Stay home, kids. Lock your doors. There’s a maniac roaming the streets of YOUR town dressed as the Cat in the Hat from the popular children’s books and movies. He’s been seen lurking in a sinister manner in driveways, peering through windows and caught in security camera footage…
Cat in the Hat in Sheffield (Sheffield Online)
Warnings are all over the internet about this stranger prowler in the Cat in the Hat costume. He’s been terrorising Wexford, Limerick and Belfast in Ireland and as well as Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Lowestoft and Stroud and other parts of the UK.
…and here he is in Glasgow (Daily Record)
Police, though, have been quick to debunk the story. It is, they say, an internet meme that uses AI generated images… For further clarity, South Yorkshire police issued a statement on the matter:
To confirm, we have not had any reports of a ‘cat in a hat’ in Meadowhall, or anywhere else in South Yorkshire for that matter. We can also confirm no recent sightings of his associates Thing One and Thing Two.
So let’s look into this bizarre emerging panic, why it’s gaining media traction and speculate how it might develop. Could it be more than just a silly season news distraction?
The Cat in the Hat Goes Bad
I loved the Cat in the Hat books as a kid. Written and illustrated by Dr Seuss (Theodor Geisel) and first published in 1957, the books are still popular today. The first book sees the titular Cat in the Hat burst into the house of two bored children to show them tricks and creating havoc in the process. The Cat is helped by his two friends Thing One and Thing Two who add to the mayhem. Fortunately, the Cat uses a madcap machine to tidy up the mess he’s made just before the children’s mother returns home.
The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss
In June 2026, clips from the Mike Myers movie version of the Cat in the Hat that showed the character dancing went viral on Tik Tok. The clips were given a dark twist by the (false) caption saying: “How mfs be dancing at prom just to overdose 2 weeks later.”
The same TikToker, ‘Daletok’ had similar success with the same clip and a variation on the caption: “How mfs be celebrating their birthday just to be found dangling from the ceiling fan the next day.”
The dark Cat in the Hat meme seems to have developed quickly from these dark ‘creepy pasta’ style posts. By August, AI generated images showed the Cat in the Hat in specific locations, seemingly starting in Wexford, Ireland. And soon, AI images and videos of the Cat in the Hat superimposed onto real streets, driveways and other locations began surfacing on social media platforms.
The Cat in the Hat visits West Yorkshire
The videos are often accompanied by a warning about a serial killer dressed as the Cat, sometimes supposedly from the police: Lock your doors, Sheffield… or Manchester… or Glasgow…
The videos and photos utilise the familiar ‘found footage’ horror movie stylings made famous by the Blair Witch Project (1999) but which really began with the notorious Italian gut-munching video nasty Cannibal Holocaust (1980). The images of the Cat in the Hat are often grainy and blurry which adds to their disturbing quality and adds to their realism.
The Pooh-niverse
There’s something creepy about old toys and dolls and they frequently feature in horror films to add spooky atmosphere. But in recent years, there have been several movies that take out of copyright children’s favourites and turn them into gory horror films. Examples include Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), Mickey’s Mouse Trap (2024), Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (2025), Bambi: The Reckoning (2025), Popeye the Slayer Man (2025).
Public domain children’s characters go bad
The sinister reimagining of the Cat in the Hat as a serial killer seems to be following in this tradition. And with the character’s proclivity for home invasion, it’s understandable.
But it’s also following in another tradition: the ghost hoax.
Ghosts, Clowns and Gimps
I’ve long been fascinated by the forgotten nineteenth and early twentieth century phenomenon of ‘playing the ghost’ – dressing as a ghost and hanging out in spooky locations to scare the wits out of passersby. Sometimes the pranksters wore just a white sheet over their heads, though some would use devil masks, animal skins, outlandish clothes and luminous paint to create more imaginative spooks.
Nineteenth century Ghost hoaxer gets his comeuppance (Illustrated Police News)
Often gangs of young men would patrol the streets hoping to catch the ghost and give him a well-deserved drubbing. These ghost hunts would frequently degenerate into a drunken riot with the ghost hunters dressed as women hoping to honey trap the ghost into attacking them.
In more modern times, a bloke with a sheet over his head is unlikely to create much of a stir. Instead, we get the Killer Clown panic of 2016 and the Gimp Men of more recent times. In the Killer Clown flap, people shared photos of sinister looking clowns in spooky locations or pranksters dressed up in scary clown costumes to scare people or to take photos for social media.
Gimp Men (most famously the Somerset Gimp Man) dress in black leather and a gimp mask and jump out on people in dark streets.
The danger of these pranks/assaults is that the hoaxer may be caught by the police or by an angry mob. The ghost hoaxers of previous centuries were frequently caught, beaten and perhaps dumped in the nearest body of water. The Somerset Gimp man was arrested and banned from ‘gimping’ for five years.
But the Cat in the Hat serial killer hoaxes avoid these risks as there is no need to actually dress up and go out on the night streets. The footage from security cameras can be AI generated in seconds and spread just as quickly.
Epilogue
I’m really interested to see how this emerging panic will develop.
One possibility is that ‘victims’ will make up stories of fake attacks by a maniac dressed in a Cat costume. Another possibility is that pranksters will really start dressing up in Cat in the Hat costumes and scaring people in the street.
Or perhaps we’ll see other beloved children’s characters go over to the dark side.
My new book will be out by Halloween. It’s called Demonic Lancashire: Possession and Exorcism in the Red Rose County. Here’s the back blurb:
Seventeenth-century Lancashire was a divided and demon-haunted land.
Religious conflict, accusations of witchcraft and fear that the End Times were approaching created a world in which the Devil seemed frighteningly real.
The story of the Lancashire Witches is well known. Far less familiar is the extraordinary series of demonic possessions that swept through the county. Men, women and children fell into terrifying fits: frothing, convulsing, barking and howling, speaking in strange voices and vomiting impossible objects. Ministers, priests, physicians and cunning folk struggled to determine whether they were witnessing the work of Satan, witchcraft, fraud – or something they could not explain.
From the mass possession of the Lancashire Seven in the 1590s to Richard Dugdale, the celebrated Surey Demoniac and “Dancing Devil” a century later, Demonic Lancashire uncovers a remarkable lost history of possession, exorcism and the battle against the Devil in England’s Red Rose County.
One evening in early July 2026, nineteen-year-old Ruphus Chai Ngala was walking to his home in the Kenyan village of Mdangarani. Kilifi County. On his way he passed a local woman named Asha Samini who was wearing traditional Muslim dress.
They exchanged greetings and the woman asked Ruphus ‘Uko sawa (Are you ok)?’ The youth then felt a sudden cold sensation sweep over him.
He knew immediately what had happened. A witch had used black magic to steal his manhood.
Ruphus phoned his father Benson to tell him what had happened and he arrived on the scene shortly afterwards. The two men then accused Samina of being a penis-stealing witch and began screaming and beating her. A mob soon gathered and joined in the attack on the innocent woman.
Her life was only saved when some local elders intervened and rescued her. Samina was seriously injured but survived. A medical examination of Ruphus’s genitals found everything to be normal.
Both Ruphus and his father were sentenced to a year in prison without the option of a fine.
The Kilifi County case is one of around twenty similar episodes sweeping the Kenyan coast. Young men became convinced that a sorcerer had cast a spell on them causing their genitals to shrink or vanish. In two cases, the supposed sorcerer was beaten to death by an angry mob.
Penis Panics
Penis theft panics, sometimes called Koro, occur regularly in Africa (particularly in Nigeria) and frequently lead to mob violence. Typically, a stranger brushes past a young man who suddenly feels a sensation of cold or an electric shock and then becomes convinced that his nob has been magically stolen by a witch for use in black magic ritual. Accusations of sorcery follow and the hapless stranger finds himself at the mercy of a furious mob.
Often the man’s friends and family hold on to the man’s penis to try and stop it vanishing. They may even tie or clamp it to something to prevent it from disappearing. Unsurprisingly, this may lead to eye-watering injuries.
It’s suspected by media and governments that many of these panics are started by criminals. An accomplice starts screaming that a witch has stolen his manhood, and as a crowd gathers and begins to attack the supposed sorcerer, the criminal gang can join in, robbing him in the process, and picking their way through the pockets of the crowd.
