I was watching a group of children play the other day. My youngest daughter was among
the happy bunch. For the most part it had been a pleasant half-hour. There had been no
fights and only some minor injuries. The parents of said injured children would swoop in
and relieve their children of any responsibility for taking care of themselves. After some
kind words and a bandage, the injured children were turned back loose to be injured again.
Now I am sure this was not the intent of the parents but by their actions they had set their
children up to be injured again. They had not let the steel be hardened by the fire. No they
had immediately put the fire out. Their children were not tempered by fire, but were brittle
and would break at the slightest pretense.
I am not this way, and when my daughter skinned her knee she only looked my way to see
if I had witnessed her fall. "Your fine," I yelled. "Get back to playing, we have to go soon."
And back to playing she went. She is a tough little girl and besides it will save me
hundreds of dollars in bandages over the next few years.
As I was about to call my daughter over so that we could leave, I noticed one little boy
begin swinging at the air and screaming something. He started running wildly here and
there and bumping into other children. These other children would then also begin running
wildly around, swinging at the air and screaming. Soon many if not all of the children's
parents began running around wildly and swinging at the air. It was something akin to a
nuclear reaction.
Finally, things began to settle down. The mother of the "atom" that had split and had
caused the reaction caught up to her little disaster and asked him what had caused him to
act like that. Well as it turned out, while playing around the equipment some spiders web
had stuck to his hair and then a small leaf had stuck to that. It was just on the inside of his
peripheral vision, and he had thought it was a giant spider. The pleasant group of children
had turned into a hysterical mob over a leaf.
While this group of children had been running around screaming I was proud to see my
daughter at the top of the slide observing the goings on, the way I was. I had taught her
well and she had gone to higher ground to avoid danger, not from the leaf but from the
mob. Being that she is only two years old, she was a bit concerned over the actions of the
group and was ready to go after things settled down. It was good to know that the hysterical
panic had not infected my daughter as it had the others.
I have observed many groups over the years where similar situations have occurred.
Sometimes the hysteria is controlled and slow, and other times it is like the explosion at
the beginning of this story. When it is slow to take hold, it can affect more people. It will
slowly creep into the minds of those there and before you know it, all believe the same
thing.
Mass Group Hysteria is not always a bad thing. On the way home one day I observed an
individual waving Old Glory on the street corner. He was alone, so I hurried home and
retrieved my own flag and joined him. Now I am not sure why he was waving the flag, but it
seemed like a good thing to do. I said "hi" and began waving my own flag. It was not long
before we had a hysterical crowd there waving flags. People from all walks of life that
would not normally have gathered together were there, waving flags. Cars would honk and
that would get a hysterical cheer from the crowd. Many people in the cars were seen to be
crying. And though hysteria was definitely involved this day there on the street corner, I
don’t believe anyone went away with an uneasy feeling, like my daughter did earlier as we
left the playground.
Sometimes a situation can teeter on the very edge of disaster! Destructive Hysteria
waiting with its mouth wide open on one side and a pleasant warm feeling waiting on the
other. Flag waving does not always have the same effect as it did on the street corner.
Sometimes the waving of a flag spells disaster. It all depends on the moment. Some years
ago, while on an elk hunt high up in the Wyoming wilderness, I was witness to a flag waving
gone bad.
Getting back to camp after an early morning's hunt, I decided to let the horses loose so that
they could get some high mountain grass in their bellies. We had been doing this in the
previous few days and the horses had stayed in the little meadow close to camp, never
wondering far. Meadowlarks were singing and there was a big blue sky above. It was
peaceful sitting there, watching the horses feed. Soon I fell asleep.
As sometimes happens when you are in a deep sleep, I found myself in the middle of a
dream. Thundering hoofs were all around me. The sounds of excited shouts and of trees
snapping were all mixed in. A hysterical herd of horses were headed for disaster. The
direction of the disaster was towards the trailhead eight miles away. I woke up with a start!
I had no real desire to hike the eight miles to the trailhead to retrieve the horses and so the
dream was unpleasant.
That’s when I heard Elkless George yell something about the horses. Still in the fog that is
often present when one awakens from a deep sleep, I was unable to understand Elkless
George. He yelled again but just before he did I saw the matter that had concerned him. In
fact the "matter", a terrified bucking apparition of a horse was barring down on my location
with great speed. The horse had quite a large limb from a tree tangled in his tail, waving
like a flag in the air behind him. A small log was also wrapped up in his lead rope. Horses
are really motivated by something following them. Especially when they can't seem to out
run it.
