I’ve seen a hypnotists show, and I call shenanigans. Perhaps its just a stroke of luck the girls did this for him, but I’m calling this one ‘free advertising’.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/06/15/quebec-hypnosis-show-high-school.html

2nd hypnotist rescues students stuck in trance
Private school show unfurls after hypnotized students don’t snap out of it

A show at a private girls’ high school in Sherbooke, Que., went strangely awry when a young hypnotist left several students in “mass hypnosis” limbo and he had to call in his mentor to snap them out of it.

One student at Collège du Sacré-Coeur was reportedly left hypnotized for five hours until Maxime Nadeau, the young hypnotist, called his mentor to the school for an emergency intervention.

It all happened at an end-of-school year event last week, when Nadeau was hired to stage a hypnotism show for a small group of 12- and 13-year-old girls.

He worked on a small group while others watched the show. When it came time to end the event, several girls in the audience remained mesmerized and couldn’t snap out of it, no matter what Nadeau did.

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It certainly sounds like a case of the girls, as a group, continuing to play the game long after it ceased being funny.  I’m sure they all felt like they were still ‘under’, but that’s what group dynamics and pressures are all about.  There’s a certain something about a mob mentality…

Sounds like mass hysteria to me.

I read an article early this morning covering this:  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/students-left-mass-hypnosis-demonstration-goes-awry-233654807.html and the young hypnotist had to call his own professor to help him un-hypnotize the students.  One girl was in a trance though for 5 hours according to the article:

“There were a couple of students who had their heads lying on the table and there were [others] who, you could tell, were in trance,” Whitbread said. “The eyes were open and there was nobody home.”

In order to reverse the effect, Whitbread says he convinced the girls he was “re-hypnotizing” them and them brought them out of the trance “using a stern voice.”

“I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like you’re no longer there,” student Émilie Bertrand told the CBC about her experience. “You’re spaced out.”

Nonetheless, Bertrand described the experience as “cool” as said she would do it again, even knowing the potential consequences.

Interestingly, Whitbread said the girls may have been especially vulnerable to Nadeau’s suggestions because of his young age and “good looks.”

I’m sure if Accipiter would’ve exposed his elbow* to them they would’ve “snapped out of it”.

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