Buzz
Hypnotism has captivated the public since the late 1800s. Across the globe, people have either explored it or experienced its effects firsthand. In fact, it was a frequent subject of newspaper coverage around the world, appearing almost daily.
Hypnotists traveled internationally, performing jaw-dropping feats by putting entire crowds under hypnosis to carry out amusing stunts. Medical professionals also embraced hypnosis, using it to alleviate the pain of childbirth, while dentists employed it during tooth extractions.
Even the criminal underworld became involved. People began reporting that they had been hypnotized into committing crimes or that burglars had used hypnosis to manipulate their victims during break-ins.
While many stories about hypnotism seemed far-fetched, some were so extraordinary they bordered on the unbelievable.
10. Used His Students as Guinea Pigs
Before attempting to experiment with hypnotism on a large group, it's crucial to understand that not everyone can be easily hypnotized. One schoolteacher in Berlin learned this the hard way back in 1912.
Boennecker, the teacher, had the challenging task of teaching children from the 'lower working classes.' He found them noisy, impolite, and difficult to manage, leaving him feeling frustrated with his class.
With a curiosity about hypnotism, Boennecker decided to try it on his students. Believing that he had successfully hypnotized them, he instructed them not to speak of the hypnosis to anyone. He then made them promise to always tell the truth and act politely.
When the teacher brought his class out of the trance, it seemed the hypnosis had worked on some students. However, others did not fall under the spell. These alert children went home and immediately shared what the teacher had done with their parents.
An investigation was launched, and the teacher was arrested. In court, it was concluded that the hypnosis was harmful to the students, and Boennecker was sentenced to 10 days in prison for his reckless actions.
9. Erase the Memory of Your Last Meal
Hypnosis often only works when the right suggestion is made, as seen in the 1899 case of a woman struggling with a severe stomach issue.
The woman, whose identity remained unknown, had tried every possible method to prevent vomiting, but nothing seemed to work. While at an Austrian university, doctors decided to attempt hypnosis as a solution.
Initially, they suggested to her that she would be able to eat, and that her food would stay down. However, after the first session, she immediately began to vomit again. Despite several more attempts with the same suggestion, each session ended in failure.
Ultimately, a doctor suggested that she should forget about eating altogether after each meal. This approach worked. The woman would eat, and just as quickly, forget that she had eaten. After repeating the hypnotic suggestion a few more times, she was finally able to keep her food down.
8. Must Have Been a Quiet Day
What would you do if you were working in medical research on a particularly uneventful day? Chat with the bacteria in a petri dish? In 1953, Richard De Silva from the Ceylon Medical Research Institute decided to ‘hypnotize’ bacteria.
According to his presentation at the Sixth International Micro-Biological Congress, he claimed to have influenced the death rates of bacteria using the power of verbal suggestion.
De Silva placed bacteria on two petri dishes, then spoke over one, saying, “No growth, no growth! You are sterile, you are sterile, you are sterile! You are dead, you are dead, you are dead!” Both dishes were placed in an incubator. After 24 hours, the dish he had targeted with negativity had fewer living bacteria than the one he had left untouched.
While science continues to explore how an observer's thoughts influence behaviors and outcomes in research, speaking to inanimate objects that could not possibly comprehend human language was once considered hypnotism in the 1950s.
7. Tragically Driven to Madness
Ilma Szandor was prone to hysterical episodes, but that certainly didn’t justify the way doctors and ‘professionals’ treated her.
This young Hungarian woman was highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Once this was known, she became the subject of numerous hypnotic experiments, many of which were described as utterly pointless.
For months on end, she was subjected to hypnosis multiple times a day by anyone eager to test their hypnotic skills. During these sessions, she was exposed to 'painful and distressing suggestions.'
One particularly cruel experiment involved a pair of scissors. While under hypnosis, Ilma was told that the scissors were red-hot. The experimenter then placed them on her arm, causing her immense pain. Despite the scissors being cold, the experience led to burn blisters that took months to heal.
By the time the hypnotists had finished with her, she had become mentally unstable and was declared insane.
6. How to Escape a Marriage Proposal
Talk about getting cold feet. In 1903, Martin Case from Milwaukee went to court to claim that a woman named Miss Ormond had placed him under her hypnotic influence.
According to a newspaper report, Case only felt love for the woman when he was near her, and her letters had cast him under her hypnotic spell. He argued that her eyes had a mesmerizing effect on him, and although he originally wanted to hire her as a housekeeper, he soon found himself falling for her.
What did the woman want?
Marriage. She relentlessly pressured him for marriage. On one occasion, she even turned off the lamp, sat on his lap, and stared deeply into his eyes. Eventually, Case gave in and agreed to marry her. From that point on, Ormond was determined to hold him to his word. However, Case swore he detested her whenever she was out of sight.
