It’s Thick, It’s Heavy, It’s Wood
by Bill
Okay, this story is going to make me look like sort of an ass, but it has to be told, and it was a long time ago, so gimme a break. Oh and kids, don’t be stupid and try this at home. Stupids.
I do hypnosis. Not hypnotherapy or anything like that. It’s always been just to make people do silly stuff. It’s more of a hobby than anything else.
Back when I was still learning, A friend of mine, and I were working on a way to get ‘the victim’ into a hypnotic state faster and more efficiently. We tried a lot of different things, and what finally became our main technique was what we called the ‘Doorway’ method.
As a joke, and to try to scare the person being hypnotized, I’d always use the word ‘victim’. It’s just me being silly again.
The idea behind the ‘Doorway’ method was simple. we’d use relaxation techniques, and have them visualize a long hallway with doors on each side, and they’d slowly be walking the hallway in their mind. Along the way, we’d ad-lib a little with stairs and things until we felt that the ‘victim’ was following every instruction, and completely relaxed.
During relaxation and the hallway visualizations, I’d often plant a ‘test suggestion’. What that does, is help me gage how deep the subject is going under. I always used the ‘log test’. The log test was simple. I told them that their right arm was EXTREMELY heavy, and hard to move around like a giant log. After that, I’d change the subject and continue talking about the hallway and the doors. I’d keep going on the hallway for a little while, and suddenly say, “now, I want you to lift your right arm as high as you can.”
At that point you watch them struggle to lift this ‘giant, heavy as a log’ arm. If they don’t struggle at all, you know that you have a lot of work left to do before you can plant suggestions. Regardless, you have to keep them moving through the hallway.
Here’s where things can get tough for the subject depending on their imagination, but it’s pretty effective for most people. I focus on the doors, and tell them to enter one of them. Once they are inside, they’re supposed to, sort of step out of their body and turn around, and look at it through the doorway. Most people can do this with no problem. Then I tell them to close the door. After they close the door, I explain that they closed the door on their ‘physical body’, and all that’s left is their conscious mind and subconscious mind.
Then, I repeat the process to put them deeper under. This time, however, I tell them that they’re leaving their ‘conscious mind’ behind, and I’m speaking only to the subconscious mind from that point on. I make up a safe word, and get ready to make them do stupid things. (Taking morality & ethics into consideration of course) When they were done being humiliated, I’d lay them back down and guide them to their doors where they left their ‘bodies’ and wake them up, very simple.
Now that I’ve wasted all this time explaining myself, I can get to the actual story.
I just started dating this girl. We always talked about ‘spooky stuff’, and eventually the topic of hypnosis came up. She wanted to try it. Naturally, I was more than willing to make it happen. Anyway, when the opportunity to hypnotize somebody came up, the unwritten rule was for me to call my buddy Eric, if possible, and get him involved. If roles were reversed, he was to call me. So, I called Eric and we set up a night to get it done.
She and I went to Eric’s house, and I sat her down and started going through my procedure. Things were going well. When I told her that ‘her arm was a log’, she barely moved it at all, which was a great sign.
If you know anything about hypnosis, you know that you’re speaking directly to the subconscious mind. It interprets what you tell it LITERALLY. It DOES NOT make stuff up.
So, I tell her to visualize the hallway and the doors like I explained before. She finds herself in the long hallway walking to the first door and closing it on her physical body. She moves onward to the other door where she leaves her conscious mind behind. As the door was about to close, she screams and jumps out of her chair and wraps her left arm around me and holds tight. She was crying and trembling. I was of course concerned for her, but also kind of bummed because the session obviously didn’t work.
Neither Eric, nor I had the slightest idea what the hell was going on. It took a little while, but we got her calmed down enough for her to tell us what happened.
This is where things start getting weird. Apparently, Someone was ‘in the hallway’ with her. She described it as an old woman with long straight white hair. Now, let me be clear. When I say old, I mean decaying and possibly skeletal. I don’t know, I didn’t see the thing. I’m just going by what she told us. She explained to me that when I told her to leave her conscious mind behind and close the door, she did exactly as I told her. As she turned around she saw it. The old woman was at the far end of her ‘hallway’ and ‘floated’ at great speed down the hallway toward her and stopped about a foot away. That’s when she ‘woke up’ and jumped into my arms.
I’m gonna go ahead and skip a lot of the insignificant details, but we said to hell hypnosis for the night ,and went into the living room and started to relax and hang out like normal people. Eric didn’t like to have cigarette smoke in his house, so she went over to the window to blow it outside. That’s when we noticed her talking to herself. At that point Eric and I were discussing the idea that she may not be the most mentally stable person in the world. She also kept complaining about her arm bothering her.
We kept probing her with questions to find out what really happened. We weren’t getting many answers until she came out and said, “She’s behind you, Bill.”
