So, evidently there’s a perceived health syndrome called “Eclipse anxiety” or “eclipse sickness”, in which the mentally ill have behavior changes when there’s an eclipse. It’s akin to the claims that a full moon causes an uptick in emergency room visits: NASA says it’s all just confirmation bias while ER staff swear to it. Evidently, there’s a correlation with eclipses as well.
That article made me remember that I have my own anecdotal eclipse evidence from 2017. I didn’t mention it at the time because of the nagging fear my mentally ill brother Dave would find this blog.
In the morning of the 2017 eclipse I woke up in a hotel in Cuba, MO, to an eight-screen long text message from Dave. ranting that if Gary didn’t stop controlling me, Dave was going to pay us a visit and get rid of Gary. Dave usually made vague threats, but this was the first time he’d directly targeted Gary.
I read as much as I could before another message popped up at the bottom, suggesting that though Dave and I couldn’t watch this eclipse together this year, we would in 2024, because somehow Gary wouldn’t be in the picture.
Gary dismissed it, and when I confronted Dave that evening, he said he didn’t remember typing anything. I kept the text for years, just in case. I worried every time Dave invited himself to my house for this year’s eclipse. And I’m not going to travel to see the totality this time, even though Dave is dead and not a threat. It’s just that I still remember the eclipse experience so well from last time, and it will be the same.
As I say, real evidence for “eclipse sickness” is slim. But anecdotal evidence is compelling.
2 responses to “TWIL: Eclipse Sickness”
That Dave story (even without much background on my part) is truly horrifying. I am glad for you that he is dead (which, while it seems weird to me, is also true)
Kate – it was pretty horrifying at the time, and for years after. Luckily, that day there was totality to distract me.