DIFFUSION AND BELIEF IN A COLLECTIVE DELUSION. THE SEATTLE WINDSHIELD PITTING EPIDEMIC.

While individuals may at times lose touch with reality as their culture defines it, whole communities ordinarily do not. Yet instances are on record when this has very nearly happened: people in Mattoon, Illinois, believed for a few days in September 1945 that a "phantom anesthetist" was prowling their town; and a Martian invasion took place in the minds of many persons in the New York City area on October 30, 1938. Russia's Sputniks may be expected to give rise to a wide variety of mass hallucinatory phenomena similar to those that followed our first H-bomb explosions in March, 1954. This paper analyzes one such reaction: the windshield pitting epidemic that broke out in Seattle, Washington, in the Spring of 1954. Most commonly, the damage reportedly, windshelds consisted of pitting marks that grew into bubbles in the glass of about size of a thumbnail. On the evening of the 15th, the Mayor of Seattle declared the damage was no longer a police matter and made an emergency appeal to the Government for help. Many persons covered their windshields with mats or newspaper; others simply kept their automobiles garaged.