Frightening Folklore

As winter approaches every year, we are plagued with the flu and the common cold. However, we always know they are coming, and many of us try to prepare ourselves for them as much we as possibly can. No one could have ever prepared or expected some of the plagues and illnesses that have occurred that were much stranger than the flu or the common cold.   Imagine you have lost all control of your body and have found yourself dancing uncontrollably, unable to stop. That is what those affected by the dancing plague experienced. Some Christians believed Saint Vitus was the cause of this strange illness due to the folkloric belief that Saint Vitus would curse anyone that angered him with a dancing plague. Obviously, some kind of illness must have been the real cause. Many people believe starvation drove the dancing people insane, but how did starving people have the energy to dance for days? Would that be impossible without some kind of disease or chemical altering their body chemistry?

In 2013 a couple saw two extremely thin, deathly pale white humanoids wearing black hooded cloaks walking down the road in front of their rural home in Enon Valley, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. They were about six feet tall, the same height as an average man. The first thing that the wife thought when she saw these strange black hooded figures was that they were unlike anything she had ever seen before and that they did not belong there. It was not Halloween, so they doubted that these were people walking to a costume party at someone’s house. The area is so rural and the houses are so far apart that the children in the area do not even walk house to house for trick or treating on this road. It was a very creepy, explainable experience for both of them.       About 23 years earlier, the couple's son-in-law spotted a black hooded figure in Enon Valley while driving home one night on route 551. It stood about five and a half feet tall and was extremely pale white with no visib