We Have Another One | 3

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

[2] Previously on Hysterical.

[3] At first it was whispers, it was like, oh, it's this one girl, like, we don't know what's going on, like blah, blah, blah.

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

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

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

[7] Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

[8] Like, I just think that's bullshit.

[9] Like, you're just going to withhold all this information on us?

[10] Like, what is actually going on?

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

[12] Let's start the day with a little role play.

[13] You are a parent of a high school girl.

[14] And lately she and a bunch of her classmates have been exhibiting some very wild symptoms.

[15] And they scare you and they make you scared for her.

[16] And then at this big town meeting, you're told that what your kid has is this very rare, almost unbelievable illness, a phenomenon really, that to you sounds a lot like it's all in her head.

[17] And then they ask you to just, you know, keep it all on the down low.

[18] And to please, please, please stay away from the media.

[19] All the attention would just make it worse.

[20] What would you do?

[21] from NBC News.

[22] This is Today.

[23] That is what I would do to.

[24] Also ahead.

[25] Imagine if your child suddenly began to suffer from unexplained ticks and verbal outbursts.

[26] Hey, look, everyone.

[27] It's Matt Lauer.

[28] On the Today Show, on CNN, the usual suspects, several parents go public, rejecting mass hysteria and questioning the school's secrecy, why they weren't making available any of the testing for toxins they had supposedly done.

[29] Here's one of the moms live in the studio.

[30] Where's the proof?

[31] Where's the data?

[32] Where's the testing?

[33] When has this been done?

[34] You've not been shown any data?

[35] No. No, nothing.

[36] Her daughter is sitting next to her on the couch.

[37] I was always so...

[38] I was always so active.

[39] I don't feel like myself anymore.

[40] We hope that some doctor watching this now can help you and these other girls.

[41] And so that's...

[42] Meanwhile, at the school, once the story breaks nationally, I had been sitting in my tech class.

[43] This is Rose, eighth grade.

[44] Someone was like, dude, there's a newsman outside.

[45] I took off so fast.

[46] I went to go see.

[47] I was like, what?

[48] Because, like, you know, I'm nosy.

[49] Whatever.

[50] I had just got in a new car, like, around that time.

[51] So it was, like, a big thing for me to, like, finally be driving because I was riding the bus for a little bit.

[52] Here's Jessica, a senior.

[53] I remember exactly, like, where I parked, like, getting out and just, like, standing there staring at the cameras.

[54] Like, holy shit, like, what the hell is going on?

[55] And it was the entire bus loop just filled with these, like, giant satellites and cameras.

[56] And just people, like, they weren't allowed to, like, get out because the school wouldn't let them, but they were, like, in their trucks videotaping us.

[57] It was nuts.

[58] Yeah.

[59] It was nuts.

[60] Camera crews lined up on Main Street.

[61] Mr. Mahalek, the band teacher.

[62] It was an absolute zoo in a little town, which only drove the fear more.

[63] What makes you say that?

[64] Well, people knew something serious was happening then.

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

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

[67] By now, many kids at the school have stopped drinking the water from the water fountains.

[68] This weekend, at least five basketball games scheduled in Leroy have been canceled.

[69] Parents of those players not willing to risk their children's health and safety for sport.

[70] Students take to Facebook tracking who's come down with symptoms.

[71] Soon, a video service of a strange -looking crop duster dumping unknown chemicals onto a field adjacent to the school.

[72] On Main Street, at the Pentecostal Church, the letters on the letterboard sign out front have been rearranged.

[73] Now they say, we are praying for our Leroy High School girls.

[74] The emphasis, of course, is on the girls' part, right?

[75] Up till this point, one big indicator that it at least might be mass psychogenic illness is that all the cases are confined to that one broad social group.

[76] In this case, teen girls at Leroy Junior Senior High School.

[77] The illness seems to be passing between the other female students at the school, but it's not jumping lanes to parents, to siblings, to neighbors, or to strangers.

[78] You don't piece it all together as it's happening.

[79] Then someone new comes forward.

[80] Things like exploded, and then I was trying to decide which pieces am I picking up.

[81] Someone who lives in Leroy, but she's not on the soccer team.

[82] She doesn't play in the marching band.

[83] She doesn't go to Leroy High School or high school, period.

