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Previously on Hysterical.

I was like at my locker and.

She came up to me and she.

Was like, stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop fucking around. She's like, I can't.

My 8th or 9th day straight to Gangdeh doesn't stop.

That's when things got scary for everybody.

She basically said, oh, well, it's all in your head. You're fine.

Am I going crazy? Is this really happening?

That just does not fit. That doesn't land with me. That is not it. I know it's not.

We broached the following question briefly at the very beginning of this series, but I feel like now, this being our final episode, we have enough background knowledge to actually hazard a guess. The Waldorf Jell o Salad. Is it a salad or is it a dessert? No, seriously. In the original joys of Jello cookbook from 1963, which I own. Shut up. The Waldorf salad is made with lemon or mixed fruit or orange pineapple. Jello sounds like dessert, and it's got apples in it and walnuts in it. Dessert. But it also has celery in it and vinegar salad. It also upsettingly has mayonnaise on it. Salad. But the recipe says the mayo is optional. Dessert. In the end, of course it's salad. It's dessert. It's neither. It's both. Honestly, it's dealer's choice. Such states of in betweenness work. For something like Jello, the stakes are gloriously low. But when a mystery illness is tearing through your town, settling on labels and definitions takes on a little more import. We're not just trying to categorize our lives here. We're looking to stop this thing from spreading, and we're looking for a cure. But how do you solve a mystery illness that no one can agree on?

On today's episode? This is how it ends, and also, in a way, how it never will. I'm Dan Tabersky from wondery and Pineapple street studios. This is the conclusion of hysterical episode seven. We're Gucci. I'm Alice James. And I'm Colin Murray. And we are the hosts of everything to play for. And our next two parter is all about the great Tanny Gray Thompson. Eleven paralympicals, six London marathons, now an important crossbencher in the House of Lords. And what makes this two parter different than anything we've recorded before? Ellis. Finally I get to discuss a welsh athlete my Hladvana D. No, it's a tiny Gray Thompson is in the studio. Yes. And this that. All my medals are in a rucksack. Anyway, they're all kind of wrapped up, so if you came to a house.

You wouldn't see rucksack.

Yeah, rucksack.

You don't want to stick them all.

Out on the wall, do you? I mean, that look a bit naff. Follow everything to play for on the wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge seasons early and ad free right now on Wondry plus. I'm afwa hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan, and in our podcast legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we are revisiting the life of Cecil Rhodes. From sickly child to diamond tycoon to leading colonialist in south Africa, he was a bastion of british imperialism. Over the past few years, campuses around the world have been met with students chanting roads must fall. His legacy has been completely transformed. Follow legacy now, wherever you get your podcasts.

I think I was one of the youngest girls in the whole, like, group of everybody and everything.

You all know Emily. Emily was in 8th grade and in the marching band when this all happened and her tics started. Hers were mostly a big jerk of the head and arm.

So I kind of felt alone for the most part because, like, all the other girls were like, they were friends with each other and, like, they knew each other and everything. And I was like, oh, I'm kind of alone in this, but, like, I know I'm not alone, but I'm alone in this.

Did you think that this is how you were gonna be forever now?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'd walk home from school and I'd be like, man, I'm never gonna be able to drive cause I'm doing this.

The thing that struck me was just that there was no build up to her having tics. It was just like instant. It was like a switch had been flipped.

Remember Emilys mom, Kathy, was weirded out by the fact that almost everyone was going to the same doctors, the ones at Dent Neurologic institute nearby. She wasnt totally opposed to the idea of conversion disorder. She wasnt like anything but that. But there were so many voices and so many theories, she didnt know who to believe.

Kathy's 13 year old daughter Emily started.

To tick just two weeks ago.

So they did the tv thing, looking for answers. That way they explored different doctors, different natural remedies were prescribed, even a juice.

So, I mean, it was juice. It was 100% natural, and we thought, it can't hurt.

I still crave that juice.

Not gonna lie.

It was really good. Oh, all the time.

Taste good. Didn't do much. But they kept trying.

There was never. There was no, like, right thing to do. It was just, let's try this. All right, that didn't work. Let's try this. That didn't work. Let's try this.

Until eventually.

Ding, ding, ding. We got a winner.

Through this little network of all the parents talking to each other, I got connected with the mother of one of the girls. She said, we got in contact with this doctor from New Jersey, New York City area.

