Date: August 15, 1951

Crime Scene: Pont-Saint Esprit village, France

Incident: 300 inhabitants of a village suddenly go mad and start hallucinating.

Crime Tool Bread

On August 15, 1951, Pont-Saint Esprit, a small village in France, woke up to a historic event. On that day, it was as if everyone had lost their minds. Some were hallucinating and acting in unimaginable ways, while others were just complaining of nausea, headaches and the inability to sleep for days on end. But the fact was that everyone was abnormal.

Some villagers claimed to have seen dragons, others said snakes were attacking them. Charles Granjhon, then 11 years old, came out of his house and tried to strangle his grandmother, while Gabriel Validire, a laborer, claimed he was dead. According to Validire, both his and his friend's heads were made of copper and their bellies had been eaten by snakes.

Another woman claimed she had been eaten by tigers. The village had turned into a madhouse. As these unbelievable incidents increased, authorities and doctors began to investigate. More than 250 people were put under surveillance and 50 people were institutionalized because they could not be controlled.

Those who were institutionalized were not idle there either, there were even some who claimed that their heart had been dislodged and demanded that it be replaced.

In fact, 8 days after the events, a woman in the asylum screamed and threw herself down from the 2nd floor and started running after she fell. She claimed that she was an airplane.


Citizens Hospitalized in Mental Institution
Dr. Gabbai, Dr. Lisbonne and Dr. Pourquier, who investigated the events, wrote in their article "The starting point of the incident was that everyone was in a state after eating bread distributed from a bakery. The amount of bread eaten was the determining factor in people's mental balance. Those who ate less bread had symptoms such as nausea, severe headache and inability to sleep between 6 and 48 hours. Those who ate too much could not be controlled. When the insomnia (inability to sleep) disappeared in those who were mildly affected, we understood that the disease had also disappeared, but there were also those who were seriously and even fatally affected. These were the ones who could start going crazy after 10-12 days. The whole village was poisoned and some people were going mad. We think it was the ergot mixed in the bread that caused this."

As a result, 50 people became mentally ill and 7 people died. The baker Roch Briand was held responsible. Everything came to light after those cursed loaves of bread.

Research showed that the baker had mixed ergot mushrooms, the main ingredient of LSD, into the bread. LSD is the most powerful hallucinogen in the world.

But ergot still did not solve the mystery. Because there were still questions like "even if ergot mushroom is mixed into bread, can it have such a strong effect in its unprocessed form?". This led to the theory that perhaps LSD could have been mixed directly into the bread.


ed 100 kilometers away from the village. On the other hand, it was also known that this pharmaceutical company and the CIA worked together in MK-Ultra experiments.

LSD is such a drug that its effect is measured in drops. The most potent hallucinogen in the world, 297 milligrams of LSD was injected into an elephant and it died within seconds. Similarly, much smaller amounts can kill a person or cause them to lose their mind.