Mass Mystery Illness? Tics, Outbursts in N.Y. Teen Girls

Mass psychogenic illness is thought to be triggered by stress or emotional distress, in response, for example, to reports of a chemical exposure, toxin or virus. The symptoms — which can and have included everything from uncontrollable dancing, unstoppable laughter and fainting spells to fits of meowing and penis shrinkage — spread through groups by way of humans’ often unconscious social mimicry of one another’s behavior.

This reminds me of an article I read about Pentecostal movement called the Toronto Blessing

Something happened on January 10, 1994, at a Vineyard Church near the Pearson International Airport in Toronto that was unique in the history of professing Christianity. to the claims of the "Laughing Revival"

Churches were reporting spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter erupting from their congregations, even during times of solemn ceremony or messages from the pulpit. Some report uncontrollable weeping, falling to the floor in ecstatic trances, an danimal noises such as barking like dogs and roaring like lions. Some stagger and reel like drunken people, unable to walk a straight line. For simplicity's sake, all these have come to be called "holy laughter," since laughter is the preeminent phenomenon displayed. It was felt to be, by those who attended, the Holy Spirit.

This was the description by those who believed in the movement, Oral Roberts was one.

One of Howard-Browne's books has a section titled "Holy Ghost Glue." In it he recounts the story of a wealthy woman who got "stuck" in the spirit. As Howard-Browne tells it:

"She was lying there from noon until 1:30 … At 1:30, she tried to get up. She wanted to get up. She couldn't. All she could do was flap her hands. So she was lying there flapping away -- flap, flap, flap, flap … 2:30, 3:30, 4:30 … At 4:30 the woman was still saying, 'I can't get up. I'm stuck to the floor.'"

She flapped so long that, as Howard-Browne put it, he ended up "walking out on the Holy Spirit":

"I turned to the pastor and said, 'Look, I haven't had either breakfast or lunch. It's 4:30. I'm not stuck and you're not stuck. These people are going to stay here with her, so let's go have a meal before the night service.' The ushers told us later that at 6 o'clock the woman finally peeled herself off the carpet. Then it took her an hour to crawl from the center of the church auditorium to the side wall. She had been stuck to the floor for six hours!" (Manifesting the Holy Spirit, pp. 26,27).

Another experience from John Arnott:

"When Randy Clark preached at the Airport Vineyard, the pastor claimed that 'almost 80 percent of the people were on the floor. … It was like an explosion. We saw people literally being knocked off their feet by the Spirit of God. … Others shook and jerked. Some danced, some laughed. Some lay on the floor as if dead for hours. People cried and shouted'" (The Father's Blessing, by John Arnott, pp. 71-72).

This has the same feel to me, and perhaps I'm judging unjustly. I saw these girls and their mothers in a T.V. interview. Some movements seems spontaneous, and some appeared under a girl's control. Either way, I'm sure both mothers and children believe it's real, but I wonder how much is mass hysteria.....I DON'T think it's the Holy Spirit.