n southern France near Avignon was a quiet village on the Rhone called Pont Saint-Esprit where two bakeries tended to the inhabitants' daily need for bread.
The summer of 1951 was unusually wet, and that year's rye crop was expected to fall short. In August of that year,
one of the village bakers received a supply of strangely gray flour, but with the government strictly controlling flour distribution, he had no other means of making that morning's baguettes and proceeded to bake and sell his wares as usual. Over the course of a few weeks,
le pain maudit—"the cursed bread"—wreaked havoc in Pont Saint-Esprit.
Within 48 hours, some 230 villagers became violently ill. Initially their reactions to the bread resembled severe food poisoning, with people experiencing nausea and vomiting accompanied by days of insomnia. But a few fared far worse, experiencing wild hallucinations, convulsions and swollen limbs that felt as if they were burning, some turning gangrenous. "I have seen healthy men and women suddenly become terrorized, ripping their bedsheets, hiding themselves beneath their blankets to escape hallucinations," Mayor Albert Hubbard said to the United Press at the time. People leaped from windows to escape their visions. Some thought they were being eaten by tigers, others saw men with grinning skulls for heads. "I am dead and my head is made of copper and I have snakes in my stomach and they are burning me," villager Gabriel Veladaire repeatedly screamed before attempting to throw himself in the river.
Five people, including an otherwise healthy 25-year-old man, died.
