Panic broke out at the Moruga Composite School yesterday as 17 female students fell mysteriously ill and began rolling on the ground, hissing and blabbering in a strange tongue, after suffering bouts of nausea and headaches. Two of the students reportedly tried to throw themselves off a railing and had to be physically restrained, triggering fears of a possible demon attack. The drama started during the lunch hour in the Form One block and quickly spread to other areas. Form Five student Kern Mollineau, who attends the Lighthouse Tabernacle Church, said he got worried when the girls’ eyes began rolling up in their heads and they began beating up on the ground.
With the assistance of several other students and teachers, the pupils were taken to the multi-purpose hall where some of them fell into a semi-conscious state. Mollineau recalled: “One girl was blabbering as if in a strange language. I could not understand what she was saying. “It was sounding like ‘shebbaberbebeb shhhhee.’ The girls were unusually strong. We had to hold them down so that they will not hurt themselves. “The teachers were right there. I get a kick in my face when one of the girls started beating up on the floor. Many of them had bruises.” ...
Roman Catholic priests, as well as pastors from nearby churches, including Josephine Charles, Deborah Charles and Pastor Gordon, visited the school and began showering the children with holy water and prayers. Two more students, Kriston Mollineau and Kishon Bethel, said they too were called by teachers to assist the ill girls. Kriston said the girls complained of headaches and some of them wanted to go to the toilet. Six ambulances arrived at the school accompanied by police teams from the Moruga and St Mary’s Police Post. A party of fire officers from the Princes Town Fire Station, led by acting Assistant Divisional Fire Officer Ramdeo Boodoo visited the school and began conducting several tests on the surroundings to determine the cause of the problem.
Boodoo said there was nothing in the environment to trigger fainting spells, nausea and headaches.
via Panic after ‘Devil attack’ at school | The Trinidad Guardian.
Other possibilities: I have a female friend who used to pull pranks on her friends and on adults. She would pretend to be possessed by a ghost. She was a great actor. She really got into it. Others: undetected poisons, mind altering vibrations (see infrasonic acoustic weaponry) ...
Giving the unknown a name seems to be what people do for comfort when the concepts "I don't know yet" and "no one knows yet" are too difficult. Nothing wrong with taking a best guess, but a "devil attack" is not a good guess since there is no evidence for a devil... other than others having previously given unknown things with ill effects this same name.
The Papyrus of Ani written over 3,000 years ago (16th century BC - 1600 BC to 1501 BC) cautions against this when it says, "not have I judged hastily." ( This is part of the Principles of Maat. The principles contain "the 10 commandments" and by most accounts predate them by hundreds of years. )
Superstition is alive and well. Requests for exorcisms are on the rise. That's why I got my exorcist license last week. I've already ejected a demon from my toaster.
14 comments:
"shebbaberbebeb shhhhee" isn't that a Dean Martin lyric?
I googled it and look what came up. Someone is pranking us me thinks!
I AM NOT ONE OF YOU
SHEBBABERBEBEB SHHHHEE
I COME FROM AN ANCIENT TIME
SHEBBABERBEBEB SHHHHEE
I AM KNOWN AS THE ANGEL CRUSHER
SHEBBABERBEBEBSHEBBABERBEBEBSHEBBABERBEBEB SHHHHEE
Cheng, this is an interesting finding. With due respect, however, may I ask, without intending to belittle your research in the slightest, what is your point (!)?
That perhaps Dean Martin, a lonely person, a descendant from an "ancient time," and the "angel crusher" have something in common with those suffering hysteria? Or, is it some kind of sinister conspiracy propagated over the virtual world of the internet? Or, worse?
I googled it and found Cheng's post. He cleverly designed a self fulfilling prophesy.
I wouldn't go as far as to call it "research". Idle surfing more like!
My point? Is British (or perhaps just my) humour really that far removed from American? Only that the silly phrase recounted by an alledged witness reminded me of the "shabba dabba doos" the old 50's crooners used to pad their songs out with. Deano was the first to come to mind.
The whole article I think is a prank. That phrase, perfectly recounted and having the same spelling as something posted in 2008, heard from someone babbling. All seems like too much of a massive coincidence.
