CSU students get hypnotized

Darrol Telck was hypnotized, made to believe he was a baby kangaroo, and doesn’t remember a thing about it.

“I remember staring at a light and then waking up. My shirt was inside out, and I was a member of the kangaroo club,” said Telck, a freshmen agriculture education major.

Hypnotist/comedian Frederick Winters performed what audience members could only call an “awesome” show Wednesday night in the Lory Student Center Theater.

Winters started the night by explaining to the audience that hypnotism is a real, legitimate science that produces a state akin to daydreaming. He assured them that it is very safe.

“Hypnosis is something that everyone can achieve,” he said in an interview after the event.

After selecting 18 very eager volunteers from the audience of about 250 people, Winters hypnotized them using a single small light, slow music and his voice, a process which took about five minutes.

One onlooker, who did not volunteer, also fell into the trance.

Those being hypnotized were made to believe a number of fantasies: some laid imaginary eggs, others raced in a fictional Kentucky Derby.

After being informed that he had tried to enforce a rule of “no laughing aloud on campus,” and after he had told the crowd that he wanted to “beat everyone up” during the performance, Andrew Grinnan, a freshmen chemistry major, said that he was mystified.

“It worked on me, I guess — I definitely don’t remember some stuff,” he said. “How does that make me feel? It makes me feel kind of embarrassed.”

After the show, Winters said he was satisfied with the effects of hypnotism on his audience.

“For the most part people really fell into the power of suggestion — they fell into their imagination. And that’s something that any of us can do at the spur of the moment,” he said.

“It was not as if I had to do what he said, but I didn’t want to not,” said Zach Horwitz, a sophomore political science major. “Everything felt so good — I was like ‘OK.’”

At the end of the show, Winters handed out informational slips of paper for several of his hypnotic products such as CDs that help people lose weight and power nap.
Hypnotism can also be used for therapeutic purposes, Winters said. Many people undergo hypnosis in attempt to quit smoking or overeating.

Staff reporter K.C. Fleming can be reached at news@collegian.com