All In Your Head | 2

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[2] Previously, on hysterical.

[3] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

[4] I'm like, stop fucking around.

[5] She's like, I can't.

[6] So by the third one, I'm having concerns.

[7] We heard a lot of like a yipping sound, a screeching sound.

[8] I even heard like a cat meowing.

[9] Were you thinking that other people were faking it?

[10] Yeah, but that like I figured out later on I was like, oh, I'm so sorry that I thought that about you.

[11] Because here I am and we're in the same boat now, girlie.

[12] Where did you grow up?

[13] Right here in Genesee County.

[14] I went to Byron Bergen, which is a tiny combined school, one town over from Leroy.

[15] I'm in Leroy, New York, sitting in the living room of Kathy Dunn.

[16] And before I explain who Kathy is, let's just get the white -hot controversy out of the way.

[17] How come some people say Leroy?

[18] The richer people call it Leroy, because they want to sound classy and elegant, is almost like, and then just regular working class, blue -collar people call it Leroy.

[19] In the fall of 2011, Kathy was a full -time mom, raising two kids, two daughters, both of whom were attending Leroy Jr. Senior High School.

[20] And a score!

[21] Her oldest, Amy, was a sophomore and played on the junior varsity soccer team.

[22] Kathy'd go to the games all the time.

[23] Yeah, I mean, you know, the parents sitting on the sidelines, you sit in your little folding chairs while the kids are playing and you're chatting.

[24] Lately, though, the sideline chit chat was being consumed by one chit in particular.

[25] That little, you know, parent talk and it's like, what's going on with these girls, you know?

[26] What's going on with these girls was becoming the question of the season.

[27] Still kind of whispered, but getting louder.

[28] There was a lot going on with these girls having, what we were saying is having outbursts.

[29] Describe that.

[30] What are you saying before hearing?

[31] A lot of verbal, a lot of verbal ticking were things, you know, like maybe just a holler, a yell.

[32] And you didn't think much of it if it was one girl.

[33] Remember, there already was someone with Tourette syndrome in the school.

[34] So till now, the occasional tick was less a reason to freak out and more just like a, well, there goes so -and -so.

[35] Yeah, it was kind of like, you know, oh, well, that girl has blonde hair.

[36] Well, this one has a verbal tick once in a while.

[37] But then that started to change.

[38] So it didn't become anything noticeable until it was more than a couple girls.

[39] And all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute.

[40] So after watching her daughter Amy play soccer week after week as her teammate symptoms worsened, it was a surprise when it was Kathy's younger daughter, Emily, who eventually came down with the symptoms.

[41] Yeah, it was the school nurse called me and said that Emily had been in her office that day because they had noticed that she was starting to do some physical like head ticking.

[42] I didn't think that it was going to affect me. And then it did.

[43] Emily, you'll remember her from last time, just on eighth grader when her symptoms started.

[44] For her, it was uncontrolled jerks of her head and arm.

[45] Do you start to even question yourself like, is this real?

[46] Oh, yeah.

[47] I had moments.

[48] I was like, is this even a thing?

[49] Let me see if I can stop doing it.

[50] Let me see.

[51] You see you would try to like sit still.

[52] Oh, yeah.

[53] I'd try to sit there for like five minutes and sit still.

[54] Couldn't do it.

[55] Here I am again with Kathy, her mom.

[56] I feel like if I had come home with ticks, I feel like my mother's first instinct would have been like, what are you up to?

[57] Like a little suspicious, not because she doesn't trust.

[58] I mean, yeah, of course I was a little bit because, you know, Kids are kids.

[59] And, you know, you don't know.

[60] She was always an odd girl anyway.

[61] She was already an odd one out.

[62] So everybody in town had been saying, oh, a lot of these girls are faking it.

[63] They're doing it for attention.

[64] So I just kind of thought, maybe, maybe she could.

[65] Who knows?

[66] Kathy asked her older daughter, Amy, what she thought?

