Hello,
I am relatively new to Dwarf Fortress, but, with help from the wiki, and a great deal of persistence, I have got most of the basics worked out. However, earlier today I ran across one situation which has thus far left me completely flummoxed: I began a new fortress, got the fundamentals taken care of, and set out to accelerate my metal industry with a magma forge. I constructed the forge and instructed a few dwarves to begin work, and left them to it (inefficient design meant long trips to fetch material, that I planned to fix later). I was a bit consternated to receive a notice that one or two of my workers had died there under violent circumstances. A brief glance over the logs seemed to show a baby fighting and I dismissed it as an untimely tantrum that would die down with the infant's death. However, the notifications (and the corpses) kept piling up and I checked the logs more thoroughly only to discover that it seemed the dwarves were getting into scuffles with the loose boulders themselves, leftover from when I had dug out the area. Furthermore, as dwarves would go to retrieve and bury the corpses, items and articles of clothing dropped by the unfortunate victims on one particularly "haunted" square would also participate in the melee, including one especially vicious pair of trousers that seemed to have strangled the mayor. I was at a total loss as to what should be done, and ordered more dwarves to dump the debris in an futile attempt to clear the sinister tile, but they too succumbed to the onslaught of possessed paraphernalia. A tantrum spiral ensued, dwarves began boxing each others' brains out, quite literally, and the fortress was lost shortly thereafter.
My question: what in blazes was going on there?? I couldn't find anything remotely resembling that situation on the wiki or elsewhere on the forums... I didn't receive any notices about ghosts, and the environment was "Calm", so it couldn't have been an actual haunting, could it? I am just completely at a loss here. If any one could shed any light on the situation, it would be greatly appreciated.