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.
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.
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justkeepfishing.com
Group Hysteria