[84] When did you start piecing it together that other people were having similar symptoms?

[85] I only knew what was on the news, and people were thinking that it was, like, contagious.

[86] Did it start to occur to you that maybe it was?

[87] No, because it was all teenagers, and I was far from a teenager.

[88] I'm Dan Taberski.

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

[90] Episode three, we have another one.

[91] If you ever find yourself in Paris in 1882 with some time on your hands, just looking for something to do, head on over to the mental hospital.

[92] Because the biggest attraction in Belapac Paris, it could be argued, isn't the Louvre or the opera house.

[93] It's a place called Salpetriere.

[94] The hulking structure on the left bank of the Sen was once a gunpowder factory, and over the years it had morphed into a hospice for poor women, then a prison for poor women.

[95] And finally, a women's mental hospital.

[96] And it was around this time that something very strange started happening there.

[97] The beds in Salpetriere began to fill up with patients, all experiencing truly bizarre symptoms that no one could explain.

[98] Ticks, paralysis, loss of consciousness.

[99] Dr. Jameson Webster is a clinical psychologist and a professor at the New School for social research in New York.

[100] Loss of language, abilities to speak languages, they didn't know they could speak, different multiple personalities, emotional fits of all different kinds, whether it'd be crying, whether it would be giggling, whether it would be smiling uncontrollably.

[101] All behaviors that to every doctor who examined them appear to have no physiological cause.

[102] As far as they could tell, there was nothing physically wrong.

[103] They were symptoms that didn't make any sense.

[104] That shouldn't be happening at all.

[105] But there they were.

[106] Similar outbreaks were happening among women in Victorian London, in Austria, in Germany.

[107] But it was Paris that became, as one historian put it, the epicenter of the hysteria industry.

[108] And that was because of a man named Jean -Martin Charcot.

[109] Charcot started a neurology clinic at Salpetriere.

[110] It was one of the first.

[111] And every Friday, Dr. Charcot would put these women, his patients, on display.

[112] literally, on a stage, every Friday afternoon like a matinee.

[113] And the doctors from around the city would fill up the auditorium as these patients, one by one, took the stage in front of them to writhe and bark and contort into impossible shapes, while the men in the audience would watch and try to figure out what was causing it.

[114] And the fascination with what they were doing with their bodies that was clearly related to their mind was fascinating these doctors at the turn of the century.

[115] Now, if you can believe it, in some ways, this was good medicine.

[116] Before the 19th century, the unexplained symptoms often associated with hysteria were thought to have their source in the uterus.

[117] The body, constantly disrupted by the wandering womb, that's how they termed it, literally moving around in a woman's body.

[118] Charcot rejected all that uterus jazz, and using medical observation and search for a real cause was a step up from hysterectomies.

[119] Also, while we're here, the myth that doctors used vibrators to treat hysteria in their female patients appears to be just that, a myth, which, trust me, is for the best, once you see what early vibrators looked like.

[120] But on the flip side, Salpetriere was total insanity.

[121] Charcot's sessions drew more than just the medical community.

[122] Writers and actors and artists came too, enamored with the mystery of it.

[123] Patients became famous, known by first names like Augustine and Jean -Viev, and for the drama of their specific symptoms, especially what Charcot termed the grand hysteria, where the patient would violently contort herself bending backwards into a half -circle.

[124] The sessions became so popular that Charcot had a 500 -seat amphitheater build at the hospital with proper theatrical lighting and everything, including a huge spotlight to center the hysterics on the darkened stage.

[125] Now, as those Fridays rolled on, you would have started seeing a face showing up in the crowd more and more often.

[126] He's about 5 '8.

[127] He's sporting a tweed suit, a beard, maybe a little cocaine lingering on his mustache.

[128] And lodged in his mouth, a cigar.

[129] Which, legend has it, he would one day insist that despite its considerable length and girth, is sometimes just a cigar.

[130] Sigmund Freud was a young neurologist in from Vienna, here to get a gander at the medical mystery.

[131] But whereas Charcot thought for sure that there was some physical explanation that they just hadn't found yet, Freud comes at it differently.

[132] And it really took Freud instead of just looking at them and looking at them and being excited and fascinated and interested.

[133] He was the first one who said, talk.

