Hysterical female employees of a Pakistani garment factory were rushed to the emergency room after reporting seeing a ghost, Gulf News reports from Pakistani news sources.
The doctors sedated the women and sent them, but a great deal of chaos had initially raged there when the women were brought in, according to reports, as the women were screaming and yelling hysterically.
Staff were lost as to how to treat the uninjured women, especially since the stories the women were telling varied from one to another.
“I saw a big black ghost in the washroom. It resembled a shadow but was far bigger than any shadow I have ever seen,” an employee named Shaufta Naz told paramedics.
Another told staff she had seen a woman with her feet turned around, which in South Asia represents “Churail,” or “the ghost of an evil woman”.
Naz said mysterious sounds of a man crying had been emanating from the bathroom for several days.
One woman, who fainted, could only remember her name when her mother arrived to pick her up.
Doctors suggested a poisonous gas leak might have been to blame for the incident, causing panic and asphyxiation.
Later they concluded it could only have been a case of collective panic disorder.
“It was quite weird as nothing could be diagnosed except they might have been struck with panic one after another,” hospital director Dr. Seemi Jamali said.