Skeptic March 2020

ARTICLE

10 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 25 number 1 2020

Since mid-December, there

have been hundreds of reports

of drones with unusually long

wingspans flying in remote

parts of Colorado, Nebraska,

and Kansas, often in formation

with other drones. The sight-

ings have created such concern

that the FBI has launched a

Drone Task Force and is work-

ing with more than a dozen

state and federal agencies. The

flurry of mysterious drones

crisscrossing the skies over the

Midwest has attracted interna-

tional media interest and spawned numerous conspir-

acy theories. It’s the military. It’s the CIA. It’s a retired

aviation expert with too much time on his hands. And

of course, no explanation would be complete without

the usual suspects: the Russians, the Chinese, Arab

terrorists, and space aliens. But authorities are in-

creasing looking to a surprising explanation: hysteria.

As an expert on this topic, I can categorically con-

clude that whatever the trigger for these sightings

is, it is notmass hysteria. Commonly referred to in sci-

entific circles as mass psychogenic illness, this term

refers to the rapid spread of illness symptoms within

what is typically a close-knit group. I am unaware of a

single report involving people seeing drones and sud-

denly feeling unwell. Given the lack of concrete evi-

dence for drones and the identification of several

objects that were clearly not drones, there is a much

more likely explanation: what sociologists refer to as a

collective delusion. Unfortunately, there is a lot of

misinformation surrounding the term because of the

word “delusion,” which is commonly used by psychia-

trists and psychologists to describe people who are ex-

periencing psychosis and hav-

ing trouble telling the differ-

ence between fantasy and

reality. They may exhibit vi-

sual or audio hallucinations

or create complex stories that

have little basis in fact. How-

ever, when sociologists use

the term collective delusion,

they are usually referring to

incidents involving the spon-

taneous spread of false beliefs

within a given population.

If this were a horse race,

based on the evidence com-

piled thus far, Social Delusionwould be the clear

early favorite. There are many examples of collective

delusions in recent history. One famous episode oc-

curred in Ireland during the mid-1980s, when groups

of people began flocking to religious grottoes follow-

ing reports that statues were moving. The episode

began on February 14, 1985, when several school-

children thought they had witnessed a miracle. One

of the witnesses, 7-year-old Elizabeth Flynn, said: “I

saw Jesus moving. His hand moved and he called me.”

Other pupils said they could not only see the beckon-

ing hand, but the eyes were moving as well. This dra-

matic incident received sensational media coverage

and soon people began flocking to the church to con-

firm or deny the “miracle.” Before long thousands of

people were reporting that they too could see the stat-

ues moving. Many assumed it was a sign from God.

Over the next several months, thousands of people

began visiting churches across the region and staring

at the statues with the expectation that they might

“give them a sign.” Newspapers and media outlets

could not keep up with the deluge of reported

The Phantom Drone

Scare

The Recent Spate of Sightings in the Midwest have

Residents on Edge. One Explanation Can Be Ruled Out—

Mass Hysteria

BY RO BERT BARTH O LO M EW