All In Your Head | 2
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Previously honey's ical, I was like.

my occurrent came up to me and choose like starting ing super bad and my stop fucking around. So by the third one.

I am having .

concerns.

We heard a lot of like a iping sound, a stretching sound. I even heard like a cat in wing.

Are you thinking that other people are taking him?

Yeah but that like I figured out later on, oh, i'm so sorry that I thought that about you because here I am and we're in the same boat now clearly.

You right here .

in tanny county I went to um bye rg in which is a tiny combined school one town over from the right.

I'm in liver in new york sitting in the living room of Cathy done and before I explain who Cathy is, let's just get the White hot controversy out of the way. How come some people say .

the the Richard people call IT the way? Because they want to sound class. The and elegant is almost like. And then just regular working class. Blue color people color ly right in.

The fall of two thousand and eleven, Cathy was a full time mom, raising two kids, two daughters, both of whom were attending Lori junior senior high school in school. Her oldest, amy, was a soft mall and played on the junior versy soccer team. Get to go to the games all the time.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the parents sitting on the sideline, you sit your little folding chairs while the kids are playing in your chat.

Lately, though, the sideline chit chat was being consumed by one chit, in particular parent .

talk and and like, what's for now with these girls know .

what's going on with these girls? Was becoming the question of the season still kind of whispered.

but getting louder, there was a lot going on with these girls having what we were saying .

is having outburst and .

a lot of verbal, a lot of verb taking where things you know, like maybe just a holler, a yl, and you didn't think much of IT. If IT was one girl.

remember there already was someone with turret syndrome in the school. So till now, the occasional tick was less a reason to freak out and more just like a welp, there goes so and so yeah.

was kind of like, you know, of that gal has blond hair well, this one has a verbal tick once in a while.

But then that started to change.

So IT didn't become anything noticeable until IT was more than a couple girls. And all the sun is like.

wait a minute. So after watching her daughter amy play soccer a week after week as her teammate symptoms worsened, IT was a surprise when I was catte's y Younger daughter Emily, who eventually .

came down with the symptoms. Yeah was the schoolmaster 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 taking.

I didn't think that I was going to affect me, and then I did.

Emily, you'll remember her from last time, just an eighth greater when her symptoms started for her IT was uncontrolled jerks of her head and ARM. Do you start to even question yourself like.

is this real? Or I had moment I was like, is this even thing? Let me see if I can stop doing IT. Let me see.

So you would try to like, sit still.

Yeah, i'd try to sit there for like five minutes and sit still.

Couldn't do IT here. Are you again with coffee, mom, I feel like if if I had come home with tis, I feel like my mother's first instinct would have been like, what are you up to? Like, a little suspicious. Not because he isn't.

You mean, course, I was a little bit because, you know, you kids are kids and you know, you don't know, he was always an add girl where he was already an add one out. So everybody in town had and say, in all, a lot of these girls are faking IT. They are doing IT for attention. So I just kind of that maybe, maybe SHE good. Who knows?

Kathy asked her older daughter amy what he said.

I just said, what do you think? Do you think she's vacant and she's like, I don't know.

So that evening, when Emily came home from class, Cathy played dumb.

I didn't say anything to work about IT. I didn't say, hey, school called inside. You're doing this. I wanted to kind of see if he would still do IT outside of school. And SHE .

observed to see if Emily would tick when he thought that no one was with no audience, nothing to gain there, sitting in front of the TV zoning out alone, with whatever we run, flickering in front. Emily did IT. I don't.

How do you explain that kind of turning ahead, ahead, jerk of thing?

And then he did IT again and again playing this day. Whatever was causing these symptoms that Cathy had been watching spread from her folding chair on the sidelines had now spread to your own kid.

Okay, so this is something this is for real. This is happening.

On antabuse kim from wondering and pineal street studios, this is historical episode all on your head.

A few years ago, I was walking my dog down, urging place in manhattan. Billy was an old geezer by then a great A S agger. And we come to a corner and he's stiffing the trash cam. And I notice they're smoke coming out IT, probably a flick cigarette that didn't go out, but it's becoming a proper little fire. I can see flames now, and a couple of Robert neck ers noticed now too, and little bits of trash fire are falling off the sides.

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. How do you know and who decides want to seeing goes from being just an oddity, a thing to go out and exchange gLances about, to the level where someone finally pulls the fire alarm.

As the weather group colder in library that fall, the symptoms continued to come to life. A flashing junior one week, a couple soft mores, the next, an irregular heartbeat finding its rhythm, but are still unofficial. The schools not talking about a publicly, the town isn't acknowledge ing IT parents are just kind of watching this thing happen.

