In the late 19th century, a rare and highly unusual neuropsychiatric condition was observed among a group of French-Canadian lumberjacks living in the Moosehead Lake region of northern Maine. Those affected exhibited an extreme and exaggerated startle reflex. When startled by a sudden movement or loud noise, they reacted with dramatic involuntary responses, such as leaping into the air, screaming, repeating words, or instantly obeying shouted commands. It was reported that the "jumpers" were primarily of French descent, born in Canada, and worked as lumbermen in the Maine woods.
The mystery of the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine first drew the attention of the scientific community in 1878, when prominent American neurologist George Miller Beard informed members of the American Neurological Association at its annual meeting that he had heard accounts of these lumberjacks and their unusual nervous condition. Two years later, Beard himself travelled to the Moosehead Lake region to see first-hand if the accounts were true. He wasn’t disappointed.
Lumberjacks at a Maine logging camp, circa 1900.
Beard investigated several jumpers:
In another case, a sixteen-year-old boy was playing with one of his mates when someone abruptly commanded him to “strike him.” Without hesitation, the boy complied, delivering a blow “very hard and explosively, with both hands at a time.” In another instance, a jumper was aboard a lake steamer when the ship’s whistle suddenly blared. Startled by the noise, he leapt so violently that he nearly struck his head on the deck above.I found two of the Jumpers employed about the hotel. With one of them, a young man twenty-seven years of age, I made the following experiments:
1. While sitting in a chair, with a knife in his hand, with which he was about to cut his tobacco, he was struck sharply on the shoulder, and told to "throw it." Almost as quick as the explosion of a pistol, he threw the knife, and it stuck in a beam opposite; at the same time he repeated the order "throw it" with a certain cry as of terror or alarm.
2. A moment after, while filling his pipe with tobacco, he was again slapped on the shoulder and told to "throw it." He threw the tobacco and the pipe on the grass, at least a rod away, with the same cry and the same suddenness and explosiveness of movement.
Such individuals were often subjected to cruel practical jokes. Onlookers would intentionally startle them and watch in amusement as they obeyed to simple commands such as jump, run or hit, sometimes to the point of self-injury.
One jumper was standing near a window when he was startled by the command “strike,” and he drove his fist right through the glass, severely cutting his hand. On another occasion, a jumper nearly cut his throat while shaving, when the door slammed suddenly behind him. “These Jumpers have been known to strike their fists against a red-hot stove; they have been known to jump into the fire, as well as into water; indeed, no painfulness or peril of position has any effect on them; they are as powerless as apoplectics or hysterics, if not more so,” wrote Beard.
A group of lumbermen pose at Russell Camp, a camp for loggers in Maine, circa 1900.
After observing and examining many jumpers, Beard concluded that jumping was a type of nervous disorder. In a paper published in 1881, Beard wrote:
Jumping is a psychical or mental form of nervous disease, and is of a functional character. Its best analogue is psychical or mental hysteria, the so-called ‘servant-girl hysteria,’ as known to us in modern days, and as very widely known during the epidemics of the middle ages.
Beard surmised that the syndrome of jumping might be tied to tickling:
This disease was probably an evolution of tickling. 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, which, by mental contagion, and by practice, and by inheritance, has ripened into the full stage of the malady as it appears at the present hour.
Jumping was also found to be strongly tied to families indicating a genetic condition.
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. In the family of another with whom I experimented there were four, all brothers. In the family of another of whom I obtained information, but did not study, there were three cases, an uncle, a mother, and a brother. In another family there were two boys, both Jumpers.
Although the phenomenon of jumping was most notably observed among French-Canadian lumberjacks, newspaper accounts from the late 1890s claimed that individuals of other ethnic backgrounds in North America also exhibited similar behaviours. These reports suggested that many ethnic groups, including Germans, Scandinavians, Americans, and Irishmen, that worked in the woods in isolation for long periods of time exhibit jumping.
Credit: Patten Lumbermen’s Museum
In addition to broadening the ethnic scope, newspaper accounts also expanded the supposed geographical range of the condition beyond that documented by medical professionals. Reports described jumpers not only in Maine but also in Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Michigan, and the Canadian Northwest. While these accounts lack the rigorous clinical observation of Beard’s original work, they do raise the possibility that similar behavioural patterns may have emerged independently in other lumbering communities, possibly as a result of environmental or occupational stressors.
Even more intriguingly, comparable syndromes have been reported in distant regions of the world. In Malaysia, a condition known as latah exhibits many of the same features—exaggerated startle responses, echolalia, echopraxia, and automatic obedience to commands. A similar condition known as myriachit has been documented among the Yakut people of Siberia.
Following the initial wave of interest sparked by Beard’s publications, reports on the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine largely disappeared from both scientific and popular literature for several decades. The phenomenon resurfaced in the 1960s, when Harold Stevens, a professor of neurology at George Washington University, documented three new cases. These included a French-Canadian man whose father had worked in the northern Maine woods—suggesting a possible familial or environmental link—and two women of Protestant Scotch-Irish-German descent from North Carolina, one of whom was the niece of the other. Stevens noted that the syndrome was “probably not confined to particular ethnic groups or geographic areas”.
Additional cases soon emerged. In 1967, Charles Kunkle, an associate neurologist at Maine Medical Center, reported having personally observed and examined 15 individuals exhibiting behaviours similar to those Beard had described nearly a century earlier.
A broader investigation was carried out by sociologist Gordon E. Moss, who conducted case studies of 41 individuals exhibiting jumping behaviours. Moss argued that the phenomenon did not appear to be hereditary nor confined to any particular demographic group. Jumping, he concluded, showed no consistent correlation with variables such as age, gender, class, educational background, occupation, or ethnicity. Moss proposed that the jumping behaviour arose as a response to a unique combination of social and physical stressors.
Lumberjacks in a bunkhouse. Credit: Langlade County Historical Society
In 1965, Reuben Rabinovitch, an assistant professor of neurology at McGill University, wrote a letter to the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal , where he described a children’s game he had witnessed in the Laurentian Mountains, north of Montreal. In this game, a child would secretly follow another, jab them in the ribs, and imitate the sound of a kicking horse. The “victim” was expected to respond by mimicking the sound, leaping into the air, and flinging their arms outward. This form of horseplay, he noted, often continued into adulthood, particularly in isolated villages or lumber camps where recreational outlets were scarce.
Rabinovitch concluded that the Jumping Frenchman syndrome was not a neurological disorder per se, but rather a conditioned reflex that developed out of the monotony and social isolation of life in lumber camps. According to this interpretation, the behaviour became institutionalized within a close-knit community as a form of interaction and entertainment. When the traditional logging camps gradually disappeared, so too did the jumping behaviour.
Further support for this view came in 1986, when two Canadian neurologists and a psychologist studied eight individuals in Quebec who exhibited jumping behaviours. The researchers found that all of the men had developed the condition during adolescence, shortly after beginning work in lumber camps. They reported being teased and provoked by other workers until the jumping behaviour became ingrained.
Based on this evidence, some scholars have argued that the 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.
The long and the short of it is that the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine may have more to do with human nature than with neurology. In the rough, close-knit world of lumber camps, where entertainment was scarce, a peculiar habit took hold, that slowly developed into a cultural quirk, or even a very strange joke that went too far. As the lifestyle that nurtured it faded, so did the jumping.
Nothing conclusive has yet been established. The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) still lists Jumping as “an extremely rare disorder” with “no specific therapy”. While it acknowledges the theory of operant conditioning, NORD notes that some researchers believe that jumping Frenchmen of Maine may be a somatic neurological disorder, caused by a gene mutation that occurs after fertilization and is not inherited from the parents or passed on to children.
The organization concludes that further research is needed to understand the exact causes and underlying mechanisms of the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, as well as other culturally specific startle disorders.
References:
# Mark Paul Richard. “A peculiar condition: A history of the Jumping Frenchmen Syndrome in scientific and popular
accounts”. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
# Stephen R. Whalen, Robert E. Bartholomew. “The Enigma of the ‘Jumping Frenchmen of Maine’”. Maine History
# George M. Beard. “Experiments With The "Jumpers" Of Maine”. Popular Science
# Jumping Frenchmen of Maine. National Organization for Rare Disorders
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