Possessed women in Morzine, France

Between 1857 and 1870, in Morzine, France, a couple of miles away from my Alpine hometown, dozens of women fell victims of seizures, hallucinations, and mass hysteria. All claimed they were possessed by the devil. In these days, Morzine was totally isolated community from modernity and abjectly poor. My parents have told me at length about that story and even in the 1960s, continued to be terrorized by these stories of witchcraft, which did not fail to affect my young imagination.

It's only this summer that I took the time to read a number of books on this subject that a young lady from my hometown valley was gracious enough to pass along to me. Having spent a quarter of a century next to Morzine in a culture deeply influenced by the Catholic religion and widespread beliefs in witchcraft, until the middle of last century, I can appreciate all the trauma caused by these extraordinary events and I'm even surprised that this crisis could be solved by imposing modern scientific reasoning over popular superstition at a time when the science of psychology was still in its infancy.

I am also pleased to see how France – that had recently become a secular country – was, over 150 years ago, much more advanced than some of our American states are today in sorting out irrational faith-based beliefs and scientific knowledge. I came to the conclusion that some significant Morzine public servants had shown exceptional courage, both in terms of their intellectual independence and physical resistance in standing up against continued attacks and irrational pressures.

Of mice and men

I should rather say “Of rats and men” not to paraphrase John Steinbeck’s book title in order to evoke a cultural rift at Morzine, the main town near my home village of Montriond, France, where I was raised. In those days, religion was fiercely rooted into Morzine’s culture, with a mixture of superstition and sorcery that came long before this once inaccessible valley was evangelized by the local monks. 

Morzine had to deal already with its unruly bunch of possessed, hysterical women and also had to wrestle with two distinct, opposed factions, fracturing its community, the red rats and the white rats. 

Again, Morzine stood in a dead-end valley, in this remote part of Haute-Savoie, its back right up against the ridge defining the Swiss border. The river Dranse ran through Morzine, with its right bank, where City Hall, the church and Avoriaz ski area are located, and the left bank where La Crusaz, the new main square, Nyon and the Pleney ski areas are situated. 

In that setting, the inhabitant of the right bank were known as “les rats blancs” (the white rats) and those of the left bank as “les rats rouges” (the red rats). 

The “rats blancs” had the reputation of being overly pious, conservative but also by some, devious as well as consumed by business schemes and profits, while the “rats rouges” were more like peasants and generally more progressive. 

The two clans quarreled quasi-permanently and inter-marriages between rats blancs and rats rouges were quite rare, if not unthinkable. 

Today, under the “British Occupation” of the entire region, things have mellowed a bit, but it’s rare that someone still blames a rat of some color for something bad or unethical happening around town. 

Since I’m not too clear on that subject, I plan to study it further, and I will let you know if and when I’m able to provide you with a definitive explanation of that long quarrel between white and red… rodents! Jul 20, 2011