The Transparent Hypnotist

By Josh Houghton

I have always enjoyed hypnosis and magic since I was a kid. I had seen a few stage shows on television and thought it was pretty cool. It was as if everyone was under some magic spell that the hypnotist placed on them. The hypnotist would walk up to each person and as soon as he shouted the word “SLEEP” they all appeared to go to sleep. As we know now they aren’t asleep, but as a kid I didn’t know any better. So as I got older my love for hypnosis continued. Okay, maybe love is a little strong of a word, maybe interest is a better word. Yet, over the years my interest in hypnosis would fade out and fade back in.

It wasn’t until high school that I had decided to attempt to hypnotize someone for the first time. I had no knowledge other then what I had seen on TV or during the stage shows I went too. I didn’t know the principals behind the techniques and I still thought the people we’re asleep. During the time I never knew you could actually get books on hypnosis from the library. Still I felt to some degree I was ready to give it a try. Technically as a teenager I was ready to give anything a try. I mean, how hard could this hypnosis thing be? I had seen tons of hypnotists put people to sleep on stage.

I had convinced a good friend of mine to be my first subject. He was pretty scared because he didn’t want to be under my power. Even though he had some fear he thought it could be fun as did I. We we’re both teenagers looking to have a little fun and what’s better than having your best friend be your hypnoslave for a few. I’m joking of course, but I may have been serious back in the days. Still kidding.

We had decided to do it after school on the old baseball field. We had invited a few friends to check it out and see the performance. So we arrived at the field and decided to get right into hypnotizing my friend. I had my friend stand in front of me and I went into this long talk. It was pretty much stolen from a hypnotist I had seen on TV a few months earlier. After the talk, which was pretty much a paragraph telling the person how powerful I was and how he will not be able to fight against my will. Looking back at this makes me want to laugh. I told him to then stare into my eyes. So my friend began to stare into my eyes. I kept repeating the phase to him over and over. I swear I must have said it at least 10 times. Eventually I saw his eyes beginning to close and then he would try to open them.

I continued to repeat the phase over and over and each time I said it he appeared to become very tired. I then started to say “As you stare at me your legs are getting very tired and you just want to go to sleep”. Remember all I was doing was repeating some stuff I saw on TV. I waited a moment and as I saw my friend’s eye close I yelled “Sleep” as loud as I could and pulled him toward me. I didn’t realize how heavy he would be in hypnosis. He became very relaxed and fell right into my chest. As he hit me I wasn’t prepared to catch him. I thought at the time he would just move toward me. I never suspected his legs would give out. As he fell into me he knocked me straight over. Since he caught me off guard I wasn’t able to catch my balance. I fell straight to the ground and when I hit the ground my head hit a pretty big rock with a sharp edge to it.
The rock cracked me in the head and that’s all I remember. My next memory was waking up in the hospital. After spending a few moments getting my focus back I could see my parents and my friends who we’re with me at the field. My mom told me my friends called them when I fell and hit my head on the rock. They told her my friend, after being hypnotized fell into me, which caused me to fall and hit my head. My friend who was my subject ended up being fine because I broke his fall. One of my friends thought I was dead so most of them we’re pretty scared. A special thanks to my friends who I’m still friends with today for thinking fast. Who knows what could have happened if they didn’t call 911 and then call my parents.

They said I kept waking up and drifting off during the ride to the hospital, but I don’t remember any of that at all. I was able to leave the hospital that night, but I left with a pretty bad scar which I still have to this day. Luckily my hair covers the scar up pretty well. Looking back on these events now with the knowledge I process I can say I did everything wrong. I put myself in danger and my friend in danger. I decided to mess with something I had no real knowledge of and never ever thought about any dangers to him or me. Looking back on these events the first thing I would have done was learn hypnosis.

I should have spent time studying and practicing with pillows or something before I made my first attempt. I should have tried to hypnotize him in a place I could control rather then a rock filled field. I’m lucky my friend fell on me instead of the rock. My parents and I could have been facing some serious lawsuits. So the lesson of this story is to take the time to learn something before you attempt it. Yes, you may see all the hypnosis videos on youtube. You may want to try what they did in a video. It may look easy, but understand these people are trained the majority of the time. So before trying what you see do a little research.

The final piece of advice is to always make sure your subject or client is safe. They are your responsible and they are trusting you to keep them out of harms way. So don’t break that trust and do what you can to make sure everything goes smooth. This is a true story and yes a little sad, but I felt someone reading this could learn something from my mistake or at least take away a bit of wisdom that they can relate too. Hypnosis by it’s self isn’t harmful, but in the hands of someone untrained accidents can happen. So take the time, study, ask questions and you will have a much better start and experience then I did all those years ago.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 5:56 am and is filed under First Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.