Case wanted to escape Ormond, but he couldn’t summon the will or courage to do so in her presence. Instead, he enlisted a lawyer who argued that “Case’s mind had been deeply affected by some strange influence, and he was not accountable for his actions.”
A judge reviewed the case and granted Case legal protection.
5. Married While Under Hypnosis
Men weren’t the only ones to use hypnosis as an excuse to avoid marriage. In 1897, a young woman claimed that a man had hypnotized her and then married her. The twist in her story, however, is that she might have been telling the truth.
The man she married, B.M. Main, was a professional hypnotist, palmist, and phrenologist. He had been traveling and made a stop in a town in New York, where he stayed at a boarding house owned by the older sister of Miss Mary Whitman.
Before anyone realized what was happening, Main had married the young woman, despite her being engaged to another man. When her family learned of the marriage, they filed charges against the hypnotist, and he was arrested the following day.
When questioned, Miss Whitman claimed to have no memory of the wedding or anything that followed that night. She insisted that she was deeply in love with her fiancé and was repulsed by the hypnotist. Her only wish was to be freed from the marriage.
A similar case occurred in Brooklyn in 1901. A man attended a seance and married the spiritualist that very day. Having never met the woman before, he believed she had placed him under hypnosis. He went to court to seek an annulment and to escape her overpowering influence.
4. Skipped The Chloroform
In the early 20th century, hypnosis became a fascinating subject, especially among the general public. Take A.J. Clark, a well borer, for instance. In 1902, Clark was injured in an accident that caused a severe tear in the back of his hand. He was rushed to the hospital where the doctors quickly prepped him for surgery.
Rather than accepting the offered chloroform, Clark asked the doctors how long the procedure would take. Upon learning it would last about an hour, Clark closed his eyes, gently rubbed his uninjured head, and drifted into a deep hypnotic sleep.
The doctors went ahead with the surgery, and throughout the operation, Clark showed no signs of reaction to the poking, prodding, or cutting. They finished the procedure a few minutes ahead of the scheduled hour, then sat back, waiting to see if Clark would awaken.
Exactly one hour later, Clark stirred from his trance, stretched, and sat up. He said he hadn't felt or heard a thing during the surgery and felt perfectly fine upon waking.
3. Never Hypnotize The Police
What was intended to be a lighthearted entertainment turned into a tragedy in 1924, when an Australian professor attempted to demonstrate the power of hypnosis in front of an audience.
The professor had successfully hypnotized several audience members without issue. But when he noticed a police officer in the crowd, he invited him onto the stage. He placed the officer under hypnosis, handed him a stick, and suggested that it was a gun.
The hypnotist, thinking this would be a humorous act, instructed the officer to 'shoot the audience and arrest those causing a disturbance.'
However, the officer, realizing that the stick wasn’t firing, drew his actual gun. In a panic, he fired into the crowd, tragically killing three people and injuring several others.
The audience was thrown into chaos, and it took considerable effort to awaken the policeman from his hypnotic state. When he finally regained consciousness, it was said that he 'went mad' upon realizing his actions. The hypnotist was arrested for his reckless behavior.
2. Did The Crime Against Her Will
In the early 1900s, there were multiple instances where criminals claimed they had been hypnotized and forced to commit crimes. They argued that they had lost control of their actions, believing they were under the influence of an unknown force or manipulated by someone they knew, entering a zombielike state.
For example, in 1923 in Germany, a woman named Paula Boden asserted that two men had hypnotized her, and together they stole seven million marks worth of equipment from the Rontgen Institute.
All three were apprehended, but when brought to trial, Boden maintained that she had no agency in the theft. Medical professionals who examined her concluded that she must have been under hypnosis during the crime.
What made the claim even more credible in court was the admission from the men that they had previously hypnotized other women. However, they maintained that they had never used hypnosis on Boden.
The charges against Boden were dropped, and the two men were subsequently sentenced to prison.
1. Not For Public Television
Was it a wise idea to hypnotize the public through their television sets? In 1946, the BBC decided to run an experimental broadcast featuring a hypnotist performing live hypnosis on camera. This performance was then shown on a closed-circuit TV in the studio.
During the first test, 12 staff members watched the broadcast, and five of them 'fell asleep' under the hypnotist's influence.
For the second experiment, six staff members participated, and four of them succumbed to the hypnotist's influence, falling into a deep sleep. Two of these participants were so deeply hypnotized that the hypnotist had to intervene personally to wake them.
It was then concluded that airing hypnosis sessions on public television could be extremely risky. Should any viewers fall into a profound trance, it was believed that only the original hypnotist could awaken them, and he would have to do so in person.
