Nearly fifty years ago, the inhabitants of the southeastern French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit mysteriously went mad, enduring grotesque and horrifying hallucinations resulting in the deaths of five. Hundreds were affected with many committed to asylums.
The so-called “Mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread)” still haunts the people of Pont-Saint-Esprit, located in Gard, France.
On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.
One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.
Time magazine wrote at the time: “Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead.”
However, investigative journalist H. P. Albarelli Jr. claims to have found evidence proving the nightmarish incident was a covert, sinister, mind control experiment led by the CIA and the U.S. Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) located at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the originating town of the deadly spores used in the more recent anthrax attacks. The outbreak was accomplished by spiking local bread with LSD, a powerful hallucinogen.