According to belief that has persisted since ancient times, the aura is a radiance from the “energy field” that supposedly emanates from and surrounds all living things. It is perceived not by ordinary vision but by clairvoyance. Although “no evidence has been found to prove its existence” (Guiley 1991), the concept has thrived as pseudoscience. For example, in his 1911 book, The Human Atmosphere, Dr. Walter J. Kilner claimed he could not only see the aura and use it for medical diagnoses, but he also accepted the validity of nonexistent “N-rays” and clairvoyance. The British Medical Journal rightly scoffed.

Today self-professed “medical intuitives” like Caroline Myss (1997) claim to describe the nature of people's physical diseases by reading their "energy field.” Thus Myss “can make recommendations for treating their condition on both a physical and spiritual level.” She calls this supposedly auric process “energy medicine,” but offers no scientific evidence to substantiate her alleged powers. (New Age magazine stated Myss no longer gives readings, and quoted me as terming the practice “offensive and dangerous” [Koontz 2000, 66, 102].)

The human body does, in fact, give off certain radiations, including weak electromagnetic emanations (from the electrical activity of the nerves), chemical emissions (some of which may be detected, for instance, as body odor), sonic waves (from the physical actions within the body), etc. Paranormalists sometimes equate these radiations with the aura (Permutt 1988, 57-58), but they do not represent a single, unified phenomenon, nor have they been shown to have the mystical properties attributed to auras.

If psychics could actually see the purported energy fields, one wonders why, as Guiley (1991) observes, their composition “is the subject of conflicting opinions.” She states: “No two clairvoyants see exactly the same aura. Some say they see the entire aura, divided into different layers or bodies, while others say they see only parts of the aura.” In fact, tests of psychics' abilities to see the alleged radiant emanations have repeatedly met with failure. One test, for example, involved placing either one or two persons in a completely dark room and asking the alleged psychic to state how many auras she saw. Only chance results were obtained (Loftin 1990). James Randi conducted another test for a television special, offering $100,000 for successful results. The psychic challenger selected ten people she maintained had clearly visible auras, and agreed that the auras would extend above the screens behind which-unseen by her-the people were to stand. Unfortunately, in choosing which screens supposedly had people behind them, the psychic got only four out of ten correct guesses-less than the five that chance allowed (Steiner 1989).

Once at a psychic workshop I volunteered as the subject whose aura others were instructed to visualize. I stood in front of a blank wall while the instructor noted how my energy field expanded and contracted as I inhaled and exhaled. Actually, I held my breath for long periods, while raising and lowering my chest and shoulders to simulate breathing. Such is the power of suggestion that some imaginative initiates “saw” the alleged effect despite the negating conditions.

In addition to purportedly seeing the aura, some mystics claim they can actually detect it by such means as dowsing. For example, while inspecting a crop circle near Silbury Hill in southern England, I had my auric field checked by a local dowser who had used his divining rod to convince himself the circle was genuine, produced by earth spirits. Although my aura supposedly measured only a few inches, after I had compliantly meditated for a few moments it expanded to several feet - or so the rhabdomancer claimed (Nickell 1995).

Not surprisingly, there have been various attempts to photograph the aura. For example, in the 1890s a French army officer tried to record alleged psychic force fields on photographic plates but with reportedly poor results (Permutt 1988, 89). Claims that the aura has been successfully photographed are typically based on a misunderstanding of the simple scientific principles involved. For instance, while infrared photography can produce images of people with aura-like bands of radiance around them, these are actually only emanations of body temperature (Nickell 1994; Permutt 1988, 123).

More serious claims that the aura could be demonstrated scientifically through Kirlian photography were publicized in the 1970s. In this non-camera technique a high-voltage, high-frequency electrical discharge is applied across a grounded object. The “air glow” or “aura” that is yielded can be recorded directly onto a photographic plate, film, or paper. Such Kirlian images (named for the Russian inventor of the process, Semyon Kirlian) show fuzzy glows around fingers, leaves, and other objects (Ostrander and Schroeder 1971).

Although the Kirlian aura was claimed to present information about the “bioplasma” or “life-energy” of the object, actually it is only “a visual or photographic image of a corona discharge in a gas, in most cases the ambient air.” Moreover, experiments have failed to yield any evidence that the coronal pattern is related "to the physiological, psychological, or psychic condition of the sample,” but instead only to finger pressure, moisture, and other mechanical, environmental, and photographic factors (some twenty-two in all). Skeptics observed that even mechanical objects, such as coins or paper clips, could yield a Kirlian “aura” (Watkins and Bickel 1986).

Following in the Kirlian tradition is a development called Aura Imaging photography introduced in 1992 by Guy Coggins, a California entrepreneur with a background in electronic engineering. Coggins's Aura Camera 6000 is a combined optical-electrical system that produces a Polaroid color photograph of the subject together with his or her “electromagnetic field or aura.” Coggins's company, Progen, also markets a software program called WinAura that allows one to "see the aura move and change like a movie in real time on your computer or TV screen” and to “print your aura image from your computer printer” (Progen 1999).

Coggins concedes that most who purchase and use his device fail to understand how it works. “These people live quite different lives than the rest of us,” Coggins told a reporter. “Sometimes, we have trouble explaining to them how to plug the thing in” (Sullivan 1999). Scientists, on the other hand, continue to be skeptical of all claims made about the alleged aura. Observes Sullivan (1999):

The reason little of the research on energy, auras, and energy healing has been accepted by the scientific community is that it's unpredictable. To be proven as concrete, science demands that an action, performed in the same way under the same circumstances, must yield the same results. No such luck in this area, Coggins admits.

“None of this is duplicatable. It works once, but maybe not the next time. So there's no way to prove it, according to scientific standards.”

Figure 1. Author posing for “aura” photograph with hands placed on sensors. Photo by Ben Radford.

But what about Coggins's aura-imaging technology? Can a photograph lie? I was intrigued by the process, which I found demonstrated at a psychic fair at Olcott Beach in western New York (July 17, 1999). There I posed for my very own “Full Body Aura Photograph.” Actually, I had two such photos made (at $20 each), and therein lies a story. I was invited to stand facing the camera with my hands on electrical modules wired to both the camera and a computer printer (figure 1). I soon received a color Polaroid photograph plus a printout (copyrighted by Progen) showing a simplistic asterisk-rendered outline of a human figure arrayed with letters that indicated color areas (“B” for blue, “G” for green, etc.). These roughly correlated with the areas of colored light in the photo.

Figure 2. “Full body aura photograph” of author with dramatic yellow-white burst of radiance.

The photograph (figure 2) showed such an intense “energy field” of yellow-bordered white light that it washed out my facial features. The printout designated this area as “Yellow” and interpreted it (in grammatically unparallel fashion) as “Sunny, Exhilaration.” (Small areas of “Green"-"Healing, Teaching"-were shown on either side.) One of the enterprise's “experienced Certified Aura Imaging Counselors” told me the bright area of light showed I had prominent "spiritual” qualities.

As I reflected on what had transpired, it occurred to me that a single such picture is little more than a novelty, while two would represent the beginning of an investigation. When I returned to the booth for a second portrait, the proprietor seemed discomfited, asking me why I wanted another. I expressed curiosity, wondering aloud whether different moods would affect the outcome. She said it would, jokingly cautioning me not to think about sex and - when I asked what would happen - telling me the color red would predominate.

