The Dancing Plague of the Middle Ages
For centuries, crowds of people danced to death
In 1237, something eerie happened in the German town of Erfurt. A large group of children spontaneously started dancing and, in a state of trance, jumped and danced their way to Arnstadt, a city 20km (12 miles) away.
Around the same time, a legend was born in the far-away town Hamelin. It was about a pied piper who had been hired to lure rats away with his magic pipe. But the people of Hamlin refused to pay him. So he took revenge: he played his magic pipe for the town’s children. The music put them in a trance and he lured them away.
The legend of the pied piper of Hamlin is not the only thing that gives the case of the Erfurt children its eeriness, however. More chillingly, it was neither the first nor the last time groups of people would be seized by the so-called “dancing mania” — a seemingly curious but innocent phenomenon that becomes more ominous the more you learn about it.
Symptoms
The dancing was not joyful. It was compulsive.
Sometimes it was just one person. More often, it was a group of people that would gradually grow as more people involuntarily joined in.
