Case file · Witch trials
The possessed of Morzine
From 1857, scores of women and girls in the Alpine village of Morzine (then in Savoy) fell into convulsions, cursed in strange voices and declared themselves possessed.
1857 CE · 46.18, 6.71 · status: official
The account
Exorcisms failed. After annexation to France, the government sent the psychiatrist Adolphe Constans in 1861, with troops, and dispersed the sufferers to hospitals; relapses came until about 1873.
The sceptical view
It is studied as a classic 19th-century epidemic of hysteria in an isolated community.