The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic

In 1962, uncontrollable laughter spread through a school and then an entire region, closing schools for months — real, documented, and still not fully explained.

In January 1962, an outbreak of uncontrollable laughter began among students at a girls' school in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), spreading to nearby villages and affecting hundreds of people over several months. Schools were forced to close, and the episode remains one of the most well-documented cases of mass psychogenic illness on record.

✓documented

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Quick facts

→The outbreak began among just a few students at a boarding school and eventually affected an estimated 1,000 people across the region.
→Symptoms included uncontrollable laughing fits, but also crying, rashes, fainting, and respiratory problems in some cases.
→The affected school was forced to close for several months, and the laughter spread as students returned home to their villages.
→No toxin, pathogen, or environmental contaminant was ever identified as a physical cause.

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Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic (event)

1962 outbreak of mass psychogenic illness that began at a Tanzanian girls' school and spread to affect roughly 1,000 people.

→ began at → Kashasha girls' school✓documented

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Kashasha girls' school (location)

Tanzanian boarding school where the laughter epidemic began in January 1962.

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