A mind control experiment conducted by America's Central Investigative Agency is being blamed for a mysterious disease that caused an entire French village to go temporarily mad 50 years ago.

On August 16, 1951, hundreds of residents in picturesque Pont-Saint-Esprit village were suddenly struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations, and at least five people died.

In the horror scenes an 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs, The Sun reports.

For decades the bizarre incident was blamed on a local baker whose baguettes had been poisoned with either a psychedelic mould or mercury.

But new evidence suggests that the CIA may have spiked bread with LSD in a mind control experiment.

The incident was investigated by a Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz who have been revealed as the same people who secretly supplied the CIA with LSD, the paper says.

Journalist H P Albarelli Jr came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of a biochemist who fell from a 13th floor window two years after the "Cursed Bread" incident, it adds.

According to one transcribed note, a Sandoz official mentions the "secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit" during his conversation with a CIA agent and explains that it was not "at all" caused by mould but by diethylamide - the D in LSD.

According to US news reports, French intelligence chiefs have demanded the CIA explain itself. (ANI)