The mass psychogenic illness that started with the cheerleaders

The investigative series Hysterical provides a compelling listen about the mind, the body and girlhood in small-town America.

By Anna Leszkiewicz

Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair in *The Exorcist*. Photo by Screen Archives/Getty Images

In early 2012, the sign outside the pentecostal church in the small town of LeRoy, New York, read: “We are praying for our LeRoy High School girls.” The girls were sick, or mentally disturbed, or both, but no one knew why. They twitched, they yelped, they barked. It had started with the cheerleaders. First just one or two girls were afflicted, in the autumn of 2011, but soon it was the whole squad. Then girls on the football team started to be affected. Then girls who didn’t cheerlead or play football. But always just the girls.

The New York State Department enlisted a doctor to investigate the Tourette’s-like symptoms spreading through the school, who told parents their children were suffering from “conversion disorder”, or “mass psychogenic illness”: in other words, this was an instance of mass hysteria. Sceptical parents were advised not to talk to media, which would only make the outbreak worse. And so, by January, cameras jostled in the school parking lot and lined the usually quiet Main Street. Local sports games were cancelled, and reports swirled of a strange-looking crop duster dumping unknown chemicals on to a field adjacent to the school. Ordinary townspeople turned amateur sleuths, stalking schoolchildren on Facebook to see who had developed symptoms. At the high school, students stopped drinking from the water fountain.

Hysterical, a series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, narrates these events a decade later. Host Dan Taberski speaks with parents, doctors and the women affected by the contagion who explain how scary their symptoms were, and how invalidating it felt to be told it was all in their heads. “I felt like Linda Blair in The Exorcist,” one recalls. “At one point I had a bruise on the back side of my shoulder from where my chin was constantly hitting my shoulder. The back side… I couldn’t eat unless someone was with me, because I was choking. I had to drink with a teaspoon.” With hints of The Crucible and Carol Morley’s The Falling, this is a compelling, atmospheric listen about the mind, the body, and girlhood in small-town America.

Hysterical
Wondery App/Spotify/Apple Podcasts

[See also: The decline of the US public school]