By Todd Hayen

On August 16, 1951, the quiet town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France was struck by a bizarre outbreak. Residents suddenly experienced severe symptoms: nausea, insomnia, and vivid hallucinations.

People reported seeing terrifying visions—snakes crawling out of their stomachs, fire engulfing their bodies, or blood dripping from the walls of their homes. Some cases were extreme: an 11-year-old boy attempted to strangle his grandmother, a man jumped from a window claiming he was an airplane, and others were restrained in straitjackets or chained to their beds.

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As I remember the story, the outbreak was linked to bread from a bakery run by a local baker. Doctors and investigators concluded that the rye flour used in the bread was contaminated with ergot (claviceps purpurea), a fungus known historically for causing ergotism, or “St. Anthony’s Fire.” Ergot contains alkaloids similar to LSD, which could explain the hallucinations. This explanation was published in the British Medical Journal shortly after the event and became the prevailing theory for decades.

However, in 2009, Hank P. Albarelli Jr. reignited interest in the case with his book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, claiming the incident was not a natural occurrence but a deliberate CIA experiment. While researching the death of Frank Olson—a CIA biochemist who died in 1953 under suspicious circumstances after working on LSD-related projects—Albarelli uncovered documents suggesting the agency had spiked the town’s food with LSD as part of its Cold War mind-control program, MKULTRA (or its precursor, Project SPAN).

Read full article here:

https://off-guardian.org/2025/04/26/maybe-its-in-the-water/