I just kept thinking what's going on? I didn't have any clue. I just was like, there's got to be an answer.

There's got to be something at the root. You know, what's the common denominator was basically, all I have thinking is, what's the common denominator? Or here the soccer .

moms and dads would hash out series .

on the sideline. And I remember us very casual conversation. What's the coach doing these girls? Are they stressed out?

What's go in on? One of the first students to fall ill was on the socket team. So at first there was some suspicion that maybe the coach was pushing them too hard.

but then maybe few weeks later than it's another girl. She's not on the socket. Am, what's going on with her?

In fact, that first girl was also on the cheerleading squad, and three weeks later, her best friend on the squad came down with symptoms.

You know, IT was almost like making this little spreading. Okay, well, this girls in this grade and sheep does this activity.

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

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

mr. Aholic, the band teacher.

was a lot of the same. Kids were involved in those same activities.

I thought I had to be something to do with the school or the school grounds only because that was the only thing everybody having come as they went .

to the same school .

and they were female.

The focus for some turn to the athletic fields where the kids played. In practice, they failed to become notorious for being repeatedly soaked with flood water from heavy rains. There would even be complaints from students about an orange woods coming up from the grass there that stuck to their sneakers and closed.

Then there was the question of, why just girls so far? At first I was whispers s, that was like, oh, it's this one girl like, we don't know what's going on like and the next thing I know, it's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. This rose another eighth greater at leery that year. I remember .

hearing at some point since IT was all girls IT must be a bad batch of tampons.

And I just like what Jessica .

a senior was also like what?

Because like if I was like the tamp ons and like the the things that school, like nobody even uses those. Like I don't think that .

would make sense really that the school give you sort of marching orders about how to deal with this.

Ah they said like you know, we're handling IT and they basically just .

wanted everybody to keep quiet. There's a mystery and the roy that no one seems to be able to solve. In november, one of the girls finally goes public with their symptoms on local news.

But SHE hides her identity. She's back let by the setting soon. So you just see her silwood.

This is my eighth day straight.

taking in dozens up for .

seventeen year old mca, as we've chosen to call her. Sleeping is the only former relief SHE has from the uncontrollable text that constantly shake her head. Meanwhile, a dent neurologic as dark or make vague tries to narrow win on the source of at all. Her waiting room is starting to .

become unmanaged flash when I patients that i'm seeing there having the symptoms all into the office and I published have in the waiting room or in the back at the same time.

Again, patient privacy becomes an issue because .

we have the same localization and barking and things like that and so they can identify each other because they know the sound and they also exacerbate each other.

Bringing two or more patients together, IT seemed, was making the symptoms of each patient worse.

So as soon as somebody starts vocalizing, the other person started vocalizing. That I have patients with migraine that are sitting there like, oh, my lord.

on november fourth, two thousand and eleven, about seven weeks after the symptoms first appeared, the superintendent post a letter on the school district website. Quote, we've had some questions about a group of students in our district that had developed what appears to be treat like symptoms. We are taking this issue seriously and you get the just the fire alarm had finally been pulled.

So they came to me because I know I was a practicing that I knew. I knew the area. They knew I was comfortable in just a clock.

OK done so when state health officials were alerted as to what was happening and how IT was multiplying. Doctor greg Young was dropped into the center of the growing storm when his house right now, he collects cookie clock.

Look right up there over the fireplace. Yeah.

the new ork state department of health put doctor Young in charge of finding the source of the mysterious illness. So 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 like IT, what's the total is we in season take and that's what .

we the lining list they created with step one, a grid of every patient, every symptom, when they started, when they got worse, looking for patterns, a formal version of the two things some of the parents had already been doing in their heads. And doctor Young had his eye out for a few possible CoOperate.

I was looking for something physical. I was you, the disease or environmental, those of things that had me worried and and I thought, I will put everything, drugs, disease, environmental drugs. And those are my three tap.

Now, the numbers fluctuate depending on who you ask and win. But by december, doctor Young, his team, are clocking twelve students at the school, with symptoms most have been seen by dark remic viga, idt, who gave them a series of tests for line disease, a tox Green eta. Some were tested for heavy metals in the blood.

A health contractor is hired who interviews the students to find any common toxin exposure and to rule out possible drug use on campus. They test for mold. They review recent water testing data and take some new samples. They test the lighting levels, which are sometimes linked to neurological problems.