While this may happen, it’s clear from first person accounts that many men do actually believe their genitals have vanished. Although it is not as common, it also affects women who become convinced their breasts or labia are disappearing.
Penis Stealing Chinese Fox Maiden Ghosts
Although Koro panics are now most commonly associated with West Africa, they also happen elsewhere.
In 1984 and 1985 two thousand men in Guadong, China were panic-stricken when they came to believe their penises were disappearing. Folklore told of fox maiden ghosts that roamed the countryside looking for penises to steal, because only by stealing a man’s manhood could these ghosts acquire the power to live again.
Fox Spirit c.1700
The attacks usually happened at night. A man might feel a sudden chill and the sensation that his penis was shrinking. This would lead to panic as the man and anyone nearby would hang on to the member to try and save it.
A number of women were accused of being possessed by the fox maiden ghost and were cruelly assaulted. A fish would be placed on their heads, they would be beaten and their fingers broken with chopsticks.
The 1970s and 1980s saw similar panics in India and Thailand. In Thailand, it wasn’t black magic or fox ghosts that were blamed for the vanishing genitals, it was Vietnamese immigrants they believed were poisoning food and cigarettes to render Thai men impotent.
Pull the Other One
Penis stealing panics seem strange and comical to outsiders. How can anyone believe a body part has vanished or is disappearing when in fact it’s still dangling there?
Penis theft episodes are a kind of phantom attacker panic when communities come to believe they are under threat from a mysterious assailant of their own imagining. Classic examples of phantom attacker panics include the Halifax Slasher, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the Delhi Monkey Man and needle spiking episodes of recent years. In all cases, just as with penis theft panics, the anxieties of a community erupt in different ways, but when they occur, they spread like an epidemic.
Given that, it seems likely that the current Kenyan panic will spread to other parts of the country and perhaps across borders, though perhaps we can hope the prison sentences given to Ruphus and his father might go some way to mitigating the violence.
Epilogue
During the 2023 penis theft panic that swept Nigeria, popular blogger Kel Armstrong Amobi (often called KAA) set out a challenge to the county’s sorcerers. He offered 10 million Naira (about £4,500) to any magician who could steal his ‘John Thomas’. He signed a legal consent form absolving the witch from any blame should he or she succeed. On the other hand, any sorcerer taking up the challenge would have to submit to a flogging should the attempt prove unsuccessful.
Despite upping the reward, it seems no sorcerer was up to the challenge.
But these panics have also happened in Europe. In Heinrich Kramer’s fifteenth century tome Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), he argues that witches and demons can cause a man’s member to vanish (or at least the magic can make him believe it’s gone).
In fact, Kramer says that some witches keep twenty or thirty penises in birds’ nests where they live as if they were alive, wriggling and being fed on vegetables and oats. The victims were often said to be adulterers and fornicators.
In one incident, a man goes to see a witch after his manhood has vanished to try and retrieve it. The witch directs him to a tree and tells him to climb it and help himself to one of the many members he will find in a nest there. The man picks out a particularly large one. The witch tells him he can’t take that one because it belongs to the parish priest…
It seems likely here that gullible Kramer has misunderstood a bawdy joke and assumed it to be a true story. In any case, although penis theft panics are typically associated with West Africa, they have a long history in other parts of the globe.
Gentlemen should be assured that Little Elvis has not left the building.
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun
But mama, that’s where the fun is
(Manfred Mann’s Earthband)
I heard about this guy once. Took LSD, lay down in a field and stared at the sun until his eyes melted… He was discovered later by friends staggering round the field permanently blinded and utterly mad. He never recovered his sight or his sanity.
That’s how I first heard this cautionary tale about the dangers of drugs. The shocking image of the tripped-out acid freak with his eyes dripping down his face is certainly an arresting one, and perhaps this is why the legend has become such an enduring part of Acid Lore. We’ve all been told tales of the poor soul who was blinded after staring at the sun on an LSD trip. But it’s just a myth, right?
Well, the real story begins in the Summer of Love in California…
Don’t Stare!
Here Comes the Sun
The front page of the Los Angeles Times on 19 May 1967 carried a report by an anonymous ‘staff writer’ with the headline ‘Four LSD users suffer serious eye damage from sun gazing while on trip’.
According to an anonymous spokesman from the Santa Barbara Ophthalmological Society, four students on separate occasions had taken LSD and stared at the sun causing permanent damage to their vision. One of the students told doctors he had been ‘holding a religious conversation with the sun’, while another said he had stared into the sun ‘to produce unusual visual displays.’ As they gazed at the sun, they all apparently had no awareness of the damage they were doing to their retinas.
According to the article, the four Santa Barbara students all suffered the same kind of eye damage. They had not been totally blinded; instead, the sun had burned pinhead sized holes in their retinas. This meant they could never read again – they could see the corners of the page, and the shape of the print, but they were unable to see the word their eyes were pointing at due to a permanent blind spot ruining their reading vision. So much for their studies – their young lives destroyed because of careless experimentation with a dangerous drug. That’s the lesson that many readers will have taken from the article which was gleefully picked up by newspapers across the US and around the world.
There are many reasons to be suspicious of this story. No names are given, for one thing. The story also seems implausible because bright sun in the eyes instinctively causes them to fill with water, the pupils to narrow and it would be almost impossible not to look away, especially with dilated pupils when on an acid trip. It seems highly unlikely that four students in the same city would independently be dumb enough to stare at the sun on drugs long enough to cause permanent eye damage.
In any case, this seems to be the earliest print reference to the story, though we can speculate that it was circulating by word of mouth before then.
A few months later, an even more horrific new version of the tale was hitting the headlines.
Let the Sun Shine In
One sunny spring morning in 1966, six Pennsylvania college students headed to a nearby meadow to trip out on LSD. Six hours later, they had not returned, and concerned friends went to the meadow to look for them. They were horrified to find all six were helplessly blind after lying on their backs and staring at the sun in a psychedelic daze.
They didn’t realise they had been staring at the sun until they came out of their trance. Somehow the drug had kept their eyelids open. The six students permanently lost their sight and were receiving rehabilitation treatment from Pennsylvania Welfare Department.
This report surfaced in the Los Angeles Times on 13 January 1968 and was covered widely in other newspapers. The source for the story was Dr Norman Yoder, a man who had been blind since a childhood accident and who worked for Pennsylvania Welfare Department as the state commissioner for the blind.
Dr Yoder said he could not reveal the names of the students, nor the college they attended. He did tell the press that as of 1968, the students were back at school and doing well, though still suffering from remorse and shame.
The story was confirmed as true by a number of state officials, including governor of Philadelphia Raymond Shafer in front of a news conference. Nevertheless, there was growing scepticism as well as pressure on Yoder to reveal the names of the supposed victims. Reporters searched in vain for the blinded students, and Yoder’s superiors began to note inconsistencies in his claims.
Finally, Yoder confessed that he had fabricated the story as he was concerned about the dangers LSD posed to the young. After revealing his hoax, Yoder collapsed and was taken to a psychiatric hospital in Philadelphia. Governor Shafer, one day after telling the world he was convinced the story was true, found himself before another news conference to reveal that it had all been a hoax.
Some 1968 headline
The previous summer Yoder had attended a lecture about the effects of LSD on the eyes and afterwards felt the need to do something. Perhaps inspired by an already circulating legend, or a memory of the Santa Barbara reports, Yoder concocted his morality tale. He increased the horror by making the hapless students totally blind, rather than suffering the partial visual damage of the Santa Barbara four.
Children of the Sun
So, the Pennsylvania six were invented by Yoder, and the Santa Barbara four were also likely a hoax or an urban legend reported as news. But people do stare at the sun deliberately or accidentally and suffer solar retinopathy – damage to the retina from sunlight. This is most likely to be the result of watching a solar eclipse, but people have also deliberately looked at the sun to get out of military service, because they were mentally ill or were conducting sun worship rituals.
And yes, it has been documented in LSD users, though these cases occurred after the Santa Barbara and Pennsylvania hoaxes. Just as life imitates art, it also imitates urban legends.
