“The entire world’s gone crazy,” I sigh melodramatically into the air of my bedroom office, shutting my smudged laptop. I’m listening to an episode of Maintenance Phase about RFK Jr. and reading about yet another how people are consuming Borax and…I just kind of short-circuit. Because I am trying to contort myself into a position to understand but I just. Can’t. Do it. How can anyone think like this?
Or, more critically, how can literally millions of seemingly regular humans, people with lives and jobs and children and refrigerators full of Diet Coke and cars with cake pop wrappers on the floor, actually? Think? These? Things? What kind of hate-fueled, religiously-driven mushy-brain syndrome have they all developed?
In this situation, I usually try to find something - anything. Literally any solitary shred - that I can make sense of. I try to make their arguments for them, considering the angles they might present and the ideas they might bring to the table.
But my god, the cruel maneuvers and manipulations of reality that it requires. This practice in Trying To See Someone As A Human When All Evidence Contradicts That Theory is….it’s getting really hard.
How is it that so many people can believe the same untrue things - and act on them? Maybe it’s just that there’s some kind of epidemic of, uh, unbalance that’s spreading through keyboards and cracked iPhones? Maybe this is a kind of contagious lunacy the likes of which we haven’t seen in, like, a few years?
So I went hunting for another explanation. Mostly for the purposes of this newsletter, but also out of curiosity! Which led me down an interesting path of reading about mass psychosis and the previous instances in the United States (and elsewhere) when a whole lot of people came to believe something truly, truly unbelievable.
And honestly, there are a lot of examples because it turns out it’s actually extremely easy to persuade humans to believe almost any goddamn thing. Like, if you think that drinking bleach or cooking up weird pucks of trash to ward off aliens is the wildest thing that relatively sizable groups of humans have ever done, hoo boy. Buckle up.
Mass psychosis, or, when everyone loses their fucking mind
I want to say at the top that I will not be going into cult stuff at this time because, while it is a next-door neighbor of mass psychosis, it’s also a whole other can of brain worms. Maybe in a future newsletter I’ll talk about cult psychology (would you be into that? Let me know!) but not today.
Today, I want to look at the instances when a lot of people all seemed to go completely off the rails at the same time, together. You know, the thing that Harold Hill was warning about when he was scamming an entire town in the most wholesome way of all time (music). The times when large groups of otherwise normal people, with normal beliefs and a strong(ish) tether to the real world as we all know it become entirely convinced of something that is plainly, clearly, obviously not real.
Probably one of the most well-known instances is that of the Salem witch trials, wherein some children started acting strangely and then a bunch of people believed that murdering their friends and neighbors was a good idea.
The kids - who were known to be good, pious little children - “would bark at one another like dogs, and again purr like so many cats,” striking “odd postures and antic gestures.” Which like, I just spent a couple of days around my 6-year-old niece and what I learned was this: Kids are weird as hell. They just make strange noises and do all kinds of unusual shit. So like, some kiddos - who were raised with all of the magical realism that comes from basing your education 100% on the Bible, a book where snakes and shrubbery talk and people live to be 200 years old and dads come thisclose to burning their kids on a mountaintop but then JUST KIDDING! God is a silly goose!
Plus, these kids were living on the edge of a jet-black forest, in smokey little houses, wearing starched, wooly clothes, and probably eating all kinds of unsavory things. You’d go crazy, too. It’s actually incredible that more people didn’t start barking like dogs, given the sorry state of health and hygiene in the 1600s.
The amount of fervor in the town of Salem at the time (and also before that, in England, when basically the same thing happened) is hard to capture in the modern imagination; think about every barrel-curled white woman in your mom’s group who posts idiotic stuff on Facebook, except she also has the power to tell someone to literally light you on fire. And she will, if given the chance! But then we have to ask…how? What conditions were required to turn these very religious, very regimented individuals into a mob of screaming demons, willing to murder their own children?
