[sethosayher]

Hello everyone. I'm new to this site so please excuse any faux pas I may inadvertently commit.

What I want to know is whether or not Mass Hallucinations actually occur, and what psychologists think causes them. By Mass Hallucinations I'm referring to perception of auditory and visual phenomena without a stimulus by more than one person (or a group). i.e. can hallucinations be shared by groups of people? I'm not referring to things like groups of people experiencing the same symptoms, pains, etc.

Thank you,
sethosayher

[beauflow]

Hmm very interesting question.

I am not quiet sure- i think a lot of research would need to be done to actually answer this,

and even then- as time goes on perhaps more information could be found on Mass Hallucinations

After mass hysteria was not known when it was happening until history was studied of places of where it occurred.

I am sorry I am not giving an answer on this- but seeing this is your one post, i wanted to let you know that some one read it

Be well, I am going to look some of this up.

Here is one site that has your same question:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2sr/are_mass..._a_real_thing/

[sethosayher]

Thank you for looking into this. What prompted this entire investigation was the contradictory evidence I found online. Some people claimed Mass Hallucinations were nonsense...others cited phenomena like Marian Apparition to claim that hallucinations can be shared between people or groups.

btw 'Mass Hallucinations' are also termed 'Collective Hallucinations,' if that helps.

[PurpleFlyingMonkeys]

I studied this in psychology. I don't remember too much on the topic but they say that it is possible for a group undergoing the same stressors to all hallucinate and have much the same hallucinations. There have been studies conducted, research would help with this topic