Case file · High strangeness
Spirit possession in Malaysia's factories
Through the 1970s, young Malay women in new free-trade-zone electronics factories were struck by mass 'hysteria' attributed to spirits (hantu), sometimes halting production for days.
1978 CE · 3.08, 101.62 · status: account
The account
Managers called in bomoh to perform rites. Anthropologist Aihwa Ong's 'Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline' (1987) interpreted the possessions as protest against factory discipline.
The sceptical view
Medical observers class the episodes as mass psychogenic illness triggered by stress.