There are a lot of theories as to what led to this collective call-and-response of crazy. Poisoning, for example, is a strong one. The girls, who demonstrated behaviors like convulsing, babbling, making “choking sounds,” and (my favorite) “forgetfulness,” were thought to be the cause. Smallpox, too, or another disease could be responsible.
But that doesn’t exactly make the backlash - you know, straight-up murder - any more sensible. Like, why did a bunch of adults see children with symptoms of what would normally be written off as poisoning or even possession, and decide that it was punishable by death?
The role of religious conditioning can’t be understated here. The fact that the residents of Salem were there because they were freaky-weird religious rejects from England meant they were already prone to psychological manipulation by church leaders. They’d sailed across an ocean to a mostly-wild place they believed to be absolutely crammed with So Scary Indigenous People in order to practice their faith the way they wanted to, so it’s safe to say they would have done just about anything for the clergy. And when religious leaders said “those girls are witches,” they were pretty well primed to believe it. Additionally, it’s important to point to the deep deference toward authority figures. The men who were deemed righteous rulers could have literally said “oh by the way, we all worship Satan now, so like…party on!” and the villagers would have given it strong weight. They were just so primed to believe the words of their leaders that critical thought or reason was already riding in the backseat.
But not every instance of mass hysteria is due to religion (or poison). Sometimes it’s just…a need for something to believe in.
Urban Legends: Fairytales for Adults
That seems to be the case of Spring-Heeled Jack, a devil-like figure of urban legend who people in Victorian London absolutely swore they saw.
For decades, Spring-Heeled Jack - a man (kind of) who could jump very high and wore a cape and sort of looked like a bat - terrorized England and Scotland. Or like, the idea of him did. He was like a supervillain with no superhero to content with, scaring people and making for really good admonishments to children who misbehaved. Except there was no proof that such a person ever existed (did I mention that he could jump OVER buildings?) and sightings went on for more than 50 years.
“He would not rob his victims but simply ‘paralyse them with fear’ before suddenly disappearing, often leaping over a wall to get away. Some accounts suggest he ripped the woman’s clothes with his claw,” reports the Scotsman.
At first, locals concluded that he must have been some kind of cryptid or other paranormal entity. Sighting of him were exciting newspaper fodder, and local police were put on the watch. Shoppers exchanged theories on the cobblestone market streets and little girls were warned about this scary bat-type creature. But as women actually began to report that they had been attacked, it became clear that “Jack” was perhaps just a cover for men on the prowl.
“Although the accounts of Spring-heeled Jack were hard to verify, they were enough to make women feel afraid to go out at night - and newspapers loved the sensation of it all.
A trend began as copycats lapped up the attention and Scotland soon had many of its own Spring-heeled Jacks. Usually, they took on a ghostly appearance, according to accounts.”
For the most part, this specter is believed to have been a kind of mass hysteria that served as a focal point for the very real fears Londoners had at the time, ultimately inspiring young criminals who might have otherwise just taunted women or leered at them from pub doorsteps.
At the time, there were a lot of reasons for women to be afraid. Crimes of all sorts were pretty common, diseases were killing people, everyone was crammed into too-tight spaces, and no one felt especially safe breathing the water or drinking the air. Naturally, having a common Bad Guy that wasn't like, Parliament, was pretty appealing.
Also critically, Spring-Heeled Jack and another famous Jack - Jack the Ripper - were contemporaries. The idea of a legitimate predator on the streets of London has become as normal as afternoon tea. When people went out at night, they were frightened for so many reasons, which likely contributed to frantic letters to the local papers explaining that they definitely saw a man - and not, say, a large cat - on the roof of their neighbor’s home.
Spring-Heeled Jack is an interesting example of the way that people can collectively come to believe in something without any proof, especially when the conditions are right for such fantastical thinking. Looking at most of the documented instances of mass delusion or psychosis, you’ll see that they most often happen during periods of great change or hardship. Humans tend to gravitate toward slightly outlandish versions of real life when things are difficult - that’s why we all watched Tiger King at the beginning of the pandemic - because like, your brain is already testing the limits of what it can handle.
