Daniel Specklin

Officials made spaces available where the afflicted could keep dancing.

Daniel Specklin's later chronicle says arrangements were made for dancing in two public market areas with people hired to dance alongside the sufferers.

Musicians with drums and pipes were brought in, essentially giving people who apparently couldn't stop dancing professional accompaniment.

Try to imagine living across the street from this.

And this is probably where we should talk about one of the most famous parts of the story, because you've probably heard that people were literally dancing themselves to death.

You'll often see, like, articles online claiming, at the height of the outbreak, 15 people were dying every day from exhaustion, heart attacks, or strokes, and you'll see claims that dozens or sometimes even hundreds of people died before the dancing stopped.

There are historical sources that describe deaths, including later chronicles, and Daniel Specklin's account said that, quote, many danced themselves to death.

But the surviving contemporary Strasbourg civic records don't really give us a documented death toll.