Spooktober 2026: Road Trip — The Possessions at Loudun
Dark Poutine. Proudly and creepily Canadian
Monday, October 5, 2026 - 1 hour 4 minutes
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
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