[134] And then, you know, he wanted them to talk about specific things, but this opened the door to something fascinating, which was the hysterics that he speaks about in studies in hysteria, were like, okay, you want me to talk?

[135] I'm going to talk.

[136] Let me talk also about what I want to talk about.

[137] And then off they went.

[138] And for the next 20 -plus years, Freud devotes himself to the mystery of hysteria, trying to find its source.

[139] And as for Dr. Webster, her introduction to Freud came when she was a teenager herself.

[140] I read Freud when I was 17 in early college, and I kind of got excited about it.

[141] What's early college?

[142] You skip two years of high school.

[143] You skip two years of high school?

[144] Yeah.

[145] Oh, wow.

[146] And in like the second semester, they gave us Freud Nietzsche and Marx.

[147] And it was like...

[148] At 17?

[149] Yeah, it was pretty great.

[150] And you just ate it up?

[151] I ate it up.

[152] But especially Freud and his now famous case studies from the late 1890s about the women they called hysterical.

[153] And it was the story, the thing that I had to kind of present to the class because they assigned me Freud was Freud's case of Dora, the 16 -year -old hysterical girl.

[154] And I was like, oh, that's me. She had what Freud called a petite history, like she had a small hysteria, because it was in the form of stomach aches and coughs and fainting fits and moments of mutism.

[155] And he's listening to her.

[156] I mean, no one listened to her.

[157] And she talks about the adults in her life, about affairs and lies and fractured family.

[158] She had kind of been the linchpin in her father having this affair.

[159] She had helped him do it.

[160] And not just the trauma of family, but her place in society.

[161] To Dr. Webster, Dora reads as smart and struggling with wanting more than the world was offering women then in terms of self -determination, in terms of a life.

[162] And, you know, as they went, then you realize that these symptoms were tied into these huge networks of thoughts and complexities and histories and sufferings and feelings about themselves as women in this particular societal milieu.

[163] And the more they talked about them, the more they could shift, change, and eventually disappear.

[164] Yeah.

[165] It was the unconscious.

[166] That is where Freud was looking for the source of the symptoms.

[167] An entire inner life we all have, but have no real access to.

[168] Freud renamed hysteria conversion disorder.

[169] That was him.

[170] He believed that the stress or trauma in the mind was being converted into physical symptoms in the body, the unconscious's way of releasing it or getting it out there.

[171] Now, important point about Freud.

[172] Even his biggest fans will tell you, his career full of insight was also just riddled with off -the -wall ideas.

[173] I mean, it's tough because there's a lot.

[174] I mean, Freud thought that men had menstruation out of their nose.

[175] He had his own agendas, his own prejudices.

[176] He pushed his own interpretations and sexual obsessions.

[177] He did a ton of coke.

[178] Look it up.

[179] But for our purposes here, you don't got to buy everything about Freud.

[180] You just got to buy the big chunks.

[181] Namely, this uncomfortable, mysterious truth.

[182] What happens in a life, what happens in the world, and what happens in your body are really intertwined in a way that we don't understand, and certainly Western medicine doesn't understand.

[183] And sometimes talking about this is helpful.

[184] When's the last time you've talked publicly about this?

[185] Publicly, when it happened.

[186] Wow.

[187] So it's been a while.

[188] It's been a while.

[189] Well, thank you.

[190] I really appreciate it.

[191] I really appreciate it.

[192] Regardless, even if you sit there and say nothing, thank you.

[193] How do you want to be identified?

[194] First name?

[195] First name's fine.

[196] Merge.

[197] I mean.

[198] Great.

[199] That's fine.

[200] Marge's symptoms started around the beginning of the school year, at the same time as the first girls at Leroy High School.

[201] But there's a big difference between her and those students.

[202] At the time, Marge was a 36 -year -old mom.

[203] She had been working as a nurse in a day hab for people with developmental disabilities.

[204] I started what I called at the time.

[205] I started losing time.

[206] Losing time, like spacing out for long stretches.

[207] And because I have worked with individuals that would have absent seizures, I was like, is that what's happening to me?

[208] And it wasn't because I could recall like everything that was set around me. But to look at me, it would just, it would look like it would look like I was daydreaming.

[209] That's what I was told.

[210] Soon the symptoms evolved into the headjerks and the vocal outbursts.