In a 1973 paper for the British Journal of Ophthalmology, Schatz and Mendleblatt examined the treatment for two cases of solar retinopathy involving LSD. One young man had taken the drug and gazed at the sun. He had a religious experience with the sun having the significance of God, though his spiritual ecstasy was short-lived as he almost immediately realised his vision was blurry. He could see spots before his eyes, struggled to read and had to look to the side of something in order to see it clearly. He was treated with steroids, and although his visual acuity returned to normal, he was plagued by blind spots in his visual field. The man had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
The second case involved a fifteen-year-old girl who had been to a lecture on the dangers of drugs. The lecturer related the tale of the students who took LSD and damaged their eyes, and the girl thought ‘it would be a neat thing to burn out my retinas.’ She took some acid and gazed at the sun for an unknown period of time feeling omnipotent and unaware of any potential damage to her eyes. She later found she couldn’t read newspaper print or the blackboard at school, though after treatment she recovered well. She was described as having a ‘hysterical personality’.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
A number of other academic studies have examined similar cases, so perhaps the practice of sun gazing on LSD was more widespread than we might expect. In a paper for the Annals of Ophthalmology in 1971 Roger Ewald described the treatment of nine US army soldiers who had engaged in psychedelic sun gazing independently of one another. ‘A funnel led up to the sun’, one said about staring at the sun on LSD. ‘A voice told me to look at the sun,’ said another. Some of the nine had taken to sun gazing as they felt it brought about a flashback, calling it ‘tripping out on the sun’. The patients, who were all described as having ‘character and behavioural disorders’, suffered varying degrees of damage to retinas as well as blind spots. One man thought he was stuck in a permanent acid trip because his blind spot meant that whatever he pointed his eyes at seemed to disappear.
Abstract for Roger Ewald’s 1971 paper in Annals of Ophthalmology
Interestingly, Ewald seems to suggest that staring at the sun to enhance a trip or try and induce a flashback may have been common practice: ‘Based on the comments of several patients it is apparent that sun gazing associated with LSD is by no means confined to the military environment and is probably more common in the drug community than is generally appreciated.’
Eward notes dryly in the abstract to his paper: ‘Counselling directed toward the serious ocular effects of sun gazing would hopefully discourage repeated incidents’.
So the story about the acid trippers who stared into the sun and damaged their eyes is a myth, but it’s also something that really happened after the myth had been circulating. Perhaps hearing about the myth was part of what motivated people to try sun-gazing on acid, a process folklorists call ostension – the acting out of legends. The real-life sun-gazers were clearly very disturbed or very silly.
It still happens today – a 2021 paper in the journal Photodiagnosis and Photodynamic Therapy examined the treatment of a teenage boy who had taken ecstasy and then stared into the sun…
So, if you take LSD and gaze at the sun, the good news is you probably won’t go totally blind. You might lose some visual acuity and suffer from blind spots or see constant spots before your eyes, perhaps permanently. On the other hand, you might get an article about you published in Photodiagnosis and Photodynamic Therapy.
Ever wondered what it’s like to have your third eye opened surgically? In his bestselling 1956 book The Third Eye, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa describes the procedure that he underwent on his ninth birthday in a Tibetan monastery.
One lama held young Rampa’s head between his knees to keep him still. Another lama applied a herbal compress to the boy’s head and then took out a scary looking tool with a U-shaped blade covered in tiny teeth.
The lama said it would hurt. In Rampa’s own words:
He pressed the instrument to the centre of my forehead and rotated the handle. For a moment there was a sensation as if someone was pricking me with thorns. To me it seemed that time stood still. There was no particular pain as it penetrated the skin and flesh, but there was a little jolt as the end hit the bone. He applied more pressure, rocking the instrument slightly so that the little teeth would fret through the frontal bone… Suddenly there was a little ”scrunch” and the instrument penetrated the bone… For a moment the pain was intense, like a searing white flame. It diminished, died and was replace [sic] by spirals of colour, and globules of incandescent smoke…[i]
The operation, Rampa claimed, gave him special powers like the ability to see auras, leave his body, levitate and read minds…
The book that started it all
Later in this and subsequent books, Rampa tells how the monks of Tibet had created amazing giant kites and how lamas would go flying through the air in them. He also encountered a yeti, was tortured by the Japanese and travelled to Venus in a spacecraft…[ii]
Monk takes a trip in kite (from the Third Eye)
As a young teen, I devoured the works of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. They had everything: astral projection, auras, Atlantis, yetis, hollow earth, telepathy, levitation, prophecy, mysticism and flying saucers all seasoned with a superficial knowledge of Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition. Rampa wrote of the Akashic record, an infinite library of books containing everything that ever happened or would ever happen. The Akashic record is an idea Rampa borrowed from Theosophy, but as a bookish youth this endless library of wisdom was my idea of heaven. It sounds quaint now. The Akashic Record would probably all fit on your phone.
A naked lady astral projects – illustration from You-Foerver
But who was the eccentrically monikered Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, this mysterious lama from Tibet?
As the lama says, ‘The more you know, the more you have to learn…’
Lama Chameleon
As soon as Rampa’s book The Third Eye was published, experts on Tibet and Buddhism decried it as a hoax. Some scholars went so far as to hire a private detective to investigate this mysterious man from the east.
It turned out that the supposed Tibetan lama Tuesday Lobsang Rampa was born as Cyril Hoskin to a Devonshire plumber. He was not Tibetan nor a lama and had never been anywhere near Tibet yet alone Venus. He had, though, shaved his head and changed his name to Dr Kuan-So. Still, his accent was less eastern than west country.
Some 1950s newspaper headlines
At the time of his expose, Rampa aka Dr Kuan-So aka Cyril Hoskin was living in Howth near Dublin with his wife and a young woman called Sheelagh Rouse, a society hostess who had left her husband and children to become Rampa’s disciple.[iii]
It seems Rampa had also been attempting to photograph the human aura. This activity required a succession of young female models (their auras are brightest, apparently) to pose naked (the clothing interferes with the aura, apparently).
In any case, it seemed the game was up for the bogus lama, as the press were now calling him.
But Cyril Hoskin had plenty more up the sleeve of his saffron robe…
And he could explain everything…
How Cyril Henry Hoskin became Tuesday Lobsang Rampa
Rampa explained that Cyril Hoskin had been attempting to take a photo of an owl when he fell out of a tree. When he got to his feet, he was surprised to see that his body was lying in a crumpled heap where he had fallen. Just then, a saffron-robed Tibetan lama floated across the lawn and told him telepathically that he wanted Cyril’s physical body for the good of humanity. Cyril wasn’t thrilled with this prospect, but the lama told him he would be back in a month for his answer, but in the meantime he was to grow a beard and think it over.
A month later, the lama returned with two companions and met Cyril in his garden. He decided to go though with the exchange of souls. In order for the ‘transmigration’ of souls to occur, the lama told Cyril to climb the tree again and throw himself out of it once more which he did. Cyril Hoskin went straight to paradise allowing Tuesday Lobsang Rampa to take over his physical body.[iv]
Mrs Hoskin didn’t seem to mind that her husband was now a Tibetan lama, and the best-selling books continued: The Doctor from Lhasa, the Rampa Story, Cave of the Ancients, Wisdom of the Ancients, the Hermit, Tibetan Sage, I Believe, You Forever, the Saffron Robe, Feeding the Flame, As it Was… and several others. One book, Living with the Lama, was even dictated by his cat, Mrs Fifi Grey-whiskers!
I was overjoyed when I got my hands on his 1965 book You Forever. This was the one that told you how to do everything. How to see auras. How to develop psychic powers like clairvoyance, psychometry and telepathy. And best of all, how to leave your body and go travelling on the astral plane to visit the Akashic Record. I followed his instructions meticulously night after night, but my psychic powers remained undeveloped, and my astral body stubbornly refused to budge.
Not knowing of his newspaper exposes in the 1950s, it only when I read of his journey to Venus that even my teenage credulity was stretched to its limits…
The Lama Goes to Venus
In articles for the Flying Saucer Review magazine, Rampa told how he became one of a group of seven telepathic lamas who discovered an ancient alien spaceship high in the Tibetan highlands. Venturing inside the craft, they met telepathic alien giants who took them for a ride in their flying saucer.
