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Volume CXXXIII, Number 9 |
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Hypnotist Bengali mesmerizes students
JULIA GUERRERO REED
STAFF WRITER
I am usually skeptical about such things, but this guy might just be the real thing. Last Friday, hypnotist Dr. Bengali visited the Bowdoin campus and put on a very well-attended show in Smith Union.
Bengali started out by explaining that hypnotism does not work for everyone; one has to be very relaxed and in the right state of mind for it to be successful. In order to weed out students not susceptible to hypnosis, he asked everyone in the audience who wished to volunteer to perform a few exercises. About ten people passed and were chosen to go on stage.
Bengali then had the participants do some deep breathing and other simple exercises, which somehow led them into a very meditative state of mind. A few did not seem to be relaxed enough, so they were asked to return to the audience. After a couple of minutes, some of the people on stage began acting noticeably strange-relaxing so much that they were bent over or falling out of their chairs.
Once the volunteers were supposedly fully under his control, Bengali had them do different tricks and played jokes on them for the entertainment of the audience.
One of the funniest jokes was when he asked each person to go into the audience and bring their favorite "celebrity" to stage. The campus had never before seen so many stars, including Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, James Van Der Beek, Vin Diesel, Nelly Furtado, and, last but not least, Jenna Jameson.
The "celebrities" were good sports and played along with the joke, even those who had to undergo gender transformation.
Before waking the volunteers, Bengali warned the audience that these people would not remember anything of the performance and would still feel very relaxed.
Sure enough, two different performers swore afterwards that they remembered absolutely nothing of it, and I'm inclined to believe them because some of the things they did were pretty embarrassing.
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