got above 30 C for a number of days.  No one kept records....but it is noted that the summer was exceptionally hot.

I have some minor reason to believe that this local French gal, with the dancing issue....probably was dehydrated and hallucinating to some degree.  

Over the course of about ten weeks after this first gal....until mid-September....the story goes that a minimum of fifty people (some argue up to 400) were in some dancing 'fit'.

Some government records note the business....some religious letters contain updates about this dancing business.

At some point....probably two months into this....it reached a point where church and leadership folks stepped in, and took possession of the afflicted.

There's a lot of legend stuff here....some saying folks died from dancing.  Some even saying up to fifteen bodies were recovered daily from the dancing.  Some might be true....some might be bogus.

There are two general theories about this period and dancing..

First....some folks think that mushrooms or psychoactive items got into the food supply....either by accident or intentionally.    I like this theory...because it'd explain a lot.  

Also....it could have been one single peddler going through a community and dishing out the mushrooms.  

The second idea?  Mass hysteria.  I'm less of a believer on this idea.

The fact that all of this stopped as fall approached?  Yeah....that's part of the story.  Oddly....it just stopped.....never repeated. 

I always thought it'd be a great movie idea.