The Halifax Slasher....lock your doors!!

To find the very best incident of mass hysteria that I could lay my hands on, I decided to cross the bond and I found a particularly interesting story from the town of Halifax in northern England. It began in 1938 after two women claimed that they were attacked by a dark, mysterious man. The distinctive feature they remembered were the bright buckles he was wearing. The mysterious man with bright buckles became known as the "Halifax Slasher." Soon after there were other reports of local women being attacked by the mysterious man with bright buckles on his shoes. Within a period of ten days the attacks continued and mass hysteria enveloped the entire town.

Because of this, the town became all but shut for business, rewards were being offered and vigilante gangs roamed the streets and several men, wrongly mistaken for the attacker, were physically assaulted. Soon the panic became so sever that detectives from Scotland Yard came to investigate.

Following the investigation, the detectives came to the conclusion that there was no "Halifax Slasher" and many of the "victims" actually admitted that their wounds were self-inflicted. I understand that people would be frightened if a lot of people in their town were getting attacked, but who in their right mind would actually inflict wounds upon themselves to keep this "Halifax Slasher" myth alive? Crazy Brits....

http://www.calderdale-online.org/html/community/life3.html