I love the word. It aptly describes
the deadly allure of Niagara’s vibes:
primal urges to be swimming or flying
that often end up with somebody dying.
Source: T.W. Kriner. The Red Pill and Other Poems. Buffalo: J & J Publishing, 2026.
It is well known that Niagara Falls produces a mesmerizing effect, that draws people to it, and overwhelms the senses, drawing some to commit or attempt to commit suicide, as documented in interviews with survivors, and in the words of many of the poets represented on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website. Describing this phenomenon, Kriner coined the word hydracropsychic in his book In the Mad Water: Two Centuries of Adventure and Lunacy at Niagara Falls, J & J Publishing, Buffalo, 1999. p. 14: “The water, the altitude, and the distracted mind may combine to produce what might be called a hydracropsychic effect.”
The word “hydracropsychic” was later used by Joyce Carol Oates in her book The Falls, published in 2004. In it, a fictional doctor writing a fictional letter describes “an uncanny effect called the hydracropsychic,” a “morbid condition” that has been known to “render even the will of the active, robust man in the prime of life temporarily invalid, as if under the spell of a malevolent hypnotist,” with the result, in the direst cases, that “the unfortunate victim throws himself to his doom if he is not prevented.”
See Wiktionary: Suggest a word/August 2009 for a discussion of the word hydracropsychic (you will have to scroll down the page to find it).
