ABSTRACT
According to A. Vigouroux and P. Juquelier “the more important the emotional side of the idea is, the more contagious it is.” Owing to these conditions, illusions and hallucinations of an identical character may be developed in many persons simultaneously. Then, sometimes, mass illusions and hallucinations developed among passengers, and land with unusually beautiful forms and picturesque beaches often appeared to them, and fairly frequently there were even cases of passengers jumping overboard. One of the interesting examples of mass illusion and hallucination is the case that occurred on French military vessels in 1846. Historical examples of collective hallucinations are not less common. According to the stories of all who had olfactory hallucinations, the smells were pleasant. Hallucinatory feelings meet in content the mood and direction of the person’s thoughts, and they are communicated immediately, through unintentional verbal or other suggestion, to other persons in the same psychic conditions, turning the hallucinatory feelings into a real hallucination.
