This week’s historical dumpster fire

The Dancing Plague of 1518

A weekly dose of macabre history, gently pressed into your hands like a haunted educational pamphlet.

In Strasbourg, a woman reportedly named Frau Troffea stepped into the street and started dancing.

Then she… kept going.

For days.

No DJ. No playlist. No cute little festival wristband. Just one woman absolutely terrorizing the cobblestones with cardio.

Then other people joined, because humans are nothing if not committed to making group projects worse. Accounts say the dancing spread to dozens, then possibly hundreds.

A 1642 engraving by Hendrik Hondius of afflicted peasants dancing during a dancing plague

The city’s solution? More dancing.

They reportedly opened dance spaces and hired musicians, because apparently the cure for unstoppable dancing was medieval jazz hands.

Shockingly, this did not fix the cursed Zumba outbreak.

Historians still debate what caused it. Mass psychogenic illness is one theory. Ergot poisoning gets mentioned too, but not everyone is sold on the moldy bread nightmare.

So yes: the dancing was real.
The cause? Still a sweaty little mystery.

Seance scent pairing

This one belongs to The Bride — for anyone who enjoys romance, theatrics, and the faint sense that the reception has gone terribly wrong.