I absolutely love mass delusions. They are like Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields combined with the granfalloons of Kurt Vonnegut, its like groupthink via hallucination. A true example of a hive mind and the manipulation of perception.

One of the best examples of mass hallucination in US history was the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, IL. . Throughout August of 1944, the residents of Mattoon reported attacks from a mysterious gasser who induced temporary illness.

It was near midnight on Thursday, August 31, 1944, when Mattoon police received a phone call from a woman and her daughter who claimed that they had been attacked by a figure lurking in the shadows near their home. After they opened a bedroom window, the house was reportedly sprayed with a sweet-smelling sickish gas that left them nauseated and dizzy. The mother also said she experienced a slight, temporary paralysis in her legs. Police investigated but found no evidence of the intruder…

On September 2, the editors of the Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette published the headlines: “Anesthetic Prowler on Loose.” After reading the story, two Mattoon families contacted police with similar accounts of being gassed in their homes just before the incident. Over the next several days, police were inundated with numerous gassing claims, which tailed off and ceased altogether after September 12.³ During the first two weeks of September, Mattoon police received a total of 25 separate reports involving 27 females and two males claiming to have been sprayed with the enigmatic incapacitating gas by someone who became widely referred to as “the phantom anesthetist” and “the mad gasser of Mattoon.” Johnson described the series of reports as an episode of mass hysteria, noting that 93 per cent of the “victims” were females of low socioeconomic status who were uncritical in evaluating the situation, and concluding that they were exhibiting hysterical conversion reactions. The transient symptoms reported by those “gassed” were limited to nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, palpitations, difficulty walking, and in one instance, a burning sensation in the mouth. These symptoms can be accounted for by anxiety generated by “gasser” publicity, while a series of early cases involved the redefinition of mundane physical reactions that would have ordinarily gone unnoticed, but were subsequently attributed to the phantom anesthetist. Johnson provides two examples of this latter process.

Illinois Sociologist David L. Miller re-examined the original Mattoon Daily Journal-Gazette press reports and uncovered some interesting findings. Miller said that several newsmen who came to cover the episode reported headaches that they believed had been caused by the gasser, yet they were not counted as victims because of their gender. Miller also found that during several “attacks,” husbands were accompanying their wives, and while both described suffering from the effects of the gas, only wives were counted as victims, casting suspicion on the presence of epidemic hysteria. Why is this important? Because Johnson confirmed the presence of conversion disorder (epidemic hysteria) by observing that most victims were female (females are supposedly more prone to experiencing hysteria, but this claim remains contentious among most sociologists and feminists, for reasons too detailed to go into here). Miller also noted that in the light of these points, the media initially defined women as the perceived targets, which may have contributed to a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Consequently, following the initial sensational case and subsequent police search for the gasser which received spectacular newspaper coverage, residents, especially women, may have reinterpreted mundane occurrences such as nocturnal shadows, chemical odors from numerous local factories, and anxiety states.

Interesting stuff. Do we suffer through mass illusions today? How much of the American political debate is just mass illusion?

Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land [via @alexismadrigal]