And Xeno, I prophesised nothing. None of the above twaddle has anything to do with me. I merely took the bait of the article writer……damn his eyes!!
Who knows or really cares?
Blimey Ann. Did you have ancestors in the Spanish Inquisition?
All I was saying was, a supposed witness hears something incomprehensible but manages to spell it identically to a posting on the net from a couple of years ago. I smell a rat. Either the article writer or the alledged witness. But like I said, who cares?
I think you're funny! Did I have ancestors in the Spanish Inquisition? Ha! They were probably burnt, if they were of the European variety.
Well to continue this ratty investigation, it would seem to me it was the writer who wrote the phrase that he heard, not the person he presumably quoted, who perpetuated the phrase, although the hysterical event may still have been real.
Journalists eh? Why quote facts when you can start a conspiracy theory and grab that headline? Is it because they are all frustrated novelists? Whatever it is, it seems to afflict them all. Even the people that write my company rag can't help themselves embellishing or cropping stories.
I think all news stories should be dictated by the journalist strapped to a polygraph machine and the accuracy result printed next to the headline.
The news wouldn't be so much fun though!
I have heard of mass hysteria, but have not, so far, read any real account. What is the evidence for it?
Cheng, a bit extreme, I think, strapped to a polygraph. Oops! Sorry, that must be some more of that dry British humor.
Well, Xeno, this article is an account of hysteria. Hysteria has characteristics of loss of control, mimicry and contagion. The loss of control can be mental or physical or both. The symptoms seem to spread among more often women or young girls, but not always. It usually happens too quickly to be caused by any material agent.
I don't have, at the moment, any specific references, but wasn't there something similar case among children in East Africa not long ago? There's a bunch of historical accounts, like the nuns in France 1630s (Loudun?) and in Paris about a 100 years later among the "convulsionaires." There were the "jumpers" in Siberia (Irkutsk). And, there was an event at the Royal Free Hospital in London in 1955 when 100s of the staff suffered similar ailment without any physical cause. But, it may have been only a massive dose of that British type of humor. One can never be sure.
Americans don't suffer this sort of psychogenic ailment - yeah right! Think post-9-11. Ok, so that may be a sort of hysteria that was controlled by our much beloved leaders. Consider the events in the small town of Muldoon. The first signs of hysteria were a police report by a woman claiming to have been gassed, which was followed by a local newspaper running a story, "Anaesthetic Prowler on the Loose." Within a few days the local police were swamped with calls of women having been gassed by the "phantom anaesthetist." Some of these gassings occurred at the same time in different parts of the city. No cause or culprit has ever been uncovered or found.
I don't collect these stories, but they're actually not all that rare. The supposed cause can be anything from demons to terrorists. Well, if you think about it, what's advertising and sometimes propaganda all about if not trying to get bunch of people excited about something ...
"There were the “jumpers” in Siberia (Irkutsk). And, there was an event at the Royal Free Hospital in London in 1955 when 100s of the staff suffered similar ailment without any physical cause."
This turned out to be a craze started by an Irish porter at the hospital called Patrick O'Gostick. His invention took the fad mad Londoners by storm while they were waiting for the Beatles to be invented.
You mentioned previously your "company rag." Have you thought of contributing? It seems an article about Patrick O'Gostick would fit in well.
I would, but I don't fancy being strapped to the polygraph machine :S
Xeno,
Because I relied on a British source, my spelling of "Muldoon" may be incorrect. Outside British circles of journalism, it is more commonly spelled as "Mattoon." Nothing like the Queen's English and her journalists to cause havoc in the English language.
And, the most often cited source of the event in Mattoon is:
D.M. Johnson, "The "phantom anaesthetist" of Mattoon - a field study of mass hysteria," J of Abnormal & Social Psych April, 1945; 40: 175-186
(I wish someone would scan it and post it online so I could read it. My info is only from second hand sources.)
The Jonestown mass sucide seems kinda like a mass hysteria, but they had a leader, probably the same kind of psychosis or something anyhow.
http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16
CAUTION! VERY DISTURBING!
Peace
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