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For days, the world watched and waited anxiously as Mexican authorities engaged in a desperate search to rescue a little girl who was reportedly trapped under the rubble of her school – a building that had tragically entombed many of her classmates. They even appeared to have held conversations with the girl and learned that she had saved herself by getting under a desk when the quake struck. But in a stunning development, officials have now cast doubt on the girl’s existence. “It is very likely that there is nobody,” a Mexican official said.
The girl even had a name – “Frida Sofia.” On Wednesday, Mexican TV reporter Danielle Dithurbide said that according to a navy admiral who was leading the rescue, the girl had communicated to authorities that up to five other students had survived under the ruble. According the media reports, not one but several rescuers said they had spoken to the girl, and some even claimed that they could see her wriggling fingers.
How is this possible?
While I do hope there is a little girl still alive and they find her, if searchers were chasing phantoms, it would not be surprising. Human beings are imperfect perceivers of their environment, and their eyes – and ears have been known to play tricks on them. A famous example of this took place one sunny afternoon during the nineteenth century, when a group of sailors on board a French frigate saw a life raft adrift in the ocean. According to a newspaper report from the time, those on the ship, including officers, “clearly saw a raft covered with men towed by boats.” A rescue operation was launched and a boat was soon racing toward the survivors who were “clearly seen stretching out their hands and clearly heard.” But the sailors were stunned when they reached the spot, only to realize that the “raft” was made up of “but a few branches of trees covered with leaves” that had been swept out to sea from the nearby land mass.
An even more dramatic example involving both the sight and sound of phantom people, occurred during the French and Indian War. It happened at Frog Pond near Windham, Connecticut. The year was 1758. It was a time of great anxiety when the local residents lived with the fear of French and Indian raiding parties. One night during July 1758, after midnight, the inhabitants were awakened by strange noises. Men grabbed their muskets and prepared to defend the town, believing that it was about to be attacked by French and Indian raiders. Throughout the night, the residents waited for their attackers with frayed nerves. Many residents could clearly hear the war cries of Indians massing for the attack. In his 1836 book, Connecticut Historical Collections, John Barber recounts the story from a local newspaper of the time. It states: “At intervals, many supposed they could distinguish the calling out of the particular names, as of Cols. Dyer and Elderkin two eminent lawyers, and this increased the general terror.” Soon, amidst the clamor, people rushed “from every house, the tumult in the air still increasing—old and young, male and female, poured forth into the streets.” Convinced they were hearing the yells of Indians massing for an attack, they ascended the hill on the eastern side of the village. The next morning a scouting party discovered the source of the commotion in the night: in the midst of a summer drought, bullfrogs had been fighting over a small patch of water in puddles of what was left of a pond. Barber reports that many of the frogs were found dead in the wake of the battle with each other. Windham has come to embrace this unusual incident in the annals of American history and psychology. A frog is now part of the town seal, while the event has even been the subject of postcards, poems, ballads, and even an opera.
During times of great stress and crisis, the human mind can play tricks on itself. We would do well to recall the words of William Shakespere, who once wrote: “Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”
