Putting the "Hip" in Hypnotism

On September 30, Fay was fortunate enough to host a mind-blowing show by one of Las Vegas’s best entertainers, the hypnotist Brian Imbus. He was able to hypnotize a handful of Fay students for an hour, which we all found more than hypnotizing.

For the first fifteen minutes or so, our entertainer gave us a brief overview of his occupation and how he came to be a hypnotist. Brian Imbus himself had been a skeptic of hypnotism, but watching his first hypnotist show as a high-schooler and seeing his best friend become hypnotized sparked his interest.

He also gave us a detailed description of what it was like to be hypnotized, talked about how it would affect our mental state (it piqued the audience’s interest when they heard that one hour of hypnosis was equivalent to eight hours of sleep, especially after a long week of working on TMA and Ancient History) and cleared away any superstitious rumours that we might have had about being in a hypnotic state. Even though some were still doubtful towards hypnotism, everybody nodded along.

He then performed a few tricks on the crowd relating to what he called ‘verbal hypnosis’, and later picked out some ninth graders - to name a few, Irvin, Allie, and Amanda.

He had the stage lights off and instructed everybody to focus on a spinning globe of light as we doubtfully listened to his directions. It took a few minutes, but most of the volunteers gradually fell into a sleep-like trance. Some people just didn’t fall asleep; some others snapped awake in the middle of the show, and some others who fell asleep in the audience paraded down the stairs from their seats when he called them to the stage.

They all performed reasonable tasks as they would normally do when they were awake, but it was still interesting to watch. After the show ended, some of them claimed to not have remembered being hypnotized. One person even forgot everything that happened after lunch!

I’m sure that all the students and faculty can agree that the show was more than amazing. It was definitely worth the the time; there really are no other words to describe how the audience was simply blown away.

Kelly '17