The Yanagawa High School

In a strange case of mass hysteria in the Yanagawa High School in the Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan, 26 girls fell ill at the same time.

At 10 p.m. this Monday, one of the girls private high school of Yanagawa shrieked and fell to the floor. Two other students from the same class suffered the same incident, followed by more children from other classes who came to examine the girl. Some of the students turned pale, and had authorities thinking what this mystery illness could be.

The  school immediately canceled all classes and let 26 afflicted children go home. After this, Vice Principal Shigemitsu Mori released an official statement:

“We don’t know why such an incident happened, but we need to take good care of the students. I’ll talk to them more to find out what happened.”

The incident went viral on social media, with theories such as a mass demonic possession, before psychiatrist Rika Kayama revealed that the students actually suffered a group panic attack.

“The only thing you can do [to avoid the recurrence of such incidents] is to distance yourself from people and topics that triggered such incidents. Rumors spread quickly in today’s society, through Twitter and other means, raising the possibility of panic attacks.”

Courtesy of Japan Times. What do you think? Leave your comments!