This is Doctor Trifletti.

This is Doctor Trifoletti.

Doctor Rosario Mario Trifolletti is a pediatric neurologist.

And they said, well, he's an expert on pandas.

Pandas. P a N D A S. Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep. With pandas, a child develops psychological and neurological symptoms after a lingering strep infection, symptoms that can include obsessive compulsive behaviors and tourette like tics. It's rare and was only identified as an illness in 1998. So still a lot of unknowns about pandas. But this new doctor seemed confident that it might be a match.

He's willing to travel here to Leroy to see these girls free of charge. And I thought, well, what's it gonna hurt? It's another doctor. It's another opinion. Let's go for it.

Local neurologists who've seen the Leroy teens believe they are suffering from conversion disorder, a psychological condition. Another specialist disagrees, and he has traveled to test the high schoolers for a bacterial infection.

So in late January, at the height of the outbreak and the day after Bob Bocock and team Brockovich exploded into town, Doctor Trifolletti arrives. They probably pass each other in the street, and he meets with nine of the affected kids and their families, including Kathy.

He kind of sat with us all together in a big group and was just explaining what pandas is, why he thinks maybe there's a good connection there. He says, and I'd also like to do blood tests if you all agree to it, you know? And I was like, okay, makes sense to me. Blood test sounds like a good idea. If there's no infection in her bloodstream, then we can say, yeah, conversion disorder. If there is an infection, then we can say it's something, you know? So I was like, let's test her. And I think it was maybe less than a week later, we got the results back that Emily had evidence of walking pneumonia.

Triffolletti makes a public announcement. He says he has found elevated levels of strep antibodies in five out of the eight girls tested. And he found elevated levels of mycoplasma pneumonia antibodies in seven of the eight girls. He couldn't quite call it pandas. Pandas is related to strep. And they found more than that. So based on his findings, Trifolidi announces that he is ready to give this mystery illness a name. Leroy syndrome. Then he begins treatment, and it was.

Steroid anti inflammatory, which was ibuprofen. And I believe there was something to.

Treat the infection, like antibiotic.

Like an antibiotic. And I don't remember 100% on that one, but I remember it was heavy on the ibuprofen. And the steroid was one of those ones where you start heavy and taper off. And it took her eleven days and the symptoms were gone.

No more sudden head jerks, no more flailing arms, no more tics.

And I thought, okay, when? What else? There's the proof. There's my evidence. To me, that was just like, I closed the book on it. This is what it was.

But lets take a beat for a minute. Does all this make sense? After all this time and all this grief, could it really be that simple? So pandas does not square with you?

It didnt pan out for my patients, yeah.

Doctor McVig, the neurologist at Dent, had already seen 14 of the affected girls. And she says that she had already ruled out pandas.

Now, I can't speak of the four that I didn't see, but when you look at the literature and you compare it to evidence based medicine, absolutely did not fit with pandas. Those patients did not.

Here's the first problem. The presence of strep antibodies in and of itself doesn't mean pandas. In fact, test any random group of kids for strep or other lingering bacterial infections, and as many as half or more are gonna come up with elevated levels, especially during winter, especially in a place like Leroy, where snowfall gets measured in feet and keeps everyone inside and Germy for months. Also, unlike conversion disorder, Pandas is a disorder that appears overwhelmingly in boys, not girls. Also, Pandas is a pediatric disorder that happens to children. All the known affected people in Leroy were past that stage. They were teenagers and a woman in her thirties. Also, pandas is not contagious. So is this the correct diagnosis for what's happening in Leroy? A non contagious very rare disorder that occurs mostly in prepubescent boys.

Even, let's say it's pandas. Why is it all young, healthy, previously healthy girls? They don't have autoimmune disorders. They don't have a weakened immune system. For all of them to have it concurrently at the same time in the same school, that's just logically like, let's just think about this, people.

Eventually. Trifolletti says he treated six of the girls based on his diagnosis. And he says all six saw improvement. Emily is cured completely. So heres the big if trifolidis diagnosis is wrong, why would the treatment for it work? Well, some people suspect. Okay, I suspect. I suspect that what Trifolidi has to offer isnt necessarily the right answer, but something may be just as useful an answer thats easier to believe in.

You know, when something makes aha, it makes sense.

Like, this is Alicia. You remember her? She was one of the satellite cases that had popped up after she and her softball team passed through Leroy, and she came down with symptoms. Alicia, too, went to see doctor Triffolletti.