The magnificent seven telepathic lamas were taken on a tour of the alien giants’ base on the dark side of the Moon before being flown at the speed of light to Venus. There they found the planet to be full of fairy cities, with towers, domes and spires all glittering with beautiful colours…
Seven telepathic monks in a flying car on Venus (from My Visit to Venus)
Rampa and the other lamas were taken in a flying Venusian car to the Hall of Knowledge, where the Lords of Venus projected for them the entire history of the planet earth from the eons before Atlantis to the year 3000…
And then they were taken home again…
As the lama himself says, ‘If people don’t wish to believe, it doesn’t matter how much proof is offered…’
Epilogue
Tuesday Lobsang Rampa died in 1981 aged 70. An excellent recent biography of the man by R.B. Russell sums up his ubiquitous books:
…a unique mix of derring-do, hardship, pseudo-orientalism and various New Age beliefs, although there was also a great deal of home-spun philosophy with additional reactionary grumbling.[v]
Yes, he was a New Age charlatan who made a living from writing specious books about his imagined experiences in a Tibet he had never even visited. But his books also fired the imaginations of many around the world looking for exotic excitement and occult adventure. He still has his devotees today and his website contains online versions of all nineteen of his books, including the one written by Mrs Fifi Grey-whiskers his Siamese cat.[vi]
As the lama once said, ‘Humans upon earth are an irrational figure given to believing that which is not so, in preference to that which is…’
[i] Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (1956) The Third Eye, Corgi, pp.75-78
[iii] R.B. Russell (2025) T. Lobsang Rampa and Other Characters of Questionable Faith (Tartarus Press)
[iv] See the excellent R.B. Russell (2025) T. Lobsang Rampa and Other Characters of Questionable Faith (Tartarus Press) for the different versions of Rampa’s transmigration story in his various books
[vi] This website run by Rampa’s devotees including his live in disciple Sheelagh Rouse and contains all his books in various digital formats: https://www.lobsangrampa.org/research-material.html The snippets of Rampa wisdom (the lama says etc …) are taken from the above website
Feeling anxious? Feeling stressed about war, terrorism, inflation, pollution, infection, shortages?
If so, you’re not alone. But…what’s that smell? Sort of chemical-like… You’re feeling a bit nauseous and your head is starting to spin…
And down you go. And then someone else bites the dust. And then another….They’re dropping like flies… Could this be a terrorist poison gas attack?
Call the police. The men in hazmat suits rush in. Evacuate. Lockdown. Investigate…
Then nothing.
Funny smell fears are fuelling fainting fits across the country… What’s going on?
On 30 April 2026, a funny chemical smell was noticed by some passengers at Farringdon station on the Elizabeth Line in London. The station was evacuated and emergency services rushed to the scene including armed police. Fourteen passengers received medical treatment and two were taken to hospital.
On 8 May, a funny chemical smell was noticed by customers in a branch of the NatWest Bank in Golders Green, London. Several people became unwell. Cue emergency services, men in hazmat suits, evacuation, hospitalisation and investigation.
A few people were given medical treatment, but no unexpected chemicals were found. A police spokesman said: “A number of people were experiencing a range of symptoms which could indicate exposure to a chemical or other substance. Crews carried out a thorough search of the area using detection, identification and monitoring equipment and have now confirmed there are no elevated levels of hazardous materials present.”[ii]
Golders Green (Izzy Sampson)
A third incident occurred not in London but in Manchester. On Monday 11 May, police received reports of a chemical smell coming from a hotel on Canal Street, the heart of Manchester’s gay village. Nobody was reported as needing treatment, but emergency services cordoned off the street. The hotel and nearby bars were evacuated, and a man was taken into custody. Police said there was no terrorist threat and no risk of explosion.[iii]
Canal Street Manchester (the Manc)
On 12 May, emergency services were called to a Norwich ambulance control centre as staff complained of a ‘mysterious odour’. The centre was evacuated though nothing unusual was found.[iv]
Something Smells Funny
Concern, anxiety, panic, nausea, shortness of breath and fainting are all common reactions to a funny smell in tense times such as the ones we’re living through. Often the episode starts when someone notices an unusual odour – perhaps from a cleaning fluid, someone’s perfume or even a surreptitiously deployed stink bomb. In 2023, a number of poison gas panics in Iran were indeed started by stink bombs.[v]
When people are suffering from free-floating anxiety, they can become hypervigilant of their surroundings and pick up details they would normally miss. A strange smell can be misinterpreted as dangerous and then the nocebo effect takes over – people start to feel unwell because they believe they have been in contact with a noxious substance, even though they have not. The nocebo effect is the evil twin of the famous placebo effect. One’s mind and one’s expectations create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You expect to feel sick. Then you do feel sick.
Typically, the symptoms spread form person to person. When one person complains about an odd smell and a headache before fainting, it’s likely that others nearby will behave in a similar fashion.
Media amplify these episodes with footage and photos of police cordons, medical personnel, sick people on stretchers and scary-looking investigators in protective clothing. This feeds the flame of the panic and it spreads…
These panics are a normal part of the human reaction to anxiety and stress. It’s called mass psychogenic illnesses, though is perhaps better known by the more politically incorrect term, mass hysteria.
Mass hysteria occurs when emotional conflict or anxiety lead to the simultaneous development of physical or mental conditions in a group of people when there is no organic cause. It’s socially contagious and spreads easily between individuals.
Mad Gassers
The classic instance of funny smell mass hysteria was the Mad Gasser of Mattoon panic of 1944. Dozens of residents of Mattoon, Illinois reported the smell of a sweet gas that they thought had been sprayed into their homes. The victims immediately began to suffer from nausea, paralysis, dizziness and other symptoms. Some were sure they’d seen a shadowy figure at their window.
There was intense and sensational media coverage as more and more cases of alleged gas poisonings were reported. However, no evidence of any poison gas or a mysterious prowler materialised. Newspapers had been filled with claims that the Nazis were planning gas attacks on the US, so when people in a hypervigilant state noticed a smell, they took normal smells (blocked chimneys, bug spray, flowerbeds) for poisonous fumes.[vi] The apparent attacks were a hysterical reaction to wartime anxiety and fear that chemical weapons would be deployed by the Germans.
Similar panics took place in Palestine in the 1980s, in Afghanistan in the 2000s and Iran in 2023. All were against a backdrop of conflict and fear of chemical weapons.[vii]
Of course, contributing to the Golders Green incident of May 2026 is concern after several attacks on synagogues in the area as well as the knife attack on two Jews and a Muslim by a deranged Somali man on the 29 April.[viii]
Epilogue
We are cursed to live in interesting times, and interesting times fuel hysterical outbreaks. I don’t think these are the last funny smell panics that we’ll see in the coming months, so keep your eyes open…and hold your nose…
O, take heed girls! One sip is all it takes…Look what happened to Millie Taplin. She accepted a drink from a strange man and was rendered paralysed, trapped in her own body and squirming and gurning as if possessed by a demon.
Millie’s mother released a shocking video of her daughter taken while she was in hospital after the alleged spiking incident. The story of Millie Taplin has been all over the international media this week along with lurid headlines about demonic possession, paralysis, malevolent strangers and drug-induced horrors so you’d be forgiven for thinking this was news. In fact, it happened in 2021.[i]
Millie’s story is often presented as a warning in social media posts and news accounts. A kind of fable for young women. You could be next!
We’ll get to what I think is going on shortly but first let’s look at the myth.
Are you ready for a fairy story?
One sip is all it took…
Once upon a time a young woman called Millie went for a night out with friends. She had just turned eighteen, she’d never been to a nightclub before and at last the lockdowns that failed to stop the pandemic had just been lifted. Finally, young people were free to enjoy a night out.
Millie’s mum sent her daughter an ominously prophetic text warning her not to leave her drink unattended, because….well, you know what might happen to an innocent young woman – and everyone’s heard the stories.
At Moo Moo’s nightclub in Southend, Essex, a stranger chatted with young Millie and offered her a drink of vodka and lemonade. Her mother’s wise words seemingly forgotten, Millie took a sip…
Soon she began to feel hot and sick and went outside. Her vision went blurry. She was taken to hospital where her condition deteriorated. She could no longer walk, her hands were clenched into claws, her body went stiff and her face underwent grotesque contortions as if she’d been possessed by a demon.
Later Millie said she’d been fully conscious in the hospital but unable to control her spasms. It was as if she had been trapped inside her own body.
