Featured Entertainment Article Part 3

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Featured Entertainment Article Part Three

Hamilton starts with card tricks and tearing up, setting fire to and mending newspapers and $20 bills and then takes several volunteers from the rowdy audience to be hypnotized. Some are curious about hypnosis and wonder if anything will happen; some others are skeptical of it and want proof to support their doubts. And some with more faith in hypnosis can't wait to get in on the action themselves.

Hamilton begins hypnosis by turning down the lights and soothing his volunteers into a trance state with calm, quiet words

"If audience members pay too much attention to Hamilton, they may keel over into sleep as well"

He starts a countdown from 10 with suggestions of extreme relaxation and drowsiness until they slump against each other like sacks of potatoes. If audience members pay too much attention to Hamilton, they may keel over into sleep as well.

Scott Eiting, a 33-year-old Geology major at Western who has tended bar at the Elephant and Castle for six years, said he was accidentally hypnotized while watching a Hamilton show

When Hamilton suggested that the subjects had a funny thought in their heads that kept getting more hilarious every time he touched their forehead, Eiting laughed right along with them.

"Someone at the bar kept touching my forehead, and I laughed harder and harder," Eiting said. "Eventually I came out of it, but I couldn't remember the joke I was laughing about."

Hamilton can't hypnotize every volunteer he gets, however. He said that the success of the hypnosis process depends on the individuals' ability to concentrate and the amount of alcohol they have consumed.

"It's hard to keep the attention of a subject who's tanked," he said. "We try to start the shows before the crowd has a chance to drink too much."

Hamilton also said a person's individual beliefs about hypnotism influence their chances of being entranced.

"Some skeptics say to me, 'hypnosis doesn't work. You can't hypnotize me,' and I tell them, 'You're right; it won't'" he said. "No one can force you into hypnosis. It's not a domination of one mind by another, but rather an agreement between the hypnotist and his subject that one will accept the suggestions of the other," he explained. "If you decide it's not going to work, then it won't."

When it appears that the induction isn't working on a few volunteers, Hamilton whispers for them to return to their seats. He concentrates all his energy on the visibly wilting subjects that remain on stage, who proceed to steal the show and make the crowd roar.

They watch their favorite body parts grow to gigantic proportions, scramble for $100 bills on the stage floor, and act like sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer answering explicit sexual questions.

"What's fellatio?" an audience member asks "Dr. Ruth," who, in reality, is a tall, blonde, 20-something woman.

"That's the stuff that comes out when you're having sex," she replies confidently. The audience gasps at the misinformation. Hamilton smoothly pulls the woman aside and whispers a suggestion in her ear. She grins and puts the microphone back to her mouth ...

"I realize that you guys don't get to have sex very often in your lives and may not know much about it, but that's why I'm here. I'll clear up anything you may have heard wrong," she replies. The gasps turn to chuckles as she asks for more questions from the audience.

Hamilton's show has drawn standing-room-only crowds at the Elephant and Castle since it moved there last October. Now a fixture that last two weekends of every month, his performances are solidly popular.

Host Jared Hayes said, reservations sell out a week or so before the show. The restaurant fills up long before the show starts, and business is brisk as the crowd packs down nachos, beers and margaritas while watching the antics unfolding on stage.

Some people object to stage hypnosis acts like Hamilton's, Michael Gershman, a registered nurse and hypnotherapist from Columbia, Mo., said. There are two main sources of opposition: people who object to hypnosis as a whole, and those - including members of the psychology and hypnotherapy fields - who don't think hypnotism should be used for entertainment purposes.

Continue to Part 4 ..