Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Previously on Hysterical.

I was at my locker and she came up to me and she was stuttering super bad. I'm like, Stop fucking around. She's like, I can't. So by the third one, I'm having concerns. We I heard a lot of a yipping sound, a screeching sound. I even heard a cat meowing.

Were you thinking that other people were faking it?

Yeah, but I figured out later on, I was like, Oh, I'm so sorry that I thought that about you. Because here I am, and we're in the same boat now, girly.

Where did you grow up?

Right here in Genesey County. I went to Byron Burgeon, which is a tiny combined school, one town over from Leroy.

I'm in Leroy, New York, sitting in the living room of Cathy Dunn. And before I explain who Cathy is, let's just get the white-hot controversy out of the way. How come some people say Leroy?

The richer people call it Leroy because they want to sound classy and elegant, is almost like. And then just regular working class blue collar people call it Leroy.

In the fall of 2011, Kathy was a full-time mom, raising two kids, two daughters, both of whom were attending Leroy Junior Senior High School. And a score. Her oldest, Amy, was a sophomore and played on the junior varsity soccer team. Kathy'd go to the games all the time.

Yeah, I mean, the parents sitting on the sidelines, you sit in your little folding chairs while the kids are playing and you're chatting.

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

They at little parent talk, and then it's like, What's going on with these girls?

What's going on with these girls was becoming the question of the season. Still whispered, but getting louder.

There was a lot going on with these girls having What we were saying is having outbursts.

It wasn't- Describe it. What are you seeing? What are you hearing?

A lot of verbal, a lot of verbal ticking were things like maybe just a holler, a yell. You She didn't think much of it if it was one girl.

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

Yeah, it was like, Oh, well, that girl has blonde 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 of girls. Then all of a sudden, Wait a minute.

So after watching her daughter, Amy, play soccer week after week as her teammate's symptoms worsened, it was a surprise when it was Cathy's younger daughter, Emily, who eventually came down with the symptoms.

Yeah, it was the school nurse 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 head-ticking. I didn't think that it was going to affect me. And then it did.

Emily, you'll remember her from last time, just an eighth grader 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?

Oh, yeah. I had moments I was like, Is this even a thing? Let me see if I can stop doing it. Let me see.

So you would try to sit still? Oh, yeah.

I'd try to sit there for five minutes and sit still. Couldn't do it.

Here I am again with Cathy, mom. I feel like if I had come home with ticks, I feel like my mother's first instinct would have been like, What are you up to? Like a little suspicious, not because she doesn't trust me.

I mean, yeah, of course I was a little bit because Kids are kids, and you don't know. She was always an odd girl anyway. She was already an odd one out. So everybody in town had been saying, Oh, a lot of these girls are faking it. They're doing it for attention. So I just thought, Maybe. Maybe she could. Who knows?

Cathy asked her older daughter, Amy, what she thought.

I just said, What do you think? Do you think she's faking? 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 her about it. I didn't say, Hey, it's a school called and said, You're doing this. I wanted to see if she would still do it outside of school.

And she observed. To see if Emily would tick when she thought that no one was watching, with no audience, nothing to gain. And there, sitting in front of the TV, zoning out alone with whatever rerun flickering in front of her, Emily did it.

How do you explain that? Turning her head, a head jerk thing.

And then she did it again and again, plain as day. Whatever was causing these symptoms that Cathy had been watching spread from her folding chair on the sidelines had now spread to her own kid.

