So you're saying it worked on you? I find it really interesting...do you remember the show?
I'm just interested in what it felt like from your perspective.
I've never been to the Dixie Classic Fair. My DH went with his Ag class in school one year. We have never taken the girls. Is it fun? I've always been afraid there would be too much riff raff. Kinda like Hanes Mall used to be on a Saturday night, if you can remember that.
Nooo! The fair is delightful, particularly during the week.
I remember the whole show vividly, and that may be in part because the guy TOLD us we would remember everything.
It started out with the entire audience having to do some things, I suppose to see who could be hypnotized and who couldn't. We all eventually had to hold our arms out straight and clasp our hands together tightly. He kept talking about how we couldn't pull our hands apart no matter how hard we tried. DH pulled his apart, but I honestly couldn't. It was really really hard. I guess the look of concentration on my face was pretty convincing because his assistant tapped me on the shoulder and told me to go sit up on stage.
So about 20 of us were chosen, and eventually he sent about half of them back to the audience. Then he had us sit up straight, close our eyes and listen to just his voice while he suggested our right arms were getting light and floating away.
Here is where I need to explain what I felt the rest of the show....I was aware of everything he said, everything he asked me or anyone else for, everything the audience was doing and everything I was doing. I was fully in control of my actions, it's just that everything he suggested I do sounded perfectly REASONABLE and logical.
While me arm was hanging up in the air, I noticed that it was starting to hurt (from holding it above my head). It actually hurt alot. But he hadn't told us to put our arms down so it just seemed totally reasonable to me to keep my hand up until he told me otherwise.
Crazy huh?
He then went down the line putting participants to "sleep". I could hear him moving down the row of chairs, and I wondered how on earth he would make me go to sleep?? I was wide awake (with my eyes closed and hand still up in the air). When he got to me, he told me to open my eyes, sit up straight (which I did), then he took my right arm (the tired hurting one) and shook my hand asked me how I felt, to which I replied good, and then he tugged on my arm, snapped his fingers and told me to "SLEEP".
Darned if I didn't simply crumple over on the poor person next to me! I was still awake, but totally chilled, with my eyes closed, slumped on a stranger...and it felt completely RIGHT and normal...because the hypnotists TOLD me to do it.
He picked on two or three other people specifically in the group, but I suspect they were waaaaaaaaaay more under than I was. He had us do a few things as a group, some a little embarrassing , like when he told us we were super cold and I put my legs up on the guy next to me and hugged him close, rubbing his arm to help warm him up, or then when he suggested we open our eyes and realize the person next to us is the funniest looking person in the world. I thought to myself as he suggested it, would I actually see something different about the guy next to me...but no. He looked perfectly normal, but I just started laughing at him, with his little ears and spiked hair and freckles. All normal things (he was actually kind of cute) but I totally found things to make fun of him for.
Then he told us to go to sleep again, and BAM I was slumped over.
Then he told us that same "funny" person was now super scary, but we couldn't run away from them. He woke us up and I looked at the cute guy and started screaming at him. He didn't look scary, he looked like he did before, but the hypnotist TOLD me to be scared of him, so I was. Then I jumped out of my seat to scootch away from the guy (I was on the end), and he put us all to sleep and I fell on the floor.
So I'm laying there, chilling on the floor, thinking "Okay, what's next?". The guy next to me is actually on my legs, cause he had fallen too.
I hear him picking on someone else for a bit and the audience going wild with laughter. It sounded like he was making one of them think they were a runway model.
The whole time I noted my breathing was super steady and even. Long, steady, deep breaths.
Then he told us that when we woke up, the person next to us would be the most BEAUTIFUL person we'd ever seen. So I wake up (still on the floor) and lock eyes with the guy next to me and I think they started playing Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" on the soundsystem. Well the two of us were making all kind of goo-goo eys at each other, and I even mouthed the words "what's up baby?" at him, which ellicited a roar of approval from the crowd.
DH turned to the lady next to him out in the audience and said "That's my wife. And this is why I handle the finances."
Later on he sent us back to our seats in the audience with the suggestion that when we sat down, we were going to get super agitated, thinking we'd been sitting for 10 hours and were tired of waiting for the show to start and would start yelling at him to get going.
So I went and sat next to DH, and then I started fidgeting in my seat and getting cranky, and then about 30 seconds later we all started heckling the guy, demanding him to start the dang show already. Then he said the cue word that would wake us all up and the show was over.
I turned to DH and explained to him that I always knew exactly what I was doing, but that the requests just seemed so reasonable...why not scream at the guy next to me? Why not heckle him?
It was very interesting and a lot of fun. I'd do it again.
