Phuket
Khaosod is reporting that a group of high school students in Phuket succumbed en-masse to hysteria this week, resulting in the hospitalization of several students and the mass religious cleansing of the entire class.
Students at Wat Suwankiriwong School in Katoo District had assembled in the schoolyard for a salutation of the national flag when several students started to scream and lose consciousness. Panic swept through the student body’s ranks and soon the whole class was indulging in similar histrionics.
Twenty-two students required hospitalization, though school officials looked to non-medical sources as well in their efforts to staunch the outbreak.
Both a Buddhist monk and a Muslim cleric were brought in to give the class a ritual cleansing, after which, the school staff reported, students gradually regained their senses.
According to rumor, hysteria spread through the student body after one girl left her clothes to dry in a spot that the students considered to be haunted. One student later claimed to have seen a demon riding on a fellow student’s shoulder, which set off the hysteria ensued.
