I suppose this story began in early January, at my girlfriend Sally's house. I was there for a Sunday Lunch with her family, which was masquerading as a late Christmas Dinner. Sally and I are both in our second year at Warwick University, which is where/how we met; Sally still lives at home with her parents near Warwick, while I'd been back in Scotland with my own family for the holidays.
Sally had caught the train north to join my family for the Hogmanay celebrations and we'd driven back together the day before, in time for that lunch date. Sally was relating anecdotes of her time in Scotland to her family during the meal; our New Year celebrations most particularly and no doubt saving the best -- in her opinion -- until the last.
It was close to the end of the meal when Sally dropped her bombshell "... and that was the first I knew about Alec being a hypnotist."
That isn't true of course; well... not really. Along with my mother and siblings, I know and understand the theory and basic techniques of hypnotism and amongst my family I am perhaps the best practitioner nowadays, but that still leaves me a long way short of 'being' a hypnotist. My maternal grandfather had been the professional stage hypnotist and it was he who had taught us the basic principals when we were kids.
Not unexpectedly, Sally's pronouncement proved the catalyst for a lively debate about hypnotism and garnered the usual cross-section of opinion: Sally and her younger brother 'believed', her mother, elder brother and his wife Hannah, were all sceptical, but prepared to debate the subject, while Sally's father Tom and her younger sister Emma both immediately called 'bullshit'.
Hypnotism is real; you don't have to believe me, just do a little research on the internet; ten minutes should suffice. Sure, what you see on stage or TV includes a lot of razzmatazz -- you wouldn't pay for a ticket without that -- but the underlying science, mainly cognitive psychology, is fact. It was that aspect which I spent the following fifteen minutes trying to explain and as is invariably the case... I failed miserably.
As is also, invariably the case, our discussion concluded with demands that I 'prove it' and 'go on then, show us; hypnotise someone.' I'd been dreading this moment ever since I'd been cajoled into hypnotising my Aunt Maude on New Year's Eve. Sally hadn't stopped talking about it since and despite pleas that she not mention it back here in Warwick, I'd anticipated that she wouldn't be able to resist.
The first skill, or if you prefer 'trick' to hypnotism, is in selecting a subject. If you're good enough -- which I certainly aren't! - you can in theory, hypnotise anyone, but some people are much easier to hypnotise than others; Aunt Maude's a piss-ball. So given a choice, you're looking for people who not only believe, so therefore expect to be hypnotised, but those who also appear willing and likely to perform once you have.
That primarily is why I'm NOT a Hypnotist; while I can make the easy distinctions, I'm not a good judge of those in the middle -- usually the majority -- nor am I skilful enough to hypnotise any but the more... susceptible. Given my options that day, Sally would undoubtedly have been the best person to select, but I knew that to choose her would get called foul and a fix.
With Sally, along with Tom and Emma immediately discounted, I turned my attention to the others. Young Jack was likely susceptible, but he was rather timid... easily embarrassed, so while he'd go under easily enough, I may not be able to get him to do much -- perform if you like -- once I had. Sally's mother Kate, gave me similar concerns, which just left me with Mike and Hannah.
Neither would prove easy for someone of my limited abilities, but as I'd not met either before today there'd be no suggestions of collusion. Better yet, I reasoned that if as expected, I only managed to hypnotise one out of the two, that'd prove that while hypnotism in itself was real, I wasn't a 'real' hypnotist and so perhaps avoid any future requests for a demonstration.
With that decided I insisted everyone remained sat quietly at the table, while I directed Mike and Hannah in clearing a space and rearranging chairs for themselves. I also got them to remove some odd items of 'distracting' clothing and jewellery; those tasks were all part of the hypnotism process, but I wasn't letting them or anyone else know that.
Eventually climbing to my own feet, I deemed the pendant which Hannah had removed unsuitable for hypnotism purposes and instead borrowed the one which Kate was wearing. Beyond providing a distraction and fulfilling their expectations, swinging either one of them back and forth would make no difference whatsoever... just another bit of razzmatazz.
With everyone silent and Kate's pendant metronomically swinging from my left hand, I began the... act. The whole process revolves around suggestions and instructions; the right words, spoken in the right tone, with the right modulation. That swaying pendant and the physical contact are just bells and whistles, it's all in the voice.
That both succumbed was a surprise and the speed with which they did so -- less than twenty seconds -- even more so. I've wondered since whether my success might've been related to my being sober; I was driving that day and it's generally late into a party that I'm called upon to perform. Whatever, while Hannah's eyes had remained open, she was perhaps even further under than Mike.
That's another misconception: Not everyone closes there eyes and for a hypnotist it's almost better that they don't; people can easily fake closing their eyes, but if a subject's eyes remain open, it provides you with more tell-tales that the hypnotism has succeeded; pupils react more slowly than normal, the blink reflex even more so.
I directed the pair of them to perform a few out of character actions: Clucking like chickens and meowing & hissing at each other like cats, but nothing outrageous. In conclusion I had them exchange their shirt/blouse, but that was Kate's suggestion rather than my own and one I felt a prudent moderation to the initial suggestion of getting them strip-off entirely.
That wasn't as impractical as it might sound: compared with the elfin frames of Kate and Sally, Hannah is a rather more... substantial girl. It was young Jack who'd made the 'get 'em naked' proposal, but his father had quickly joined him in that request; the look in Kate's eyes suggested that I wasn't the only one to be surprised by that.
Once a surprised and embarrassed Hannah and Mike were back with us, I decided to quit while I was ahead. Jack especially was now eager for me to hypnotise him too, but his interest soon waned when I reminded him of his demand to get Hannah naked... In light of that it would surely be only fair to have him strip-off instead?