Figure 3. Second “aura” photo, made only minutes after the first, with subdued tones of blue and green.

In fact, however, while I (blush) thought vividly about the warned-against subject (purely in the interests of science, of course), my aura was depicted in the resulting photo (figure 3) as predominately blue ("Peaceful, Contemplative") and green ("Healing, Teaching"). Since I was accompanied by some college students (summer interns at the Center for Inquiry), I was told that the results were due to the fact that, obviously, I had been “teaching” the students in the interim between photo sessions.

My own interpretation was that the radically different photos demonstrated a lack of any consistency that might justify people thinking of their aura as an expression of their inherent individuality. (An accompanying brochure spoke to the reader about "your personal energy field,” and Coggins insists, “The aura is individual, like a thumbprint” [Ziegler 1996].) Instead, the disparity seemed attributable to an ever-changing light display that did not seem to correspond to moods-at least not on the occasion I tested the system.

Indeed, a look at the actual process employed-described by Coggins as “intensified Kirlian imaging"-shows it to be not the actual image of the body's unseen image field but the imitation of such a field based primarily on something called skin resistance. That is one of the physiological variables measured by a galvanometer as part of a polygraph or “lie detector,” whereby an unfelt electrical current passes through the subject's hands and detects sweat-gland activity associated with nervousness. (Cheap lie detectors-as well as the “E-meters” used by Scientologists in their controversial pyschotherapeutic technique called “auditing” [Behar 1999]-are essentially only galvanometers.)

As one source explains the aura camera's technique (while neglecting to mention that the electrical current is induced):

The hand plates on the electronic modules contain sensors that are located at specific acupuncture points on each hand. Each one of the points corresponds to a different area of the body.

Coggins said the sensors pick up the electrical current on the skin at each of those locations. This current is called “skin resistance.”

Next, according to this source:

The computer plots the information from the sensors. Within the camera is a liquid crystal display [LCD] of different colors. Each electrical frequency plotted by the computer is assigned a different color. The higher frequencies are assigned warmer colors-reds, yellows, oranges. The lower frequencies fall toward the cooler end of the spectrum-blues and purples. Greens and shades like turquoise, aquamarine, and yellow-green fall into the center of the vibrational spectrum. Coggins said he worked with psychics who helped him interpret the frequencies, and the colors they could represent. People with a lot of high energy in their field-red and orange-are described by most clairvoyants as vibrant and passionate.

Finally,

The LCD flashes lights according to the pattern and frequencies plotted by the computer. The Polaroid film is thus exposed to the colored lights, which show up on the photograph in the areas of the body where the corresponding electrical currents were sensed (Sullivan 1999).

This torturous process-involving obtaining dubious electrically stimulated data from the hands, extrapolating it by analogy to acupuncture to the entire body, translating the electrical frequencies into alleged color equivalents, and then substituting for them simple flashes of colored lights-can scarcely be called photographing the aura. As is typically the case with photographs of alleged paranormal phenomena, what you see is not what you get.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Tom Flynn, Director of Inquiry Media Productions, for considerable help with this investigation and Tim Binga, Director of the Center for Inquiry Libraries, for research assistance.

References

1. Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 105-107.
2. Behar, Richard. 1999. The thriving cult of greed and power. Time, May 6, 50-57.
3. The British Medical Journal. 1912. January 6; quoted in the foreword of Kilner 1911 (1984 ed.)
4. Cavendish, Richard, ed. 1974. Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 48
5. Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1991. Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience. New York: HarperCollins, 40-42.
6. Kilner, W. J. 1911. The Human Atmosphere; reprinted as The Aura. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1984.
7. Koontz, Katy. 2000. The new health detectives. New Age, January/February, 64-67, 102-110.
8. Loftin, Robert W. 1990. Auras: Searching for the light. Skeptical Inquirer 14(4) (Summer): 403-409.
9. Myss, Caroline. 1997. Why People Don't Heal and How They Can. New York: Harmony Books, xi.
10. Nickell, Joe. 1994. Camera Clues. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 178-179.
11. --. 1995. Crop circle mania wanes. Skeptical Inquirer 19(3) (May/June): 41-43.
12. Ostrander, Sheila, and Lynn Schroeder. 1971. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. New York: Bantam, 200-213.
13. Permutt, Cyril. 1988. Photographing the Spirit World. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press.
14. “Photography.” 1960. Encyclop¾dia Britannica.
15. Progen Company. 1999. Aura camera promotional literature. Redwood City, California.
16. Steiner, Robert. 1989. Live TV special explores, tests psychic powers. Skeptical Inquirer 14(1) (Fall): 3.
17. Sullivan, Michele. 1999. Your true colors: Can a camera capture the unseeable? The Warren Sentinel, March 18. (N.P.; clipping reproduced by Progen 1999).
18. Watkins, Arleen J., and William S. Bickel. 1986. A study of the Kirlian effect. Skeptical Inquirer 10(3) (Spring): 244-257.
19. Ziegler, Daira. 1996. What your aura says about you. National Examiner, August 6.

Related Information

• Progen

In November 1999 a long report of this study appeared in New Scientist magazine, and I was provoked enough by it to take a closer look. Here follows a copy of the letter I had occasion to write to the editor a few weeks later:

“Prayers can help patients recover even when they don't know people are praying for them, says a provocative new study" (New Scientist, 13 November, p. 24). But it turns out that hidden in the original paper that describes this study (Archives of Internal Medicine, 159, 2273) is a result that is even more curious: namely, that prayer works best of all before it has been started!

The paper reports the following facts without comment. “1,013 patients were randomized, 484 to the prayer group and 529 to the usual care group. After subsequent removal of those patients who spent less than twenty-four hours in the Coronary Care Unit [because it took a day to get the prayers up and running], 524 remained in the usual care group and 466 in the prayer group.”

But look at these figures. While 18 of 484 patients who were going to be prayed for got better within 24 hours, only 5 of 529 patients who were not going to be prayed for did so. This difference is significant at p<.001 by a chi-squared test. By contrast the main effect reported in the paper, namely that among patients who stayed more than 24 hours those who were prayed for had better clinical outcomes than those who weren't prayed for, only just makes it to the p<.04 level.

So it seems that either the study has come up with strong evidence of prayer producing backward causation of recovery, or else that there was something wrong somewhere with the way the study was conducted (e.g., that, despite the claim of randomization, less sick patients were in fact being assigned to the prayer group). Readers should take their pick of these two interesting alternatives.

I sent a copy of my letter to the first author of the paper, William S. Harris. He acknowledged, in a courteous reply, that these numbers were somewhat puzzling. But he moved to head off my veiled accusation (that someone involved with the study had deliberately tried to rig the results by assigning less sick patients to the prayer group) by reminding me that I was making an unwarranted assumption: namely, that those who left the unit within twenty-four hours had indeed got better-when in fact they might have died (this is something he said he had not yet had time to look into). Point taken. If it should turn out that patients who were assigned to the to-be-prayed for group were actually significantly more likely to die within twenty-four hours, the implications of this study would surely be more interesting still.

