Spooktober 2026: Road Trip — The Possessions at Loudun

Episode 439: In September 1632, plague was tearing through Loudun, France, when the Ursuline nuns began reporting apparitions, unexplained blows and violent physical attacks. During a series of exorcisms, the voices speaking through the women named a local priest: Urbain Grandier. Grandier was intelligent, outspoken and surrounded by scandal. He had also made powerful enemies. As clergy, physicians and royal officials entered the case, reports from inside the convent became part of a much larger struggle involving religion, medicine, politics and the law. In this episode, we examine the Possessions at Loudun and the people who tried to explain them. Were the nuns experiencing a supernatural attack, a shared psychological illness or something shaped by suggestion and institutional pressure? What happens when investigators settle on an answer before they finish asking questions? Sources The Possession at Loudun by Michel de Certeau The Devils of Loudun by Des Niau Documents pour servir à l’histoire médicale des possédées de Loudun by Gabriel LeguéSœur Jeanne des Anges, supérieure des Ursulines de Loudun: autobiographie Possédées de Loudun, Affaire des (1632–1634) “The Possessions at Loudun” by Craig E. Stephenson “La possession de Loudun (1632–1637) by Sophie Houdard “Mass Sociogenic Illness” by Robert E. Bartholomew and Simon Wessely “Divine Punishment or Disease?” The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley Jeanne des Anges bibliography and manuscript record “Edict of Nantes” “Tarantism, Dancing Mania and Demonopathy: The Anthro-political Aspects of ‘Mass Psychogenic Illness’” Looking Back: The possessions at Loudun | Stephenson The Possession at Loudun by Michel de Certeau Malleus Maleficarum Index | Internet Sacred Text Archive The Devils of Loudun by Edmund Goldsmid, free ebook download | Global Grey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices