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Book Review: The Arctic Hysterias

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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The History of Poblochto

Every Arctic explorer from about 1900 to 1930 had the most amazing stories about Poblochto. Every Eskimovillage he encountered would have jaw-dropping incidents, sometimes caught on grainy black and white film. It seemed like one of the defining features of Arctic life. Folks could barely find any. The ten or so cases he scrounged up after years of searching probably vaguely qualified but seemed less intense than the explorer's descriptions. A few seemed to fade into more Western disorders like schizophrenia. And this was in the 1970s. I can't figure out what it would mean for the whole thing to be fake. Some writers say that Eskimo oral tradition doesn't talk about

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