See, I might not. I'm the same way with movies. I might not remember lines or scenes perfectly or at all, really. I have an awful memory. But I remember how things feel. That's like, what I go by, like how I felt on the inside. That's what I can remember.

And when she saw Triffolletti, I just.

Remember feeling a little more at ease just in his presence. I just felt a little bit more at ease and heard. And I was maybe optimistic, too, that he would have more answers, which he did.

I feel like he almost was like the voice of reason sometimes, you know.

Kathy describes a similar feeling.

Just what he said, just to me, it made sense. It just felt like an answer and a possibility. And if nothing else, I was like, at least it's somebody who's like, seems sincere. And just for the fact that he traveled here, he's doing it free of charge. Like that spoke to me. That was like telling me that, hey, this is somebody who at least seems concerned for their well being.

So did anybody suggest that it was the placebo effect, that they had treated the pandas with these things? But because she believed in it, she got better.

We did follow up blood work.

A.

Few months later, and it showed no infection in the blood. And I was like, okay, so no infection in her blood, no tics. I see that as a connection. And there was just a lot of people that still insisted, no, it's conversion disorder. And I said, I've got my answer. Like, it worked. So I'm not gonna dig anymore.

And even Doctor McVig acknowledges the diagnosis that she's offering. Conversion disorder is almost more confusing than no answer at all. She says she saw this play out in one of the families who resisted conversion disorder, who really just didn't want to hear it.

So this family wanted there to be something more other than this is an emotional, social, emotional issue. And we need to do some internal introspection and calming and relaxation techniques and felt like I was hokey and, you know, that this wasn't genuine on my end. And there must be something medically or someone to blame or someone to sue. A hard thing to look at self. It's harder than blaming others, I do have to say.

It does strike me as something that I can relate to. Like to go to the doctor and you're having these things happen to you, and for the doctor to look at you and just be like, look at self, like, that's hard to hear because.

That'S just more fucking work when you're a teenager, too.

Yeah.

Cause that's just like a nightmare.

Who wants to look at themselves when you're 16, right?

When I was 16, I don't know if I had the. I don't know if I had the capacity to look at myself.

Tonight we have some news. Tell it, Doctor Drew. Some of the girls apparently have gotten better over the past three weeks. Some did have antibiotics. And the question is to what extent that they played a role here, or was this a placebo or something else? And perhaps what Trifolletti was really offering was an off ramp from all the craziness that had come to surround the mystery. We tried to ask Trifoli about all this. He and his office told us multiple times he won't talk about what happened in Leroy. Even though, it's gotta be said, headlines about his involvement are still splashed all over his website.

And I understand conversion disorder worked. It was accurate for those other girls that it worked for as long as they were satisfied with that answer. I didn't. That's fine. That's fine for them. And then there was still the group that legitimately had this pandas like infection. And it just happened to be this terrible, perfect storm of a situation. You know, they were in a little terrarium together and this is what happened.

So in the end, it's mass psychogenic illness and it's Leroy syndrome. It's a salad and a dessert. It's neither. It's both. It's dealer's choice. But are we satisfied to just Waldorf Jell o salad this thing and call it a day? Not quite yet. There's one more Leroy girl I want you to hear from. This person never made it into any of the news reports. You never saw her face on tv. She never even caught the tourette's like symptoms that had spread through the high school so ferociously because this person had already been dealing with Tourette's syndrome itself for years and she ended up in the center of it all.

What if your partner developed 21 new identities? Or you discovered that your friend who helped you through the darkest times was actually a conniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere, inhabiting people around you, including your son? What would you do? I'm Whit Missseldine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life changing events told by the people who lived them. In our newest season, you'll hear even more intimate first person accounts of how regular people have overcome remarkable circumstances, like the man who went to jail for 17 years for accidentally shooting the person who tried to save his life. To a close friend of the infamous scam artist, Amanda Reilly, these haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies. But I assure you, this is actually happening. Follow this is actually happening on the wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen to this is actually happening ad free on wondery.