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

I'm Dan Tabersky. From Wondery and Pineable Street studios, this is Hysterical. Episode 2, All in your Head. A few years ago, I was walking my dog down Irving Place in Manhattan. Billy was an old geeser by then, a grade A ass dragger. We come to a corner and he's sniffing at this trash can. I notice there's smoke coming out of it. Probably a flick cigarette that didn't go out, but it's becoming a proper little fire. I can see flames now. A couple of other rubber neckers notice now, too, and little bits of trash fire are falling off the sides. It's the same thing. I look at the guy next to me, and he looks at the fire, then back identity. She's backlit by the setting sun, so you just see her silhouette.This is my eighth or ninth day. Straight ticking and doesn't stop. For 17-year-old Mikaela, as we've chosen to call her, sleeping is the only form of relief she has from the uncontrollable ticks that constantly shake her head.Meanwhile, at Dent Neurologic, as Dr. Mcvig tries to narrow in on the source of it all, her waiting room is starting to become unmanageable.Flash to when I have patients that I'm seeing that are having the same symptoms, and I've got to get them all into the office, and I probably shouldn't have them in the waiting room or in back at the same time.Again, patient privacy becomes an issue.Because we have the same vocalizations and barking and things like that. 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 starts vocalizing, then I have patients with migraine that are sitting there like, Oh, my Lord.On November fourth, 2011, about seven weeks after the symptoms first appeared, the superintendent posts a letter on the school district website. We've had some questions about a group of students in our district that have developed what appears to be Tourette-like symptoms. We are taking this issue seriously, and you get the gist. The fire alarm had finally been pulled.So they came to me because they knew I was a practicing doc. They knew I knew the area. They knew I was comfortable, and that's just our clock.Okay, let me just wait till it's done so we can hear it. When state health officials were alerted as to what was happening, and how it was multiplying, Dr. Greg Young was dropped into the center of the growing storm. We're in his house right now. He collects cuckoo clocks.Look, right up there over the fireplace. Oh, yeah.Eilaflets. Yeah. The New York State Department of Health put Dr. Young in charge of finding the source of the mysterious illness. So when something like this happens and you're at the Department of Health, is there a binder that you flip to and be like, Okay, here's what we do if we think we're dealing with this? What's the protocol?Now, the protocol is we know what we need to do in a disease outbreak, and that's what we call the line list.The line list they created was step one, a grid of every patient, every symptom, doctor.She said, Through the school, we're dealing with Dent.That's who she says the school wanted them to see. Dr. Mcvig and Mekler, the neurologists.And I went, Okay, why are you suggesting even to a parent of a child where they should take them to be seen? Yeah, really unusual. I just felt like, Why are we funneling these girls, all of them to one doctor? It just didn't seem 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 if one doctor is looking at 20 people and saying the same thing over and over, it didn't feel authentic to me.Kathy never did call the doctor as a dent. She says it didn't matter, though.I remember getting a phone call from dent and them asking me, did I want to set up an appointment and such? And I was like, How did you get my number? How did you get my information? Kind of thing.Kathy 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, It's conversion disorder. To me, face to face, never even turned her head to look at Emily or examine her or anything. I said, How do you know? Just thinking, you haven't even... You're a doctor, and I'm not, so how do you know this? And she said, Well, she goes to Leroy. These girls all have it, so she's got it. She basically said, Oh, it's all in your head. You're fine.Here's Emily.How are you, as a medical professional, going to 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 either. And I was like, You're not going to do any test? And she's like, No, I don't need to. And I was like, Okay. And we left. And she didn't want any part of it. So I was like, Okay, we'll find another opinion.It felt like she didn't want any part of it.Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it did. It felt like... It's terrible to say this, but my child's an individual, and I don't want her grouped in with, I don't want you to tell me that she's exactly like all the other ones. And this is... I don't know. I was like, I know my kid.Whether it was called conversion disorder or mass psychogenic illness, everyone knew what it meant. It meant mass hysteria. It was all in their heads.It It started to feel like people were picking sides on conversion disorder or question mark.In 1976, a new theory emerged about Salem, Massachusetts, and what had happened to the girls there in the 1600s. The theory was that the women and girls in Salem had not been possessed by the devil, nor did they experience a mass psychogenic illness. The paper suggested that what they had experienced was something called erget poisoning. Erget, you'll be interested to hear, often grows on rye grass, and in certain weather conditions, rainy, damp, cool. Rye grass, it should be noted, is a common grass type to plant on athletic fields like the ones in Leroy, New York. The same fields that students complained had a habit of flooding after rainfall, that had reportedly been oo a weird orange substance sticking to the clothes and sneakers of students, students on the soccer team, students on the cheerleading squad. I'm not saying what's happening in Leroy is erget poisoning. I'm not even saying what happened in Salem was erget 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 Dunn and the parents at Leroy High School who were trying to weigh a diagnosis of mass hysteria 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. Today, national correspondent Amy Robach is here with the latest on that. And the sickness that till now had been confined to the high school, to the girls that were seeing each other in the halls every day, it was about to jump the tracks.Good morning.As we've been reporting, more than a dozen girls at Leroy High School say they have an illness that causes severe tics and verbal outburst.Now, a 36-year-old woman says she has those same symptoms.Next time on Hysterical. So you're still not grouping yourself in with that?No, because it was all teenagers, and I was far from a teenager. Someone was like, Dude, there's a news van outside. I took off so fast. Is there really something bigger than we think going on here? Some people would go as far to say, There's a cover up.Follow Hysterical on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery. Com/survey. If you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wundri. Com/tips. Hysterical is a production of WNDRI and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Miloski. Our associate producer is Maria Alexa Kavanaugh. Producer, Sophie Bridges. Managing producer, Erin Kelly. Senior producer, Lena Masitzis. Additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelle. Fact-checking by Natsumi Ajisaka. Mixing by Hannah Brown. Our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija. Original music, composed and performed by Dina McAbbie. Legal services for Pineable Street from Crystal Tupia. For WNDYRI, our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers. Coordinating producer, Mariah Gasset. Senior Managing producer, Callum Plues. Histerical is written and executive-produced by me. I'm Dan Tabersky. Our executive producers for Pineble Street are Max Linsky, Henry Malavski, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weis-Burman.Executive producers for WNDRI are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louis, and Jenn Sargent. Thanks for listening.

