"Can large groups of people experience mass delusions, hysteria's, or hallucinations? The answer is truly remarkable.
On May 15th, 2001, a bizarre report came out of New Delhi, India. A CNN article reported, "Fear has gripped the Indian capital after dozens of residents reported attacks by an ape-like creature able to leap from roof to roof. Police had received about 65 reports of a mysterious attacker with a monkey's face and human body scratching and biting victims in and around Delhi since Saturday, a senior police official told Reuters on Tuesday." Residents came forward displaying wounds from the attacks, some of which were later confirmed as animal bites by doctors.
Fear was so rampant that several people fell to their deaths upon hearing news that the monkey was nearby. "...a pregnant woman sleeping on her terrace was woken by neighbors shouting: 'The monkey has come!.' The woman fell down a staircase and died in the hospital. Two nights earlier, an industrial worker died in similar circumstances when he leapt in terror from a building at Noida, a southeastern suburb." By the end of the two week long saga, nearly 350 reports of sightings or attacks were logged by the local police and a reward had been offered to anyone who could provide information leading to the creatures capture.
The amazing thing is the so-called "Monkey Man" never existed. It had been the product of a mass hysteria. According to a CNN article, "The mysterious 'monkey man' that instilled terror and claimed three lives in the Indian capital was simply the product of the city's collective imagination." Psychiatrists and forensic experts concluded that the beast was a "mere figment of the imagination of emotionally weak people"... In the end, policed "blamed the panic on uneducated poor people, many of them superstitious and strong believers in the supernatural."
... Whether or not we could have ever anticipated it happening, an entire city had fooled itself into believing that a creature was randomly attacking citizens at night. Mass hysteria, mass delusion, and mass hallucination. Similar things have happened in places other than India...
The psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones have carried out a study of collective or mass hallucinations. They tell us how this happens:
It is expectation that plays the coordinating role in collective hallucination. Although the subject matter of individual hallucinations has virtually no limits, the topics of collective hallucinations are limited to certain categories. These categories are determined, first, by the kinds of ideas that a group of people may be excited about as a group, for emotional excitement is a prerequisite of collective hallucinations. The most common causes of emotional excitement in groups are religious, and, indeed, phenomenon related to religion are most often the subject of collective hallucinations. Second, the categories are limited by the fact that all participants in the hallucination must be informed before hand, at least concerning the broad outlines of the phenomenon that will constitute the collective hallucination. This may take the form of a publicly announced prophecy, for example, or someone suddenly looking up and saying, "Lo, in the sky!" or words to that effect. Things in the sky, or at least overhead, are the most commonly seen collective hallucinations: radiant crosses, saints, religious symbols, flying objects, sometimes all these in combination. Once the general type of hallucination is established, it is easy to harmonize individual differences in the accounts. This may take place during the hallucination or in subsequent conversations."
Even in cases of emotional contagion that so often takes place in crowds moved by strong emotions, there will be always some who will not see the hallucination. It is uncommon for them to speak out and deny it. They usually keep quiet, doubtful perhaps of their worthiness to have been granted the vision for which so many of their fellows all around them are fervently giving thanks. Later on, influenced by the accounts of others, they may even begin to believe that they saw it too. The "reliable eyewitness," who, as it turns out upon closer examination did not see anything unusual at all, is an all-too-frequent experience of the investigator of phenomena seen by many. (Anomalistic Psychology, pg. 135)