You know, in the days of the witch trials, they too, had a way to solve an unsolvable mystery, an A B test that gave an answer every time when someone was accused of being a witch. And the question was, is she or isn't she? Some places would use a test called swimming the witch. And it's simple. They would tie you up and throw you in a pond. If you float, you're a witch. If you sink, you're not a witch. You are tied up at the bottom of a pond now, but no one thinks you're a witch. Swimming a witch was effective not because it gave a rational answer. It is, of course, craziness. But it did give them an answer, no in between. And it gave a town someone to pin all this unpleasantness on some poor, buoyant witch who theyd pull out of the water and perhaps hang on a hilltop nearby. Theres at least one human instinct we can all recognize when its too difficult to sit with the unanswerable. The next best thing is finding someone to blame.

I was first diagnosed when I was about eight years old. I had started this weird facial twitch thing. And we went to the doctor and she looked at me and she's like, yep, that's Trss. Let's send you to neuro.

This is Rose.

But looking back at it now, knowing that information, we can notice tics that I had as young as, like, two and three years old.

The development of Rose's tics as a kid came gradually. It's a common marker for Tourette's syndrome, as opposed to the sudden onset of the mystery illness in Leroy. Other differences. You've got to have multiple tics for at least a year for it to be considered Tourette's also. Tourette's occurs overwhelmingly in boys rather than girls, but not for Rose. In 2011, she had just entered 8th grade at Leroy High School.

I mean, I had always had very prominent tics from the time I was diagnosed. Like, I had facial twitches. I would go through spurts where I would be throwing things. I was always very loud. Like, I always have very loud vocal tics. You will always hear me. Everybody always knows who I am.

Can I ask you, how disruptive did you feel? Like when you say you were taking a test and you'd, like, throw a pencil, did it feel like you were getting in other people's way?

I wasn't worried about being the weird kid that needed extra testing. I wasn't worried about being the weird kid on meds. Like, everybody's a weird kid for some reason. That was just my thing, and I was fine with that.

But then the arrival of the mystery illness, or as Rose might have called it, attack of the clones, like, I.

Can remember sitting in school and someone looked at me and was like, oh, did you hear? Like, so and so caught your tics? And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I was just confused. I'm like, dude, how? What? Like, what do you mean? Somebody caught my dis. What?

In fact, you can't actually catch Tourette's. It's not that kind of disorder.

So, yeah, like, Tourette's in itself is not contagious. Like, I have two brothers. Neither of them are ticking. I'm not. Like, I don't need to be quarantined in a little bubble. Like, I work around people's food every day. Nobody else has Tourette's. Like, we're Gucci. But, like, Tourette's can be suggestive in the sense that when you're around other people that tick, you tend to tick more.

That's when Rose says she became the target as the obvious source for all of it.

Cause that was immediately. Immediately it was, you're contagious. And all this stuff, like, right from day one.

Who was saying that?

I mean, at first it was the kids. It started with just the kids. It was, oh, you're contagious. Oh, she caught it from you. Oh, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I'm just trying to go to school, dude. But, like, nobody stood up and was like, hey, this isn't their fault. Don't blame them. Like, not once did an adult say, that's not how that works. This isn't their fault. Leave them alone. People were, like, yelling at me in grocery stores. Like, and again, I'm 14. Grown ass men would walk up to me and scream at me for causing this in the middle of a grocery store store. Like, wow.

And then there was the hoard.

Leroy was the new Dateline. And everyone was trying to solve the murder.

Cameras and reporters everywhere and approaching the girls outside the school.

And I just kept being like, this is not me. Like, I am not a part of this. Leave me alone. Like, the only thing I could really tell them was that I had Tourette's and it wasn't contagious, and I didn't know what was going on. And then they'd leave me alone after that because, oh, you're not a medical mystery. That's not what we want. Like, no, literally, that's what it was. As I was like, I have a real answer for you. They were like, no, we're done. We're good.

And at the same time, the stress of it all is making Rose's tourette's tics worse. Much, much worse.

So I had a tic where I would punch myself right here in the face over and over and over. And, like, I.

And your chin, that was your chick.

My tick was literally to, like, cold cock myself, like, with force. Not just, like, with force. So I had fractured part of my jawline and another one of my tics. I have permanent damage in my right eye. Cause my other tick was to punch myself in the eye. I was literally beating the shit out of myself.

Rose developed a kicking tic that was so severe, she began coming to school in a wheelchair.

I had a tic for a little bit where I would slam my head off the table. I had to get sent home one day with, like, a goose egg on my forehead. Cause I would just, like, bang my head on the table. And I was going through that while all of this was going on, while all of the other tic stuff was happening. That was all starting for me.