[67] I just said, what do you think?

[68] Do you think she's faking?

[69] And she's like, I don't know.

[70] So that evening, when Emily came home from class, Kathy played dumb.

[71] I didn't say anything to her about it.

[72] I didn't say, hey, the school called and said you're doing this.

[73] I wanted to kind of see if she would still do it outside of school.

[74] And she observed to see if Emily would tick when she thought that no one was watching, with no audience, nothing to gain.

[75] And there, sitting in front of the TV, zoning out alone with whatever rerun flickering in front of her, Emily did it.

[76] I don't know how you explain that, kind of turning her head, a head jerk kind of thing.

[77] And then she did it again, and again.

[78] Plain as day.

[79] Whatever was causing these symptoms that Kathy had been watching spread from her folding chair on the sidelines had now spread to her own kid.

[80] Okay, so this is something, this is for real.

[81] This is happening.

[82] I'm Dan Tversky.

[83] From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, this is hysterical.

[84] Episode 2.

[85] All in your head.

[86] A few years ago, I was walking my dog down Irving Place in Manhattan.

[87] Billy was an old geyser by then, a great A ass dragger.

[88] And we come to a corner and he's sniffing at this trash can.

[89] And I notice there's smoke coming out of it.

[90] Probably a flick cigarette that didn't go out, but it's becoming a proper little fire.

[91] I can see flames now.

[92] And a couple other rubberneckers notice now, too, and little bits of trash fire are falling off the sides.

[93] And I look at the guy next to me, and he looks at the fire, then back at me. And I look at the fire, and I look at Billy, and Billy looks at me like, don't look at me. And all of us just kind of standing there, wondering if someone should, you know, do something.

[94] How do you know?

[95] And who decides?

[96] When a scene goes from being just an oddity, a thing to gawk at and exchange glances about, to the level where someone finally pulls the fire alarm.

[97] As the weather grew colder in Leroy that fall, the symptoms continued to come to life.

[98] A thrashing junior one week, a couple sophomores the next, an irregular heartbeat, finding its rhythm.

[99] But all still unofficial.

[100] The school's not talking about it publicly.

[101] The town isn't acknowledging it.

[102] Parents are just kind of watching this thing happen.

[103] I just kept thinking, what's going on?

[104] I didn't have any clue.

[105] I just was like, there's got to be an answer.

[106] There's got to be something at the root.

[107] You know, what's the common denominator?

[108] It was basically all I kept thinking is what's the common denominator here.

[109] The soccer moms and dads would hash out theories on the sideline.

[110] And I remember us very casual conversation.

[111] Hmm.

[112] What's the coach doing to these girls?

[113] Are they stressed out?

[114] What's going on?

[115] One of the first students to fall ill was on the soccer team.

[116] So at first there was some suspicion that maybe the coach was pushing them too hard.

[117] But then maybe a few weeks later, then it's another girl.

[118] Well, she's not on the soccer team.

[119] What's going on with her?

[120] In fact, that first girl was also on the cheerleading squad.

[121] And three weeks later, her best friend on the squad came down with symptoms.

[122] You know, it was almost like making this little spreadsheet.

[123] Okay, well, this girl's in this grade and she does this activity.

[124] And as the sound of ticks and barks grew louder in the school, some began to see patterns.

[125] I felt like kids in marching band, some soccer players, and kids in track.

[126] Mr. Mahalek, the band teacher.

[127] It was a lot of the same kids were involved in those same activities.

[128] I thought it had to be something to do with the school or the school grounds only because that was the only thing everybody had in common is they went to the same school.

[129] Yeah.

[130] And they were female.

[131] The focus for some turned to the athletic fields, where the kids played and practiced.

[132] The field had become notorious for being repeatedly soaked with floodwater from heavy rains.

[133] There would even be complaints from students about an orange ooze coming up from the grass there that stuck to their sneakers and clothes.

[134] Then there was the question of why just girls so far?

[135] At first, it was whispers.