They also do air quality tests, focusing specifically on a few spots inside the school that seem to be coming up again, again, the library, a biology classroom, the girl's locker room and art room, three, sixty to the first afflicted girls, the cheerleaders. They shared a class in this room by new year's doctor. Young felt like they come up with the answer.

So we did a central investigation, and you read the report. You ve got the same one that I do are we really went through away and I know what the diagnosis was.

On january eleven, two thousand and twelve, about three months into the sickness, now, parents are called to a town meeting in the high school auditorium. It's a wednesday evening, and the goal is to calm the fear that had been building. And you were the spokesman.

yeah, I want to pay the spokesperson, and I does .

not a job you want.

IT. Well, IT was a job somewhere .

here to do. IT does not go great.

I told them two things. I said, we've looked at the infectious disease side of IT, and there is no infection among these children. The second thing we've done in the environmental review, the water quality, came from my role, county water. I mean, he was great water. Its tests regularly, there was nothing in water .

to be concerned about. It's not .

infectious ous, not environmental. That's all you need to .

know and that was pretty much IT. Doctor Young said what the state thought IT wasn't not infectious. It's not environmental. But he refused to say what the state thought I was.

That's how I was so angry.

Here's just go again. He was there that because .

i'm like you're saying you're doing all this testing. We are not talking us what you're doing. You're saying you have come to this conclusion, but you won't tell us what if and to you.

That's suspicious. yes. Yeah.

that's one. I've went up and I called them out like I think that's pulls IT like you're just a with hold all this information rules like what is actually going on? There's clearly something going on that you're covering.

There was this girl thrown questions of my high school kid.

Young king.

People were looking for an answer. They wanted something simple, disease, environmental, and they were getting what they wanted. So by then, everybody thought .

I was holding something back.

我 呀。

Doctor Young was in kind of an impossible position here. 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 kids right to medical privacy.

I took hypocritical go to me ethics way far more than my job or anything else. Even if if i've been ordered to il sure the diagnoses I would not done IT .

IT might be ethical, but IT is also a great way to scare the hell out of a crowd of free doubt. Parents, here's doctor Young. During that meeting.

we will share as much as we can without sharing the diagnosis. We can do that. It's not right.

He bowed and weaved for three hours after a while, a parent whose daughter had already gotten her diagnosis in private got sick of dancing around IT. So he just walked to the mike and set IT for him. The diagnosis was something called conversion disorder. And you know what that means? Well, neither didn't most of the people in that auditorium.

On january third, two thousand and twelve, there is an item in the batavian that's the newspaper in the next big town. Over the headline, snowball throwers sought in liver, right? A group of kids throwing snowballs and cars were navigating police.

And i'd left behind two major clues, footprints in the snow and one orphant glove found at the scene on the status of the manhunt. And officer is quoted as saying, someone's gna have a cold hand. When a reader wrote in the comments, how is this news? The packer's response was economical, and to the point, because I say IT is my name, is Howard owns.

i'm publisher of the behavior serving gensec county .

Howard owns says that is.

So we have become, for a lot of people, the primary .

or sloppy too.

What's me and I have to employees.

But now, just one week later, the snowball story somehow seen small as a couple hundred loans packed the school auditorium um looking for an answer to a newer, scarier mystery the ones were sitting in the front row when the state's diagnosis, the one they were trying not to say, was finally revealed.

And that's the first time in my life I heard the term conversion disorder so as Frankly out of my depth but I said there you know, google your best friends sometimes, right?

Sometimes is your worst. Danny, he actually just google .

IT in the meeting in the first article that in the unions pops up on conversion disorder is like a total. This is fraught, ent kind of diagnosis.

In fact, conversion disorder is real, but IT can be a bear to wrap your mind around. Now, the definition is constantly evolving, but in two thousand and twelve, the running definition for conversion disorder is psychological stress or trauma that boils over into physical symptoms. The symptoms are very often neurological trouble, walking a limp that won't go away.

Nonetheless, seasons motor tics, from the mild, like a twitch, to the extreme, often violent, a conversion reaction can last for an afternoon, and I can also cripple you for a lifetime. But in general, you know, it's conversion disorder because there is no organic cause. There is no clear physical explanation for why it's happening.

So you have a lymph, but x rays are Normal, and U, F, seizure multiple times a day, but mrs. Show nothing. The symptoms and conversion disorder are real. They are actually happening. IT is not faking IT.

It's not looking for attention, but all the tests, the E, E, G, the blood work, the tax, the screens, Normal, but that's just the first part of IT because what's happening in library isn't happening to one person. It's happening to, at last count, twelve persons and spreading. Here's darter ic vig. SHE agrees with the state's diagnosis.

