On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we explore a little known mass hallucination event in a small town in France. It was August 15, 1951, in the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France. Roughly 300 people fell ill, including 50 people sent to insane asylums and 7 deaths. Theories range from ergot poisoning to tainted bleached bread, but the best of all links it to the CIA’s MK Ultra mind control program and the use of LSD.

So, what happened in Pont-Saint-Esprit? The morning of August 15, people started to fall ill, and the waiting rooms at all doctor offices were at capacity. At first, the symptoms were basic stuff like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Then the symptoms got strange—mass insomnia, and people started to smell like dead mice. Then? The whole village went plumb crazy.

Journalists on the scene recorded a staggering amount of hallucinations. For example, one man shouted to his room-mates “I’m dead! My head is made of copper and I have snakes in my stomach!” A girl thought she was being attacked by tigers, and a man nearly died after jumping in a river to drown his belly full of snakes. Another guy was being chased by bandits with donkey ears. You get the picture.

So, how did this happen? The French Government investigated and came up with a lot of theories such as poisoning by the ergot fungus (known in history to have caused mass hysteria such as the Salem Witch Trials). They also pointed to a chemical called Panogen used to clean wheat containers and even a tainted water supply. Interestingly, the government failed to consider the source of the grain itself, which is the first conspiracy. You see, the French government controlled the supply of grain, so they didn’t want to blame themselves.

More recently, a scholar named Steven Kaplan wrote a book and concluded it was due to illegal chemical bleach poisoning by the baker who tried to make the flour as white as possible.

However, the big doozy is from journalist Hank P. Albarelli Jr. He started to study the suicide of the CIA’s Doctor Frank Olson. This led him down a rabbit hole of MKULTRA and something called MKNAOMI, both of which involved the creators of LSD, a major chemical factory near the town, and typical CIA tomfoolery. If you like a good CIA cover up, this is the episode for you.

Visit Our Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-10996838

http://www.tootlafrance.ie/features/the-idyllic-french-village-that-went-insane

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558020/pont-saint-esprit-france-1951-bread-poisoning-mass-hallucinations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint-Esprit_mass_poisoning

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/arts/24iht-blume.1.14718462.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKNAOMI

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbw8vv/the-great-french-acid-trip-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Gottlieb