Hypnotist mesmerizes students for charity

The Martians invaded earth Saturday night and the only safe place to take refuge was Bodek Lounge. Or at least that's what one student believed once hypnotist John Sacco took control of her mind. Sacco hypnotized students in a fund-raising event organized by Campuses Against Cancer. For two hours he amazed a full house in Bodek Lounge with his hypnotic suggestions. Sacco asked audience members to volunteer to sit in the "first class seats" up front and be hypnotized, claiming he would not make fools out of them. "You experience hypnosis on a daily basis," he said. "Have you ever been to a class where you remember going in and leaving, but nothing in between? That is hypnosis." Sacco, who works in clinics to help cancer patients control their pain, said one should always think and picture in positive terms. "You get what you picture, not what you want," he said. "If you picture something intensely, you will get it." Out of the many eager volunteers that asked to be hypnotized, Sacco chose 11 students as subjects. "You must be able to concentrate on my voice," he said. "It has to be an effortless concentration. People who come up here should really want to have fun." Sacco began his magic by telling the volunteers to close their eyes and grasp their hands tightly as soothing background music was played. "The harder you try to pull them apart, the tighter they will be," he said. Then he told them to "sleep" and one by one, their heads dropped as if they were in deep sleep. Once they were hypnotized, Sacco sent his subjects to do a variety of activities. College sophomore Ari Wirtschafter went scuba diving and pretended to be kissing fish. Sacco also took the students to a movie, convincing them they were choking on popcorn. He even took them to Mars on a rocket. Sacco asked them what they saw on Mars and the answers varied from a brown stone to aliens to a green American flag. At one point, Sacco told the hypnotized students they had X-ray vision. When asked what they saw, the answer was skin and hair. College freshman Nihir Shah, however, said he saw food and dinner. "I must be looking in someone's stomach," he said. "The weirdest sensation was the time concept. To me, the whole thing seemed to have taken at most 20 minutes and I was shocked when they told me that it had taken an hour and a half. The time just kind of flew by as if we were in another world. I really don't remember much of it." At the end of the show, as one of the post-hypnotic suggestions, Shah behaved like a mad dog and was chased. "As soon as he said 'mad dog', I just started to run," said Shah. "I didn't even think about it." Another subject, Sandor Han, remembered touching his body a lot. "Although I realized I was carressing my body, I don't understand why I was doing it," he said. "It was a pretty cool experience. When I opened my eyes, I was astonished because I forgot where I was."

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