[211] My head would just randomly move.

[212] Just randomly move.

[213] One side or the other, it would turn.

[214] And I would play it off as a, oh, I just thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

[215] Then it started happening more often.

[216] Your kid is three years old.

[217] How did they respond to what's happening?

[218] They called them hiccups.

[219] Really?

[220] I had hiccups.

[221] She changes her diet, thinking maybe it's food allergies.

[222] She swaps out her kids diaper cream.

[223] Any changes she had made when the symptoms began, she changes back.

[224] Nothing works.

[225] She'd heard about the outbreak in town, but to her, that's about a bunch of teenagers.

[226] She didn't have any real connection to the school, so she's not putting it together yet between her and it, or that maybe she had caught whatever it is.

[227] Until the pickles.

[228] I was in the grocery store and I dropped a jar of pickles because my head twitched.

[229] I made this weird noise and I lost the ability to hold the jar of pickles.

[230] And there was a mother and young child in the store.

[231] And the mother grabbed the child's arm and says, we don't want to catch that.

[232] And that's when I realized that I didn't really know what was going on in the town.

[233] Her symptoms get worse.

[234] I felt like Linda Blair and the Exorcist.

[235] At one point, I had a bruise on the back side of my shoulder from where my chin was constantly hitting my shoulder.

[236] Oh.

[237] The backside.

[238] Wow.

[239] I don't even know how it could physically happen, but that's how loose my neck muscles were.

[240] I was having a hard time keeping my head up.

[241] I couldn't eat unless somebody was home with me because I was choking.

[242] Oh, my goodness.

[243] I couldn't drink.

[244] I had to drink with a teaspoon.

[245] Sips of water.

[246] Marge reaches out to a friend.

[247] I was like, I am scared.

[248] And I need somebody to be scared with me. So we went here to Batavia Hospital.

[249] And...

[250] It was rough.

[251] That's when I realized how bad everything had gotten in Leroy.

[252] Because I heard one of the nurses say, we have another one.

[253] And I heard, well, that makes five this week.

[254] And we're just like...

[255] She says they gave her a valium and sent her home.

[256] I felt like nobody could help me. Yeah.

[257] Regardless of if they wanted to or not.

[258] It's really hard to overstate just how frightening Marge's symptoms were.

[259] Yeah.

[260] We used to hang out in the quarry.

[261] This is her on the local news at the time, when cameras captured a particularly violent outburst.

[262] There were times where I thought I was crazy.

[263] Like, am I going crazy?

[264] Is this really happening?

[265] And until what feels like the truth of the situation shakes out for Marge, it becomes difficult to even just be around people.

[266] I don't know if I was ashamed.

[267] Or embarrassed.

[268] I isolated myself.

[269] And I could just be like, I am home all by myself.

[270] Doors locked.

[271] Curtains drawn.

[272] Lights dim.

[273] I would have headphones on so that I wouldn't hear any of the outside world.

[274] I...

[275] What do you listen to?

[276] Um...

[277] Twilight had just come out.

[278] So I listened to Debussy a lot.

[279] I listened to a lot of Fergie and Lady Gaga.

[280] Anything that, anything, even Gloria Gaynor, I will survive.

[281] Mm -hmm.

[282] Yep.

[283] Mm -hmm.

[284] But it depended on...

[285] What I was feeling at the moment, if I was having troubles with vocal ticks, I would come out with the most vulgar 90s rap that you could think of just so that I could justify all the fox shits, cunts, motherfuckers coming out of my mouth.

[286] Wow.

[287] You really had that's severe symptoms.

[288] It looked like Tourette's.

[289] It really did.

[290] But you don't catch Tourette.

[291] Incidentally, Claude Debussy wrote this piece in Paris during the hysteria there.

[292] For 10 years, he studied and performed on stage at the Paris Conservatory, just across the river from Salpetriere.

[293] Not quite close enough to imagine that the women there might have heard the notes wafting in through open windows, while they were made to perform on a different stage altogether.

[294] Music You know, We've all been there.

[295] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[296] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[297] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated.

[298] or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[299] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[300] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[301] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[302] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[303] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[304] Marge isn't the only new person to come forward with symptoms around this time, not by a long shot.

[305] Puzzling medical condition that's affecting a dozen girls in Genesee County now has some similar cases near Albany.

