The Bizarre Plague of 1962

Claim A says a 1962 laughing epidemic in Tanganyika shut down schools for months. Claim B says a 1962 crying epidemic in Kenya made villagers weep until blind. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.

In January 1962, at a mission-run boarding school in Kashasha, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), three girls started laughing and simply couldn't stop. Within days, the laughter spread to 95 of the school's 159 students, lasting anywhere from a few hours to 16 straight days for the worst-affected.

The school was forced to close in March 1962 after the outbreak overwhelmed staff and students alike. But closing the school didn't end it — the laughter followed students home, and the epidemic spread to nearby villages and at least 14 other schools, affecting an estimated 1,000 people total over roughly 18 months.

Symptoms weren't limited to laughing. Many sufferers also reported pain, fainting, rashes, and respiratory issues, which ruled out simple joking around. Schools and even some government offices had to temporarily shut down as the "laughter" rippled outward from Kashasha.

Researchers who studied the outbreak later classified it as a case of mass psychogenic illness — stress-induced symptoms spreading through close social groups, much like the dancing plague of 1518. Exact triggers remain debated, but tension from colonial-era social pressures and tight boarding school conditions are often cited as contributing factors.

There was no 1962 crying epidemic in Kenya that blinded villagers — that detail simply never happened. No records, medical or historical, document any such event.

Would you have believed the laughing epidemic was real before reading this — or did it sound too strange to be true?