[136] It was like, oh, it's this one girl.

[137] Like, we don't know what's going on.

[138] Like, blah, blah, blah.

[139] And the next thing I know, it's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.

[140] This is Rose, another eighth grader at Leroy that year.

[141] I remember hearing at some point, since it was all girls, it must be a bad batch of tampons.

[142] And I'm just like, what?

[143] Jessica, a senior, was also like what?

[144] Because like if it was like the tampons and like the things at school, like nobody even uses those.

[145] So like I don't think that wouldn't make sense really.

[146] Did the school give you sort of marching orders about how to deal with this?

[147] Yeah, yeah.

[148] They said like, you know, we're handling it and they basically just wanted everybody to keep quiet.

[149] There's a mystery in Leroy that no one seems to be able to solve.

[150] In November, one of the girls finally goes public with her symptoms on local news.

[151] But she hides her identity.

[152] She's backlit by the setting sun, so you just see her silhouette.

[153] This is my eighth or ninth day, straight ticking and doesn't stop.

[154] For 17 -year -old Michaela, as we've chosen to call her, sleeping is the only form of relief she has from the uncontrollable ticks that constantly shake her head.

[155] Meanwhile, at Dent Neurologic, as Dr. McVig tries to narrow in on the source of it all, her waiting room is starting to become unmanageable.

[156] Flash to when I have patients that I'm seeing that are having the same symptoms.

[157] And I've got to get them all into the office.

[158] And I probably shouldn't have in the waiting room or in the back at the same time.

[159] Again, patient privacy becomes an issue.

[160] Because we have the same vocalizations and barking and things like that.

[161] And so, you know, they can identify each other because they know the sound and they also exacerbate each other.

[162] Bringing two or more patients together, it seemed, was making the symptoms of each patient worse.

[163] Yeah.

[164] So as soon as somebody starts, you know, vocalizing, the other person starts vocalizing, then I have patients with migraine that are sitting there like, oh my Lord.

[165] On November 4th, 2011, about seven weeks after the symptoms first appeared, the superintendent posts a letter on the school district website.

[166] Quote, we've had some questions about a group of students in our district that have developed what appears to be Tourette -like symptoms.

[167] We are taking this issue seriously, and you get the gist.

[168] The fire alarm had finally been pulled.

[169] So they came to me, because they knew I was a practicing doc.

[170] They knew I knew I knew the urea.

[171] They knew I was comfortable, and that's just their clock.

[172] Okay, let me just wait until it's done so we can hear you.

[173] When state health officials were alerted as to what was happening and how it was multiplying, Dr. Greg Young was dropped into the center of the growing storm.

[174] We're in his house right now.

[175] He collects cuckoo clocks.

[176] Look, right up there over the fireplace.

[177] Oh, yeah.

[178] Yeah.

[179] The New York State Department of Health put Dr. Young in charge of finding the source of the mysterious illness.

[180] So when something like this happens and you're at the Department of Health, is there like a binder that you flip to and be like, okay, here's what we do if we think we're dealing with this?

[181] Like, what's the protocol?

[182] Well, the protocol is we know what we need to do in a disease outbreak, and that's what we call the line list.

[183] The line list they created was step one, a grid of every patient, every symptom, when they started, when they got worse, looking for patterns, a formal version of the sleuthing some of the parents had already been doing in their heads.

[184] And Dr. Young had his eye out for a few possible culprits.

[185] I was looking for something physical.

[186] You were looking for an environment.

[187] I was looking for either disease or environmental.

[188] Those are the things that have me worried.

[189] And then I thought, I said, well, the other thing, drugs.

[190] Disease, environmental drugs.

[191] And those are my three top.

[192] Now, the numbers fluctuate depending on who you ask and when, but by December, Dr. Young and his team are clocking 12 students at the school with symptoms.

[193] Most had been seen by Dr. McVig at Dent, who gave them a series of tests for Lyme disease, a tox screen, etc. Some were tested for heavy metals in the blood.