Having no real desire to be trampled by the horse I vacated the spot I was in, in favor of
another. Unfortunately, the horse was having trouble keeping to a constant directional
course due to the fact that it kept looking back at the limb that was following it, at which
time it would trip on the log at its feet, causing it to change direction. To my horror he now
was headed to the same spot I had just chosen to avoid him. All the other horses seemed
to be enjoying the show and laughing hysterically as they followed along, kicking and
bucking like they all had limbs tangled in their tails.
I needed to act fast if I was going to survive this encounter with Hysteria. At the last
moment I stepped to the side and grabbed the lead rope of the frightened horse. As I left
the ground and was in the air, I was amazed that I was able to hang on to the rope.
Apparently, the horse also shared my amazement and when I hit the ground again, he
stopped his antics. Slowly, so as not to frighten the horse again, I began to get up. Well to
tell the truth, it had been along time since I had been flying, and was a little unsteady with
my feet back on the ground. Also there seemed to be a little more pain associated with
flight than I had remembered.
I was making small moaning sounds, and although it was not my intent, this was calming
the horse down. I notice at this time that the log had left the lead rope somewhere in-flight.
Then a fly landed on the horses back and the horse did what horses do all the time and
swatted at the fly with his tail. The problem was that the limb was still tangled in his tail.
Another hysterical explosion of horseflesh ensued.
After some time I was again able to calm the horse down. The problem was that the limb
was still tangled in the horses tail and Elkless George was getting tired of shooing flies
away from the horse. Elkless George began hysterically laughing and dismissed my
suggestion that he should slowly try and remove the limb from the horses tail.
Commenting that some of the rocks that had been kicked up were yet to fall back to earth
he thought it would not be wise to get that close to the rear of this horse. Such cowardice
in the heat of battle was shocking! Eventually with the help of a stick and a sharp knife the
limb was removed. Peace was again restored to the high mountain meadow. Hysteria was
back in its hole ready to reappear again at a moment's notice.
Reappear it did in Mexico, not in its explosive form, but as a slowly creeping vine.
Intertwining with ones nerves until it had complete control, causing the individual and the
group to react in ways other than normal. This hysteria is very hard to detect. In most
cases the victim or victims only realize their enslavement hours later.
We were playing some games in the yellow darkness that passes for light when both
mantels on the lantern are broken. We were all tired from a hard day fishing and from
swatting flies and mosquitoes, so no one wanted to get up and change the mantels. Also,
since what little light was emitted from the lantern was attracting an enormous amount of
insects, whether it was a five or a six on the dice did not really seem to matter.
"Yeaouhuuuuuuu………"
"What was that?" one of the children watching the game asked.
"What was what?
"Didn't you hear that?"
"Hear what?'
"Yeaouhuuuuuuuuu……"
"Hey wait guys, did you hear that?"
"Yeaouhuuuuuuuuu……"
Now everyone's attention was trained in the direction of the desert wilderness, just beyond
camp. Speculation began to grow that someone was being beaten and was screaming in
agony. Several residents of the area had been seen to be drinking before it had got dark
and had been making a lot of noise since. So violence certainly was not out of the question.
"You know that might be an animal making that noise," I said.
I offered up this opinion once or twice and was soundly chastised and told it was obviously
a woman being beaten. Doubt and slow creeping hysteria wormed its way into to my
nerves until I to was certain it was death I was hearing. If you listened carefully you could
even hear each blow as it met the poor woman's flesh.
What should we do, became the topic of conversation very quickly. We had several
children with us and were not really looking to get into some trouble trying to rescue a lady
from a certain death as must be her fate from the agony dripping from the syllables of her
screams.
Finally, a friend of the Fruitman, (The Fruitman never met a fruit stand he did not want to
stop at.) could not take the screaming any more and ran off into the desert towards the
sound. As he went by our stunned group he was heard to hysterically say, "I am not going
to let anyone be murdered while I am around." Hysteria now had a hold on us all.
Children were crying and looking for a place to hide. Adults were trying to respond to a
grave situation while in the grip of hysteria. It was slowly decided that we could not let
Fruitman's friend face this battle alone. The Doc and I instructed his two brothers that if the
noises of a fight developed after our entering the darkness, they were to get all the kids
into the van and back across the border immediately. Slowly the Doc and I marched to an
uncertain fate. We listened for any further sounds to lead us to our destiny.