[306] In fact, once the story of what was happening in Leroy blew up, people begin connecting dots left and right.

[307] Hey, everybody.

[308] So I know I haven't done a video.

[309] Hey, oh.

[310] Remember the girl who sent out those videos on YouTube?

[311] Someone who heard about Leroy gets in touch with her and she calls the news people and comes forward.

[312] They say their symptoms are similar to what 12 girls in Leroy have been dealing with.

[313] Here's her mom speaking to a reporter, trying valiantly to talk louder than her daughter's tics.

[314] She has 40 for the narcotics that they have to try to help her control this.

[315] It still doesn't really hope.

[316] A friend of the YouTube girl also came forward.

[317] Her name is Alicia.

[318] Both girls play together on the softball team.

[319] There is something actually happening to their bodies.

[320] This is Alicia's dad on the local news.

[321] Something, I believe, is coming from the outside, the environment somehow.

[322] One big butt, though, neither girl is from Leroy.

[323] They live in another town in New York 250 miles away.

[324] So maybe not related, right?

[325] Well, here's a counterbutt.

[326] Both girls did eat at a restaurant in Leroy over the summer.

[327] Their softball team had recently passed through Leroy and ate lunch at a cafe on Main Street.

[328] If it's just a coincidence, it'd be a huge one.

[329] So the outbreak in Leroy is now the outbreak centered in Leroy.

[330] Which brings us to some more role play.

[331] This one here is a Sophie's choice.

[332] You are having unexplainable neurological symptoms and you have to choose.

[333] You can either be evaluated on a stage by Dr. Jean -Martin Charcot risen from the dead from 19th century Paris, Or you can be evaluated on a stage, on TV, in front of a live studio audience by a former contestant from The Bachelor.

[334] This is The Doctors.

[335] Have you seen The Doctors?

[336] It's canceled now anyway.

[337] Sorry.

[338] It was a medical advice talk show.

[339] And the main doctor on the Doctors had previously been the main Bachelor on The Bachelor.

[340] Season 8, Travis Stork.

[341] And welcome to the doctors.

[342] Today we're going viral.

[343] And no, we're not talking about that kind of viral.

[344] Don't worry, he is an actual doctor.

[345] And we can be sure of this because he's wearing blue scrubs while hosting a talk show.

[346] 16 -year -old Alicia and her dad, Randy, are here with us now.

[347] So glad you could come.

[348] Thank you.

[349] Thank you.

[350] And so, Alicia, how long have you been dealing with these symptoms now?

[351] I've been dealing with these symptoms since May. And let's talk about this, Dr. Marcia had been pitching a softball game one day when she passed out on the mound in the middle of the first inning.

[352] Since then, her symptoms grew to include convulsions, ticks, and seizure -like events, all with no clear source.

[353] No one wanted to listen to me. The doctors didn't.

[354] They thought it was all in my head and that I was making it up.

[355] Here I am with Alicia today, 12 years later.

[356] It's all in your head, they're saying, and I'm saying it's not.

[357] I have physical symptoms, and my mom would go to my appointments with me, and a male doctor would dismiss everything we were both saying.

[358] It wasn't until my dad went into the meetings, and then until we were heard.

[359] But then, the doctor's called.

[360] Well, and a doctor's exclusive militia came all the way to Los Angeles, desperate for help.

[361] And we actually set her up with a battery of both physical and psychological testing as well as objective testing for which we're about to get the results.

[362] But first...

[363] Why did you decide to go on?

[364] I think it was my parents, this was new to them, and they didn't know.

[365] They were looking for answers.

[366] The doctors, they have these renowned doctors that they work with and collaborate with.

[367] And so obviously my parents are like, oh, we can get some answers from them.

[368] They're smart.

[369] They know what they're doing.

[370] It's not the worst idea.

[371] And they sent a list of all the tests they were going to run.

[372] We're going to run this, this, this, and this, all these different tests.

[373] And my dad's like, okay, that sounds great.

[374] Let's do it.

[375] Maybe we'll get some answers.

[376] Then we get there.

[377] And they don't do have the tests.

[378] Good morning.

[379] How are you?

[380] So let me just examine a couple things here.

[381] On the show, they play video of the doctor's examination of Alicia.