References

1. Harris, W.S., M. Gowda, J.W. Kolb, C.P. Strychacz, J.L. Vacek, P.G. Jones, A. Forker, J.H. O'Keefe, and B.D. McCallister. 1999. A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Archives of Internal Medicine 159: 2273-2278.
2. Tessman, Irwin, and Jack Tessman. 2000. Efficacy of prayer: A critical examination of claims. Skeptical Inquirer 24(2): 31-33, March/April.

“Majestic Twelve"-better known as “MJ-12"-first achieved international fame in the world of UFOlogy in mid-1987. It was then that UFOlogist William L. Moore and two associates made public three (purportedly) “Top Secret” documents which indicated that President Harry Truman had created a super-secret MJ-12 group forty years earlier to deal with extraterrestrial (ET) visitors. Truman’s (alleged) action was prompted by an alleged crashed-ET craft that had been covertly recovered near Roswell in mid-1947.

The Roswell crashed-saucer claim had been the centerpiece of a book published seven years earlier (1980) which Moore had coauthored with Charles Berlitz. (Berlitz previously authored a book describing the “mysterious dangers” of the Bermuda Triangle.)

Recently, a large batch of additional “Top Secret Majestic Documents” have emerged, provided by another UFOlogist named Tim Cooper, who claims he obtained them from several covert sources. Their authenticity has been endorsed by Robert Wood, a respected, retired McDonnell Douglas scientist and his son Ryan. (Wood is a member of the nine-person Executive Council of Peter Sturrock’s Society for Scientific Exploration.) Based on the Woods’ assessment, wealthy Silicon Valley software expert Joe Firmage, who recently revealed his conviction that some UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors, also endorsed Cooper’s documents in mid-1999.

However, on November 25 the International Space Sciences Organization (ISSO), which Firmage recently created to pursue his UFO interests, issued a statement that “ongoing research indicates that many, possibly all, the so-called MJ-12 UFO documents were officially fabricated as instruments of U.S. covert psychological warfare . . .” (emphasis added). This is ridiculous! The new Cooper documents, like their 1987 predecessors, are so riddled with flaws that they could never fool Soviet or Chinese intelligence experts. Even some long-time pro-UFOlogists have denounced them as obvious counterfeits.

One of the original MJ-12 documents released by Moore and his two partners (UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman and TV producer Jaime Shandera) purported to be a memo from President Truman to Defense Secretary James Forrestal, dated September 24, 1947, which authorized the creation of the MJ-12 group. My investigation revealed that the Truman signature was a pasted-on photocopy of a genuine signature-including accidental scratch marks-from a memo that Truman wrote to Vannevar Bush on October 1, 1947 (see “New evidence of MJ-12 hoax,” SI 14[2], Winter 1990).

A second MJ-12 document released by Moore et al. purported to be a November 18, 1952, briefing for President-elect Eisenhower, prepared by Rear Admiral R.H. Hillenkoetter, who had been director of the CIA and, purportedly, was now head of MJ-12. There were numerous flaws in the “Eisenhower Briefing Document” (EBD), the most obvious being its reference to the (bogus) Truman memo of September 24, 1947.

Further, the EBD repeatedly used a very unusual date-format-a hybrid combination of civil and military formats with a superfluous comma, i.e., 18 November, 1952. This unusual hybrid date-format was one repeatedly used by William L. Moore in his personal letters - until I pointed out this “curious coincidence” in my first article debunking the original MJ-12 papers (see SI 12[2], Winter 1987-1988). The third of the MJ-12 documents made public by Moore et al. in mid-1987 purported to be a brief memo, dated July 14, 1954, from Robert Cutler to USAF Chief of Staff General Twining informing him of change of date to brief the President on the "MJ-12 Special Studies Project.” Investigation revealed that on the date that Cutler allegedly wrote the memo, he was out of the country. Moore claimed that he and Shandera had found the Cutler memo in an unlikely location when they visited the National Archives. The memo, which had been double-folded, could easily have been carried into the Archives in Moore’s or Shandera’s coat pocket. Less than two years before Moore made public the initial MJ-12 papers-on April 16, 1983-he had confided to then-close friend and UFOlogist Brad Sparks that he was contemplating creating and releasing some hoax Top Secret documents-as first revealed in the March 1997 issue of my Skeptics UFO Newsletter. Moore explained to Sparks that he hoped such bogus documents would encourage former military and intelligence officials who knew about the government’s (alleged) UFO coverup to break their oaths of secrecy. Sparks strongly recommended against the idea.

It was not until nearly seven years after release of the original MJ-12 documents that a new “MJ-12 document” surfaced on March 14, 1994. On that date, Don Berliner, a long-time pro-UFOlogist, received in the mail an undeveloped roll of 35 mm film from an anonymous source. When the film was processed, Berliner found photos of what purported to be copies of pages from a “Top Secret/MAJIC/Eyes Only” special operations manual (SOM 1-01) intended to inform military crews how to recover crashed saucers and their ET crews. SOM 1-01, purportedly printed in April 1954, contains many flaws. For example, it stated that crashed ET craft should be sent to “Area 51 S-4” in Nevada. But that portion of Nellis Air Force Base was not given the name “Area 51” until several years after SOM 1-01 allegedly was printed.

As a result of numerous flaws in SOM 1-01, a statement denouncing it as counterfeit was released on March 14, 1999. It was signed by Berliner and several other prominent pro-UFOlogists. By this time, a new batch of more than a dozen Majestic documents obtained from Tim Cooper had recently been made public by Robert Wood and his son Ryan at a UFO conference in Connecticut. They had strongly endorsed the authenticity of the documents, although Wood admitted that there were flaws in them. But he claimed that these anomalies “tend to indicate authenticity. . . . [Document] hoaxers generally try to make sure they are perfect.”

No mention was made by Wood that his long-time good friend, UFO lecturer Friedman - who remains one of the staunchest supporters of the original MJ-12 documents - had earlier investigated several of Cooper’s documents and concluded that at least one was counterfeit. Friedman had reported his findings and suspicions about other Cooper documents in his book Top Secret/MAJIC, published three years earlier.

British UFOlogist Timothy Good, who in 1987 had strongly endorsed the authenticity of the original MJ-12 documents in his best-selling pro-UFO book Above Top Secret, has more recently characterized them as bogus, largely on the basis of the phony signature on the Truman memo of September 24, 1947. But in the early 1990s, prior to Good’s disavowal of the original MJ-12 papers, he began to receive some of the “new” Majestic documents from Cooper.

Good’s suspicions about the new Cooper documents were aroused by some factual anomalies in their content. More important, Good noted that mechanical flaws in the typewriter Cooper had used to write two letters on October 4 and October 7, 1991, resembled those of the typewriter used for one of his Majestic documents, allegedly typed in 1952. At my request, Good provided me with copies of Cooper’s two letters for analysis.

Cooper’s two 1991 letters to Good not only had the same typeface as the (purported) 1952 Top Secret MJ-12 Annual Report, but more importantly the upper-case (capital) G and N were slightly elevated relative to the adjacent lower-case letters. However, an experienced questioned document examiner informed me that it was conceivable, though unlikely, that both Cooper and the 1952 document typist might have failed to depress the “shift key” to its lowest possible position when typing G and N.