[194] A health contractor is hired who interviews the students to find any common toxin exposures and to rule out possible drug use.

[195] On campus, they test for mold.

[196] They review recent water testing data and take some new samples.

[197] They test the lighting levels, which are sometimes linked to neurological problems.

[198] They also do air quality tests, focusing specifically on a few spots inside the school that seem to be coming up again and again.

[199] The library, a biology classroom, the girls' locker room, and Art Room 360, two of the first afflicted girls, the cheerleaders, they shared a class in this room.

[200] By New Year's, Dr. Young, felt like they'd come up with the answer.

[201] So we did a thorough investigation, and you've read the report, you've got the same one that I do, we really went through everything, and I knew what the diagnosis was.

[202] On January 11, 2012, about three months into the sickness now, parents are called to a town meeting in the high school auditorium.

[203] It's a Wednesday evening.

[204] And the goal is to calm the fear that have been building.

[205] You were the spokesperson.

[206] Yeah, I wound up being the spokesperson.

[207] That's not a job you wanted.

[208] Well, it was a job someone had to do.

[209] It does not go great.

[210] I told them two things.

[211] I said, we've looked at the infectious disease side of it, and there is no infection among these children.

[212] The second thing, we've done an environmental review.

[213] The water quality came from Monroe County water.

[214] I mean, it was great water.

[215] It's tested regularly.

[216] There was nothing in the water to be concerned about.

[217] It's not infectious, so it's not environmental.

[218] That's all you need to know.

[219] And that was pretty much it.

[220] Dr. Young said what the state thought it wasn't.

[221] Not infectious, it's not environmental.

[222] But he refused to say what the state thought it was.

[223] That's why I was so angry.

[224] Here's Jessica again.

[225] She was there that night.

[226] Because I'm like, you're saying you're doing all this testing, but you're not telling us what you're doing.

[227] You're saying you have come to this conclusion, but you won't tell us what it is.

[228] And to you that's suspicious.

[229] Yeah.

[230] Yeah, that's when I went up and called them out.

[231] I was like, I just think that's bullshit.

[232] Like, you're just going to withhold all this information for us.

[233] Like, what is actually going on?

[234] There's clearly something going on that you're covering up.

[235] There was this girl in her throwing questions of me, a high school kid.

[236] Jessica.

[237] And she had this cell phone, blah, well, and she starts reading this stuff.

[238] I go, oh, brother, a young kid.

[239] People were looking for an answer.

[240] They wanted something simple, disease, environmental, and they weren't getting what they wanted.

[241] So by then, everybody thought I was holding something back.

[242] Well, you were holding something back intentionally.

[243] Yeah, well, yeah.

[244] Dr. Young was in kind of an impossible position here.

[245] He felt like he had the answer to what was happening to the kids as a group, but revealing that diagnosis in public would violate each individual kid's right to medical privacy.

[246] I took a Hippocratic oath.

[247] And to me, ethics weigh far more than my job or anything else.

[248] Even if I've been ordered to tell, share of the diagnosis, I would not have done it.

[249] It might be ethical, but it is also a great way to scare the hell out of a crowd of freaked out parents.

[250] Here's Dr. Young during that meeting.

[251] We will share as much as we can without sharing the diagnosis.

[252] We can't do that.

[253] It's not right.

[254] He bobbed and weaved for three hours.

[255] After a while, a parent whose daughter had already gotten her diagnosis in private got sick of dancing around it.

[256] So he just walked to the mic and said it for him.

[257] The diagnosis was something called conversion disorder.

[258] And you know what that means.

[259] Well, neither did most of the people in that auditorium.

[260] In January 1692, several young girls living in Salem Village, Massachusetts, started behaving strangely.

[261] They screamed, barked, and writhed in pain.

[262] Their elders concluded that witchcraft was to blame, and the girls began accusing local women of bewitching them.

[263] Soon, witchcraft hysteria swept through their small Puritan community.

