The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
7 comments
·June 22, 2025emmelaich
xattt
This, and also possible inter-generational family violence from a time when children were meant to neither be seen or heard.
> In the family of one of those with whom I experimented there were five Jumpers, the father, two sons, and two grandchildren of the respective ages of four and seven years…
yujzgzc
> Jumping Frenchman syndrome is not a medical condition or a case of collective hysteria, but a classic case of operant conditioning —a learned behaviour reinforced by social stimuli—that developed in a closed community.
Sounds like religion
novosel
[flagged]
kylecazar
You're saying they are "jumpy" because they are rapists? Not sure I follow
novosel
Being raped.
JPLeRouzic
You may be right, some text snippets are suspicious like this one:
"Some, if not all, of the Jumpers, are ticklish—exceedingly so—and are easily irritated by touching them in sensitive parts of the body. It would appear that in the evenings, in the woods, after the day's toil, in lieu of most other sources of amusement, the lumbermen have teased each other, by tickling, and playing, and startling timid ones, until there has developed this jumping"
If you've seen fellow workers being attacked by bears or smashed by falling trees you'd be pretty jumpy too. Abrupt noise after hours of near silence, followed by trauma.