Figure 1. “Elevated 8” in Cooper’s letters and in one of his “MJ-12 documents.”

Top: Cooper’s letters of October 4 and 7, 1991 (enlarged slightly)

Bottom: From Cooper’s “MJ-12 Annual Report" rdquo; (enlarged slightly)

However, both Cooper’s letters and the 1952 document also have an “elevated 8"-which does not require the use of the typewriter’s shift-key (see figure 1). This curious coincidence was reported in the November 1999 issue of Skeptics UFO Newsletter, a copy of which was provided to Wood. His response of December 13 (via e-mail) was: “The question is whether that ["elevated-8"] is a characteristic of that typewriter design as distinguished from any particular machine serial number. We need other examples from the same typewriter design and I would hope to find some.”

In other words, Wood suggests that this mechanical flaw was a possible uncorrected characteristic of all of the typewriters produced by this manufacturer for at least several decades. Nothing further has been heard from Wood on this key issue since mid-December 1999.

Meanwhile, Tim Cooper posted a lengthy treatise on the Internet on December 30, offering his assessment of his “new Majestic documents.” Highlights of Cooper’s views are quoted below:

The question of whether they [Cooper’s documents] are genuine, authentic, or real is not the issue here. The important point . . . is the information contained in the documents themselves. . . . In my own humble opinion, the Majestic documents are basically reliable as far as content is concerned with the exception of the questionable hypothesis that there are other intelligent, thinking, machine building cultures visiting planet earth on a regular, day to day basis [emphasis added].

Yet the opening page of the Web site that the Woods have created to promote MJ-12 states: “The Majestic Documents: Evidence That We Are Not Alone. Curious about the documentary record of military and government participation with UFOs, wreckage retrieval, and extraterrestrials? This site is all about it! The documents, the forensics, the military and intelligence history, and stunning validating evidence. Join us on a journey into the beyond Top Secret world that a government cabal has been hiding since 1941." rdquo; (One of Cooper’s documents claims a crashed saucer was recovered in the spring of 1941 near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, six years before the alleged Roswell Incident. If true, the Eisenhower Briefing Document completely forgot to mention this historic event.)

The turn of the second millennium has brought about, in the Western world at least, an outpouring of concern about cosmic matters. A major portion of this concern has taken a delusional, even hysterical turn, specifically in imagining an end-of-the-world scenario. “The end of the world is near,” predicts Karl de Nostredame, supposedly the “last living descendent” of Nostradamus; "White House knows doomsday date!” he claims (Wolfe 1999, 8). Against this backdrop, it seems an appropriate time to survey a sample of social delusions and group hysterias from the past millennium. Given the enormous volume of literature, we will limit our list to the more colorful episodes.

The study of collective delusions most commonly falls within the domain of sociologists working in the sub-field of collective behavior, and psychologists specializing in social psychology. Collective delusions are typified as the spontaneous, rapid spread of false or exaggerated beliefs within a population at large, temporarily affecting a particular region, culture, or country. Mass hysteria is most commonly studied by psychiatrists and physicians. Episodes typically affect small, tightly knit groups in enclosed settings such as schools, factories, convents and orphanages (Calmeil 1845; Hirsch 1883; Sirois 1974).

Mass hysteria is characterized by the rapid spread of conversion disorder, a condition involving the appearance of bodily complaints for which there is no organic basis. In such episodes, psychological distress is converted or channeled into physical symptoms. There are two common types: anxiety hysteria and motor hysteria. The former is of shorter duration, usually lasting a day, and is triggered by the sudden perception of a threatening agent, most commonly a strange odor. Symptoms typically include headache, dizziness, nausea, breathlessness, and general weakness. Motor hysteria is prevalent in intolerable social situations such as strict school and religious settings where discipline is excessive. Symptoms include trance-like states, melodramatic acts of rebellion known as histrionics, and what physicians term “psychomotor agitation” (whereby pent-up anxiety built up over a long period results in disruptions to the nerves or neurons that send messages to the muscles, triggering temporary bouts of twitching, spasms, and shaking). Motor hysteria appears gradually over time and usually takes weeks or months to subside (Wessely 1987; Bartholomew and Sirois 1996). The term mass hysteria is often used inappropriately to describe collective delusions, as the overwhelming majority of participants are not exhibiting hysteria, except in extremely rare cases. In short, all mass hysterias are collective delusions as they involve false or exaggerated beliefs, but only rarely do collective delusions involve mass hysteria as to do so, they must report illness symptoms.

Many factors contribute to the formation and spread of collective delusions and hysterical illness: the mass media; rumors; extraordinary anxiety or excitement; cultural beliefs and stereotypes; the social and political context; and reinforcing actions by authorities such as politicians, or institutions of social control such as the police or military. Episodes are also distinguishable by the redefinition of mundane objects, events, and circumstances and reflect a rapidly spreading folk belief which contributes to an emerging definition of the situation.

Middle Ages, France

During the Middle Ages, dozens of outbreaks of hysterical fits and imitative behaviors were reported among repressed nuns in cloistered European Christian convents. “Volunteers” were often forced by their parents into joining religious orders against their will and to lead celibate lives that included vows of poverty and demanding physical labor (Madden 1857). During this time it was widely believed that humans could be possessed by certain animals, such as wolves. In France, cats were particularly despised as they were considered familiar with the Devil (Darnton 1984). It was perhaps this context that triggered an unusual episode of collective behavior, described in the passage below.

I have read in a good medical work that a nun, in a very large convent in France, began to meow like a cat; shortly afterwards other nuns also meowed. At last all the nuns meowed together every day at a certain time for several hours together. The whole surrounding Christian neighborhood heard, with equal chagrin and astonishment, this daily cat-concert, which did not cease until all the nuns were informed that a company of soldiers were placed by the police before the entrance of the convent, and that they were provided with rods, and would continue whipping them until they promised not to meow any more. (Zimmermann cited in Hecker 1844, 127)

Fifteenth Century Germany

A nun in a German nunnery fell to biting all her companions. In the course of a short time all the nuns of this convent began biting each other. The news of this infection among the nuns soon spread, and it now passed from convent to convent throughout a great part of Germany, principally Saxony and Brandenburg. It afterwards visited the nunneries of Holland, and at last the nuns had the biting mania even as far as Rome. (Zimmermann cited in Hecker 1844, 127)

Milan, Italy, 1630

British journalist Charles Mackay (1852, 261-265) described a poisoning scare that terrorized Milan, Italy, in 1630, coinciding with pestilence, plague, and a prediction that the Devil would poison the city's water supply. On one April morning people awoke, and became fearful upon finding “that all the doors in the principal streets of the city were marked with a curious daub, or spot.” Soon there was alarm that the sign of the awaited poisoning was at hand, and the belief spread that corn and fruit had also been poisoned. Many people were executed. One elderly man was spotted wiping a stool before sitting on it, when he was accused of smearing poison on the seat. He was seized by an angry mob of women and pulled by the hair to a judge, but died on the way. In another incident, a pharmacist and barber named Mora was found with several preparations containing unknown potions and accused of being in cahoots with the Devil to poison the city. Protesting his innocence, he eventually confessed after prolonged torture on the rack, admitting to cooperating with the Devil and foreigners to poisoning the city and anointing the doors. Under duress he named several accomplices who were eventually arrested and tortured. They were all pronounced guilty and executed. Mackay states that “The number of persons who confessed that they were employed by the Devil to distribute poison is almost incredible,” noting that “day after day persons came voluntarily forward to accuse themselves" (264).