And that's when Rose says that the school took action.

And so the school was like, well, none of these other girls tick when Rose isn't around. Cause she's not there to start it. So they pulled me out of all my classes, and I was doing all of my classes in the sound booth for the auditorium. Like, it was like this little, like, closet like thing. And we'd go to my class, I'd get my classwork, and then I'd go sit there and do my classwork so that none of the other people could hear me tap.

So you would go get your classwork, and then you would go sit in a soundproof audio booth?

Yep. Yep.

And do your work.

Yes. I was like, you guys are alienating me for something. I've been diagnosed with something you know about, and I don't have what they have, and I haven't caused what they have. You know, I remember being told, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. And right now, you are the. I was told that by an adult at Leroy Central School District. And I just remember, okay, all right, that sucks, I guess. Like, that sucks.

What do you do with that?

You go home and cry about it and then go to school the next day. You know, I took that one on the chin. I just kind of said, you know what? Okay. Hurt.

Wow. Needs of the many. Needs of the few. You know who coined that phrase? Karl Marx? FDr. You proceed from a false assumption. I'm a vulcan. It was motherfucking Spock to James T. Kirkland on the starship Enterprise, Star Trek, the wrath of Khan. In any case, were I to invoke logic, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It's a harsh logic, but, hey, Spock's a harsh guy with harsh bangs. But more than that, he's a logic guy. He's the logic guy. That's his whole bit. But is that the logic we're going with in this situation? The one girl who actually has a diagnosis, a diagnosis that isn't mass psychogenic illness, and she's the one we put in the audio booth all day? The de facto padded cell is logic even the thing to be grasping for here at all? Did it feel like mass hysteria?

It makes sense to me. It makes sense to me. I don't think, like, I know I wasn't contagious. I know it wasn't bad tampons. I know it wasn't yucky water. But I didn't necessarily know what it was. And I knew that it wasn't my job or problem to figure out. And I knew that the reason everything was such a shit show was because everybody decided they were a detective and tried to figure it out, instead of letting the people that knew what they were doing try and handle it. You know, had everyone stepped away from the beginning and let the professionals tried to figure this out, I don't think it would have gotten as bad as it dead.

It's probably the most frustrating paradox about masked psychogenic illness. It seems the harder we try to figure it out, the reporters, the soil tests, the town meetings, the pontificating, the brockoviching, the worse the outbreak gets. I'm not sure there's a way around it. If I were a parent, I'm sure I'd be ransacking the Mayo clinic looking for an answer. But it really does seem to be the thing that puts the hysteria in mass hysteria. We tried to talk to the school about what happened to Rose and about any of how they reacted. When the mystery illness showed up in Leroy, they declined. And so in terms of what, the truth of what happened ten years ago, um. You're still not sure.

I'm not. And I don't ask. It is. It was. It's done.

Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. I kind of get why they used to blame witchcraft for events like the one that happened in Leeroy. Its contagious, its unexplainable, and its scary as hell all things that bring out the worst in us. It feeds off our attention, and yet its totally impossible to ignore. Its not hard to imagine some witch behind a tree laughing her ass off, which, frankly, we would have had coming after the whole pond thing. But there's another quality to it. It's one that's hard to acknowledge when we're in the throes of an outbreak. But when the stakes are a bit lower, it's easier to spot. Anyone speak French? No worries. What's about to happen runs deeper than language. It's a french talk show, candy colored set, studio audience, perky host, panel of guests on the topic of today's show, people with unusual laughs. Like that one. Everyone on the panel has some sort of bizarre laugh. There's another one unleashed by a panelist after hearing that weird one before it. And maybe you can guess how all this is gonna evolve. People have genuinely lost control.

Even the host is helpless. I still laugh every time I watch it across time and space. And screens. Maybe you're laughing, too. A contagion. Of all the meanings of the word we've explored, this is my favorite hysterical yet. How the contagion here is almost magical. Even if we can't quite fathom why our minds tether themselves together like this and why it feels so good, I've come to see that it's no less magical when instead of a laugh, it's a symptom, a distress call of sorts of sent out by one person and picked up by another, who doesn't just mimic it, but experiences it themselves. And then another and another. A human chain connecting each to something larger. A couple years ago, at a sheep farm in inner Mongolia, several sheep begin doing something strange. They begin walking in a circle, not walking around the edges of their pen so that it looks like a circle. They're actually walking in a perfect circle. And they don't stop. Soon they're joined by more sheep and more sheep, till there are hundreds of them, circling like pilgrims around a holy shrine for twelve days straight. Experts have theories as to why, but no pat answers.