identity. She's backlit by the setting sun, so you just see her silhouette.

This is my eighth or ninth day. Straight ticking and doesn't stop. For 17-year-old Mikaela, as we've chosen to call her, sleeping is the only form of relief she has from the uncontrollable ticks that constantly shake her head.

Meanwhile, at Dent Neurologic, as Dr. Mcvig tries to narrow in on the source of it all, her waiting room is starting to become unmanageable.

Flash to when I have patients that I'm seeing that are having the same symptoms, and I've got to get them all into the office, and I probably shouldn't have them in the waiting room or in back at the same time.

Again, patient privacy becomes an issue.

Because we have the same vocalizations and barking and things like that. 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 starts vocalizing, then I have patients with migraine that are sitting there like, Oh, my Lord.

On November fourth, 2011, about seven weeks after the symptoms first appeared, the superintendent posts a letter on the school district website. We've had some questions about a group of students in our district that have developed what appears to be Tourette-like symptoms. We are taking this issue seriously, and you get the gist. The fire alarm had finally been pulled.

So they came to me because they knew I was a practicing doc. They knew I knew the area. They knew I was comfortable, and that's just our clock.

Okay, let me just wait till it's done so we can hear it. When state health officials were alerted as to what was happening, and how it was multiplying, Dr. Greg Young was dropped into the center of the growing storm. We're in his house right now. He collects cuckoo clocks.

Look, right up there over the fireplace. Oh, yeah.

Eilaflets. Yeah. The New York State Department of Health put Dr. Young in charge of finding the source of the mysterious illness. So when something like this happens and you're at the Department of Health, is there a binder that you flip to and be like, Okay, here's what we do if we think we're dealing with this? What's the protocol?

Now, the protocol is we know what we need to do in a disease outbreak, and that's what we call the line list.