[264] Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast, American History Tellers.

[265] We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans.

[266] Our values, our struggles and our dreams.

[267] In our latest series, we explore the history of the Salem Witch Trials, the most lethal witch hunt in American history.

[268] Follow American history tellers on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[269] You can binge this season early and ad -free right now on Wondery Plus.

[270] On January 3, 2012, there was an item in the Batavian.

[271] That's the newspaper in the next big town over.

[272] The headline?

[273] Snowball throwers sought in Leroy.

[274] A group of kids throwing snowballs at cars were now evading police, and I'd left behind two major clues, footprints in the snow and one orphan glove found at the scene.

[275] On the status of the Manhunt, an officer is quoted as saying, someone's going to have a cold hand.

[276] When a reader wrote in the comments, how is this news?

[277] The paper's response was economical and to the point.

[278] Because I say it is.

[279] My name is Howard Owens.

[280] I'm publisher of the Batavian serving Genesee County.

[281] Howard Owens says it is.

[282] So we've become, for a lot of people, the primary news source locally.

[283] And it's you?

[284] It's me and I have two employees.

[285] But now, just one week later, the snowball story somehow seemed small.

[286] As a couple hundred Leroyans packed the school auditorium, looking for an answer to a newer, scarier mystery.

[287] Owens was sitting in the front row when the state's diagnosis, the one they were trying not to say, was finally revealed.

[288] And that's the first time in my life I heard the term conversion disorder.

[289] So I was, frankly, out of my depth.

[290] But I sit there, you know, Google's your best friend sometimes, right?

[291] Sometimes it's your worst enemy.

[292] He actually just Googled it in the meeting.

[293] And the first article I sitting in the audience pops up on conversion disorder.

[294] It's like a total, you know, this is a fraudulent kind of diagnosis.

[295] In fact, conversion disorder is real.

[296] But it can be a bear to wrap your mind around.

[297] Now, the definition is constantly evolving, but in 2012, the running definition for conversion disorder is psychological stress or trauma that boils over into physical symptoms.

[298] The symptoms are very often neurological, trouble walking, a limp that won't go away, numbness, seizures, motor ticks, from the mild, like a twitch, to the extreme, often violent.

[299] A conversion reaction can last for an afternoon, and it can also cripple you for a lifetime.

[300] But in general, you know it's conversion disorder because there is no organic cause.

[301] There's no clear physical explanation for why it's happening.

[302] So you have a limp, but x -rays are normal.

[303] And you have seizures multiple times a day, but MRIs show nothing.

[304] The symptoms in conversion disorder are real.

[305] They are actually happening.

[306] It is not faking it.

[307] It's not looking for attention.

[308] But all the tests, the EEGs, the blood work, the tox screens, normal.

[309] But that's just the first part of it.

[310] Because what's happening in Leroy isn't happening to one person.

[311] It's happening to, at last count, 12 persons in spreading.

[312] Here's Dr. McVig.

[313] She agrees with the state's diagnosis.

[314] Each case uniquely is a conversion disorder independently.

[315] But when you mush them all together and they all have the same symptoms and they all know each other, then it's a mass psychogenic illness.

[316] Mass psychogenic illness, otherwise known as mass hysteria.

[317] Mass psychogenic illness is not like, oh, it happened here, it happened here.

[318] It happened this week here.

[319] These are rare occurrences.

[320] And to have this many people have an occurrence that's this well publicized that is not only that, but tick disorder.

[321] So motor disorders are much more rare.

[322] So most of the time, they're, you know, GI issues or passing out.

[323] They're not motor disorders like tick disorders.

[324] In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, when a spate of unexplainable behavior broke out among girls and women, the people there blamed the devil and the girls themselves.

[325] But many historians now believe that that was a case of mass psychogenic illness.

[326] Mass psychogenic illness happens overwhelmingly to girls.

[327] No one's quite sure why and we'll get to that.