It's a mystery. In 1987, a female orca is spotted off the coast of Washington state, swimming around with a dead salmon on her head, wearing it like a hat. Why youd have to ask her. But soon the behavior spreads to other orcas in her pod and to other whales in other pods nearby, all swimming around wearing fish like hats. It goes on like this for about six weeks, and then they all just stop. No more salmon hats. No one knows why. These kinds of things, these uncanny, unexplainable connections, they occur in the natural world all the time, and we are part of that natural world. And apologies to spock, but forcing rationality can sometimes be the most irrational thing to do.

So, like, I volunteer at a Tourette syndrome camp every summer, right?

Wow.

Yeah. And I love it. It is one of the best things I do with my life.

Case in point, Rose.

Every year, it's so amazing. But we all tick so much more because we're all ticking.

Does that feel good or bad?

Oh, I love it.

Like we said, tourette's is suggestive. One ticking person being around another can make the symptoms worse for both. Now, imagine dozens and dozens of them.

You know, when you go to camp and all these kids, like a lot of times it's the first time they're around somebody else that has it, and so they just go ham. And it's the funniest thing, but instead.

Of resisting, they just let it happen. They don't hold back it is so.

Worth every second of it, because you are having the best time and you are around your people. And the other thing is, there's something called tick shopping. That's the actual name for it. And you can pick up other people's ticks.

They're not just aggravating each other's symptoms, they are sharing them, passing them back and forth unconsciously. There's still so much about Tourette's that's unknown. But these kids are able to revel in the mystery of it, even if only for one humid buggy, wonderful weekend in the summer.

So I always have to take, like, the day after camp off. Cause I'll come home with God knows what takes. Doing what? Like, it's. It's the. It's the. But it's like the best feeling ever. It is the best feeling ever.

The line between contagion and connection is a thin one, sometimes barely there at all. Eventually, the mystery illness in Leroy followed the pattern of many mass psychogenic illnesses over the centuries. It flared up, it caused havoc, and it faded away. It died down, in part, it seems, because the attention died down. The tv appearances dried up, the camera crews tiptoed away. The headlines got smaller, almost starving hysteria from getting the attention it needs to survive. At the height of it, Doctor McVig and her colleagues even asked the tv stations to stop showing video of the girls taking on the air, because that was potentially how it was spreading. A couple local stations actually did. Doctor Drew did nothing. And in the spring, many of the affected kids began to improve. Some with Doctor Trifolletti, more with Doctor McVig.

So the kids that started to get better, there were some that got better right away. And honestly did not want to be involved with anything at all. Like, they were out. They were done. Respectfully.

Did it get. Did I wonder if the media. If the craziness actually were just like, you know what? I'm out. I'm fine.

I'm out.

I feel better.

They did. And there was a handful that happened.

As time passed, it also became clear that in some of the individual cases, there seemed to be more stress and trauma than many of the girls had been willing to let on, especially on national tv.

And there was a lot of stuff that evolved at that point in time that was not revealed to me about stressors that they had in their life, that now the event was, quote unquote, over or ending, that they actually felt like they had internal permission to tell me, oh, by the way, you know, I was struggling with my sexual identity or oh, by the way, I had this internal family conflict, or, oh, by the way, this happened at school, and someone accused me of this, and it was pretty profound. And, you know, it was like, wow, that would have helped me in the middle of this crisis, to understand where you're coming from.

Even Doctor Trifolletti, the pandas doctor from New Jersey, even he was surprised when told by Times reporter Susan Dominus about some of these traumatic situations, Trifoletti said, quote, geez, I didn't realize the extent. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to distinguish between the drug and the placebo effect. As far as what I believe happened. I believe it's impossible to say what each individual girl experienced. Each one really did have their own symptoms, their own comorbidities, their own aggravating circumstances. But as a group, as a town, as a collective, I think it was mass hysteria, a mass psychogenic illness, and among the rarest of kinds to affect so many with such prominent symptoms for such a sustained period of time. That's not an accusation. It's an acknowledgement that, yes, something truly scary happened in libre New York, but also something truly remarkable. By the time graduation arrived and summer break was upon them, finally, the sickness was all but gone from Leroy Junior Senior High school. The yearbook makes no mention of how jacked that whole year had become. And that letterboard sign in town at the church that just a few months earlier read, we're praying for our Leroy high school girls.

