In 1518, a woman started dancing — and an entire city couldn't stop

In July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg and began to dance. She didn't stop. For days she twisted and writhed without rest, food, or apparent joy. Within a week, 34 others had joined her. By August, around 400 people were caught in what historians now call the Dancing Plague of 1518.

City officials were baffled. Rather than shutting it down, they initially made it worse — they built a wooden stage and hired musicians, believing the dancers needed to "get it out of their systems." It didn't work. People danced until they collapsed from exhaustion, strokes, and heart attacks. Some reportedly died.

Mass psychogenic illness is the leading modern explanation. Strasbourg in 1518 was gripped by famine, smallpox, and syphilis. The population was under extreme psychological stress, and a local superstition held that Saint Vitus could curse people with compulsive dancing. Historians believe the combination of genuine terror, stress, and cultural belief created a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy — once people believed they could be cursed, their bodies followed. The plague faded as mysteriously as it began, vanishing by early September.