Why People Believe Weird Things

Modern witch hunts and cults are just like those in the Dark Ages.

In the Dark Ages, “witches” were hunted down and various cults were founded in the name of religion. We don’t call people witches any more, but people still go on witch hunts today for no rational reason.

In fact, medieval witch hunts have the same characteristics as certain modern crazes. From time to time, some kind of mass hysteria is triggered. People get falsely accused of a crime, the media goes wild and people become convinced that an innocent person is guilty.

This happened in 1944, in the small town of Mattoon, Illinois. A woman claimed that a stranger anesthetized her legs by spraying some sort of gas on them. After a newspaper reported her story, more cases popped up and were heavily publicized. Newspapers ran headlines like “Anesthetic Prowler on the Loose,” and the offender became known as the “Phantom Gasser of Mattoon.”

Investigations soon revealed that the entire story had been made up. The police spoke of people’s “wild imaginations” and the newspapers characterized the story as “mass hysteria.”

This is exactly how witch hunts in the Dark Ages started. Someone made a false accusation, others became scared, the truth became irrelevant, and hysteria spread.

The flipside of the witch hunt is the cult – when one unusually charismatic person is elevated above others, and their political or philosophical views accepted without criticism. Cults have no basis in science or rational judgment either, as their followers try to justify every command their leader issues.

These characteristics are prevalent in modern cults like Scientology – a litigious new age religion with millions of followers. It emphasizes belief and unquestioning obedience, and functions as a religion, focusing on faith rather than any sort of actual science. Followers of the atheist novelist Ayn Rand have a similarly hysterical devotion to their figurehead: they think they are rational “Objectivists,” but won’t tolerate any questioning of Rand.