Lille, France, 1639

Mackay (1852, 539-540) reports that in 1639 at an all-girls' school in Lille, France, fifty pupils were convinced by their overzealous teacher that they were under Satanic influence. Antoinette Bourgignon had the children believing that “little black angels" were flying about their heads, and that the Devil's imps were everywhere. Soon, each of the students confessed to witchcraft, flying on broomsticks and even eating baby flesh. The students came close to being burned at the stake but were spared when blame shifted to the headmistress, who escaped at the last minute. The episode occurred near the end of the Continental European witch mania of 1400 to 1650, when at least 200,000 people were executed following allegations of witchcraft.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1691-1693

In 1692, Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was the scene of a moral panic that spread throughout the region and involved witchcraft accusations which led to trials, torture, imprisonment, and executions. Others died in jail or during torture. At least twenty residents lost their lives. Social paranoia was such that two dogs were even accused and executed! All convictions were based on ambiguous evidence. The witch mania began in December 1691, when eight girls living in the vicinity of Salem exhibited strange behaviors including disordered speech, convulsive movements, and bizarre conduct. Explanations for the “fits” range from outright fakery to hysteria to ergot poisoning of the food supply. By February 1692, the affected girls had accused two elderly women and a servant from Barbados named Tibula of being witches, and they were arrested. Soon hundreds of residents were accused of witchcraft, and trials were held. In May 1693, the episode ended when Governor Phips ordered that all suspects be released (Nevins 1916; Caporael 1976; Karlsen 1989).

London, England, 1761

On February 8, 1761, a minor earthquake struck London, damaging several chimneys. When another tremor occurred on the following month on the exact day as the first (March 8), the coincidence became the subject of widespread discussion. According to Mackay (1852), a lifeguard named Bell then predicted that London would be destroyed in a third quake on April 5. “As the awful day approached, the excitement became intense, and great numbers of credulous people resorted to all the villages within a circuit of twenty miles, awaiting the doom of London” (259). People paid exorbitant fees to temporarily board with households in such places as Highgate, Hampstead, Islington, Blackheath, and Harrow. The poor stayed in London until two or three days before the predicted event before leaving to camp in fields in the countryside. When the designated time arrived, nothing happened.

Leeds, England, 1806

In 1806, a panic spread through Leeds and the surrounding communities that the end of the world was at hand. The “panic terror” began when a hen from a nearby village was said to begin laying eggs inscribed with the message, “Christ is coming.” Large numbers flocked to the site to examine the eggs and see the "miracle” first-hand. Many were convinced that the end was near and suddenly became devoutly religious. Mackay (1852, 261) states that excitement then quickly turned to disappointment when a man “caught the poor hen in the act of laying one of her miraculous eggs” and soon determined “that the egg had been inscribed with some corrosive ink, and cruelly forced up again into the bird's body."

Worldwide, 1835

During the summer of 1835, a series of six newspaper reports appearing in the New York Sun caused a worldwide sensation. Created by journalist Richard A. Locke, the paper claimed that astronomer Sir John Herschel had perfected the world's strongest telescope in a South African observatory, and had discovered various life forms on the Moon: a two-legged beaver, a horned bear, miniature zebras, and colorful birds among them. His most astonishing observation was that he could see human-like forms on the Moon flying about with bat-like wings. The creatures were given the scientific name of "Vespertilio-homo” meaning bat-man. These beings were described with angelic innocence, peacefully coexisting with its fellow creatures in an environment apparently absent of carnivores. The delusion began on Friday, August 21, with an ambiguous story about new astronomical discoveries. Great excitement prevailed in New York City and spread around the world; most newspapers had been hoodwinked, including the New York Times. Locke published the articles in a pamphlet and sold sixty thousand copies within a month. The New York-based Journal of Commerce newspaper eventually unmasked the hoax (summarized from Griggs 1852; Bulgatz 1993).

British South Africa, 1914

In the war scare setting of British South Africa in 1914, local newspapers erroneously reported that hostile monoplanes from adjacent German South West Africa were making reconnaissance flights as a prelude to an imminent attack. The episode coincided with the start of World War I. Despite the technological impossibility of such missions (the maneuvers reported by witnesses were beyond those of airplanes of the period and their capability of staying aloft for long periods), thousands of residents misperceived ambiguous, nocturnal aerial stimuli (stars and planets) as representing enemy monoplanes (Bartholomew 1989).

Island of Banda, Indonesia, 1937

During March 1937, the first Indonesian Prime Minister, Soetan Sjahrir, was living on the Moluccan island of Banda, where he described a head-hunting rumor-panic which swept through his village. The episode coincided with rumors that a tjoelik (someone who engages in head-hunting for the government) was operating in the area and searching for a head to be placed near a local jetty that was being rebuilt. According to tradition, government construction projects will soon crumble without such an offering. Sjahrir (1949) said that “people have been living in fear” and were "talking and whispering about it everywhere” (162), and after 7 p.m. the streets were nearly deserted. There were many reports of strange noises and sightings. Sjahrir stated: “Every morning there are new stories, generally about footsteps or voices, or a house that was bombarded with stones, or an attack on somebody by a tjoelik with a noose, or a cowboy lasso. Naturally, the person who was attacked got away from the tjoelik in a nick of time!” (164). Sjahrir described the scare as an example of “mass psychosis."

USA, 1938

On Halloween Eve 1938, a live fictional radio drama produced by Orson Welles was broadcast across much of the United States by the CBS Mercury Theatre. It depicted an invasion by Martians who had landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, and soon began attacking with heat rays and poison gas. Princeton University psychologist Hadley Cantril (1940) concluded that an estimated 1.2 million listeners became excited, frightened, or disturbed. However, subsequent reviews of Cantril's findings by sociologists David Miller (1985), William Sims Bainbridge (1987), and others, concluded that there was scant evidence of substantial or widespread panic. For instance, Miller found little evidence of mobilization, an essential ingredient in a panic. Hence, it was a collective delusion and not a true panic. Cantril also exaggerated the extent of the mobilization, attributing much of the typical activity at the time to the “panic.” In short, many listeners may have expressed concern but did not do anything in response, like try to flee, grab a gun for protection, or barricade themselves inside a house. Either way one looks at this episode, it qualifies as a collective delusion. If, as Cantril originally asserted, many listeners were frightened and panicked, it is a mass delusion. Conversely, if we are to accept the more recent and likely assessments that the “panic” was primarily a media creation inadvertently fueled by Cantril's flawed study, then erroneous depictions of a mass panic that have been recounted in numerous books and articles for over six decades constitute an equally remarkable social delusion.

