World Exclusive: Strange Outbreak of Hallucinations – Solved

It is one of the strangest stories I have ever investigated—and I specialize in strange medical mysteries. In the early morning hours of Wednesday October 12, 2016, police in Coos Bay, Oregon, responded to two separate calls by a woman who claimed that several people were trying to remove her car roof. After failing to find any evidence to support her claims, they suspected that the 57-year-old caregiver was hallucinating. She was taken to a local hospital for evaluation. Over the next several hours, the two responding police officers, a 78-year-old woman who was being cared for by the woman, and a hospital worker, all displayed similar hallucinations. Those affected were hospitalized and the emergency room was placed in quarantine. The story quickly spread around the world as a baffling medical mystery.

We now know what happened, and it is both disturbing and alarming.

The story of the ‘five people who hallucinated’ has been reported in prominent media outlets across the globe. Popular Science reported it this way: “Five people fell ill and started hallucinating, one after another, following contact with one woman who started seeing things in the dead of night …as the day wore on, everyone who’d come in contact with her started showing similar symptoms...” Their source was a story filed by KVAL-TV in Eugene, Oregon. Dozens of other accounts that I examined, all cited the KVAL story. British journalist Adam Boult of The Telegraph in the UK, reported that the “emergency department of a hospital in Oregon was quarantined… after five people experienced unexplained hallucinations.” His source: KVAL. Even local publications such as OregonLive, fueled the fear with the headline: “Mysterious Illness that can cause Hallucinations Hits Coos Bay.” KVAL was their source.

I examined the original KVAL account. They were the first to break the story. The report begins by stating that “Five people fell ill from an unknown hazardous material that appears to be spreading by contact and causing hallucinations…” My first career was in radio journalism. One thing that I quickly learned is that in the early stages of a developing story, ‘facts’ can be fluid. The only mention of spreading hallucinations was in the first line of the story and no descriptions were given, which seemed odd. For instance, there is a big difference between someone hallucinating their name being called, and seeing purple monkeys. But remember, the account is a breaking news story, and breaking news is notorious for containing errors and being incomplete.

The Plot Thickens

On Tuesday October 18, KVAL-TV offered a brief follow-up story titled: “People Afflicted by Mysterious Hallucinations in Coos Bay Sent Home from ER the Same Day.” Hospital spokeswoman Barbara Bauder told them that every one of the five people involved had been checked out in the Emergency Room and were released by noon of the very same day. They had neither been quarantined nor hospitalized. My journalistic instincts were telling me that something was wrong. Just imagine, no less than five people including two police officers (who are allowed to carry guns!), are brought to the hospital ER suffering from hallucinations. Yet all five were checked out in the ER and sent home by noon! What’s more, they were never admitted—even for observation. Even more suspicious is the absence of descriptions of the supposed hallucinations (outside of the perceived roof-raising incident). Nope—something was seriously amiss, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

The Hallucination Outbreak that Never Happened

I contacted the head of the agency officially responsible for investigating the incident: Craig Zanni of the Coos Bay County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff Zanni explained that only one person was suspected of having hallucinations: the woman who reported her car being vandalized. Everyone else soon felt unwell with lightheadedness, nausea and mild euphoria. They were checked out at the hospital and released, as their symptoms quickly resolved. The hospital worker who felt unwell, also had flu-like symptoms, and the hospital reported that she had recently been exposed to the flu! No surprise there.

Diagnosis: An Outbreak of Mass Suggestion Complicated by Lazy Journalism

Episodes of mass suggestion similar to this case are common in the medical literature. While they are certainly not everyday events, they occur with enough frequency as to be well-known to researchers in the field of psychosomatic medicine. But how could the symptoms of lightheadedness, nausea and mild euphoria, spread among the other four subjects? The original KVAL story stated that the symptoms first spread from one of the deputies, then the other deputy, followed by the 78-year-old woman, and lastly, the hospital worker. Given this sequence, it is significant that during the early stages of their investigation, HAZMAT investigators became aware that the 78-year-old woman who was being cared for, was using opioid patches to control pain. Transdermal Fentanyl patches. It was initially suspected that these patches may have been responsible for the caregiver hallucinating the vandalism of her car. HAZMAT authorities made a point to say that they believed the illness was being spread by touch. So soon after the woman was evaluated for her hallucinations, one by one, the other four began to feel unwell. While all of the patches were later accounted for, and this scenario was eventually ruled out, it was being actively considered while the house was being examined and could have easily spread the belief that the opioid patches were triggering the symptoms. Mass suggestion is spread by a belief. Lightheadedness and nausea are common symptoms in outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness, but euphoria is not, but it makes sense here because during outbreaks of mass suggestion, symptoms typically reflect the outbreak scenario. For instance, psychogenic symptoms of abdominal pain, diarrhea and nausea are common after rumors of food poisoning, while suspected chemical exposure often triggers dizziness, headache and itchy eyes. It cannot be over-emphasized that mass suggestion is not a disorder but a stress reaction in response to a belief. It occurs in normal, healthy people, and it can happen to anyone. Symptoms usually resolve quickly, and did so in this case.

An Alarming State of Affairs

How is it possible that professional journalists working in the 21st century, have gotten this story so wrong—and allowed it to have gone uncorrected until the publication of this blog? As a journalist myself, I know that mistakes happen. We are only human. But in this instance, the lack of a follow-up investigation by the journalism community, is deeply troubling.