The line list they created was step one, a grid of every patient, every symptom, doctor.She said, Through the school, we're dealing with Dent.That's who she says the school wanted them to see. Dr. Mcvig and Mekler, the neurologists.And I went, Okay, why are you suggesting even to a parent of a child where they should take them to be seen? Yeah, really unusual. I just felt like, Why are we funneling these girls, all of them to one doctor? It just didn't seem 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 if one doctor is looking at 20 people and saying the same thing over and over, it didn't feel authentic to me.Kathy never did call the doctor as a dent. She says it didn't matter, though.I remember getting a phone call from dent and them asking me, did I want to set up an appointment and such? And I was like, How did you get my number? How did you get my information? Kind of thing.Kathy 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, It's conversion disorder. To me, face to face, never even turned her head to look at Emily or examine her or anything. I said, How do you know? Just thinking, you haven't even... You're a doctor, and I'm not, so how do you know this? And she said, Well, she goes to Leroy. These girls all have it, so she's got it. She basically said, Oh, it's all in your head. You're fine.Here's Emily.How are you, as a medical professional, going to 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 either. And I was like, You're not going to do any test? And she's like, No, I don't need to. And I was like, Okay. And we left. And she didn't want any part of it. So I was like, Okay, we'll find another opinion.It felt like she didn't want any part of it.Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it did. It felt like... It's terrible to say this, but my child's an individual, and I don't want her grouped in with, I don't want you to tell me that she's exactly like all the other ones. And this is... I don't know. I was like, I know my kid.Whether it was called conversion disorder or mass psychogenic illness, everyone knew what it meant. It meant mass hysteria. It was all in their heads.It It started to feel like people were picking sides on conversion disorder or question mark.In 1976, a new theory emerged about Salem, Massachusetts, and what had happened to the girls there in the 1600s. The theory was that the women and girls in Salem had not been possessed by the devil, nor did they experience a mass psychogenic illness. The paper suggested that what they had experienced was something called erget poisoning. Erget, you'll be interested to hear, often grows on rye grass, and in certain weather conditions, rainy, damp, cool. Rye grass, it should be noted, is a common grass type to plant on athletic fields like the ones in Leroy, New York. The same fields that students complained had a habit of flooding after rainfall, that had reportedly been oo a weird orange substance sticking to the clothes and sneakers of students, students on the soccer team, students on the cheerleading squad. I'm not saying what's happening in Leroy is erget poisoning. I'm not even saying what happened in Salem was erget 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 Dunn and the parents at Leroy High School who were trying to weigh a diagnosis of mass hysteria 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. Today, national correspondent Amy Robach is here with the latest on that. And the sickness that till now had been confined to the high school, to the girls that were seeing each other in the halls every day, it was about to jump the tracks.Good morning.As we've been reporting, more than a dozen girls at Leroy High School say they have an illness that causes severe tics and verbal outburst.Now, a 36-year-old woman says she has those same symptoms.Next time on Hysterical. So you're still not grouping yourself in with that?No, because it was all teenagers, and I was far from a teenager. Someone was like, Dude, there's a news van outside. I took off so fast. Is there really something bigger than we think going on here? Some people would go as far to say, There's a cover up.Follow Hysterical on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery. Com/survey. If you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wundri. Com/tips. Hysterical is a production of WNDRI and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Miloski. Our associate producer is Maria Alexa Kavanaugh. Producer, Sophie Bridges. Managing producer, Erin Kelly. Senior producer, Lena Masitzis. Additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelle. Fact-checking by Natsumi Ajisaka. Mixing by Hannah Brown. Our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija. Original music, composed and performed by Dina McAbbie. Legal services for Pineable Street from Crystal Tupia. For WNDYRI, our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers. Coordinating producer, Mariah Gasset. Senior Managing producer, Callum Plues. Histerical is written and executive-produced by me. I'm Dan Tabersky. Our executive producers for Pineble Street are Max Linsky, Henry Malavski, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weis-Burman.Executive producers for WNDRI are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louis, and Jenn Sargent. Thanks for listening.

doctor.

She said, Through the school, we're dealing with Dent.

That's who she says the school wanted them to see. Dr. Mcvig and Mekler, the neurologists.

