A unique way to vent frustration

The strange ritual of shouting at 10pm in Sweden, the phlogista scream or ‘phlogista scream’ is now a regular word and has an interesting story behind it.

Flogesta is a place near Uppsala, Sweden, where a large number of local and foreign students live. Almost every day at ten o’clock people open the windows of the house and shout loudly and try to reduce their depression and mental stress.

In normal circumstances, if you hear someone screaming at night, you get scared, but in the Uppsala area, this is a common scene that has been going on for the past 40 years. Uppsala is home to a huge university, and its students go out on a daily night to relieve their stress. Thus it has become a regular ritual of the university.

No one knows how this ritual started, but it is said that the first time in the 1970s at the University of Lund in Sweden, students began to scream to relieve their depression and this trend reached Uppsala. The shouting continued until 2006 and then suddenly stopped. Since then, a small number of students have tried to revive the ritual and now some people shout at ten o’clock at night. Now, every night at exactly ten o’clock, the people and students of Flogista open their windows and stick their heads out and still make a loud noise to lighten their hearts.