Bizarre Instances Of Kids Suffering From Mass Hysteria

During the Middle Ages, Europeans were hell-bent on conquering the Holy Lands, so they repeatedly sent soldiers to do battle with the Muslims. Most of the time, Crusaders were full-grown adults, but on two occasions, these armies were made up of kids ... sort of.

The first Children's Crusade started in 1212, when a young shepherd named Stephen of Cloves allegedly bumped into Jesus himself. Evidently, Jesus wanted Stephen to deliver a letter to the king of France. After sharing God's message, Stephen would lead an army to reclaim Jerusalem. As it turns out, Stephen was a pretty powerful speaker, because he convinced up to 30,000 people to join his crazy quest.

Now, most historians believe these Crusaders were mostly teenagers and young adults, not children. Nevertheless, this teenage army failed to impress the king, who ordered the kids to go home. That pretty much ended Stephen's crusade, although several of his followers headed to Germany where they joined up with a prophet named Nicholas. Like Stephen, Nicholas of Cologne was a young guy with the gift of gab. Thanks to his fire and brimstone sermons, he whipped up an army of 12,000 teenagers, who planned on marching over the Alps and into Italy. Then using his miraculous powers, Nicholas would part the Mediterranean, allowing his followers to march toward the Holy Lands. Needless to say, his scheme didn't pan out. Not only was the hike over the Alps incredibly grueling, but the damn sea just wouldn't cooperate.

According to some sources, a few of Nicholas's followers tried sailing to the Middle East, but diabolical seamen sold them into slavery. (Other sources claim this happened to Stephen's army.) Regardless, the Children's Crusades were totally ineffective, although the Encyclopedia Britannica claims they were possibly the first youth movements in European history.

In 2011, the town of Le Roy, New York, was turned upside down. Beginning in May, girls aged 12 to 18 suddenly came down with a mysterious illness. Their faces twitched, their heads jerked, and their arms flailed up and down. By February 2012, there were 18 victims at the local high school, one boy and 17 girls, plus a 36-year-old female nurse.

Doctors were puzzled by this strange sickness and, despite examinations, they couldn't find any signs of disease. People blamed everything from drugs to vaccines, and parents worried some bizarre virus was going around the school. Activists like Erin Brockovich believed there were environmental factors at play, but despite investigations, officials couldn't find any traces of toxins. All the while, the victims kept on twitching, twitching, and twitching.

Eventually, psychologists realized the girls were suffering from conversion disorder. Basically, when people experience "significant life stressors," sometimes the mind turns all that tension into actual physical symptoms. Occasionally, victims suffer from blindness or paralysis, and sometimes, they begin convulsing, just like the Le Roy students. Experts soon discovered many of the victims were experiencing pretty stressful situations, like their parents divorcing, or being estranged from relatives. As for the kids who weren't undergoing stress, one of the girls suffered from Tourette's Syndrome, so perhaps the other students were subconsciously copying her tics.

To be clear, the girls definitely weren't faking their ailments. These symptoms really were beyond their control. Unfortunately, some people refused to accept this psychological diagnosis. However, the patients who did come to grips with the reality of their situation improved much faster than their skeptical friends.

Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Riceville, Iowa, when in 1968, one of her third-grade students asked a pretty deep question. The kid wanted to know why someone had just shot Martin Luther King Jr. But instead of giving a simple answer, Elliott taught one of the most profound—and controversial—lessons in educational history.

Wanting to teach her kids about discrimination, she informed the students that brown-eyed people were superior to blue-eyed people. This was because melanin, the stuff that causes eye color, was the chemical responsible for intelligence. So if you had brown eyes, you were super -smart. On the flip side, if you had blue eyes, you were lazy, stupid, and shifty.

The brown-eyed students latched onto this idea, and were soon forming weird theories about how the world worked. When Elliott said blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups to drink from the water fountain, the brown-eyed students assumed it was because they had a disease. And when they noticed Elliott herself had blue eyes, they figured the school principal probably had a lot more melanin. The brown-eyed kids even began bullying their "inferior" classmates.

Eventually, Elliott flipped things, explaining blue-eyed children were actually far superior. Interestingly, the so-called "blueys" were much nicer to the brown-eyed outcasts, possibly because they knew what it was like to experience discrimination. While this experiment drew the ire of many Americans, others considered Elliott an educational pioneer. As a result, she appeared on TV alongside Johnny Carson and Oprah Winfrey, and she lectured to groups like the Navy, the IRS, and the White House Conference on Children and Youth.

In 1967, Ron Jones was the most popular teacher at Palo Alto's Cubberley High School. A history instructor with unorthodox methods, Jones believed in hands-on projects that would bring history to life. So when he decided to teach his tenth-grade class about the Nazis, things got really intense.

On Day #1 of his experiment, Jones had his class chant slogans like, "Strength through discipline, community, and action." He had them march into the classroom, sit at their desks with perfect posture, and stand whenever they called him "Mr. Jones." On the second day, Jones kicked things up a notch by coming up with a special salute (a raised arm with a cupped hand) for his new movement, the Third Wave. Soon, his students were preaching the Third Wave gospel across the school, recruiting new students, making signs, and passing out membership cards. But if kids didn't want to join, they were bullied into signing up. Things got even darker when Third Wave members formed their own secret police force. If anyone violated the group's rules, snitches would rat them out to the "cops," and there would be scary consequences.

Throughout the experiment, the students idolized Jones like a dictator, and some even acted as his bodyguards. Eventually Jones claimed the Third Wave was a countrywide movement involving hundreds of schools, and soon, the students would meet the party's leader. On the fifth day of the experiment, the students gathered in an auditorium where they expected to see their commander on TV ... only to be greeted with a slideshow about Hitler.

As Jones explained to the devastated students, "We're no better and no worse than the Germans we've been studying." However, his experiment didn't go over well with the parents or faculty, and Jones lost his job a few years later. He never worked as a teacher again, though his story was turned both a TV movie and a book, as well as a great cautionary tale concering how easily one can be led into accepting a dictatorship.

In November 2011, Latoya Ammons moved into a rental home in Gary, Indiana. She brought along her mother and three young kids, but shortly after settling in, the family found themselves facing the legions of Hell.

In December, Ammons claimed swarms of flies appeared on her porch. The grandmother later saw a shadowy figure walking through the house. Soon, doors were slamming shut, objects were flying around, and the kids were exhibiting strange symptoms. In March 2012, the Ammons' 12-year-old daughter allegedly levitated above her bed. One of the boys was also thrown across the house. Even worse, two clairvoyants explained there were over 200 demons in the home.

Worried for her children, Ammons took the kids to several churches for protection, erected an altar in her basement, and set up several religious shrines. But despite her best efforts, the kids started showing signs of demonic possession. Creepier still, multiple witnesses saw the kids flash evil smiles, roll their eyes into their heads, and speak in deep voices. The youngest boy even tried to strangle his brother while shouting, "It's time to die." Medical staff at the local hospital saw the seven-year-old son fly across a room, and two credible witnesses watched as the nine-year-old walked backwards up a wall.

The children were removed from Ammons for six months, as psychologists tried to figure out what was happening. It was soon determined the kids were being encouraged by their mom's beliefs, and were playing into her story. The seven-year-old probably launched himself across the room. When the nine-year-old climbed up the wall, he was holding both of his grandmother's hands, so he had plenty of support. It's even possible the daughter faked levitation by throwing herself into the air and arching her back. Plus, anyone who's ever watched a horror movie knows how to fake a possession. Still, in November 2012, the children were reunited with their mom, and the family left their haunted home for good.