Each case uniquely is a conversion disorder independently. 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 psychic.

mass psychogenic illness, otherwise known as mass sisteron. My psychotic .

illness is not like, oh, what happened here? IT happened here last week here. These are rare occurrences.

And have this, many people have an occurrence that this will publicize. That is not only that, but tick disorder. So disorders are much more rare. So most the time there, you know, G, I issues are passing out. They're not motor disorders .

like tick disorders. In sixty ninety two, in sale, massage sets on a spate of unexplainable behavior broke out among girls and women. The people there blamed the devil and the girls themselves.

But many historians now believe that that was a case of mass psychogenic illness. Mass psychogenic illness happens, overwhelming lead to girls. No one's quite sure why we'll get to that.

IT involves bizarre physical systems with no clear physical cause, but then it's bread from person to person, usually entire social groups like a content or a small village or high school. So when Elizabeth paris and abajo Williams first had symptoms and sale and vocal experts and strange contractions, IT wasn't the devil. IT wasn't even conscious.

IT was some psychological stress or even trauma overflowing into physical symptoms and then spreading among the other girls in the settlement who knew apogee in eliab's, who unconsciously caught the systems themselves, how it's a line of sight thing that is the Victor for contagion here. It's not saliva or sneezing or not washing your hands. It's seeing and hearing someone suffering with the symptoms that could cause you to catch IT as well. Now that's all finding good for three hundred years ago and long gone, girls and bonnets and buckle shoes, but as a diagnosis today, in the auditorium, in livery, for appearing to hear about their kid, now that is a big pills to swallow.

IT was very tense. There was nobody was buying conversion disorder. I think strange for of us how IT owns.

again, the reporter.

you know, you're lying to us. This can't be real. You guys do not know what you're talking about.

In sitting there, facing the crowd and taking the heat, doctor Young, the guy working for the state, who thought theyd solved the mystery, why are you so confident? Are you always .

in this confident?

I, I, I, I, why, why are you so confident in dealing with something that you had never seen before in terms of massacre? Ic, illness prety rare.

IT is rare. That's first one i'd ever seen that, actually. But don't forget, I had a big army behind me.

I had a newlove st. At the psychiatry, the movement to sort people. I had the N I H. people. So yes, I was comfortable and and i'm sorry, but this is what IT is.

So you ve heard conversion disorder, and you thought.

I thought that's a bulls shit. Here's Jessica again. I I don't believe that because after single, I was like there's a snow way. I don't believe that. Like seeing all these girls, like they're not making a dog and like I just don't believe that that's the thing I just couldn't and like my mom and me were just so outraged to hear everybody just like say, that's what I was like after all of this. That's all IT is like I just don't know how to believe that .

i'm not a doctor and I don't care about hit. I care about getting these kids Better.

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

I mean, this is a whole lot of common sense here that I think is being dismissed.

His kid had missed almost a month a school so far. Her symptoms were that severe.

I think all teenagers have a certain on us stressed to deal with their lives, you know, these days with the broken homes and the boyfriends and all of that sort of thing. I'm talking about something that just comes on within a couple of weeks, and these kids are just totally Normal. And the next thing you know, there are going and their arms are swing in.

And so you were thinking conversion shorters .

bullshit or yes was my initial impression yes.

power downs. Did you ask yourself why they would say that?

Um yeah, I hate to think myself somebody buys into conspiracy theories or whatever, but certainly.

you know you can we .

should have some healthy skepticism of the government and that they might lie to us. It's not like it's never happened and they would have motivation to live. There was environmental cause, right? The strict certain well, if they liability.

If it's old making these girl sick, or bad water, or that orange ooze on the athletic fields, the school in the town could be libel on the hook for gazillions.

And they might fear liability IT was some sort of viral disease that they had failed to control. So you know, that might be reason for a government agency to fight.

do to make beg to a less degree myself are unable to get specifics. We're not do enough to hide anything. Or do, uh, we here to be responsible physicians?

The guy saying, I swear, are not having anything that doctor, last little necker doctor fix boss, A D neurologic necker goes on the news a few days later to try and calm things down. We know exactly what has what is going on. We know exactly how we should treat IT. Part of IT is natural course of the illness.

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

family's mom, Cathy IT began to feel like the school wasn't just CoOperating with the neurologist syd, but almost colluding with them, SHE says. The school's urse called and told her, do not take Emily to your .

family doctor. He said, we're dealing through the school. We're dealing with dent.

