(August 19, 2022 at 1:33 pm)LazaB Wrote: Can multiple people see the same thing even though the thing is not real ? I am interested in this because many people have ghost stories and i don't believe in those things , but it's kinda hard to refute it when two people say that they saw the same thing at the same time , lying is always the option , but is there another medical condition that can explain this ?
The medical condition is called ‘mass hallucination’. The term is something of a misnomer, as it’s actually pareidolia (interpreting a random shape as something specific) and suggestion bias. One person in a crowd looks at a cloud and says, ‘Look! It’s the Blessed Virgin!’, which makes others in the crowd bandwagon when - left to their own devices - they might see the cloud as a unicorn, a potato, or just a cloud.
While it’s true that lying is always an option, that’s not usually the case. People subject to mass hallucinatory experience tend to genuinely believe that they actually saw what they think they saw. They’re not necessarily dishonest, just mistaken.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
