© Off-Guardian
On August 16, 1951, the quiet town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France was struck by a bizarre outbreak. Residents suddenly experienced severe symptoms: nausea, insomnia, and vivid hallucinations.
People reported seeing terrifying visions — snakes crawling out of their stomachs, fire engulfing their bodies, or blood dripping from the walls of their homes. Some cases were extreme: an 11-year-old boy attempted to strangle his grandmother, a man jumped from a window claiming he was an airplane, and others were restrained in straitjackets or chained to their beds.
By the end, at least 5 people died (some sources say 7), dozens were institutionalized, and over 300 were affected.
I remember as a 13-year-old kid reading about this in some magazine (I recall it was
LIFE, but I could never find it since). For some reason, it terrified me and lived with me in my memory for 50-plus years. Recently, one of my readers turned me on to the story, and much has been written about it rather recently by other researchers.
As I remember the story, the outbreak was linked to bread from a bakery run by a local baker. Doctors and investigators concluded that the rye flour used in the bread was contaminated with ergot (
claviceps purpurea), a fungus known historically for causing ergotism, or "St. Anthony's Fire." Ergot contains alkaloids similar to LSD, which could explain the hallucinations. This explanation was published in the
British Medical Journal shortly after the event and became the prevailing theory for decades.
However, in 2009, Hank P. Albarelli Jr. reignited interest in the case with his book,
A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, claiming the incident was not a natural occurrence but a deliberate CIA experiment. While researching the death of Frank Olson — a CIA biochemist who died in 1953 under suspicious circumstances after working on LSD-related projects —
Albarelli uncovered documents suggesting the agency had spiked the town's food with LSD as part of its Cold War mind-control program, MKULTRA (or its precursor, Project SPAN).One key piece of evidence was a CIA memo labelled
"Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F. Olson Files. SO Span/France Operation file, inclusive Olson. Intel files. Hand carry to Belin - tell him to see to it that these are buried," which implied a cover-up. Another document reportedly transcribed a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz Pharmaceutical official (Sandoz being the Swiss company that first synthesized LSD), where the official hinted that the outbreak was caused by diethylamide (the "D" in LSD), not ergot.
Albarelli argued that the CIA, in collaboration with the U.S. Army's Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, might have sprayed LSD into the air or contaminated local food to test its potential as a weapon for behavioural control. This theory aligns with known CIA activities during the 1950s, when the agency conducted numerous LSD experiments on unwitting subjects, including American servicemen and civilians.
Wouldn't it figure, eh?
Comment: Of all the things to pick an ordinance fight over, this is pretty petty. Don't the Greenville and Sevierville city councils have more pressing problems? How many people have been put out of work by those city officials?