Quite a lot actually says Jonathan deBurca Butler.

Last week in Wisconsin, US, two twelve-year-old girls were arrested for stabbing a classmate.

The schoolgirls have been charged with attempted murder and face up to 65 years in prison if, as is expected, they are tried as adults.

The victim, a girl of the same age, was reportedly stabbed nineteen times and left for dead in a woods near her home.

According to police, the accused had planned to kill their schoolmate during a sleepover in her house but when those plans were scuppered they decided to commit the crime the following morning in a nearby park.

The victim was found crawling through trees by a cyclist and was taken to hospital where her condition is now stable.

The alleged perpetrators were later found near a motorway walking in the direction of the Nicolet National Forest.

They told investigators that the intended killing was meant as a demonstration of loyalty to a supernatural internet character called Slenderman; a tall and tentacled man-like figure with a white, featureless face who was created in 2009 and is known to stalk and sometimes abduct children.

When the girls were caught they told police they were on their way to Slenderman's mansion, which they believed was in the forest. There, as a reward for their actions, they hoped to become his proxies.

The accused live in the same apartment complex as each other and according to CNN, neighbours were perplexed by the pair's actions, believing them to be from well adjusted families.

Last week also saw militant group Boko Harum launch more attacks on villages in the northern Nigerian state of Borno. Witnesses described how, in one raid, about two hundred men arrived into a village on motorcycles, corralled its residents into a church and opened fire on them.

Boko Harum want to introduce Sharia Law into Nigeria and in some parts of the country they have effectively done that already. Since 2009 they have escalated their attacks and more recently their abduction of some 300 schoolgirls has seen their profile rise throughout the world's media.

Though not really a cohesive group, it is understood that the closest thing these terrorists have to a leader is Abubakar Muhammad Shekau. After a 2012 attack which killed 180 people he told his enemies via YouTube that he “enjoy[s] killing anyone that God commands [him] to kill”.

On the face of it the twelve-year-old girls and Abubakar Muhammad Shekau have little in common. Each would most likely be appalled by the other. Their cases do have undeniable similarities however.

Both parties have killed for that which evidently does not exist. They believe that by doing what they've done they will gain a reward – a power given to them by an unseen entity.

Delusion is one of the great scourges of humanity and whether it's giving up chocolate for lent or stoning a woman to death for blasphemy most of us have played a part in some sort of a delusion at some point.

On Sunday people across the globe will read about two 'crazy' girls who tried to murder their friend to satisfy some 'crazy' entity. They'll also read about the latest attack on a village in Nigeria ordered by a 'crazy' man to satisfy another fictional character. They'll tut-tut, nod their head, say 'terrible business, terrible business'. They'll put down the paper and go to mass. Some might even pray for them.

Isn't it about time we all found something real to believe in?

Follow Jonathan on twitter @deburcabutler