Mass hysteria is when a group of people have hysterical behaviors like anxiety or fear and it can spread extremely fast.
In "The Crucible," the people of Salem go kind of crazy and their fear fuels the mass hysteria affecting the city. Abigail and her "witchcraft" as well as all of her accusations are making everyone in the town afraid that there are witches in Salem. Because they have a Theocracy, witchcraft is a crime because it is against the Bible. So when people started randomly accusing anybody, they would get scared because they didn't want to go to jail or be hanged. This fear kept spreading until eventually most people in the town were afraid, and thus, mass hysteria was created. The mass hysteria only grew bigger as their fear increased and affected more people.
A similar event happened during the "Red Scare" when America was so afraid of Communists taking over. A man named Joseph McCarthy started accusing people of being Communists, except he had no proof and was just picking people like in "The Crucible." Americans were terrified of Communism taking over the country so also like in the play, their fear spread and created mass hysteria.
Basically it happens like this; something happens that affects people, a couple people become afraid, their fear spreads to more people, and then whole towns become taken over by mass hysteria.
Hysteria is like a disease. It will spread where it may quickly. "The Crucible" is paralleled by Author Miller to the Red Scare, because he was in fact accused of Communism himself.
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