The Laughing Epidemic That Shut Down Schools

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]In 1962, a school in Tanzania was shut down because the pupils couldn't stop laughing. Not giggling, laughing, for months.

[00:00:12]It started with three girls at a boarding school near Lake Tanganyika on the 30th of January.

[00:00:19]Within weeks, 95 of the 159 students were completely incapacitated, crying, screaming, fainting, and laughing uncontrollably.

[00:00:32]None of it was funny.

[00:00:34]The school closed, then the epidemic followed the students home and infected their villages.

[00:00:42]Eventually, over a thousand people were affected across multiple outbreaks that lasted nearly two years.

[00:00:49]Nobody had a virus. Nobody had eaten anything odd.

[00:00:53]What they had was mass psychogenic illness.

[00:00:57]The brain, under extreme stress, essentially malfunctions socially.

[00:01:03]It spreads like a cold, but through anxiety and shared belief rather than bacteria.

[00:01:09]The most unsettling part? It can happen anywhere. It has happened in offices, factories, and schools all over the world.

[00:01:18]Your brain is considerably less in charge than it thinks it is.