"Shee..tiktik…..shee..tiktik!"
Without a doubt, I knew this last sound. The unmistakable sound of the bolt on a rifle being
drawn back and then ramming home a round into the chamber. A sort of calm came over
the Doc and I. We had no weapons of any kind and were certain to be shot. At least Doc's
brothers would get the kids out of here and to safety across the border.
Since Doc speaks fluent Spanish, he was elected to move to a forward position and try and
reason with the bloodthirsty owner of the rifle. As Doc moved forward I tried to flank the
guy. Soon I could hear Doc talking. In fact, I was a bit surprised at the friendly manner with
which he seemed to be conversing. I wanted to yell out and tell Doc he was not getting
ready to inflict untold pain on some patient of his and thus should be trying to soothe them,
but then I heard one word that I understood. One word I should not have been surprised to
hear. But I was in the grip of hysteria and was not to blame.
"Gato!" Cat!
As I had suspected before hysteria's hold on me, it was a big cat. In fact a mountain lion
screaming the pain of a broken heart. Screaming for its lover to come back. As I
approached Doc and the rifleman, I noticed that Doc's brothers had not followed orders and
were even now coming up behind the rifleman with a very large length of two by four.
They had heard the rifle bolt slam home also, and were coming to the rescue. They were
preparing to inflict great bodily harm to the rifleman. At the last minute as the two by four
was raised and readied for its downward blow, I gleefully informed them that I had been
right all along. The power of "I told you so" is very strong. It was an animal making the
sound.
We were able to get the cat in the glow of several flashlights but the owner of the rifle
declined to shoot it. Later we found out that each cartridge cost the equivalent of about a
week's pay and unless the cat had posed a real danger he could not afford to shoot. After
sometime the cat determined we were not going to end his pain and wondered back into
the desert.
Later that night as I tried to fall asleep, I contemplated the look on Doc's brothers faces. It
had been one of determination to save us at any cost. Hysteria had turned mild mannered
dentists into possible killers. As I thought about it there was something more disturbing
there but I could not seem to get a handle on it. Then it dawned on me. I had seen this
same look before, the look of a killer about to inflict great pain. The look on the dentists
face as he stares down at you in that big chair. Hysteria gripped me and I screamed just
thinking about my next visit to the chair.
the happy bunch. For the most part it had been a pleasant half-hour. There had been no
fights and only some minor injuries. The parents of said injured children would swoop in
and relieve their children of any responsibility for taking care of themselves. After some
kind words and a bandage, the injured children were turned back loose to be injured again.
Now I am sure this was not the intent of the parents but by their actions they had set their
children up to be injured again. They had not let the steel be hardened by the fire. No they
had immediately put the fire out. Their children were not tempered by fire, but were brittle
and would break at the slightest pretense.
I am not this way, and when my daughter skinned her knee she only looked my way to see
if I had witnessed her fall. "Your fine," I yelled. "Get back to playing, we have to go soon."
And back to playing she went. She is a tough little girl and besides it will save me
hundreds of dollars in bandages over the next few years.
As I was about to call my daughter over so that we could leave, I noticed one little boy
begin swinging at the air and screaming something. He started running wildly here and
there and bumping into other children. These other children would then also begin running
wildly around, swinging at the air and screaming. Soon many if not all of the children's
parents began running around wildly and swinging at the air. It was something akin to a
nuclear reaction.
Finally, things began to settle down. The mother of the "atom" that had split and had
caused the reaction caught up to her little disaster and asked him what had caused him to
act like that. Well as it turned out, while playing around the equipment some spiders web
had stuck to his hair and then a small leaf had stuck to that. It was just on the inside of his
peripheral vision, and he had thought it was a giant spider. The pleasant group of children
had turned into a hysterical mob over a leaf.
While this group of children had been running around screaming I was proud to see my
daughter at the top of the slide observing the goings on, the way I was. I had taught her
well and she had gone to higher ground to avoid danger, not from the leaf but from the
mob. Being that she is only two years old, she was a bit concerned over the actions of the
group and was ready to go after things settled down. It was good to know that the hysterical
panic had not infected my daughter as it had the others.
I have observed many groups over the years where similar situations have occurred.
Sometimes the hysteria is controlled and slow, and other times it is like the explosion at
the beginning of this story. When it is slow to take hold, it can affect more people. It will
slowly creep into the minds of those there and before you know it, all believe the same
thing.