Medical staff concluded that Millie had been spiked with two drugs. One to knock her unconscious and one to paralyse her.
Fortunately, Millie recovered from this dose of a dangerous cocktail of narcotics after a few hours and went home.
But YOU might not be so lucky…
Drink! Drugs! Sex!
This is the story roughly as it’s been told in hundreds of social media posts and news articles around the world, and the release of the video of Millie contorted and writhing like little Regan in the Exorcist has brought it back to lurid public attention.
For all their ostentatious concern, the media LOVES it when young girls on a night out get spiked. Drink, drugs and sex – who could want more for a news headline?
Some of the headlines and social media posts
But we have some good reasons to be sceptical about Millie’s story. Firstly, there doesn’t appear to be any drug or combination of drugs that would lead to the symptoms Millie exhibited, especially after only one sip, and when the worst symptoms appeared hours later in a medical setting. Some accounts make it two sips or a few sips, but the point still stands.
There appears to have been no blood tests carried out. Or if there were, the results were negative and not released. The medical staff who supposedly suggested Millie had been dosed with a combination of narcotic and paralytic are not named. This may have been nurses’ speculation passed on to the media by Millie’s family.
Furthermore, CCTV cameras are everywhere. Surely the sinister stranger who gave Millie the drink would have been arrested and charged if he had indeed been responsible.
Could it be that Millie, unused to public drinking, and filled with government induced anxiety about Covid-19, simply drank too much and, primed by the text she received from her mum and other media accounts of women being drink or needle spiked, misinterpreted her own intoxication? When she first started feeling unwell, Millie thought she had just drunk too much, as did her friends. The effects of too much alcohol, excitement at her first night out in a club and anxiety induced by government fear propaganda could all have led to a panic attack that made her seek medical aid.
Typical of many Instagram posts
Of course, seeking medical aid is the right thing to do if you think you’ve been spiked. But drinking too much and throwing a wobbler is embarrassing to admit, so it’s easy to see how the assumption – or invention – of a spiking attack could be useful to the alleged victim. Instead of blame and criticism, the ‘victim’ becomes the centre of attention, gains 15 minutes of fame, garners sympathy and enjoys the status boost associated with being a brave victim.
The academic literature suggests that the use of drugs in sexual assaults is rare.[ii] When they are used, it’s more likely that they will be used to facilitate an assault in a private space such as the victim’s or perpetrator’s home. Incapacitating someone with criminal intent in a public space surrounded by staff and CCTV cameras is not a wise move as it would involve carrying or dragging a clearly intoxicated person through crowds of witnesses.
As drink spiking expert Pamela Donovan points out, if someone is going to spike you for malicious purposes, they are likely to do it in a private rather than a public space and they are probably known and trusted by the victim.[iii]
Drink Spiking: the Evidence
A number of studies have carried out medical tests on alleged spiking victims. Results show the vast majority of people who think their drinks have been drugged are wrong. An Australian study examined the blood of 97 people who reported to a hospital saying they had been spiked. Guess how many of that sample actually had any sedative or other drug (aside from narcotics knowingly taken) in their system? That’s right. None of them.[iv]
A similar study in Wales tested 75 mostly female patients who had presented to a hospital A&E department reporting that they had been spiked. The tests showed that while many of the patients had certainly had a lot to drink, and quite a few had ingested various recreational drugs, none of them had actually been spiked.[v]
Other studies have similar results.[vi] People who turn up at casualty departments thinking they have been spiked seem to have no drug in their system (other than ones they had taken voluntarily).
We’re told that drink spiking is common. But if it’s so widespread and blatant, why aren’t our jails bursting with the villains? Nightclubs are full of potential witnesses and CCTV cameras are everywhere. Police have investigated thousands of alleged spiking cases – 6,670 between 2017 and 2021 – and only 130 of these resulted in a charge. This survey, conducted by the Independent, does not actually tell us how many were eventually convicted, though it does say that some of these charges were for other offences to the one initially brought against the defendant.[vii] And we don’t know how many of these cases actually took place in a public place such as a nightclub.
One police force, Avon and Somerset, recorded that from 2016 to 2021, there were 486 cases of drink spiking investigated, resulting in 27 arrests but no convictions.[viii]
Tragic Magic
So what’s going on? How can so many people think they have been spiked when they haven’t?
First, perhaps the victim had not kept track of how much she was drinking, or had a bad reaction to drugs (prescription, illicit or both) she had voluntarily taken. This bad reaction might mistakenly be assumed to be symptoms of spiking – about which everyone has heard the scare stories. And as an excuse for being inebriated, being spiked would certainly gain more sympathy than having knocked back one too many Jagar-bombs. As Pamela Donovan puts it, it’s a kind of redemptive tragic magic.[ix] A drink spiking story instantly conjures up archetypes of damsels in distress and dastardly villains and magically shifts the responsibility.
Being spiked confers on one sympathy, moral status and also suggests that the victim is so irresistible that dastardly villains will do anything to get their hands on them.
Another possibility is that the victim suffered a panic or anxiety attack and then became hypervigilant about the state of their body such that a nocebo effect occurred. The nocebo effect is the powerful evil twin of the placebo effect. When you’re primed to expect negative symptoms, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and the mind does the rest. In other words, what psychiatrists of a bygone age might have called a hysterical reaction.
We’ve had plague, wars, inflation, climate doom-mongering and God knows what else relentlessly over the last few years. Constant free-floating anxiety creates the ideal conditions for hysteria. People become hypervigilant about their body and their surroundings, and their mind and the nocebo effect does the rest.
But there is also a third possibility – that the victim made the story of being spiked up to gain attention or sympathy. This may sound unlikely, but it’s certainly something that happens frequently. A famous case is the Halifax Slasher panic of 1938 when dozens of victims in Halifax and then hundreds more around the country claimed to have been attacked by a razor blade wielding maniac. It turned out that the victims had cut themselves and invented the story of the attack.[x] Let that sink in.
Angry Haligonians search for the Halifax Slasher… who didn’t exist…
There are a small but significant number of people in every culture who cry wolf…
Epilogue
But what’s the harm, you might ask, in women on a night out taking extra care to make sure their drinks are in their sight at all times? Why not sell anti-spiking glass covers, drug testing kits or run spiking awareness raising campaigns?
The problem is that these precautions and warnings reinforce a false narrative which is unlikely to stop anyone actually being spiked but is likely to lead to more supposed victims imagining or pretending they’ve been spiked.
Over the years I’ve been following spiking episodes we’ve had drink spiking panics, needle spiking panics and vape spiking panics. These panics stretch back through the twentieth century and reflect the cultural fears and folk devils of the age.[xi]
In fairy stories like these, the nightclub takes on the role of the dark spooky forest, the innocent young woman out for a good time takes on the role of the little girl who ignores mother’s sound advice and strays from the path, and the big bad wolf is a nasty man with a phial, vape or syringe full of date rape drugs on the prowl for his next victim…
And therein lies the insipid horror of the spiking myth. It could happen to you anytime. Be constantly vigilant, suspicious, aware. Spend your leisure time haunted by fear and anxiety. Might as well check under your bed every night for a mad axe murderer. You never know…
[ii] Anderson, L., Flynn, A. and Pilgrim, J. (2017) ‘A global epidemiological perspective on the toxicology of drug-facilitated sexual assault: A systematic review’, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 47, pp.46-54
[iii] Donovan, P. (2016) Drink Spiking and Predatory Drugging (Palgrave Macmillan)
[v] Hughes, H.et al (2007) ‘A Study of Patients Presenting to an Emergency Department having had a Spiked Drink’, Emergency Medicine Journal, 24 (pp.89-91)
[vi] See Bendau, A. et al ‘Spiking Versus Speculation? Perceived Prevalence, Probability, and Fear of Drink and Needle Spiking’, Journal of Drug Issueshttps://doi.org/10.1177/00220426231197826
[x] See chapter one of my Weird Calderdale for the full story of the Halifax Slasher. For other astonishing phantom panics see Bartholomew and Weatherhead Social Panics and Phantom Attackers (Palgrave Macmillan: 2024)
[xi] Robert E. Bartholomew and Paul Weatherhead, Social Panics and Phantom Attackers: A Study of Imaginary Assailants (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
A strange and terrifying figure haunted Birmingham in the autumn of 1886. He was tall, powerful, shrouded in white and his hideous face burned with an unearthly fiery glow and the sight of him was enough to send you insane. Some thought him a ghost and some thought him a devil. Others suspected he was a cruel prankster, but none could catch him. He could leap and bound over hedges and rooftops with almost supernatural strength and agility before vanishing into the night. It was rumoured that he had invented a pneumatic device attached to his boots that could send him flying with a blast of steam over the roofs and chimneys of Birmingham. You’ve heard of Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London; but this is the story of Wind-Heeled Jack, the Terror of Brum…
A Tall White Thing with a Fiery Face
In October 1886, a nine-year-old milkman’s son called Burton was standing at the gates of a farm on, ironically, Spring Hill Lane, when ‘a little black thing’ came jumping around him like a dog and a moment later the boy was confronted by the monster that had been haunting the outskirts of Birmingham for weeks.