And I went, Okay, why are you suggesting even to a parent of a child where they should take them to be seen? Yeah, really unusual. I just felt like, Why are we funneling these girls, all of them to one doctor? It just didn't seem 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 if one doctor is looking at 20 people and saying the same thing over and over, it didn't feel authentic to me.

Kathy never did call the doctor as a dent. She says it didn't matter, though.

I remember getting a phone call from dent and them asking me, did I want to set up an appointment and such? And I was like, How did you get my number? How did you get my information? Kind of thing.

Kathy 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, It's conversion disorder. To me, face to face, never even turned her head to look at Emily or examine her or anything. I said, How do you know? Just thinking, you haven't even... You're a doctor, and I'm not, so how do you know this? And she said, Well, she goes to Leroy. These girls all have it, so she's got it. She basically said, Oh, it's all in your head. You're fine.

Here's Emily.

How are you, as a medical professional, going to 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 either. And I was like, You're not going to do any test? And she's like, No, I don't need to. And I was like, Okay. And we left. And she didn't want any part of it. So I was like, Okay, we'll find another opinion.

It felt like she didn't want any part of it.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it did. It felt like... It's terrible to say this, but my child's an individual, and I don't want her grouped in with, I don't want you to tell me that she's exactly like all the other ones. And this is... I don't know. I was like, I know my kid.

Whether it was called conversion disorder or mass psychogenic illness, everyone knew what it meant. It meant mass hysteria. It was all in their heads.

It It started to feel like people were picking sides on conversion disorder or question mark.

In 1976, a new theory emerged about Salem, Massachusetts, and what had happened to the girls there in the 1600s. The theory was that the women and girls in Salem had not been possessed by the devil, nor did they experience a mass psychogenic illness. The paper suggested that what they had experienced was something called erget poisoning. Erget, you'll be interested to hear, often grows on rye grass, and in certain weather conditions, rainy, damp, cool. Rye grass, it should be noted, is a common grass type to plant on athletic fields like the ones in Leroy, New York. The same fields that students complained had a habit of flooding after rainfall, that had reportedly been oo a weird orange substance sticking to the clothes and sneakers of students, students on the soccer team, students on the cheerleading squad. I'm not saying what's happening in Leroy is erget poisoning. I'm not even saying what happened in Salem was erget 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 Dunn and the parents at Leroy High School who were trying to weigh a diagnosis of mass hysteria 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. Today, national correspondent Amy Robach is here with the latest on that. And the sickness that till now had been confined to the high school, to the girls that were seeing each other in the halls every day, it was about to jump the tracks.

Good morning.

As we've been reporting, more than a dozen girls at Leroy High School say they have an illness that causes severe tics and verbal outburst.

Now, a 36-year-old woman says she has those same symptoms.

Next time on Hysterical. So you're still not grouping yourself in with that?

No, because it was all teenagers, and I was far from a teenager. Someone was like, Dude, there's a news van outside. I took off so fast. Is there really something bigger than we think going on here? Some people would go as far to say, There's a cover up.

Follow Hysterical on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery. Com/survey. If you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us at wundri. Com/tips. Hysterical is a production of WNDRI and Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Miloski. Our associate producer is Maria Alexa Kavanaugh. Producer, Sophie Bridges. Managing producer, Erin Kelly. Senior producer, Lena Masitzis. Additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hansen is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovelle. Fact-checking by Natsumi Ajisaka. Mixing by Hannah Brown. Our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija. Original music, composed and performed by Dina McAbbie. Legal services for Pineable Street from Crystal Tupia. For WNDYRI, our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers. Coordinating producer, Mariah Gasset. Senior Managing producer, Callum Plues. Histerical is written and executive-produced by me. I'm Dan Tabersky. Our executive producers for Pineble Street are Max Linsky, Henry Malavski, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weis-Burman.

Executive producers for WNDRI are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louis, and Jenn Sargent. Thanks for listening.