At that point, it was clear that she was either nuts, or having a little fun with us. I just started going out with her, so I didn’t know her well enough to make a diagnosis. She continued to appear to talk to herself. As a matter of fact, she said that she was talking to the old woman in the room with us. She couldn’t see her, but she could hear her, and could tell where she was.
Yeah Right. We decided to play along.
She continued talking to the old woman, relaying our questions to her, and giving us painfully vague answers. The little bit of information we DID get wasn’t much to go on. The old woman was calling herself ‘Sergie’ or ‘SIR-G’ or ‘Serjee’. She didn’t tell us how to spell it. She also said that there was another spirit in the house who’s name was John Lee Baron III. I remember making a bad joke at the time that his first name should’ve been ‘Chrysler’. It didn’t go over well.
So now we got 2 possible spirits, or an insane girl who if I continue to date her, might kill me in my sleep.
At this point, Eric and I were trying to figure out a way to trick her into giving up this little charade and being honest about everything. It was at that point that we noticed it. Well, as I’ve said before, she was holding and complaining about her arm bothering her. We didn’t pay any attention. It would have never occurred to us. Her arm now had a purplish color and it looked swollen. One of us asked her, “What’s wrong with your arm?”
She looked at us as if she were confused about the question. “What are you talking about? It’s a log.”
Eric and I looked at each other in amazement. I grabbed hold of her arm. It was ice cold. Nervous and freaked out, Eric and I franticly took turns fondling her arm, and finally came to the same conclusion. It was cold. What the hell was going on here?
Claiming to be talking to spirits and telling us that she thinks her arm is a log is one thing, but her arm was showing PHYSICAL signs of something gone very wrong. There was only one possibility, which we finally came to after panicking for a minute. The hypnosis session DID work, and she had been “under” the entire time.
That explains it. I’ve made people try to eat their own feet, thinking that they were spaghetti noodles. Surely, having someone hear the voices of ghosts or spirits is within my power, or at least making them THINK they’re hearing voices.
The arm was easily explainable as well. I mean, during my procedure, I always use that “log test.” Maybe this time I accidentally changed the wording from “your arm is heavy like a log” to, “your arm IS a log.” It’s certainly possible and a simple mistake. If the subconscious takes that literally, I can see the brain not allowing blood to flow through a log. That would explain the discoloration, temperature, and the fact that it was swollen.
The solution was simple. I had to lay her back down, put her back to sleep, and tell her that her arm is NO LONGER A LOG. After that, all that was left was to guide her back through the hallway to her bodies, and wake her up.
Easy right?
WRONG!
Every time she closed her eyes, she’d see the old skeleton woman blocking the hallway, and she kept freakin’ out. Needless to say, she couldn’t relax like that. Eric and I started to get worried. This is uncharted waters for us. We’ve never seen someone’s arm turn blue before, and we aren’t doctors. As far as we’re concerned, we had no idea what kind of permanent damage could result in constant and prolonged lack of blood flow. Paranoid, I think was the best word to describe our mood. At the same time, we didn’t want to SEEM worried because if that girl freaked out more than she was, we’d never get her relaxed.
She and I talked it over. She couldn’t go through that hallway with that old lady, and her arm needed attention. Up to that point, she and I had become ‘friendly’ so using that, we made a plan. Eric was going to take over the hypnosis procedure while I held her hand so she knew she was going to be okay. Along with that, he added me to his routine by telling her that I was in the hallway with her, guarding her from the woman.
It worked. What was most interesting about the procedure was that the moment Eric told her that her arm was no longer a log, we both could plainly see the blood in her arm begin to flow. Within seconds, it had returned to it’s original color before our eyes. A bullet was dodged, and our underwear was soiled.
It’s amazing how powerful our minds are when they need to be. By suggestion only, hers was able to turn off the blood flow to her arm and turn it back on without any REAL effort.
The REAL question I have about that night is, who the hell were Serge and John Lee Baron III? My problem with the story is, she was under hypnosis. When putting someone under, I tell them they will listen only to me and my commands.Because their brain takes those things literally, that’s EXACTLY what happens. I NEVER told her ANYTHING about ghosts or spirits or whatever. There was ABSOLUTELY no reason for her to hear or see such things.
Yet, the fact remains that she either saw something, or BELIEVED she saw something. Either way, It couldn’t have happened, and means the same thing. We know she wasn’t faking. Her freakin’ log’ proved that. Eric didn’t give any suggestions. Something or someone else got involved that night. The question is who or what?
Both Eric and his old roommate have told stories of bangs, and noises while living in that house. He’s long since moved out of there, so a ghost hunt or investigation is impossible, but It’s in an area of Pittsburgh that’s known for it’s stories of the paranormal. Maybe there’s still a chance to figure it out. Only time will tell.
Here’s my question for YOU reading this. What do YOU think it was?
I enjoyed this one very much. Different.