After 50 years of suspicions over the cursed bread of the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit and its people's hallucinations, a journalist found CIA in the background of the tragedy.

presstv | In summer 1951, the whole quiet village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously affected by psychosis and hallucinations among its residents.

The out break of acute psychotic episodes and various physical symptoms killed at least seven residents, and admitted about 50 to asylums. The mysterious incident left hundreds of people afflicted.

Hank Albarelli, an investigative journalist, has claimed hallucination occurred for a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army's top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

He traced the alimentary intoxication to cursed bread. Albarelli discovered the US had poisoned the bread with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) as part of a secret experiment.

The journalist came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of Frank Olson, a biochemist working for SOD. He fell from a 13th floor window two years after the cursed bread incident.

Albarelli published the result of his investigations in a book titled A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments in 2009.