A couple of days ago Gwen’s school was visited by a hypnotist. It took him a long time to get the volunteers ‘under’ and the rest of the audience was starting to get restless but then he started the entertaining part. First he told the victims that they were in a train crossing the Alps in the middle of winter and that it was very cold because the heating system had broken down. And his 10 victims started shivering. One girl apparantly couldn’t speak she was shivering so violently. Then he told them that the heating was back on but had gone haywire so that it was far too hot so then they started wiping sweat off their brows. Then he told them that they were 4 years old and in a kindergarten and that today it was a sandcastle building competition so they all started making movements as though they were building then he went round interviewing them about what they had made. Then he told them that their mother had forgotten to collect them but that he could see her now. At this point he pointed to a member of the audience for each victim and they went bounding off to collect ‘their mother’ and bring her up on stage and sat on her knee. At this point it was time to come out of the trance and as soon as they realised that they were sitting on someone’s knee they jumped off like greased lightning.
OK so this is pretty standard stuff for a hypnotist but maybe it is rather different when you personally know all the victims and could interview them afterwards about what it felt like. So what did it feel like? ‘I knew what was happening but I couldn’t control myself.’
This was entertainment. While the older ones were being hypnotised, the younger ones were being entertained by a magician.
When we got home we found that our neighbour knows the hypnotist and that he’s terrible at handling horses.