Around August 24, 2026, a group of children from El Corpus, in Honduras’s southern Choluteca department, was riding home from a soccer match when several of them collapsed. According to the Honduran news site TuNota, around nine minors, about four boys and several girls, were taken to Hospital General del Sur, some with help from passersby.

The group’s director, identified only as Pedro, said some passengers reported seeing a woman with an extremely strange face. One boy said he saw a goblin, a duende in local folklore, perched in a tree. Others mentioned skulls and other figures. Some of the girls fainted first, then some of the boys. Symptoms included fainting, a severe attack of nerves and difficulty breathing.

Pedro pointed to more ordinary pressures too: panic spreading through a crowded bus, high temperatures and a rough two-hour ride before reaching paved road. He said the situation was under control after the children were treated, and that nothing like it had happened on earlier trips.

No doctor, health official or police statement has been published, and no medical cause was reported. The children’s ages were not given.

Honduras has seen similar episodes before. In 2018, health officials attributed a wave of fainting and convulsions among people in Guajiquiro to collective hysteria, also called mass psychogenic illness: real symptoms that spread through a group under stress.