The figure was all in white, tall and powerful. He cavorted grotesquely in a ghost like manner before disappearing behind a hedge only to return with his face ‘all over fire’. The flaming faced ghost capered in front of the young lad who was frozen with terror.
On the same night, Frank George (18) was walking home from work on Foxholly Road when he came across ‘a tall white thing with a fiery face’ who danced in front of him before vanishing. The youth was said to be brave, but this experience shattered his nerves.
Many people had similar experiences with the Acock’s Green Ghost as it was first called after the Birmingham suburb where the early sightings proliferated. It was assumed that a powerfully built man was responsible and that he was painting his face with phosphorous to give him a fiery glow, though it is more likely he was using a luminous mask.
In any case young men formed patrol groups to try and catch the culprit and reportedly gave chase to the Ghost on one occasion but he was too fast for them. It was rumoured that the guilty party was a young toff who had made a bet that he could frighten people for three months without getting caught.[i]
Britain was plagued by similar ghosts throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. People would dress up in white sheets or devil masks then jump out and scare people after dark.
A West Stafford ghost hoaxer about to be thrashed by an angry mob (including his wife!) Illustrated Police News 29 September 1894
This bizarre pass time was called ‘playing the ghost’ and was a regular occurrence. Often it would lead to mass impromptu drunken ghost hunts where revellers and the curious gathered to catch, see or at least talk about the ghost. Sometimes it would lead to angry mobs rioting drunkenly through the streets. It would often lead to copycat hoaxers who would carry out similar pranks as well as to opportunistic ‘victims’ who would fabricate encounters with the Ghost and then harvest the attention and sympathy as they languished melodramatically suffering from the shock. People would be scared to go out.[ii]
These ghost panics really gripped communities.
The press often referred to these ghost pranksters (somewhat ironically) as ‘Spring-Heeled Jacks’ after the legendary monster that haunted London in the 1830s. Jack wore a devil mask, had metal claws and would vomit blue fire in the faces of his victims before bouncing over the hedges and rooftops on his specially designed boots. He was also rumoured to be a toff trying to win a wager that he could scare his victims to death.
That’s the legend. However, descriptions of Jack varied. Sometimes he wore an animal skin or a white sheet over his head. It is likely that some of the racier attacks by Spring-Heeled Jack were invented by twentieth century researchers. We know from episodes like the Halifax Slasher that it is also quite probable that some of the supposed victims of Jack made up their stories. The press were also likely to make up stories, print rumours and urban legends as facts and exaggerate and sensationalise wherever they could. (So, what’s new, you may ask?)
Spring-Heeled Jack became a Victorian proto-superhero in Victorian penny dreadfuls
As the nineteenth century wore on, the label of Spring-Heeled Jack was applied to any mischief maker with a white sheet over his head. And remember, ghost pranksters were legion in this time. The same is true of Birmingham in 1886 – the Acocks Green Ghost soon became known as the latest incarnation of Spring-Heeled Jack. As is often the case in these episodes, the panic migrates from one area to another – ghost panics are contagious.
Jack Goes to School
In late October hundreds gathered outside Birmingham’s Summer Lane elementary school every night. It was rumoured that the city’s Spring-Heeled Jack would be seen, and indeed some claimed to have seen this mysterious figure skipping over the rooftops, though no specific witnesses are named and this was likely just a rumour. Others suggested a magic lantern had been used to project images onto the skyline. Horror shows called Phantasmagoria were very popular throughout Europe at the time. In these events projectors and mirrors were used to create scary images of ghosts, demons and skeletons on a semi-transparent screen.
Schoolboys pelt the Woolwich Ghost in the Illustrated Police News 6 November 1897
In any case, the crowds grew until they numbered five or six hundred, at least according to the press. When Jack failed to appear, scuffles broke out, stones were thrown and some pockets were picked. The police, along with a caretaker expertly wielding his trusty broom, managed to disperse the disorderly crowd.[iii]
Wind-Heeled Jack
On 13 November 1886 a mysterious letter was published in the Birmingham Mail that purported to explain the mysterious goings on of the previous weeks. The letter was signed ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’.
The author of the letter claimed to be a professional gymnast who had invented a contraption in which compressed air was pumped through tubes attached to the man’s legs and feet and controlled by levers. The letter explained:
By turning a stopcock I allow a certain quantity of air to go to the levers which are then pressed with great force against the ground, causing one to rebound a considerable distance into the air.
London’s Spring-Heeled Jack was reputed to have springs hidden in the heels of his boots, but Birmingham’s equivalent goes even further with a beautifully steam punk compressed air accessory allowing him to make his death-defying leaps. I’ve taken the liberty of giving him the nickname Wind-Heeled Jack.
The author of the letter had, he went on, been experimenting in secret with this device while wearing his white gymnast’s costume and this is what witnesses, first at Alcocks Green and later at the Summer Lane school, had seen.
The letter further claimed that now the inventor had perfected the steering mechanism and that he would demonstrate this the following Monday evening between 7 and 8pm at Birmingham’s famous Bull Ring by leaping from the top of the Market Hall to the Tower of Saint Martin’s Church – an impossibly daring feat.
Bird’s eve view of Bull Ring, Birmingham. Red arrow (right) points to the Market Hall and red arrow (left) points to St Martin’s Church
Of course, as Monday 15 November came, expectant crowds gathered in the Bull Ring waiting to see Jack’s acrobatics. The crowds supposedly numbered ten thousand, though one source says there were (rather improbably) a hundred thousand onlookers stood gawping in anticipation at the Birmingham skyline.
Some excitement was created when a top floor window was opened, but this was a false alarm. Attention was also caught by a bright object floating above the Bull Ring, though this turned out to be a balloon.
The disappointed crowd soon dispersed.[iv] It seemed that Wind-Heeled Jack had chickened out…
Epilogue
The letter printed in the Birmingham Mail was clearly a hoax perpetrated by the newspaper and inspired by recent spooky pranks. Ghost related newspaper hoaxes were fairly common in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see the bottom of this post for links to more of these), and this is a classic that doesn’t appear to have been written about anywhere else.
That this was a hoax was made obvious by a follow-up letter again purporting to be from Spring-Heeled Jack published on 20 November.
In this letter, Jack claimed he didn’t show because he had emigrated to Wellington, New Zealand. He had so perfected his pneumatic apparatus that he could now leap across continents and even oceans, landing occasionally on the odd, fortuitous ship to make it all the way down under.
He had leapt back across the ocean to deliver his final letter explaining his no-show before bounding away on his steam-powered boots to the other side of the world.[v]
And so ends the story of Spring-Heeled Jack’s Brummie cousin, Wind-Heeled Jack.