Mad Gasser of Mattoon, 1944

During the first two weeks of September 1944, residents of Mattoon, Illinois, were thrust into the world media spotlight after a series of imaginary gas attacks by a “phantom anesthetist.” On Friday night, September 1, Mattoon police received a phone call that a woman and her daughter had been left nauseated and dizzy after being sprayed with a sweet-smelling gas by a mysterious figure lurking near their bedroom window. The woman also said she experienced slight, temporary difficulty in walking. Despite the ambiguous circumstances and lack of evidence, the following evening the incident was afforded sensational coverage in the Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette ("Anesthetic Prowler on Loose"). After seeing the story, two other Mattoon families recounted for police similar “gas attacks” in their homes just prior to the incident.

Before the reports ceased (after September 12), police logged over two dozen separate calls involving at least twenty-nine victims, most of whom were females. University of Illinois researcher Donald Johnson (1945) investigated the episode, concluding that it was a case of mass hysteria. Their transient symptoms included nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, palpitations, difficulty walking, and in one instance, a burning sensation in the mouth. Given the influential role of the Mattoon news media, it may be that victims were redefining mundane symptoms such as a panic attack, chemical smell, one's leg “falling asleep,” and the consequences of anxiety such as nausea, insomnia, shortness of breath, shakiness, dry mouth, dizziness, etc. as gasser-related.

“Miracle” in Puerto Rico, 1953

At 11 a.m. on May 25, 1953, an estimated 150,000 people converged on a well at Rincorn, Puerto Rico, to await the appearance of the Virgin Mary as predicted by seven local children. Over the next six hours, a team of sociologists led by Melvin Tumin and Arnold Feldman (1955) mingled in the crowd conducting interviews. During this period, some people reported seeing colored rings encircling the Sun, and a silhouette of the Virgin in the clouds, while others experienced healings, and a general sense of well-being. Others neither saw nor experienced anything extraordinary. A media frenzy preceded the event, and a local mayor enthusiastically organized the visionaries to lead throngs of pilgrims in mass prayers and processions. Tumin and Feldman found that the majority of pilgrims believed in the authenticity of the children's claim, and were seeking cures for conditions that physicians had deemed incurable. Various ambiguous objects in the immediate surroundings (clouds, trees, etc.) mirrored the hopeful and expectant religious state of mind of many participants.

Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic, 1954

On March 23, 1954, reports appeared in Seattle newspapers of damaged automobile windshields in a city eighty miles to the north. While initially suspecting vandals, the number of cases spread, causing growing concern. In time, reports of damaged windshields moved closer to Seattle. According to a study by Nahum Medalia of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Otto Larsen of the University of Washington (1958), by nightfall on April 14, the mysterious pits first reached the city, and by the end of the next day, weary police had answered 242 phone calls from concerned residents, reporting tiny pit marks on over 3,000 vehicles. In some cases, whole parking lots were reportedly affected. The reports quickly declined and ceased. On April 16 police logged forty-six pitting claims, and ten the next day, after which no more reports were received.

The most common damage report involved claims that tiny pit marks grew into dime-sized bubbles embedded within the glass, leading to a folk theory that sandflea eggs had somehow been deposited in the glass and later hatched. The sudden presence of the “pits” created widespread anxiety as they were typically attributed to atomic fallout from hydrogen bomb tests that had been recently conducted in the Pacific and received saturation media publicity. At the height of the incident on the night of April 15, the Seattle mayor even sought emergency assistance from President Dwight Eisenhower.

In the wake of rumors of radioactive fallout and a few initial cases amplified in the media, residents began looking at, instead of through, their windshields. An analysis of the mysterious black, sooty grains that dotted many windshields was carried out at the Environmental Research Laboratory at the University of Washington. The material was identified as cenospheres-tiny particles produced by the incomplete combustion of bituminous coal. The particles had been a common feature of everyday life in Seattle, and could not pit or penetrate windshields.

Medalia and Larsen noted that because the pitting reports coincided with the H-Bomb tests, media publicity seems to have reduced tension about the possible consequences of the bomb tests-"something was bound to happen to us as a result of the H-bomb tests-windshields became pitted-it's happened-now that threat is over” (186). Secondly, the very act of phoning police and appeals by the mayor to the governor and even President of the United States “served to give people the sense that they were 'doing something' about the danger that threatened” (186).

Phantom Slasher of Taiwan, 1956

For a two-week period in 1956, residents in the vicinity of Taipei, Taiwan, lived in fear that they would be the next victim of a crazed villain who was prowling the city and slashing people at random with a razor or similar type weapon. At least twenty-one slashing victims were reported during this period, mostly women and children of low income and education. Norman Jacobs was teaching in Taipei at the time, and conducted a survey of local press coverage of the slasher. Jacobs concluded that those affected had erroneously attributed mundane slash marks to a dastardly slasher (Jacobs 1965).

Rumors amplified by sensational press coverage treating the slasher's existence as real served to foment the scare by altering the public's outlook to include the reality of a daring slasher. Police eventually concluded that the various “slashings” had resulted from inadvertent, everyday contact in public places, that ordinarily would have gone relatively unnoticed. For instance, one man told police in detail how he had been slashed by a man carrying a mysterious black bag. When a doctor determined that the wound was made by a blunt object and not a razor, the “victim” admitted that he could not recall exactly what had happened, but assumed that he had been slashed “because of all the talk going around.” In another case, it was not the supposed victim but physicians who were responsible for creating an incident. An elderly man with a wrist laceration sought medical treatment but the attending doctor grew suspicious and contacted police when the man casually noted that a stranger had coincidentally touched him at about the same time when he first noticed the bleeding. A more thorough examination led to the conclusion that the “slash” was an old injury that had been re-opened after inadvertent scratching.

On May 12 police announced the results of their investigation: they concluded that the episode was entirely psychological in origin. Of the twenty-one slashing claims examined by their office, they determined that “five were innocent false reports, seven were self-inflicted cuts, eight were due to cuts other than razors, and one was a complete fantasy” (Jacobs, 1965, 324).

First Flying Saucer Wave, 1947

On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold was piloting his private plane near the Cascade mountains in Washington state when he saw what appeared to be nine glittering objects flying in echelon-like formation near Mount Rainier. He kept the objects in sight for about three minutes before they traveled south over Mount Adams and were lost to view (Arnold 1950; Arnold and Palmer 1952; Gardner 1988; Clark 1998, 139-143).

Worried that he may have observed guided missiles from a foreign power, Arnold eventually flew to Pendleton, Oregon, where he tried reporting what he saw to the FBI office there. But the office was closed, so he went to the offices of The East Oregonian newspaper. After listening to Arnold's story, journalist Bill Bequette produced a report for the Associated Press. It is notable that at this point, Arnold had described the objects as crescent-shaped, referring only to their movement as “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water” (Gardner 1957, 56; Story 1980, 25; Sachs 1980, 207-208). However, the Associated Press account describing Arnold's “saucers” appeared in over 150 newspapers.

The AP report filed by Bequette was the proto-article from which the term “flying saucer” was created by headline writers on June 25 and 26, 1947 (Strentz 1970). Of key import was Bequette's use of the term “saucer-like” in describing Arnold's sighting. Bequette's use of the word “saucer” provided a motif for the worldwide wave of flying saucer sightings during the summer of 1947, and other waves since. There are a few scattered historical references to disc-shaped objects, but no consistent pattern emerges until 1947, with Arnold's sighting. There have only been a handful of occasions prior to 1947 that a witness has actually used the word “saucer” to describe mysterious aerial objects. Hence, the global 1947 flying saucer wave can be regarded as a media-generated collective delusion unique to the twentieth century.

