Here is an interesting article/essay, published in a Tasmanian newspaper and archived on
http://trove.nla.gov.au The Examiner (Launceston, Tasmania,] Friday 9 July 1937, page 6.
US. RADIO OPERATORS MAY HAVE BEEN VICTIMS OF FORM OF HALLUCINATIONA feature of the reports of the search for the missing airwoman, Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam, which must have interested many readers is the large number of radio stations which claim to have heard signals from the missing aeroplane, so many, in fact, that though some may be authentic, some must almost undoubtedly be either deliberately false reports or else the result of a form of hallucination.
There are many thousands of amateur radio operators in the United States, many of them possessing up to-date and highly efficient equipment. The great majority of them are members of a well organized league, and all of them must possess a license from the Department of Commerce, which has power to punish them for spreading false news.
The fact, too, that through their league organization they have in the past rendered extremely valuable service at times of national disaster, such as the recent vast floods in the Mississippi, makes it appear extremely unlikely that on this occasion those who have reported hearing messages from Mrs. Putnam have deliberately tried to mislead the public and the search vessels.
Auto-SuggestionA leading medical man in the city yesterday suggested that the real reason for these numerous incorrect reports was a form of mass hysteria or auto-suggestion, which may give rise to extraordinary hallucinations. It might even be, he suggested, a case of what psychologists call "wish fulfillment." So anxious were the operators to hear the signals from the plane that their sub-conscious minds affected their conscious minds to such an extent that they actually believed they heard the messages they were waiting for.
A leading text-book describes the effects of auto-suggestion as follows: -"In states of ecstasy or intense concentration of the attention upon some one ideal object, the object contemplated seems at times to take on sensory vividness, and so to acquire the character of an hallucination. In these cases the state of mind of the subject is probably similar in many respects to that of the deeply hypnotised subject, and these two classes of hallucination may be regarded as very closely allied."
Craving for NotorietyBesides this possibility of unconscious deception, there is also the possibility that some of the operators had something in common with that numerous [
] of persons who, whenever a spectacular murder is committed, immediately begin pestering the police with confessions of the crime, despite the fact that they may have been many miles from where it occurred or were physically incapable of committing it.
These people deceive themselves into the belief that they have committed the crime because of a sub-conscious craving for notoriety, and in just the same way some of these radio operators may have deceived themselves into the belief that they heard signals from Mrs. Putnam, because of their desire for the publicity and local fame they would thus gain.
