This report, clearly not from a Christian church and happening a lot earlier than the outbreak of Rodney Howard Browne’s “Laughter Epidemic” that hit the churches in the 90’s, show conclusively that compulsive laughter is either mass hysteria or actually demonic in origin.
Notice that this effect spread (as the revivalists claim today) “like a virus” from one person to another. Yet in the churches this is claimed to be a work of the Holy Spirit! How deluded would you have to be to accept this as from God?
Tanganyika laughter epidemic
The Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962 occurred in or near the village of Kashasha on the western coast of Lake Victoria in the modern nation of Tanzania near the border of Kenya. It is possible that, at the start of the incident, a joke was told in a boarding school, and that this joke triggered a small group of students to start laughing. The laughter perpetuated itself, far transcending its original cause. The school from which the epidemic sprang was shut down; the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off. The following symptoms were reported on an equally massive scale as the reports of the laughter itself: pain, fainting, respiratory problems, rashes, and attacks of crying.
What's Happening...? 