Zeitoun, Egypt, 1968-1971

From April 1968 to May 1971, more than 100,000 people reported observing Virgin Mary apparitions above a Coptic Orthodox Church at Zeitoun, Egypt. Witnesses' descriptions varied between two main types: small bright, short-lived lights nicknamed “doves,” and more enduring, less intense, diffuse patches of glowing light (Johnston 1980). Canadian neuropsychologist Michael Persinger of Laurentian University and his American colleague John Derr (1989) analyzed seismic activity in the region from 1958 to 1979, and found an unprecedented peak in earthquakes during 1969. They state that “The 'narrow' window of significant temporal relationship between luminous phenomena and earthquakes is within the classic time frame of more acceptable antecedents (e.g., microseismic activity) of imminent earthquake activity.” It appears that the Marian observers were predisposed by religious background and social expectation to interpreting the light displays as related to the Virgin Mary.

The Hispanic Goatsucker, 1975 to Present

Between February and March 1975, reports circulated in Puerto Rico of a mysterious creature attacking domestic and farm animals, draining their blood and scooping out chunks of their flesh. Residents claimed that they heard loud screeches and/or flapping wings coinciding with the attacks. Academics and police examined the carcasses, blaming everything from humans to snakes to vampire bats. Locals referred to the attacker as “The Vampire of Moca." This incident may have been spurred by the better known “cattle mutilation mystery” (Ellis 1996, 3). In November 1995, similar attacks were reported on the island. Called chupacabras or goatsucker, (named after a crepuscular bird that steals goat's milk), the bizarre being was described as a “bristly, bulge-eyed rat with the hind legs of a kangaroo, capable of escaping after its crimes in high speed sprints” (Preston 1996). It also exuded a sulfur-like stench. Stories described the bodies of animals disemboweled and drained of blood. One member of a Civil Defense team in a small city in the affected area says he spends half his time responding to chupacabras calls. Some people, he reported, have been so distraught “that they have had to be taken to the hospital” (Navarro 1996). Interest in the creature ran so high in May 1996 that a chupacabras Web site received enough hits to be ranked in the top 5 percent of all Web sites (Ellis 1996, 2). By March 1996, goatsucker stories had spread to Hispanic communities in Florida; by May, accounts of chupacabras attacks began to circulate in Mexico and soon after, to the Mexican-American community in Arizona. The chupacabras flap ended abruptly in mid-1996, and almost nothing has been reported on it since.

Indonesian Borneo, 1979

For several weeks in late 1979, a kidnapping rumor-panic suddenly broke out on the island of Borneo. Anthropologist Richard Drake was studying the Mualang peoples living on the Belitang Hulu River in Kalimantan Barat when the episode broke out (Drake 1989). Soon guards were posted around the village, rubber tapping ceased, and a local school closed for insufficient attendance. A variety of ordinarily mundane events (such as noises and rustling in the jungle) and circumstances were defined as kidnapper-related. The scare was triggered by rumors that the government was constructing a bridge in the region and needed a body to place in the foundation to strengthen it. The episode is related to periodic kidnapping and headhunter scares in the region dating back to the seventeenth century coinciding with real or rumored government construction projects and a local belief that such developments require a head or body to be laid in the foundation or on a special pillar nearby to make for an enduring structure (Forth 1991; Barnes 1993). Drake argues that such episodes reflect antagonistic tribal-state relations characterized by distrust and suspicion of a distant, central government.

West Bank, Jordan, 1983

Between March and April 1983, 947 mostly female residents of the Israeli-occupied Jordan West Bank reported various psychogenic symptoms: fainting, headache, abdominal pain, and dizziness (Modan et al., 1983). The episode was precipitated by poison gas rumors and a long-standing Palestinian mistrust of Jews. The medical complaints appeared during a fifteen-day period, amid rumors and intense media publicity that poison gas was being sporadically targeted at Palestinians. The episode began in, and was predominantly confined to, schools in several adjacent villages. In one incident on March 27, sixty-four residents in Jenin were rushed for local medical care after believing that they had been poisoned when thick smoke belched from an apparently faulty exhaust system on a passing car. In all, 879 females were affected. Following negative medical tests, it became evident that no gassings had occurred, the hypothesis was discredited, and the transient symptoms rapidly ceased.

Mass Delusion by Proxy in Georgia, 1988

A rarely reported form of what could be described as mass delusion by proxy occurred at a Georgia elementary school near Atlanta in 1988. It involved the re-labelling of mundane symptoms that were instigated and maintained by erroneous beliefs among hypervigilant parents. The episode began during a routine social gathering of parents and students at the school cafeteria in early September. A student's mother commented that, ever since the term began, her child had experienced numerous minor health problems and looked pale. Other mothers at the meeting noted similar signs and symptoms in their children since the beginning of the school term: pallor, dark circles under the eyes, headaches, fatigue, nausea and occasional vomiting. They soon suspected that something in the school building was to blame, a view confirmed on October 11 when the school was evacuated after a minor natural gas leak occurred during routine maintenance. When intermittent minor gas leaks continued over the next month, concerned parents picketed the school and appealed to the local media, which highlighted their fears. After negative environmental and epidemiological studies, Philen et al. (1989) concluded that mothers had almost exclusively redefined common and everpresent childhood illnesses, while the children in question neither sought attention nor were overly concerned with their symptoms, maintaining high attendance levels throughout the term.

Kosovo, 1990

On March 14, 1990, at least four thousand residents in the Serbian province of Kosovo, in the former Yugoslavia, were struck down by a mystery illness that persisted for some three weeks. According to Dr. Zoran Radovanovic (1995), the head of the community medicine faculty at Kuwait University, the symptoms were psychogenic in nature and prompted by ethnic Albanian mistrust of Serbs. The transient complaints were almost exclusively confined to young adolescent ethnic Albanians, and included headache, dizziness, hyperventilation, weakness, burning sensations, cramps, chest pain, nausea, and dry mouth. The episode began at a high school in Podujevo, and rapidly spread to dozens of schools within the province. An outbreak of respiratory infection within a single class appears to have triggered fears that Serbs may have dispensed poison. Influential factors included rumors, the scrutinization of mundane odors and substances, visits by health authorities that served to legitimate fears, ethnic tension between Serbs and Albanians, and mass communication. The dramatic proliferation of cases across the province on March 22 coincided with the implementation of an emergency disaster plan whereby ethnic Albanians seized control of public health services.

Nigerian Genitalia Vanishing Epidemic of 1990

During 1990, an episode of “vanishing” genitalia caused widespread fear across Nigeria. Native psychiatrist Sunny Ilechukwu (1992) said that most reports of attacks involved male victims. Accusations were usually triggered by incidental body contact with a stranger in a public place, after which the “victim” would feel strange scrotum sensations and grab their genitals to confirm that they were still there. Then they would confront the person as a crowd would gather, accusing them of being a genital thief, before stripping naked to convince bystanders that their penis was really missing. Many “victims” claimed that the penis had been returned once the alarm had been raised or that, although the penis was now back, “it was shrunken and so probably a 'wrong' one or just the ghost of a penis” (95). The accused was often threatened or beaten until the penis had been “fully restored,” and in some instances, the accused was beaten to death. Ilechukwu (1992, 96) described the scene in one city:

Men could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hands in their pockets. Women were also seen holding on to their breasts directly or discreetly by crossing the hands across the chest. It was thought that inattention and a weak will facilitated the "taking” of the penis or breasts. Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylaxis.