Mass Group Hysteria is not always a bad thing. On the way home one day I observed an
individual waving Old Glory on the street corner. He was alone, so I hurried home and
retrieved my own flag and joined him. Now I am not sure why he was waving the flag, but it
seemed like a good thing to do. I said "hi" and began waving my own flag. It was not long
before we had a hysterical crowd there waving flags. People from all walks of life that
would not normally have gathered together were there, waving flags. Cars would honk and
that would get a hysterical cheer from the crowd. Many people in the cars were seen to be
crying. And though hysteria was definitely involved this day there on the street corner, I
don’t believe anyone went away with an uneasy feeling, like my daughter did earlier as we
left the playground.
Sometimes a situation can teeter on the very edge of disaster! Destructive Hysteria
waiting with its mouth wide open on one side and a pleasant warm feeling waiting on the
other. Flag waving does not always have the same effect as it did on the street corner.
Sometimes the waving of a flag spells disaster. It all depends on the moment. Some years
ago, while on an elk hunt high up in the Wyoming wilderness, I was witness to a flag waving
gone bad.
Getting back to camp after an early morning's hunt, I decided to let the horses loose so that
they could get some high mountain grass in their bellies. We had been doing this in the
previous few days and the horses had stayed in the little meadow close to camp, never
wondering far. Meadowlarks were singing and there was a big blue sky above. It was
peaceful sitting there, watching the horses feed. Soon I fell asleep.
As sometimes happens when you are in a deep sleep, I found myself in the middle of a
dream. Thundering hoofs were all around me. The sounds of excited shouts and of trees
snapping were all mixed in. A hysterical herd of horses were headed for disaster. The
direction of the disaster was towards the trailhead eight miles away. I woke up with a start!
I had no real desire to hike the eight miles to the trailhead to retrieve the horses and so the
dream was unpleasant.
That’s when I heard Elkless George yell something about the horses. Still in the fog that is
often present when one awakens from a deep sleep, I was unable to understand Elkless
George. He yelled again but just before he did I saw the matter that had concerned him. In
fact the "matter", a terrified bucking apparition of a horse was barring down on my location
with great speed. The horse had quite a large limb from a tree tangled in his tail, waving
like a flag in the air behind him. A small log was also wrapped up in his lead rope. Horses
are really motivated by something following them. Especially when they can't seem to out
run it.
Having no real desire to be trampled by the horse I vacated the spot I was in, in favor of
another. Unfortunately, the horse was having trouble keeping to a constant directional
course due to the fact that it kept looking back at the limb that was following it, at which
time it would trip on the log at its feet, causing it to change direction. To my horror he now
was headed to the same spot I had just chosen to avoid him. All the other horses seemed
to be enjoying the show and laughing hysterically as they followed along, kicking and
bucking like they all had limbs tangled in their tails.
I needed to act fast if I was going to survive this encounter with Hysteria. At the last
moment I stepped to the side and grabbed the lead rope of the frightened horse. As I left
the ground and was in the air, I was amazed that I was able to hang on to the rope.
Apparently, the horse also shared my amazement and when I hit the ground again, he
stopped his antics. Slowly, so as not to frighten the horse again, I began to get up. Well to
tell the truth, it had been along time since I had been flying, and was a little unsteady with
my feet back on the ground. Also there seemed to be a little more pain associated with
flight than I had remembered.
I was making small moaning sounds, and although it was not my intent, this was calming
the horse down. I notice at this time that the log had left the lead rope somewhere in-flight.
Then a fly landed on the horses back and the horse did what horses do all the time and
swatted at the fly with his tail. The problem was that the limb was still tangled in his tail.
Another hysterical explosion of horseflesh ensued.
After some time I was again able to calm the horse down. The problem was that the limb
was still tangled in the horses tail and Elkless George was getting tired of shooing flies
away from the horse. Elkless George began hysterically laughing and dismissed my
suggestion that he should slowly try and remove the limb from the horses tail.
Commenting that some of the rocks that had been kicked up were yet to fall back to earth
he thought it would not be wise to get that close to the rear of this horse. Such cowardice
in the heat of battle was shocking! Eventually with the help of a stick and a sharp knife the
limb was removed. Peace was again restored to the high mountain meadow. Hysteria was
back in its hole ready to reappear again at a moment's notice.
Reappear it did in Mexico, not in its explosive form, but as a slowly creeping vine.
Intertwining with ones nerves until it had complete control, causing the individual and the
group to react in ways other than normal. This hysteria is very hard to detect. In most
cases the victim or victims only realize their enslavement hours later.