Here are two other instances of “sightings” of things that may or may not be real, but are are pretty well-documented and also came at a time when people were vulnerable.
The “Flying disc craze” of 1947
In 1947, Americans were still trying to get back to normal after World War II, but it was, of course, a slog. Almost as soon as the troops returned home - expected to just pick up a briefcase and go to work like nothing happened - the Cold War.
And in the meantime, everyone was getting really into space and space lore. Kids were hooked on Flash Gordon comics and adults were still talking about the 1933 serialized sci-fi hit, When Worlds Collide. Still a decade out from the launch of Sputnik, in the 1940s, space was super-hot, super-exciting, and super-mysterious!
People were very ready to see something kooky up in the sky - and they had their first taste of a real-world encounter thanks to a pilot named Ken.
In a blog post for the National Air and Space Museum, Russell Lee introduces this specific moment in time:
We will never know exactly what private pilot Kenneth A. Arnold saw 75 years ago while flying past Mt. Rainier on June 24, 1947. What he said he saw, and spent the rest of his life trying to explain, added the words “flying saucer” to the vocabularies of millions of people around the world.
Arnold’s report - which included details of maneuvers (“the objects periodically flipped, banked, and weaved side-to-side,”) and the incredible speed at which they flew (“he calculated the objects were flying at about 1,200 mph”) - ended up on the AP wire, where it went out to papers across the country. And while Arnold later denied actually using the term “flying saucer,” contemporary reports say he did - and either way, other people did, too.
Newspapers from Key West to Nome picked up the stories of these discs - or “pie pans,” - and reporters rapidly began filing their own. Within a month, news was dominated by saucer-related activity, whether it was sightings, suggested sources, or straight-up hoaxes.
That same summer, the wreckage at Roswell was recovered, which was either definitely no big deal or an absolutely enormous government cover-up. On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record ran a story with the headline “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell,” further spurring the collective interest in creatures from other dimensions.
During the summer of 1947, it was all anyone seemed to be talking about. Kind of like the Barbie movie except less existential and more extraterrestrial.
Interestingly, there’s probably a pretty non-alien explanation for what Arnold originally saw; the “flying pancake” was an aircraft that the Navy was experimenting with at the time. But regardless, in the summer of 1947, a whole lot of people were convinced - or at least, wanted to convince others - of “flying saucers.”
It was mostly harmless (and helped people think about a common threat other than, you know, fascism for a while) and ultimately died down when actual spacecraft were launched into the great dark yonder. But it’s hard not to read the “flying saucer craze” as a sign of that particular time, when the Soviet Union seemed to be on the verge of colonizing the entire planet (and space), while the United States was trying to shore up its own post-war issues. It was a scary time - but it feels like maybe “little green men” were less scary than the big red menace.
The “Windshield pitting epidemic” of 1954
Ok, here’s my last example and I couldn’t leave it out because it’s just…so…weird? Also because it took place in Seattle, my home of many years, and Bellingham, also my home or fewer but still a significant number of years.
The year is 1954. Cars are huge, both literally and figuratively, and America is feeling great now that the war is in the rearview mirror and everyone has had one billion screaming babies to erase the memory of it all. Most places are still segregated, Indigenous people were fighting to be considered actual sentient humans in the eyes of the United States government, and women still could not open a bank account without either their father or their husband’s permission. Ah, the good old days!
Anyway, in the upper left corner of the United States, residents were finding themselves puzzled. What had happened to their cars?
According to a 2003 (!) HistoryLink article (for those who are not in/around Washington, HistoryLink is like one huge local oral history), Alan Stein described the “tiny holes, pits, and dings” that had “seemingly appeared in the windshields of cars at an unprecedented rate.”