[382] Okay.

[383] And then as you touch my finger and then you nose like this.

[384] It was more like, well, if we get a shot of this, that'll look really good.

[385] Oh, I didn't like how you said hi.

[386] Can you say it a different way and then we'll talk to you?

[387] I didn't know what happened behind the scenes.

[388] This was all new to me and to my dad.

[389] It was a bunch of hooey.

[390] And that is followed by this scene in the studio.

[391] Alicia and her dad are sitting on stage, looking like nervous Jerry Springer guests, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[392] This is a functional MRI scan and fiber tracking in the brain, just as we do in a tumor patient.

[393] Then the TV doctors reveal Alicia's brain, a video wall full of her MRI scans, writ giant.

[394] And then we, the folks at home, watch the live studio audience, watch Alicia and her dad get her diagnosis.

[395] define the entire wire diagram of Alicia's brain to see if we can pick up any abnormality.

[396] I'm happy to tell you, it looks completely normal.

[397] And what was their diagnosis?

[398] I think that's when they said conversion disorder.

[399] In the final edit that we see on TV, they actually never say it to her face.

[400] But when all her other tests come back normal, the implication is pretty clear.

[401] So by ruling out a lot of these scary things, is that reassuring?

[402] That's really reassuring.

[403] It makes me feel a lot better.

[404] It makes me a lot happier, too.

[405] Well, that's good.

[406] And that's why we went ahead and put you through all these battery pests, then at least you know.

[407] Back then, on stage, Alicia was quiet and polite and doesn't say much.

[408] Now, as an adult, she can express with a bit more clarity her feelings about conversion disorder.

[409] I hate that phrase.

[410] Why?

[411] It makes me want to vomit.

[412] I hate that phrase.

[413] Because that is a term, it's a real thing in the DSM, yes.

[414] But it's overused and it's not used for the right reasons, in my opinion.

[415] It's used when doctors don't know the diagnosis.

[416] There's just a history in the U .S. of women being dismissed by doctors.

[417] You know, it's hysteria.

[418] It's all in your head.

[419] It's not physical.

[420] Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating, that kind of stuff.

[421] Wow.

[422] And it just didn't.

[423] sit with me. It did not make sense.

[424] I'm like, then how does this explain everything else that's happening to me?

[425] Did you feel like that they were telling you with conversion disorder that there's something that you or have, that there's something big in your head that you're not talking about that's making you do this?

[426] Yeah, and I think that's a lot of times the connotation behind conversion disorders, that there's some trauma that you're not willing to talk about, which I understand a lot of people don't want to talk about trauma.

[427] It's a hard thing.

[428] Like, this was traumatizing, this whole experience.

[429] But that wasn't it for me. I had a really good childhood, a supportive family.

[430] I could talk to people.

[431] I felt supported and loved, and I was very fortunate.

[432] That just does not fit.

[433] That doesn't land with me. That is not it.

[434] It just doesn't, no. That's just, that's not it.

[435] I know it's not.

[436] And that, it seems to me, became the unspoken assumption for all the girls who went public.

[437] If this is conversion disorder, and conversion disorder is very often associated with stress and trauma, then what's going on over there?

[438] And if you're the girl's parents or her teachers or the small town around her, conversion disorder can start to feel less like a diagnosis and more like an accusation.

[439] So what are the doctors telling you about what is happening to you?

[440] Mostly that it's stress -induced.

[441] When...

[442] Here's how one of the girls addressed it on the Today Show.

[443] When these started, I was fine.

[444] I was perfectly fine.

[445] I felt good about everything.

[446] I was on Ennol.

[447] There was nothing going wrong.

[448] You can answer this question any way you want to, but I want to ask it.

[449] I'm talking with Emily.

[450] She was in eighth grade when her symptoms began.

[451] Part of having conversion disorder, if it was conversion disorder, is that it comes from stress or trauma.

[452] How were you having any extreme stress or trauma that people didn't know about or that you were having a hard time talking about at the time, that may have contributed to something?

[453] Not anything that would have made it into something like this.

[454] You know what I mean?

[455] Like typical normal eighth grade drama and stuff between friends, but like nothing wild.

[456] You know what I mean?

[457] Here's Emily's mom, Kathy.