Wind-Heeled Jack – as hallucinated by our AI overlords
[i] ‘Playing the Ghost at Acock’s Green’, Birmingham Mail, 2 October 1886, p.3
[ii] Robert Bartholomew and Paul Weatherhead, Social Panics and Phantom Attackers: A Study of Imaginary Assailants (Palgrave Macmillan)
[iii] ‘Extraordinary Hoax’, Eddowes’s Shrewsbury Journal, 20 October 1886, p.5
[iv] Robin Goodfellow, ‘Table Talk’, Birmingham Daily Mail, 13 November 1886, p.2; ‘The Gullibility of Birmingham’, Portsmouth Evening News, 17 November 1886, p.4; ‘The Spring-Heeled Jack Hoax’, NewarkHerald, 20 November 1886, p.8
[v] Robin Goodfellow, ‘Table Talk’, Birmingham Daily Mail, 20 November 1886, p.2
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if a cheap, easily available store cupboard ingredient could provide you with unlimited and totally legal psychedelic experiences? Enter Musa sapientum, ‘the fruit of the wise’, otherwise known as the humble banana. Some called it ‘Mellow Yellow’, some called it Bananadine or Bananadine Acid or simply Banana Sunshine, the store cupboard psychedelic…
As teenagers in the 1980s, my budding psychonaut friend and I had heard rumours that if you dried ripe banana peel and then smoked it, it would become psychoactive as the peel contains bufotenine, the same psychedelic chemical found in toad skins. Donovan had even supposedly written his 1966 hit ‘Mellow Yellow’ about it: ‘Electrical banana is gonna be the very next craze….’
And a banana-flavoured joint is surely more appealing than licking a toad…
Donovan’s 1966 hit
Not having a recipe, we dried ripe banana skins on hot radiators. They turned black and slimy and were impossible to light. Thus our quest to open the doors of perception with bananas proved ultimately fruitless.
But the (entirely spurious) belief that smoking dried banana peel gets you high has proved remarkably persistent, despite it being regularly debunked as a myth. Its origins are slippery, but it seems to have begun with articles in the underground press explaining how to dry banana skins and extract the ‘bananadine’ powder that could then be smoked.
A wave of banana smoking swept through the hippy scene and this was picked up by the press – and soon Mellow Yellow was everywhere. Donovan, Country Joe and the Fish, the underground press, anarchists and the Food and Drug Administration all play a part in the story of how the banana became a short-lived symbol of the hippy underground. It’s also a story of how government laboratories created banana smoking machines to isolate its elusive hallucinogenic compounds and kids everywhere blew their minds on one of their five-a-day…
Electric Bananas for Mind and Body
In February 1967, legendary psychedelic rock band Country Joe and the Fish were flying to Vancouver for a concert. On the flight, drummer Gary ‘Chicken’ Hirsh told Country Joe McDonald that you could get high by smoking dried banana peel as it contains THC like cannabis. After arriving in Vancouver, the band headed to the nearest store and stocked up on bananas which they then took to a nearby hippy shop and asked if they could bake the peels in the oven.
Country Joe and the Fish
When they were dry enough, the band scraped the white stuff off and smoked around twenty joints of it before going on stage for their final set – and that’s when it hit them. Tripping wildly, they couldn’t stop playing their song ‘Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine’ and ended up doing a 45-minute version of it. When they came off stage, they ran back to smoke some more, crying (according to Country Joe’s website) ‘Man this shit really works, I am so high I can’t believe it.’
After the gig, Joe and the band began telling everyone they knew of the wonder drug they had found. When they returned to Berkeley, at a gig in California Hall the band passed five hundred banana joints around the crowd telling them it would get them high.
However, what the band had forgotten is that as they were smoking the banana joints in Vancouver, they had also been taking copious swigs from a jar of water at the side of the stage that was full of LSD for the band (it was the 1960s). They were tripping on acid, not banana joints.
The band’s manager, Ed Denson, wrote about being turned on to the fruit in his column in the underground newspaper the Berkeley Barb in the issue dated 3 March 1967, and this seems to be the first print reference to the practice. The ‘recipe of the week’, Denson wrote, was to scrape the pith of banana peels, dry them in the oven until they can be crumbled and then smoke in a joint. The effect, supposedly, was similar to opium. Denson also suggests (for ‘those who feel experimental’) soaking grass in banana oil.
In the same issue, an anonymous letter to the editor claimed that the Berkeley police narco squad were hanging around the grocery section of the local Co-op. They had been assigned to observe people who were buying large amounts of bananas. There was also the suggestion that the government was planning to criminalise the possession of a certain quantity of the fruit.
LA Free Press May 1967
In a 2022 interview with Psychedelic Scene, Country Joe and the Fish drummer Gary ‘Chicken’ Hirsh described what happened next:
‘At any rate, the following weekend, you couldn’t buy a banana any place in the Bay Area. It was like Safeway stores sold out of bananas. The Co-op in Berkeley, you couldn’t get a banana. And since then, I’ve learned that you know, it just swept the nation. It went all over the world. You know, we’ve run into people in England who tried smoking bananas. You know, the underground press jumped on it. The Federal government ended up testing to see if there was anything that in them.’
Trip on a Banana Peel
Enterprising hippies began drying bananas and selling the powder ready to smoke in $5 ‘psychedelic turn-on bags’. ‘Trip on a banana peel,’ their adverts in the underground press said, ‘Mellow Yellow is here.’
Roll up and and get stoned on Banana Peels (advert in the Berkeley Barb 1967
Indeed, Donovan’s 1966 hit ‘Mellow Yellow’ was perfectly timed with its lyrical references to being ‘born high forever to fly’ and how ‘electrical banana is gonna be a sudden craze’. It seemed obvious to many that Donovan was trying to turn the world on to the psychedelic delights of smoked banana skin. However, in his autobiography The Hurdy Gurdy Man, the Don writes that the song was a ‘cheeky little number’ that was influenced by his smoking of the green herb, not the yellow fruit. The song was a throwaway party piece singalong that producer Mickie Most decided should be his next single. The ‘electrical banana’, Donovan says, was a nudge-nudge, wink-wink reference a magazine advert for a vibrator.
By the end of March articles began to appear in the mainstream press about the latest youth drug craze. The New York Times of 27 March described how the crowds at an Easter ‘be-in’ in Central Park were chanting ‘Banana! Banana! Banana!’ By 30 March, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that marijuana farms were lying idle as students were instead getting stoned on bananas.
Ban the Banana – Repeal the Peel: The Banana Labelling Act of 1967
The banana smoking craze even made an appearance in the US congressional record on 9 April 1967 thanks to New Jersey politician Frank Thompson’s tongue in cheek speech. ‘From bananas,’ he said, ‘it is just a short but shocking step to other fruits… Tomorrow we may face strawberry smoking, dried apricot inhaling or prune puffing.’
Thompson proposed a ‘Peel Corps’ of ‘swinging’ young Americans to travel to the jungle and observe the effects of bananas on their biggest consumers – monkeys. Furthermore, those banana smoking beatniks should be targeted with new legislation, the Banana Labelling Act of 1967. Just as cigarette packs carried government health warnings, so should bananas: ‘Caution: Banana peel smoking may be injurious to your health. Never put bananas in the refrigerator,’ would be stamped on every fruit.
‘I will only breathe easier,’ he said as he finished his impassioned speech, ‘when this country, this land we all love, can declare, “Yes, we have no bananas; we have no bananas today”’.
The Banana Smoking Machine
Although Thompson was clearly jesting, concern was growing about the supposed mind-altering effects of bananadine, and so the US Food and Drug Administration stepped in. To test the hallucinogenic properties of the fruit, a banana peel smoking machine was constructed that trapped the smoke in tubes so it could then be analysed. Several different processing recipes were tried, as was banana juice. The results were clear. Bananas didn’t contain any known psychoactive chemical. The FDA’s tongue in cheek press release of the 26 May 1967 summed up the results of the experiment: ‘A laboratory apparatus ‘smoked’ dried banana peels for more than three weeks and never did get high’.
‘Was it all a hippy hoax?’ the FDA asked.
Taking the Pith
So, did a hippy hoax fool both the counterculture and the mainstream media alike? Gary Hirsh’s account suggests he really believed bananas could get you high, as does Country Joe’s account. On other occasions, though, Country Joe claimed he knew it was a hoax all along, and it’s hard to ignore the satirical element in the banana craze. If governments legislate against psychoactive herbs and fungi, what would it do if a common foodstuff could be easily turned into a drug by any kid with access to an oven? And, of course, the banana is the most comical of fruits.