It started in Bellingham, but quickly spread to Seattle, Tacoma, and even some of the islands in Puget Sound.
The little pits looked like they may have been caused by buckshot - which, out in Whatcom County, a place that is basically Little Appalachia, would not be surprising - but when people in other rural areas started noticing them, too, it became A Whole Thing.
Sure, you could point to the fact that most of the early reports came from folks who were regularly driving on unpaved or under-paved roads, and that in 1954, windshield glass was still pretty fragile. Or maybe that, you know, kids did often run around with BB guns and slingshots and all manor of other destruction-causing implements at the time.
But the people of Washington did not point to those facts. They pointed to the sky (H-bomb testing?) and to each other (vandals!) and to the government (because why not. Police from a number of agencies got involved.
From HistoryLink:
Losing no time, all available law enforcement officers in the area sped to town in the hope of apprehending the culprits. Roadblocks were set up south of town at Deception Pass Bridge, and all cars leaving and entering the city were given a detailed once-over, as were their drivers and passengers.
To no avail. Farther south, cars at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station at Oak Harbor were discovered to have the same mysterious dings. Nearly 75 marines made an intensive five-hour search of the station. They came up empty. By the end of the day, more than 2,000 cars from Bellingham to Oak Harbor were reported as having been damaged. Two things became abundantly clear: This could not be the work of roving hooligans; and whatever was causing windshield pits and dings was rapidly approaching Seattle.
The Seattle Police actually went out and inspected a number of vehicles to see what proof they could gather. They were vexed. Mayor Allan Pomeroy even wired the President of these United States for help, pleading for “appropriate federal (and state) agencies” to “be instructed to cooperate with local authorities on emergency basis.”
Eventually, it was shown that the likely culprit was a kind of coal dust - and that the pits had been there all along, people just hadn’t noticed them. The “epidemic” ended nearly as quickly as it started, which is to say, it just kept existing but people paid it no mind.
Mass psychosis, massive fallout
As I’ve mentioned before (I think), a lot of ~ scary stories ~ are rooted in what people are actually afraid of in life. As a result, a lot of instances of mass hysteria are less frivolous and more dangerous. Many racist beliefs have deep roots in these kinds of group delusions; consider the fear of Black men which lead to lynchings in the Jim Crow south and continue to feed the prison industrial complex, or the Red Scare and the blacklisting of writers and actors in Hollywood during McCarthy’s bat-crackers crusade.
People can also hurt themselves when they become absorbed in these cultural frenzies - a sitting President (who’s now been indicted on 70something counts, but who’s counting?) once plugged the ingestion of bleach and it wasn’t even the biggest news story of the day. The obsession with “home remedies” and “holistic treatments” like essential oils, raw milk, or even Borax are encouraged by crunchy blond-haired women on TikTok. If you see enough of their videos, the thesis starts to almost sound plausible. What are ~crunchy~ moms in Facebook groups engaging in if not a kind of collective insanity when they decide not to use soap?
Of course, a lot of these fears are truly baked in. When marginalized groups begin to ascend to toward parity, the previous ruling class feels personally threatened. When science and technology have become the new answer for everything, machines (terrestrial or otherwise) became the stuff of nightmares. We saw an uptick in DIY medical treatments in the wake of COVID-19.
Most documented instances of collective madness have ended on their own - people usually move on to something else. But not before some people get hurt, or before some people discover all-new depths of their own brains. And some of them take hold and never let go, evolving and changing with each new era, finding the seekers and would-be cult joiners wherever they are, on their level.
Our collective bouts of temporary insanity tell us something about what we’re really afraid of. And often, it’s each other. Or progress. Or change. Or all of the above.
Ugh. I’m tired.
Stay spooky, don’t join a cult, and remember that cleaning supplies are for *outside* the body. Ok? Outside.
🧼 Related: Did you know I also co-host a podcast about cleaning (and mental health, and house stuff, and solutions to everyday problems)? I do! You should check it out. I think it’s very fun.