In 1518 a plague swept through the town of Strasbourg, France. The Church, City Council, and doctors flocked to the scene of plague wonder what they should go watching the victims move about. This was no ordinary Plague, this was a Dancing Plague.

Yes, this is ridiculous and yes this actually happened. While today we look at it and laugh about people be forced to dance to sick a beat but some sources place the kill count around 15 people a day. Though this number is highly debated and no sources coming from Strasbourg itself claim there were any deaths. There are few modern theories about how the plague happened. Such as food poison and stress induced mass hysteria. Both of these theories a very logical and have evidence to back them up unlike the theories in 1518 which were demonic possession, overheated blood, and tarantula bites (tarantulas don’t live in a France I have zero clue why they thought it was a tarantula bite when the most north place Tarantulas live is Italy).

The dancing plague started out as one woman dancing in the street, unable to stop. Soon more woman and more woman started to dance and soon there was a large crowd of people dancing in the street. The city council hired musicians hoping that maybe if the crowd had their fill of dancing they would stop. Doctors started to bring some of the people into their homes and tried to sure them while the church held mass exorcisms and prayers for the afflicted. In the end they brought the dancers to shrine for a local saint and bless the crowd of people dancing. This caused them to stop dancing and their lives returned to normal. Of all the ways to die I think death by the dancing Plague has to be the strangest I have ever heard.