We were playing some games in the yellow darkness that passes for light when both
mantels on the lantern are broken. We were all tired from a hard day fishing and from
swatting flies and mosquitoes, so no one wanted to get up and change the mantels. Also,
since what little light was emitted from the lantern was attracting an enormous amount of
insects, whether it was a five or a six on the dice did not really seem to matter.
"Yeaouhuuuuuuu………"
"What was that?" one of the children watching the game asked.
"What was what?
"Didn't you hear that?"
"Hear what?'
"Yeaouhuuuuuuuuu……"
"Hey wait guys, did you hear that?"
"Yeaouhuuuuuuuuu……"
Now everyone's attention was trained in the direction of the desert wilderness, just beyond
camp. Speculation began to grow that someone was being beaten and was screaming in
agony. Several residents of the area had been seen to be drinking before it had got dark
and had been making a lot of noise since. So violence certainly was not out of the question.
"You know that might be an animal making that noise," I said.
I offered up this opinion once or twice and was soundly chastised and told it was obviously
a woman being beaten. Doubt and slow creeping hysteria wormed its way into to my
nerves until I to was certain it was death I was hearing. If you listened carefully you could
even hear each blow as it met the poor woman's flesh.
What should we do, became the topic of conversation very quickly. We had several
children with us and were not really looking to get into some trouble trying to rescue a lady
from a certain death as must be her fate from the agony dripping from the syllables of her
screams.
Finally, a friend of the Fruitman, (The Fruitman never met a fruit stand he did not want to
stop at.) could not take the screaming any more and ran off into the desert towards the
sound. As he went by our stunned group he was heard to hysterically say, "I am not going
to let anyone be murdered while I am around." Hysteria now had a hold on us all.
Children were crying and looking for a place to hide. Adults were trying to respond to a
grave situation while in the grip of hysteria. It was slowly decided that we could not let
Fruitman's friend face this battle alone. The Doc and I instructed his two brothers that if the
noises of a fight developed after our entering the darkness, they were to get all the kids
into the van and back across the border immediately. Slowly the Doc and I marched to an
uncertain fate. We listened for any further sounds to lead us to our destiny.
"Shee..tiktik…..shee..tiktik!"
Without a doubt, I knew this last sound. The unmistakable sound of the bolt on a rifle being
drawn back and then ramming home a round into the chamber. A sort of calm came over
the Doc and I. We had no weapons of any kind and were certain to be shot. At least Doc's
brothers would get the kids out of here and to safety across the border.
Since Doc speaks fluent Spanish, he was elected to move to a forward position and try and
reason with the bloodthirsty owner of the rifle. As Doc moved forward I tried to flank the
guy. Soon I could hear Doc talking. In fact, I was a bit surprised at the friendly manner with
which he seemed to be conversing. I wanted to yell out and tell Doc he was not getting
ready to inflict untold pain on some patient of his and thus should be trying to soothe them,
but then I heard one word that I understood. One word I should not have been surprised to
hear. But I was in the grip of hysteria and was not to blame.
"Gato!" Cat!
As I had suspected before hysteria's hold on me, it was a big cat. In fact a mountain lion
screaming the pain of a broken heart. Screaming for its lover to come back. As I
approached Doc and the rifleman, I noticed that Doc's brothers had not followed orders and
were even now coming up behind the rifleman with a very large length of two by four.
They had heard the rifle bolt slam home also, and were coming to the rescue. They were
preparing to inflict great bodily harm to the rifleman. At the last minute as the two by four
was raised and readied for its downward blow, I gleefully informed them that I had been
right all along. The power of "I told you so" is very strong. It was an animal making the
sound.
We were able to get the cat in the glow of several flashlights but the owner of the rifle
declined to shoot it. Later we found out that each cartridge cost the equivalent of about a
week's pay and unless the cat had posed a real danger he could not afford to shoot. After
sometime the cat determined we were not going to end his pain and wondered back into
the desert.
Later that night as I tried to fall asleep, I contemplated the look on Doc's brothers faces. It
had been one of determination to save us at any cost. Hysteria had turned mild mannered
dentists into possible killers. As I thought about it there was something more disturbing
there but I could not seem to get a handle on it. Then it dawned on me. I had seen this
same look before, the look of a killer about to inflict great pain. The look on the dentists
face as he stares down at you in that big chair. Hysteria gripped me and I screamed just
thinking about my next visit to the chair.
Group Hysteria
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