Its letters got rearranged. Now it said, leroy, still a great place to live. How are you doing?

Yeah, better. I feel. Oh, yeah, yeah, I feel better.

Emily's symptoms went away, but the memory of them and of that time still looms large in her mind.

Do you ever tick? No.

And I think. I think about it. I'm like, I do, because I still think about it to this day. I'm like, this just, like, came and went almost like a season, basically. Like a. Like, almost like a Netflix scene. Like, you got nine episodes. Here you go. Run with it. How come I still don't do this? Like, what did we do? Like, how am I fixed? Am I gonna. Something gonna happen, I'm gonna hear some noise, and that's gonna set me off? Or. It's just so still kind of like.

Question mark number one. I don't have conversion disorder. I never did.

Alicia also rejected conversion disorder. She accepted Trifolletti's diagnosis, but only as one part of a larger series of health problems that she was dealing with last year she got her master's in social work and now advocates for kids with autism.

I absolutely love it.

Really? Oh, yeah.

Because they're another population that's often dismissed and not heard and not advocated for and don't get the services and treatment that they deserve.

People ask me all the time. They're like, well, do you wish you didn't have it? And I'm like, I can't think fathom that. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rose, of course, never had it at all, but she still has Tourette's and she's still mostly okay with it.

Like, are there times where I could wish I could just shut the hell up? Like, yeah, do I miss a movie theater? Absolutely. But, like, I think I'm good. Like, it would just feel funny. It would just be weird to just be still and quiet. I can't. It doesn't, doesn't click in my head.

Rose still sees Doctor McVig to help.

Manage it, and it's just so funny now to be on the adult side of it, but still seeing her, to be able to look back and be like, bro, that was some shit. Like, you know.

In the end, the only person we talked to who really embraced conversion disorder, Marge, the 36 year old nurse and mother.

I went through the cognitive behavior therapy and I. I did the work and I saw her three times a week for, for what felt like forever.

It always does. And as for why it's more common among women than men, I don't know.

Why it's mostly women, but it's, why are, why are there more male serial killers than female serial killers?

Well, shit. Marge left her job in healthcare and now works in sales online line. She sells, appropriately enough, vibrators.

It's not just vibrators. I'm telling you, we have an excellent line of bath products. You are beautiful from morning to night. I will give you, I will give you my card.

That's nice to hear.

How else can I help out hysterical women other than selling them a great vibrator?

Follow hysterical on the wondery app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com. survey. And if you have a tip about a story that you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondery.com. tips Hysterical is a production of wondery in Pineapple Street Studios. Our lead producer is Henry Milofsky. Our associate producer is Marie Alexa Cavanaugh, producer Sophie Bridges managing producer Aaron Kelly senior producer Lena Matsises additional production by Zandra Ellen. Diane Hodson is our editor. Our executive editor is Joel Lovell. Fact checking by Natsume Ajisaka mixing by Hannis Brown our head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija. Original music composed and performed by Dina Maccabee Legal Services for Pineapple street from Chris Tupia for wondery. Our senior producers are Lizzie Bassett and Claire Chambers, coordinating producer Mariah Gossett senior managing producer Callum Plews. Special thanks to Elliot Adler, Pedro Alvira, Robert Bartholomew, Keona Barnwell, Jn Barry, Grace Cohen Chen, Ryan Feldman, Barry Finkel, Ben Goldberg, Mark Hallett, Courtney Harrell, Jonathan Mink, Marina Pais, Jennifer Sanchez, Michaela Squire, Virginia Swenson, Charlie Tarr and to CNN.

Hysterical is written and executive produced by me. I'm Dan Tabirsky. Our executive producers for Pineapple street are Max Linsky, Henry Malawski, Asha Saluja, and Jenna Weiss Berman. Executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Marshall Louie, and Jen Sargent. Thanks for listening.

Weve all been there. Turning to the Internet to self diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes. Though our minds tend to spiral to worst case scenarios, its usually nothing. But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated. Or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings. Hey listeners, its mister Balin here and Im here to tell you about my podcast. It's called Mister Ballin's medical mysteries. Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night. Follow Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon music.