On January 30th, 1962, an all-girls boarding school in Kashasha, Tanganyika, witnessed one of the oddest types of mass hysteria ever recorded in human history: The Laughter Epidemic. This epidemic, ...

On October 30, 1938 Orson Welles (1915–1985) broadcast an episode of the American radio drama Mercury Theatre on the Air. This episode, entitled ‘The War of the Worlds’, was based on a novel by HG ...

All these years later, it's easy to forget the scope of the medical mystery that more than a decade ago struck teenage girls in Le Roy, triggering from them Tourette-like tics, spasms and vocal ...

It sounds sexist, and it’s sure to raise the ire of some feminists, but the literature does not lie. Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited ...

It’s all in your head. Or is it? We're sorry, but something went wrong while fetching your podcast feeds. Please contact us at plus@slate.com for help. “Hysteria ...

Looking for a little out-of-this-world fun before Halloween? A “War of the Worlds” 85th anniversary “broadcast bash” will take place Sunday, Oct. 29, on a farm in the Grovers Mill section of West ...

Hysteria, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess." That pretty much sums up the Satanic Panic of the 1980s when parents across ...