[328] It involves bizarre physical symptoms with no clear physical cause, but then it spreads from person to person, usually in tight social groups like a convent or a small village or a high school.

[329] So when Elizabeth Paris and Abigail Williams first had symptoms in Salem, Massachusetts, vocal outbursts, and strange contortions, it wasn't the devil, it wasn't even conscious.

[330] It was some psychological stress or even trauma overflowing into physical symptoms.

[331] And then spreading, among the other girls in the settlement, who knew Abigail and Elizabeth, who unconsciously caught the symptoms themselves.

[332] How?

[333] It's a line of sight thing.

[334] That is the vector for contagion here.

[335] It's not saliva or sneezing or not washing your hands.

[336] It's seeing and hearing someone suffering with the symptoms that could cause you to catch it as well.

[337] Now, that's all fine and good for 300 years ago and long -gone girls in bonnets and buckle shoes.

[338] But as a diagnosis today in that auditorium in Leroy, for a parent to hear about their kid now, that is a big pill to swallow.

[339] It was very tense.

[340] It was nobody was buying conversion disorder.

[341] It was, I think, strange for all of us.

[342] Howard Owens again, the reporter.

[343] You know, you're lying to us.

[344] This can't be real.

[345] You guys don't know what you're talking about.

[346] And sitting there facing the crowd and taking the heat, Dr. Young, the guy working for the state who thought they'd solved the mystery.

[347] Why are you so confident?

[348] Have you always been this confident?

[349] No, I wasn't.

[350] I went it this way.

[351] Why are you so confident in dealing with something that you had never seen before?

[352] And in terms of massacogenic illness, it's pretty rare.

[353] It is rare.

[354] That's the first one I'd ever seen, actually.

[355] But don't forget, I had a big army behind me. I had the neurologist.

[356] I had the psychiatrist.

[357] I had the movement disorder people.

[358] I had the NIH people.

[359] So I was comfortable, and I'm sorry, but it's just, it is what it is.

[360] So you heard conversion disorder and you thought...

[361] I thought that's bullshit.

[362] Here's Jessica again.

[363] I don't believe that.

[364] Because after seeing...

[365] I was like, there's just no way.

[366] I don't believe that.

[367] Like, seeing all these girls, like, they're not making it up.

[368] And, like, I just don't believe that that's the thing.

[369] I just couldn't.

[370] And, like, my mom and me were just so outraged to hear everybody just, like, say that's what it was.

[371] Like, after all of this, that's all it is.

[372] Like, I just don't know how to believe that.

[373] I'm not a doctor, and I don't care about hip.

[374] I care about getting these kids better.

[375] This is a parent talking to reporters after the town hall.

[376] I mean, there's a whole lot of common sense here that I think is being dismissed.

[377] His kid had missed almost a month of school so far.

[378] Her symptoms were that severe.

[379] I think all teenagers have a certain amount of stress to deal within their lives, you know, these days with the broken homes and the boyfriends and all of that sort of thing.

[380] I'm talking about something that just comes on within a couple of weeks, and these kids are just totally normal, and then next thing you know, they're going blah, and their arms are swinging.

[381] And so you were thinking conversion sort is bullshit?

[382] Yes.

[383] Yes.

[384] That was my initial impression, yes.

[385] Howard Owens.

[386] Did you ask yourself why they would say that?

[387] Yeah, I hate to think of myself, somebody buys into conspiracy theories or whatever, but certainly, you know, you can't, we should have some healthy skepticism of the government and that they might lie to us.

[388] It's not like it's never happened.

[389] And they would have motivation to lie if it was environmental cause, right?

[390] The school district would certainly.

[391] Well, liability.

[392] If it's mold making these girls sick or bad water or that orange ooze on the athletic fields, the school and the town could be liable on the hook for gazillions.

[393] And they might fear liability if it was some sort of viral disease that they had failed to control.

[394] So, you know, that might be reason for a government agency to lie.

