Outstanding Documentaries: L'histoire mystérieuse du pain maudit de Pont-Saint-Esprit (2018)

 

L'histoire mystérieuse du pain maudit de Pont-Saint-Esprit, or "The Mysterious Story of the Cursed Bread of Pont-Saint-Esprit," is a very short 2018 documentary by Brut, an online media company out of Paris, France.  While the movie is in French, it's very easy to translate & can be watched with English captions turned on if you please.  The visuals--which include photography, colorful animation & old silent movie clips--are utterly entrancing & will leave you wishing this was a full-length doc.

The plot revolves around an obscure unsolved mystery:  In 1951, villagers in Pont Saint Esprit (literally "Holy Spirit Bridge") in Southern France were stricken with hallucinations, violent panic attacks & psychotic symptoms resulting in suicide and major self-harm.  To this day the cause is unknown.  For decades it was believed to be a case of ergotism caused by "cursed" bread contaminated with the parasitic fungi ergot, but now we know that may not be the full story.  Listening to the victims recount their harrowing stories is beyond intriguing.  One man states:  "I went 21 days without sleeping. My nights, I spent them counting. To murmur the word “saxophile” which rhymes absolutely with nothing, without stopping."

Ergot of rye

Yikes.  Ergotism is caused by Claviceps purpura, a fungus that grows on rye.  Symptoms include not only psychedelic hallucinations but physical atrocities like gangrene, peeling of the affected limbs or digits, seizures/convulsions and loss of affected body parts.  As many drug nerds will know, ergot is the precursor to lysergic acid diethylamide: the drug better known as LSD, which does not cause these nasty peripheral side effects.  It's also used in the production of some Parkinson's & migraine medications.

This doctor believes the Pont Saint Esprit episode was a classic case of "mal des ardents" (the burning disease), aka ergotism.   Between 150-250 people suffered severe psychotic symptoms in all, & animals that ate the bread also developed the convulsive illness.  This means the cursed loaf was almost certainly the source.  There were 5 to 7 fatalities in all, for which bread miller Maurice Maillet faced charges of manslaughter, though he was freed when tests on the flour didn't reveal any known toxin. Mercury & nitrogen trichloride were also looked at as possible causes. 

...and then there's the "other" theory.

Frank Olsen, the man who knew too much

In 2009 American journalist Hank Abarelli believed he saw a link between the story & the death of Frank Olsen, Biochemist for the CIA.  Olsen had gone to France a few months before the Pont Saint Esprit affair & began acting strangely upon his return to the U.S., when he told his wife he'd made a "terrible mistake" but didn't elaborate further.  He intended to leave his job at the CIA but died after falling out a window in New York in 1953 when he was given LSD without his consent.  Abarelli discovered a CIA document labeled "Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F.Olson Files. SO Span/France Operation file, inclusive Olson. Intel files. Hand carry to Belin - tell him to see to it that these are buried."  😱

In addition, the Sandoz laboratories were located only a few hundred kilometers from Pont Saint Esprit.  Sandoz is the company that manufactured pharmaceutical grade LSD for military experiments in those days.  It was the only place on Earth where LSD was being produced as it wasn't a popular recreational drug yet.  Albarelli later got access to a CIA report from 1954 about a meeting between a CIA agent and a representative of the Sandoz Chemical Company.  According to the agent, the Sandoz rep stated: "The Pont-Saint-Esprit 'secret' is that it was not the bread at all... For weeks the French tied up our laboratories with analyses of bread. It was not the grain ergot, it was a diethylamide-like compound.”  

Say WHAT?!

A Third Option?

St. Anthony's Fire (ergotism) induces fiery hallucinations

Of course that leads us to a 3rd option:  that it was neither LSD nor ergot that caused the villagers' madness but some man-made ("diethylamide-like") hallucinogen created by the CIA, or possibly a neurotoxin like mercury from the bread production line.  But with mercury you'd expect the children to have lasting or fatal effects since heavy metals are the most harmful to their developing brains.  In fact this is the opposite of what happened--it was mostly elderly folks who died & the kids who recovered first from the hallucinogenic effects.  Other cases of mass mercury poisoning such as Minamata Disease & the Iraq "Pink Death" Grain Poisoning outbreak of 1971 resulted in much higher death tolls, and lead poisoning is similarly detrimental to long-term health of survivors (particularly children).  There were also no known cases of teratogenic effects or birth defects in subsequent generations as can happen with dioxins & heavy metals like mercury. 

While metal poisoning can cause hallucinations, they are generally not as pronounced as neurological symptoms like loss of balance, narrowed visual field, burning/tingling sensations in the skin (paraesthesia), convulsions & tremor, and survivors of heavy metal poisoning are also more likely to incur lasting physical effects like hair and tooth loss and kidney damage.  The vast majority of survivors of this incident recovered fully.  So I think it's safe to rule out heavy metals. 

Whatever caused this trip was a long-acting hallucinogen, and lots of it.  

Frank Olsen was exhumed in 1994 upon request by his son Eric, who was suspicious that his death was not caused by an accidental fall.  Indeed, some strange injuries were found on his body that pointed to foul play and the possibility he was pushed out that window.  Eric Olson claims that the forensic evidence points to a known CIA assassination method included in their first manual that says:  "The most efficient accident in simple assassination is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface." The Olsen family was awarded $750,000 by the U.S. government in a wrongful death suit & received apologies from President Gerald Ford & then-CIA Director William Colby...  As close to a confession as anyone will ever get, I suppose.

Whether you believe the Pont Saint Esprit incident was caused by a bad case of food poisoning or something more sinister, L'histoire mystérieuse du pain maudit de Pont-Saint-Esprit is definitely worth checking out.  I recommend watching it at 3:00 a.m. with the lights out like I did for maximum creepy effect.