20. Sensationalist Press Fueled a Mass Panic
Another example of a Taipei phantom slasher attack was caused by incompetent doctors, who examined another older gentleman who showed up with a laceration on his wrist. When the patient casually mentioned that a stranger had brushed against him around the same time that he noticed the bleeding, the doctors put two and two together, and came up with nine. They attributed the wound to the feared slasher, and contacted police. Further examination by more competent doctors revealed that the laceration was simply an old wound that had been reopened by scratching.
In reality, there had never been a slasher. It was just a case of mass delusion and hysteria, amplified by sensationalist press reporting. After thorough investigation, police concluded that the “victims” had simply suffered the kinds of everyday accidental cuts and slight injuries that most people endure every now and then without hardly noticing. However, in the fevered atmosphere of the slasher panic, people attributed any rip in their clothes or scratch on their bodies to a surreptitious attack from an imaginary maniac. As described by the police investigation’s final report, out of twenty-one reported slasher “victims”: “five were innocent false reports, seven were self-inflicted cuts, eight were due to cuts other than razors, and one was a complete fantasy“.