Although the Country Joe and the Fish story is the most well-known origin of the banana rumour, there is a rival account, again involving the underground press, but this time on the east coast. In his autobiography Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut, underground publisher Paul Krassner described a visit to the office of the East Village Other newspaper. There he met the editors who were speculating that as LSD caused the release of serotonin in the brain, then perhaps bananas (which contain serotonin) might have a similar effect. Krassner suggests that the editors were confusing serotonin with ‘serotin’, though this makes no botanical sense. Bananas do contain small amounts of serotonin, but it’s not going to get you high, no matter what you do with it. In any case, Krassner claims that this is where the idea came from which was then picked up by the Berkeley Barb.
Paul Krassner’s autobiography
So, it’s not clear whether the Great Banana Hoax started as a deliberate piece of hippy satire to bait the authorities, or a genuine belief in the psychedelic properties of the fruit’s dried peel or a simple misunderstanding. Perhaps the myth had been floating around for a while before Country Joe and Paul Krassner got to hear about it. There can be no doubt, though, that what makes this piece of drug lore unusual is that the underground hippy press played a key role in its spreading.
Too Much Monkey Business
Despite regular debunking, the mellow yellow myth persisted, certainly helped by a recipe included in the infamous Anarchist’s Cookbook by William Powell in 1971. Along with tips and tricks for the amateur terrorist, such as making explosives and hand to hand combat training, there are instructions for processing bananadine. This is probably the best-known recipe, though if you plan on trying it, you’re going to need a lot of bananas:
Take 8 pounds of ripe bananas (that’s about thirty) and scrape the pith from the inside of the peel. Add this to water and boil for three or four hours before straining and then continue to boil until reduced to a black tar-like paste. Spread on a baking tray and bake on a low heat until dry and can be crumbled into joints.
How many eager psychonauts tried the recipe is impossible to tell, but the number must be very high – unlike the smokers themselves.
However, it’s understandable that many believed in the psychedelic effects of Mellow Yellow. Like Joe and Chicken, they may have smoked their bananadine at the same time as they ingested LSD or marijuana and confused the effects of those drugs. Banana smokers may have been in a setting that included trippy light shows and psychedelic music, and the powerful placebo effect might have done the rest…
Although the banana peel hoax of 1967 is most likely an amusing piece of hippy satire that went viral (as we might say nowadays), it also reflects the quest for the ultimate organic high that could be hiding in plain sight. When Country Joe heard that the FDA’s banana smoking apparatus had found no hallucinogenic properties in the fruit, he suddenly remembered that in Vancouver, as well as smoking bananadine, they had also been drinking acid-spiked water. Joe went over to Chicken’s house and told him that bananas didn’t work – it was the LSD that got them high.
‘Forget about that,’ Chicken replied. ‘If you smoke a cigarette through a bell pepper it gets you really stoned…’
Speaking of peppers, according to Paul Krassner, the Los Angeles Free Press wanted in on the hallucinogen hoaxes – they promoted ‘pickled jalapeno peppers, anally inserted.’
‘All over Southern California,’ Krassner claims, ‘heads were sticking vegetables up their asses.’ But that’s a story for another day.
‘I’d Love to put you on’
The Great Banana Hoax (the Electric Prunes)
This article was first published in Psychedelic Scene Magazine.
The story of the 1612 Lancashire Witch Trials is well known. Eight women and two men were found guilty and executed for heinous crimes involving witchcraft, often accused by each other, their own families or convicted on the testimony of a little girl. Their names still resonate today – Old Chattox, Old Demdike, Mouldheels, Squinting Lizzie…
However, the story of Old Mother Cuthburt and her two daughters is largely forgotten. It appeared in a pamphlet published probably in the 1780s called TheHistory of the Lancashire Witches, and it’s a mix of fantasy, folklore and fiction, bearing very little in common with the unfortunates of 1612. It shows just how much attitudes had changed over the decades, with this family of witches portrayed as mischievous folk heroines enjoying a series of bawdy adventures and supernatural jolly japes.
So here is their story. The other Lancashire witches…
How Old Mother Cuthburt Became a Witch
Mother Cuthburt and her two lusty daughters lived at the bottom of a bleak hill known as Wood-and-Mountain-Hill – perhaps a reference to Pendle Hill. The family were very poor, but all this would change when Mother Cuthburt was walking through the forest and saw a rabbit run out in front of her. The rabbit then transformed itself into a hound and then a man. The old woman was terrified and frozen to the spot, but the man only pressed some coins into her hand and told her to come back the next day.
She returned home and told her daughters what had happened, and they advised her to go back the next day.
As she entered deep into the forest, she saw a tree rise out of the ground and move towards her and then surrounded her by turning into a thick wood. She feared she would be lost, but then heard music and followed it to a house where a matron invited her inside.
Witches and Devils have a bit of a do (from History of the Lancashire Witches c.1780)
She found herself in the middle of a wild party, with men and women dancing and the tables groaning with food and drink, and when the dancing stopped Mother Cuthburt was invited to partake of the banquet, which being very hungry, she did.
After the feast, the matron who had welcomed Mother Cuthburt struck the floor with a wand and summoned a host of witches’ familiars – demons in animal form that do witches’ bidding. The matron, a witch from Wales named Mother Crady, began clanging out a demonic tune by beating a griddle with some metal tongs, and all the cats, bears and apes danced around the palatial hall to the merriment of all who saw it.
Mother Crady invited Mother Cuthburt to join their company and anointed her breast with some ointment, and gave her some more to take home with her. She uttered some magic spells and gave her a small box with a little imp in the form of a mole-like creature inside. Then all the gathered witches jumped on coal staffs and flew away, leaving Mother Cuthburt to wonder what she had seen.
It’s interesting that these witches eschewed the more traditional broom, opting instead for coal staffs, a long, pole-like implement for carrying coal – something more associated with the urban than the rustic.
But now Old Mother Cuthburt had the power to get up to all kinds of mischief…
Old Mother Cuthburt and the Mayor of Lancaster
Some years prior, Old Mother Cuthburt had stolen the Mayor of Lancaster’s wooden pail and used it for firewood in the depth of a frozen winter. She had subsequently been whipped for the crime her poverty had driven her to. With her newfound magical powers, the witch vowed to get revenge on the Mayor.
She went to the Mayor’s grand house where he was revelling with his rich friends and sent him a note. When the Mayor read it, he suddenly told his guests that he needed to run a race and stripped off all his clothes. He then took a whip and lashed himself through the streets of Lancaster and none could stop him. When he came to his senses, he found himself in the middle of the city, stark naked and bloodied from head to foot. He later said that he had thought he was riding in a horse race.
Old Mother Cuthburt could play tricks on your mind.
Old Mother Cuthburt and Friends (from the History of the Lancashire Witches)
Old Mother Cuthburt Righting Wrongs
One interesting aspect of the Old Mother Cuthburt stories in the History of the Lancashire Witches is that rather being portrayed as evil, the witch is more of a folkloric heroine, perhaps like a female Robin Hood.
On one occasion Mother Cuthburt came across a party of officers carrying a poor man to Lancaster prison for the crime of being unable to pay his debt. When the witch asked the officers what the man’s crime was, they rudely pushed her out of the way.
Mother Cuthburt then pulled out a magic pipe that Mother Crady had given her, told the prisoner to cover his ears, and began to play. Pied Piper-like, she led the officers, who were magically compelled to follow, through hedges, briars and deep dirty ditches, finally leaving them bruised, scratched and bloody in the middle of a stinking pond.
The prisoner, meanwhile, made his escape.
Another time, Mother Cuthburt overheard some thieves bragging about how much they’d stolen and recited some magic words that made the robbers’ horses stumble. Then the thieves heard the clamour of what they took to be an angry mob rapidly approaching, yet their horses refused to move. They had no choice but to dump their loot and flee on foot.
Of course, there was no angry mob only Mother Cuthburt and her magical mind games. She returned the loot to the poor people it had been stolen from.
Well, at least she returned some of it…
Witches and Devils do the Hokey-Cokey… You put your left hoof in, your left hoof out….(History of the Lancashire Witches)
Epilogue
I’ve spent the last couple of years researching and writing a book on the history of demonic possession in Lancashire, so this little pamphlet with its comical and sceptical tone was nice contrast to those written by the zealous Puritan exorcists I’ve been reading.
Stay tuned for the amorous adventures of Mother Cuthburt’s witchy daughters, Margery and Cecily, and Margery’s doomed love for the splendidly named Roger Clodpate…
Paul Weatherhead 