[395] Dr. McVeague, to a lesser degree myself, are unable to get specifics.

[396] We're not doing that to hide anything.

[397] Or we're here to be responsible physicians.

[398] The guy saying, I swear I'm not having anything, that's Dr. Laslow Meckler, Dr. McVig's boss at Dent Neurologic.

[399] Meckler goes on the news a few days later to try and calm things down.

[400] We know exactly what is going on.

[401] We know exactly how we should treat it.

[402] Part of it is the natural course of the illness.

[403] That was the funny thing to me that gave me that, you know, that feeling in the pit of your stomach of something isn't right.

[404] For Emily's mom, Kathy, began to feel like the school wasn't just cooperating with the neurologists at Dent, but almost colluding with them.

[405] She says the school nurse called and told her, do not take Emily to your family doctor.

[406] She said we're dealing through the school, we're dealing with dent.

[407] That's who she says the school wanted them to see.

[408] Dr. is McVig and Meckler, the neurologists.

[409] And I went, okay.

[410] Why are you suggesting even to a parent of a child where they should take them to be seen?

[411] Yeah, really unusual.

[412] I just felt like, why are we funneling these girls, all of them, to one doctor?

[413] It just didn't seem...

[414] To make sense, why don't we all go to different doctors?

[415] And then if you all say the same thing, okay, that makes sense to me. But if one doctor is looking at 20 people and saying the same thing over and over, it just, I don't, it didn't feel authentic to me. Kathy never did call the doctor's attempt.

[416] She says it didn't matter, though.

[417] I remember getting a phone call from Dent and them asking me, did I want to set up an appointment and such?

[418] And I was like, how did you get my number?

[419] How did you get my information kind of thing?

[420] Kathy takes Emily to their family doctor instead.

[421] But even then, it's the same old song, and she's getting sick of hearing it.

[422] The doctor walked into that examining room and said, it's conversion disorder.

[423] to me face to face, never even turned her head to look at Emily or examine her or anything.

[424] And I said, how do you know?

[425] Just thinking, you haven't even, you know, you're a doctor.

[426] So, you know, and I'm not.

[427] So how do you know this?

[428] And she said, well, she goes to Leroy.

[429] These girls all have it.

[430] So she's got it.

[431] She basically said, oh, well, it's all in your head.

[432] You're fine.

[433] Here's Emily.

[434] How are you as a medical professional going to look your patient in the eye and be like, you're fine?

[435] Stop thinking about it.

[436] You're fine.

[437] You're fine.

[438] So what you're saying is, I have these symptoms, but you don't know why either.

[439] And I was like, You're not going to do any test?

[440] And she's like, no, I don't need to.

[441] And I was like, okay.

[442] And she didn't want any part of it.

[443] So I was like, okay, we'll find another opinion.

[444] It felt like she didn't want any part of it.

[445] Yeah.

[446] Wow.

[447] Yeah, it kind of did.

[448] It kind of felt like, it's terrible to say this, but my child's an individual and I don't want her grouped in with, I don't want you to tell me that she's exactly like all the other ones.

[449] And this is, I don't know.

[450] It just, I was like, I know my kid.

[451] And whether it was called conversion disorder or mass psychogenic illness, everyone knew what it meant.

[452] It meant mass hysteria.

[453] It was all in their heads.

[454] It started to feel like people were kind of picking sides on conversion disorder or question mark.

[455] In 1976, a new theory emerged about Salem, Massachusetts and what had happened to the girls there in the 1600s.

[456] The theory was that the women and girls in Salem had not been possessed by the devil, nor did they experience a mass psychogenic illness.

[457] The paper suggested that what they had experienced was something called ergot poisoning.

[458] Urgett, you'll be interested to hear, often grows on ryegrass, and in certain weather conditions, rainy, damp, cool.

[459] Ryegrass, it should be noted, is a common grass type to plant on athletic fields, like the ones in Leroy, New York.