[458] Nothing outside a typical teenage middle school.

[459] I mean, she was a middle schooler.

[460] She was eighth grade.

[461] She was 13.

[462] You know, I wasn't like...

[463] Gives me the shivers.

[464] That is such a terrible year.

[465] Right.

[466] There's no subtext here, by the way.

[467] There's no suggestion that anyone is hiding something or in denial about what's really going on.

[468] For a lot of the girls and the parents in Leroy, it just didn't feel true.

[469] Was it shocking to hear conversion disorder?

[470] I didn't even really understand.

[471] I knew it's a psychological disorder.

[472] In fact, one of the only people who seemed willing at first to even entertain the idea of conversion disorder, that this was all a mass psychogenic illness, Marge, the 36 -year -old mom.

[473] And I was like, okay, I can deal with mental illness.

[474] So I take some psych meds.

[475] People do it all the time.

[476] If Valium's going to do it, give me the Valium.

[477] Well, Valium didn't do it.

[478] Give me the Xanax.

[479] She doesn't shut it down completely.

[480] To her, it just doesn't seem impossible.

[481] One of her doctors uses a metaphor.

[482] They described me as a volcano.

[483] I have never been able to deal with stress ever.

[484] I dealt with a lot of abuse when I was younger, so I just buried feelings.

[485] I didn't deal with feelings.

[486] Nobody wanted to be around somebody who was crying all the time.

[487] So I didn't deal with the abuses and stuff.

[488] I didn't deal with the aftermaths of all that.

[489] So everything that I had been pushing down and not wanting to deal with started bubbling up.

[490] Into the physical symptoms that were erupting.

[491] A volcano.

[492] March has good reason to give conversion disorder a chance.

[493] Because to her, it's a lot less scary than the alternatives.

[494] Because Marge isn't just looking for the right answer.

[495] She needs it to be an answer she can actually live with.

[496] My gosh, I could live with conversion disorder.

[497] I could not live with the environment did it to me. Yeah.

[498] As mass psychogenic illness proponents were lining up, so too were those who believed that that wasn't it at all.

[499] They believed it was a chemical in the ground or something in the water or a toxin in the air that was to blame.

[500] I mean, I couldn't work with that.

[501] I couldn't work with that because when it's an environmental thing, it's like it's a cancer.

[502] Because I'm like, again, thinking, I have a three -year -old.

[503] So I was like, no, mm -mm.

[504] The environmental to me was terminal.

[505] But the state said everything was okay on that front, right?

[506] They did all those tests at the school.

[507] They checked the old water records.

[508] It all seemed fine.

[509] But let's say you don't trust the state.

[510] And at this point in Leroy, a lot of people don't.

[511] Let's say you think it's some sort of toxin and someone's covering something up.

[512] Where do you even begin to look to find that smoking gun that you suspect is out there?

[513] What you'd need is a fresh clue, pointing you in the right direction.

[514] You'd need, say, someone to walk up to the home of one of the affected families and anonymously slip some documents and a note under a door.

[515] Or drop it in a mailbox.

[516] Or place it under the doormat, as I've also heard this story told.

[517] But wherever it's found, that document and that note, that'd be the thing.

[518] That'd be the thing that turns a lot of people's suspicions into full -blown panic.

[519] And that is next time on hysterical.

[520] You are not doing your job.

[521] You are not doing your job at all.

[522] When the medical mystery in Leroy has its top blown off.

[523] Our big story this morning, nationally known environmentalist Aaron Brockovich sent a team to Leroy yesterday to dig for answers about a mysterious medical condition there.

[524] I mean, everybody knew what cyanide was.

[525] Nobody knew what trichlor -ethane was.

[526] Oh, shit, having those natural gas wells on my football field is not a really fucking smart thing to do now, is it?

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

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

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

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

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

[532] Our lead producer is Henry Molloski.

[533] Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Kavanaugh.

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

[535] Senior producer, Lena Massitzi's.

[536] Additional production by Zandra Ellen.

[537] Diane Hotson is our editor.

[538] Our executive editor is Joel Lovell.

[539] Fact -checking by Natsumi Ajisaka.

[540] Mixing by Hannes Brown.

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

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

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

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

[545] Senior managing producer, Callum Ploos.

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

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

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

[549] Thanks for listening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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