We’re back with another edition of Urban Legend: Fact or Fiction. In this chapter, we are going to find out if fright can turn your hair white. So strap in for this hair-raising read.
The Story
We’ve all seen it, a story where the protagonist goes through A LOT of pain and trauma. Only for them to wake up with white hair. Like Nancy Thompson’s highlight courtesy of Freddy Kruger in “Nightmare on Elm Street,” or Nadine Cross’ fully white tresses caused by Randall Flagg in 1994’s “The Stand.”
It’s a plot point or ending that is almost as well-worn as “and then I woke up.” And as we all know, if it’s repeated in movies or on TV, it must be true! So today we are going to dig and find out if stress and fright can suddenly turn your hair white.
Themes
You’ve got to admit, there are only so many ways storytellers can express fear in a character. Screaming, rapid breathing, quick eye movements, and backing away can all show subtle or intense terror. But none of those are quite as visually striking as watching a character’s hair suddenly lose all of its color. To some degree, this legend can be left at a simple narrative device, but like most things, there is a bit more to it.
When this legend first originated, hair dye didn’t have anywhere near the longevity that it does now. There is a belief that some of the earlier examples of this phenomenon could have been people mistaking someone’s hair dye washing out.
As well as the possibility that they did realize it was hair dye and are telling the tale to shame them. Altering the color of your hair was often considered vain and was significantly more stigmatized than it is today. Saying someone’s hair suddenly turned white is going to get around town a lot faster than just saying they dye their hair.
Good old societal pressure rears its ugly head in this series, once again.
Variants
The disorder that causes hair to suddenly turn white is called Canities subita, AKA Marie Antoinette syndrome or Thomas More syndrome. Despite its namesake, the earliest example supposedly happened in 83 AD to a 17-year-old Jewish scholar who was appointed chief of the main Israeli Talmudic academy. After his wife remarked that he looked too young for the job, he suddenly developed 18 rows of white hair. The anomaly was explained as “a consequence of strenuous studying.” And by far the most intense way to prove your spouse wrong that we’ve ever heard of.
Keep in mind that many of these accounts happened when record-keeping was… dodgy. In some cases, separating historic facts from tall tales about well-known figures becomes impossible. Take the examples given below with a large grain of salt.
- In 1534, Sir Thomas Moore was imprisoned in the Tower of London after refusing to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn. He was then sentenced to death after refusing to avow the supremacy of Henry VIII over the pope. His hair allegedly turned white the night before he was to be killed.
- In 1793, it’s rumored that Marie Antoinette‘s auburn hair turned white the night before her execution.
- In 1901, famed sharpshooter Annie Oakley had her hair suddenly turn white at 41 after a horrific train accident. Though some versions chalk it up to a really hot bath.
Pop Culture
- 1897 – “Dracula” by Bram Stoker – Jonathan Harker’s hair begins to go grey after his imprisonment at the Count’s castle. This is repeated in 1992’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
- 1919 – “The Doll,” Puppenfabrikant Hilarius’ (Victor Janson) hair begins to turn white when he learns what happened to his daughter. Only for it to revert to its original color once he finds out that she is safe.
- 1935 – “Bride of Frankenstein,” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) has white streaks on either side of her updo hairstyle. These highlights are attributed to the shock of her creation/rebirth.
- 1971 – “The Ωmega Man,” the shock of being infected by the vampiric disease is enough to strip its victims of their hair color.
- 1979 – “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Tobias Ragg’s hair changes after being locked in Mrs. Lovett’s basement and learning what’s in the pies. The 2007 film adaptation has Sweeney (Johnny Depp) develop a white streak after fifteen years of hell in Australia.
- 1984 – “Nightmare on Elm Street,” Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) gets a white highlight, after being terrorized in her dreams by Freddy Kruger (Robert Englund).
- 1990 – “IT” Henry Bowers’ (Jarred Blancard) hair turns white, and he is driven mad after seeing Pennywise in its true form.
- 1992 – “Candyman,” Billy’s (Ted Raimi) hair goes white after he sees the aftermath of his girlfriend Clara (Marianna Elliott) being slaughtered by the Candyman.
- 1994 – “The Stand,” Nadine Cross’s (Laura San Giacomo) hair begins to grey, then becomes fully white within the span of a few days. All while she is also driven insane by the pure evil that is Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan).
- 1995 – “Se7en” Victor aka the Sloth Victim (Michael Reid MacKay) has his brown hair turn grey while being tortured by John Doe (Kevin Spacey)
- 2005 – “Constantine,” one of the titular character’s helpers, has his hair instantly turn white after seeing a demon exorcised out of a little girl.
Is it Real?
No, your hair won’t suddenly turn white from fear because that is scientifically impossible.
“It’s appealing on a literary or poetic level that a person’s experience could be so severe or terrifying that they age overnight,” explains Dr. David Orentreich, associate director of the Orentreich Medical Group in New York and assistant clinical professor in the department of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “But you can’t lose pigment in your hair. Once it leaves your scalp, it’s non-living; it’s dead.”
However, there is one disorder that may make it appear that way. Alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition that attacks hair follicles. This causes the follicles’ pigmentation to fall out, leaving only non-pigmented white or grey hairs behind. While this is a gradual process, alopecia areata causes most afflicted to lose their hair entirely
“If someone has salt-and-pepper hair – a mixture of gray and black – and they develop alopecia areata, the dark hairs can fall out quickly,” Dr. Orentreich explains. “So it appears that they’ve gone gray overnight.”
Stress is often a trigger for autoimmune disorders, which can give the impression that the two events are more directly linked. “It’s conceivable for a person who has a tendency for alopecia areata to go through a stressful experience which makes it flair up and the first thing that happens is their dark hair falls out,” he says. “And that can happen quickly – in days or weeks – leaving just the gray hair.”
Hair And Stress
Even without an autoimmune disorder, stress can cause people to prematurely grey, but gradually as their hair grows out. A team at Harvard University, led by Dr. Ya-Chieh Hsu, conducted a study about the effects of extreme levels of stress on the sympathetic nervous system. This system dictates how our body’s involuntary responses to dangerous or stressful situations.
Our hair color is determined by melanocyte cells, which come from melanocyte stem cells (MeSCs). As we age, these cells begin to deplete naturally, causing hair to lose pigmentation. The team at Harvard exposed mice to different stressors like pain, restraint, and psychological stress during different phases of hair growth.
Each of these unpleasant stimuli caused a reduction in MeSCs, gradually leading to patches of white hair.
“When we started to study this, I expected that stress was bad for the body—but the detrimental impact of stress that we discovered was beyond what I imagined,” explains Dr. Hsu. “After just a few days, all of the melanocyte stem cells were lost. Once they’re gone, you can’t regenerate pigments anymore. The damage is permanent.”
But Can It Come Back?
While Hsu’s statement does imply hair color can never be regained, we did find threads with commenters offering anecdotal evidence that they/know people who did. Each one effectively saying that a person experiencing long-term stress had parts of their hair turn white over weeks/months. Once the stressor was gone, they began to regain their original hair pigmentation.
And both the study and these commenters may be right. It’s possible that the stressors present in Dr. Hsu’s study were different from those experienced by the commenters. Not to mention the fact that everyone experiences stress in different ways.
The bottom line, dear reader, is that fear and stress can cause your hair to turn white, just not overnight. We’ll call this one semi-true true though, since the two events can be clearly connected. So, hyper-focusing on time frames just seems like splitting hairs.
