In France, A Group of Nuns Started Meowing Like Cats and Couldn’t Stop
Throughout history, there have been several events known as “mass hysteria”- psychological phenomenons when large groups of people all seem to suffer from the same physical ailments, when it’s really just in their head. In a book called Epidemics of the Middle Ages by J. F. C. Hecker, he recounts an old story of a nun who began meowing at her convent.
Soon, other nuns started meowing, and wouldn’t stop for hours at a time. Since we already established that the Catholic Church associated cats with the devil, priests began to assume that these nuns were possessed. Soldiers were brought in to contain the women, and they were beaten until they promised to stop meowing.