[460] The same fields that students complained had a habit of flooding after rainfall, and that had reportedly been oozing a weird orange substance sticking to the clothes and sneakers of students, students on the soccer team, students on the cheerleading squad.

[461] I'm not saying what's happening in Leroy's ergot poisoning.

[462] I'm not even saying what happened in Salem was ergot poisoning.

[463] But the thing that makes a conversion disorder or a mass psychogenic illness diagnosis viable is that there is no other explanation.

[464] And for Kathy Dunn and the parents at Liori High School, who were trying to weigh a diagnosis of mass hysteria on one hand and question mark on the other, question mark is starting to look pretty good.

[465] Especially because now it seemed like whatever was making the girls in the high school sick was starting to evolve.

[466] This morning, the mystery appears to be growing.

[467] Today, national correspondent Amy Robach is here with the latest on that.

[468] And the sickness that till now had been confined to the high school, to the girls that were seeing each other in the halls every day, it was about to jump the tracks.

[469] Good morning, and as we've been reporting more than a dozen girls at Leroy High School say they have an illness that causes severe tics and verbal outburst.

[470] Now a 36 -year -old woman says she has those same symptoms.

[471] Next time on hysterical.

[472] So you're still not grouping yourself in with that?

[473] No, because it was all teenagers.

[474] And I was far from a teenager.

[475] Someone was like, dude, there's a news van outside.

[476] I took off so fast.

[477] Like, is there really something bigger than we think going on here?

[478] Some people, you know, would go as far to say, there's a cover up.

[479] Follow hysterical on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[480] You can binge all episodes early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[481] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.

[482] And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at Wondery .com slash tips.

[483] Hysterical is a production of Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

[484] Our lead producer is Henry Molloski.

[485] Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanaugh.

[486] Producer, Sophie Bridges, managing producer, Aaron Kelly.

[487] Senior producer, Lena Massitzi's.

[488] Additional production by Zandra Ellen.

[489] Diane Hotson is our editor.

[490] Our executive editor is Joel Lovell.

[491] Fact -checking by Natsumi Ajisaka.

[492] Mixing by Hannes Brown.

[493] Our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija.

[494] Original music, composed and performed by Dina McAbee.

[495] Legal services for Pineapple Street from Crystal Tupia.

[496] For Wondery, our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers, coordinating producer Mariah Gassett.

[497] Senior managing producer, Callum Pluse.

[498] Hysterical is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Taberski.

[499] Our executive producers for Pineapple Street are Max Linsky, Henry Molloski, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss Berman.

[500] Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent.

[501] Thanks for listening.

[502] Marty Markowitz had his share of problems, troubles at work, a failing relationship.

[503] His parents had recently died.

[504] And so, Marty decided to get some professional help.

[505] In the summer of 1981, he walked into the office of a psychiatrist named Ike Hirschkopf.

[506] At the end of the first session, he said, I'm going to take you on as a patient.

[507] And he says, you know, I don't do that with everybody.

[508] But this therapist wasn't like other therapists.

[509] He cut me off from everybody.

[510] So the only person I could turn to was Dr. Ike.

[511] And from the moment Marty started seeing him, he began to change.

[512] We didn't see him.

[513] I mean, he lived around the corner, and, like, suddenly we didn't go there anymore.

[514] Like, he wasn't coming over anymore.

[515] It's as if somebody died.

[516] It was obvious.

[517] It was obvious that I had the power, and Marty followed the rules.

[518] If Marty Markowitz had known what he was walking into when he first visited that office, he probably would have walked right out the door and never come back.

[519] This is a story about power, control, and turning to the wrong person for help for more than 29 years.

[520] From Bloomberg and Wondery, the company behind Dirty John, Dr. Dev, and over my dead body.

[521] I'm Joe Nocera, a columnist for Bloomberg opinion.

[522] Follow the shrink next door on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[523] You can binge all episodes of the Shrink Next Door ad -free exclusively on Wondery Plus.

[524] Join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts.

[525] Thank you.