Social and cultural traditions contributed to the outbreak as many Nigerian ethnic groups “ascribe high potency to the external genitalia as ritual and magical objects to promote fecundity or material prosperity to the unscrupulous” (Ilechukwu 1988, 313). The belief in vanishing genitalia was not only plausible but institutionalized; many influential Nigerians expressed outrage when police released suspected genital thieves. A Christian priest even claimed that a Bible passage where Jesus asked “Who touched me?” because the “power had gone out of him,” referred to genital stealing (101-102).

Concluding Remarks

The next one thousand years will yield a new batch of social delusions and hysterical outbreaks that will reflect the hopes and fears of future generations. While it is not possible to know the exact nature of these episodes, we can confidently predict one of the first delusions of this period. For at the start of the second Christian millennium, we should be mindful that the millennial notion is itself a social delusion. The concept does not exist in nature but is a human creation-a product of history and circumstance. It has no significance beyond the meaning that humans attach to it. Yet, students of history know well that the consequences of beliefs can enormously influence the course of history.

References

1. Arnold, K. 1950. The Flying Saucer As I Saw It. Boise, Idaho: Self-published.
2. Arnold, K., and R.A. Palmer. 1952. The Coming of the Saucers: A Documentary Report on Sky Objects that Have Mystified the World. Amherst, Wisconsin: Self-published.
3. Bainbridge, W.S. 1987. Collective behavior and social movements. Pp. 544-576. In R. Stark (ed.), Sociology. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
4. Bartholomew, R.E. 1989. The South African monoplane hysteria: An evaluation of the usefulness of Smelser's Theory of Hysterical Beliefs. Sociological Inquiry 59(3):287-300.
5. Bartholomew, R.E., and F. Sirois. 1996. Epidemic hysteria in schools: An international and historical overview. Educational Studies 22(3):285-311.
6. Barnes, R.H. 1993. Construction sacrifice, kidnapping and headhunting rumours on flores and elsewhere in Indonesia. Oceania 64:146-158.
7. Bulgatz, J. 1992. Ponzi Schemes, Invaders from Mars & More Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. New York: Harmony Books.
8. Calmeil, L.F. 1845. De la Folie, Consideree Sous le Point de vue Pathologique, Philosophique, Historique et Judiciaire [On the Crowd, Considerations on the Point of Pathology, Philosophy, History and Justice]. Paris: Baillere.
9. Cantril, H. 1940 [1947]. The Invasion From Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
10. Caporael, L. 1976. Ergotism: The Satan loosed in Salem? Science 192:21-26.
11. Clark, J. 1998. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, Volume One: A-K (second edition). Omnigraphics, Incorporated: Detroit, Michigan.
12. Darnton, R. 1984. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books.
13. Drake, R.A. 1989. Construction sacrifice and kidnapping: Rumor panics in Borneo. Oceania 59:269-278.
14. Ellis, B. 1996. Chupacabras mania spreads. Foaftale News 39:2-3.
15. Forth, G. 1991. Construction sacrifice and head-hunting rumours in central Flores (Eastern Indonesia): A Comparative Note. Oceania 61:257-266.
16. Gardner, M. 1988. The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books.
17. Gardner, M. 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover.
18. Griggs, W.N. 1852. The Celebrated 'Moon Story.' New York: Bunnell and Price.
19. Hecker, J.F.C. 1844. Epidemics of the Middle Ages (translated from German by B. Babington) London: The Sydenham Society.
20. Hirsch, A. 1883. Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology. New Sydenham Society: London.
21. Ilechukwu, S.T.C. 1992. Magical penis loss in Nigeria: Report of a recent epidemic of a koro-like syndrome. Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review 29:91-108.
22. ---. Letter from S.T.C. Ilechukwu, M.D. (Lagos, Nigeria) which describes interesting koro-like syndromes in Nigeria. Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review 25:310-314.
23. Jacobs, N. 1965. The phantom slasher of Taipei: Mass hysteria in a non-western society. Social Problems 12:318-328.
24. Johnson, D.M. 1945. The “Phantom Anesthetist” of Mattoon: A field study of mass hysteria. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 40:175-186.
25. Johnston, F. 1980. When Millions Saw Mary. Chulmleigh, England: Augustine Publishing.
26. Karlsen, C.F. 1989. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: Vintage.
27. Mackay, C. 1852. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds Volume 2. London: Office of the National Illustrated Library.
28. Madden, R.R. 1857. Phantasmata or Illusions and Fanaticisms of Protean Forms Productive of Great Evils. T.C. Newby: London.
29. Medalia, N.Z., and O. Larsen. 1958. Diffusion and belief in a collective delusion. Sociological Review 23:180-186.
30. Miller, D. 1985. Introduction to Collective Behavior. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth.
31. Modan, B., M. Tirosh, E. Weissenberg, C. Acker, T.. Swartz, C. Coston, A.. Donagi, M. Revach, and G. Vettorazzi. 1983. The Arjenyattah epidemic. Lancet ii:1472-1476.
32. Navarro, M. 1996. A monster on loose? Or is it fantasy? The New York Times, January 26, p. A10.
33. Nevins, W.S. 1916. Witchcraft in Salem Village. Franklin: New York.
34. Persinger, M., and J. Derr. 1989. Geophysical variables and behavior: LIV. Zeitoun (Egypt) Apparitions of the Virgin Mary as tectonic strain-induced luminosities. Perceptual and Motor Skills 68:123-128.
35. Philen, R.M., E.M. Kilbourn, and T.W. McKinley. 1989. Mass sociogenic illness by proxy: Parentally reported in an elementary school. Lancet ii:1372-1376.
36. Preston, J. 1996. In the tradition of Bigfoot and Elvis, the Goatsucker. The New York Times, June 2, p. 2E.
37. Radovanovic, Z. 1995. On the origin of mass casualty incidents in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, in 1990. European Journal of Epidemiology 11:1-13.
38. Rockney, R.M., and T. Lemke. 1992. Casualties from a junior high school during the Persian Gulf War: Toxic poisoning or mass hysteria? Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 13:339-342.
39. Sachs, M. 1980. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigee.
40. Sirois, F. 1974. Epidemic hysteria. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica Supplementum 252:7-46.
41. Sjahrir, S. 1949. Out of Exile (translated from Dutch by Charles Wolf). New York: Greenwood Press.
42. Story, R. 1980. The Encyclopedia of UFOs. New York: Doubleday.
43. Strentz, H.J. 1970. A Survey of Press Coverage of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947-1966. Doctoral Dissertation, Northwestern University, Department of Journalism.
44. Tumin, M.M., and A.S. Feldman. 1955. The miracle at Sabana Grande. Public Opinion Quarterly 19:124-139.
45. Wessely, S. 1987. Mass hysteria: Two syndromes? Psychological Medicine 17:109-120.
46. Wolfe, R. 1999. Weekly World News, September 28:8-9. l