Fantasyland Chapters 37 and 38

Jacob Cesario 

Intro to Philosophy Section #10 

Fantasyland by Kurt Anderson Chapters 37 and 38 

    Fantasyland by Kurt Anderson is about how opinions became the same as fact, and most Americans tend to just believe what someone says based off little to no factual evidence. This is seen all throughout the book, but during chapters 37 and 38, the main examples brought up were child abduction in the late 1900s, sexual assault in the late 1900s, cults in the late 1900s and alien sightings in the late 1900s and early 2000s. All these examples scared Americans, even though none of them were true.  

    During chapter 37, Kurt Anderson gives three examples: Child abduction, sexual assault cases, and cults. All of these he talks about occurring during the late 1900s. The first of these he mentions was child abduction, in which he claimed Americans started "imagining" that kids were being abducted. Kurt says that "Americans suddenly believed that children--by the tens or hundreds of thousands--were being abducted and tortured and kidnapped every year" (Anderson 325). Americans were just blindly believing a fake statistic with 0 factual backing. Multiple different statistics were thrown around, from as low as 30,000 child abductions per year to as much as 100,000. This means, at the low end, a dozen children were being abducted in New York alone for a week. This of course scared many parents in America, and man moved their kids to homeschool, set up stricter curfews and more. Americans were changing their lives and living in fear for no real reason. To Kurt, though, these statistics seemed improbable. He took proving this false into his own hands, so he called police stations around the country and asked how many were occurring per year. Most said they only had a few a year if not 0. This meant that, at the most, the real number was in the thousands. The FBI later concluded that the real number was around 300 a year, significantly lower than the "guesstimate" made by Adam Walsh's father that so many believed, which was 50,000.  

    His next example was physiologists/therapists were influencing people into thinking or "re-remembering" that they were sexually assaulted. This spread and became more popular, making it seem like there were more cases than there were. This was of course not true, but it still scared many regardless. Many scientists at the time claimed it just was not reasonable to say someone could just forget they were sexually assaulted and then, magically "re-remember" it. Kurt follows this by stating "But science be damned; the clinicians and patients and other people desperate to believe they had formed a movement" (Anderson 330). This was Kurt making fun of the people involved for making things up for the sake of a fake "movement". Yet another example of Americans believing and letting themselves fear something that never actually existed.  

    His 3rd example of chapter 37 was abductions again, but this time they threw in cults and feeding babies to sharks. People started to believe that cults were kidnapping, raping, murdering, and more hundreds of thousands of people. This caused nationwide panic. Many books of supposed "victims" were published. The first one was written by Michelle Proby, who was made to believe her daughter was kidnapped by a cult through means of hypnosis. Her book became a bestseller, and Kurt said this book was the template for many more books to come.  
 

    Other false claims included a physiatrist claiming that there were 60,000 ritual homicides each year, while the actual homicide number was only 20,000, with the actual ritual homicide rate being even lower. It was also said that a daycare kidnapped kids, transported by hot air balloon over the ocean, and fed them to sharks. Kurt stated that "several people were sentenced to long prison terms, and several served time before their convictions were overturned or charges were dismissed" (Anderson 338). Many were imprisoned because of these lies, and many are still imprisoned for these "crimes" to this day. 

    During chapter 38, Kurt talks about UFO and alien sightings. This example is a little less off track from murder and rape and mass panic and more on the side of Americans believing something more harmless. After movies such as E.T. came out, many more UFO sightings started to become more prevalent. Someone named John Mack tried holotropic breathwork, which helped him "re-remember" his past life as a Russian in which he was abducted by aliens. He made a book on his encounter with aliens, and uncoincidentally many more alien encounters started popping up after this. It was even said that skepticism of these "victims" was as ugly as laughing at a rape victim. By 2015, UFO sightings increased by 241%. It took one movie to start a bunch of lies.  

    I think Kurt's main idea here is that Americans are too easily manipulated or persuaded. So long as someone reputable says something or there is some sort of "proof", people will believe it, regardless of if that person is telling the truth, has any evidence, or if that proof or evidence makes sense or is backed in some way. Instead of believing what you want, Americans should research problems that arise, such as increased cult kidnappings and babies being fed to shark in the Atlantic. These problems and panics would have never come to be if Americans stopped believing everything they heard. 
 

Work Cited: 

Andersen, Kurt. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. Ebury Press, an Imprint of Ebury Publishing, 2017. 

Arlin Cuncic, MA. “Is Holotropic Breathwork Right for You?” Verywell Mind, Verywell Mind, 8 May 2023, www.verywellmind.com/holotropic-breathwork-4175431.