That's who he says the school wanted them to see. Doctor, is my vegan necker than analogies.

and I OK, why are you suggesting, even to a parent of a child, where they should take them to be seen? I just felt like, why are we funding these girls? All of them to one doctor didn't to make sense.

Why don't we all go to different doctors? And then if you all say the same thing, okay, that makes sense to me. But with one doctors looking at twenty people and saying the same thing over and over, I don't I didn't feel authentic to me.

Kathy never did call the dog. I dent SHE says he didn't matter, though.

I remember getting a phone call from them and then asking me, did I want to set up an appointment? Such a nice like, how did you get my number? How did you get my information kind of thing.

Cathode takes Emily to their family doctor instead. But even then, it's the same old song, and she's getting sick of hearing IT.

The doctor walked into that examining room and said, its conversion disorder to me, face to face, never even turned her head to look at Emily or examine her anything. And I said, how do you know? Just thinking you haven't even you know your a doctor so you know and i'm not so how do you know this and he said while he goes delivery these girls, i'll have IT so she's got .

IT SHE basically said, I will join your head you're fine.

Here's Emily.

How are you as a medical professional gonna a look your patient in the eye and be like, you're fine. Stop thinking about you're fine, you're fine. So what you're saying is I have these symptoms, but you don't know why I .

don't like you not going to do only test and she's like, no or need to was like, okay, we left and SHE didn't won any part of us. I was like, okay, we'll find another opinion.

I felt like shouldn't .

want any part of IT. Yeah, yeah. I kind of did a kind of felt like it's terrible to say this, but my child's an individual and I don't want to grouped in with I don't want you to tell me that she's exactly like all the other ones and this is but I don't know. I just I was like, I know my kid and whether he .

was called conversion disorder or mass psychogenic illness, everyone knew what I meant IT meant mass historia. They was all in their heads .

IT started to feel like people were kind of picking sides. And conversion disorder, or question mark.

In one thousand nine hundred and seventy six, a new theory emerged about sale master huts. And what had happened to the girls there in the sixteen hundreds. The theory was that the women and girls and sale had not been possessed by the devil, nor did they experience a mass psychogenic.

The paper suggested that what they had experienced was something called urgent poisoning. Urgent, you'll be interested to hear, often grows on regress, and in certain weather conditions, rainy, damp, cool, right grass, that should be noted, is a common grass type to pumped on athletic fields like the ones and liver. In new york, the same fields that students complained that a habit of flooding after rainfall that had to reportedly been using a weird orange substance sticking to the cloth and sneakers.

The students, students on the soccer team, students on the truly ating squad. I'm not saying what's happening in lia is urgent poisoning. I'm not even saying what happened in salem was urged poisoning. But the thing that makes a conversion disorder or a mass psychogenic illness diagnosis viable is that there is no other explanation.

And for Cathy done, and the parents, at least a high school, who were trying to wait a diagnosis of mass steria on one hand, and question mark on the other, question mark is starting to look pretty good, especially because now IT seemed like whatever was making the girls in the high school sick was starting to evolve. This morning, the mystery appears to be growing to a national correspondent. Amy robot is here with the latest on that. And the sickness that till now had been confined to the high school, to the girls that we're seeing each other in the halls every day, IT was about to jump the tracks.

Good morning again. We've been reporting more than a dozen girls at the roy high school say they have an illness that causes of your tax and verbal outburst. Now a thirty sexual woman says he has those same symptoms.

Next time on hysterically. So you're still not Robing yourself in with that? No.

because IT was all teenagers and I was barred from a teenager. Someone was like, do there's there's a news van outside I off so fast?

Like, is there really something bigger than we think going on here? Some people you know would go as far to say there's a cover up.

Follow hysterically on the wondering APP amazon music or whereever you get your podcasts. You can bench all episodes early and add free right now by joining wondering plus in the wondering APP or on apple podcast before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondering dot com slash survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondering docs flash tips.

Sterile as a production of wondering and point out the street studios, our lead producer is hendering milosch y. Our associate producer is maria ex a cava producer sophie bridges, managing producer eron Kelly, senior producer linna cities. Additional production by sanda Allen dian hanson is our editor. Our executive editor is joe level fact checking by not sumi ag soca nixing by hands Brown. Our head sound in engineering is rage mckey original music composed and performed by dina makey legal services for pineapple street from Christal tupia for wondering, our senior producers are easy basket and clear chAmbers coordinating producer maria gasket, senior managing producer colum clues historical is written and executive produced by me on the our executive producers for pineal street are maxell skier and reels I asia saluda and generates burman executive producers for wondering are Morgan Jones, martial lui and gene sergeant? Thanks for listening.