I’m as skeptical as you are but your hypothesis makes no sense. You’d have to take an exceptional amount of potent hallucinogens to have an experience like the one described in the article, let alone share such an experience with others in such vivid recalled detail.

I have no conclusive evidence of course, just positing a hypothesis.

re: amount you'd have to consume, "entire families would find themselves afflicted with either symptoms of burning and eventual gangrene in the hands and feet or with epileptic-like convulsions, headaches and hallucinations." [1]

re: timing, ergot tends to thrive in summer after cold winters followed by damp springs. March is a bit early, but not out of the question.

re: wide-spread, ergot outbreaks affected huge populations all at once. [2]

For what it's worth there's a decent chance that ergot poisoning may be responsible for the Salem Witch Trials. [1]

The best argument I could find against my case is that it was rare in the UK as the climate is less favorable to rye [2].

> ...let alone share such an experience with others in such vivid recalled detail.

It's an acid trip. Ask someone whose done acid. They'll tell you exactly what they experienced.

[1] https://asm.org/Articles/2018/November/From-Poisoning-to-Pha...

[2] https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2017/has-ergot-altered-events-worl...

From the fine article:

> On the night of March 6, 1716, people all over England witnessed a bloody war unfolding in the sky.

> the aurora was bright enough to read by

Aurora. Visible across the country. Rare in England, hence the amazement.

Is "aurora" a term used at the time, or was it added later by people who thought they knew better?

'Aurora borealis" seems to have begun appearing in print at rougghly this period:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=aurora+boreali...

References prior to 1714 (daate attributions may be inaccurate):

https://www.google.com/search?q="aurora%20borealis"&tbm=bks&...

The question is one of revisionist history. Did the people writing of the event at the time recognize it for what it was? Or did a later transcription of the event substitute their current understanding and lose the confusion surrounding the original?

At least some reports at the time were of heavenly armies and other fantastic things. So at the time the phenomenon was not described (at least universally) as aurora.

The article - written much later - assumes that it was in fact an aurora. The comment I replied to proposed "tl;dr: IMO they were probably high on wacky loaf." Which is an alternate explanation that doesn't really match the fact that this was seen all over the country on the same night, and not other nights.

Which happened to affect all sorts of people across a country, for several days, all at the same time, which they recorded in various writings?

Are you sure you've thought this out?

Nope, I’m not at all sure :) just throwing my hat in.