THOUGHT POLICE
Death by Suggestion – Donald K Hartman (editor)
I love this book!
Editor Donald K Hartman has brought together 22 short stories from the 19th and early 20th century where hypnotism is the cause of death.
As we know, trawling through old collections of short stories seeking tales with a mesmeric or hypnotic theme is not my favourite activity. So I’m grateful to Hartman for bringing this anthology together!
These stories reveal the fear, and glamour, that the public associated with mesmerism and hypnotism through the mid-1800s and into the 1900s.
That the authors, and the stories’ settings, are spread across Britain, America, Europe and ‘the Orient’ also indicate the phenomenon’s ubiquity.
Lost inheritances and cuckolded husbands that spur the denouement of elaborate, years-in-the-making and disproportionately cruel hypnotic comeuppances is a recurring theme.
As is that of young, beautiful women with unnatural mesmeric powers and penetrating eyes driving beaus and husbands to suicide and madness – whether for financial gain or the sheer fun of it.
Yes, that the practice can be used for pure evil wielded by Svengali-type puppet-masters is, of course, a common anxiety in these stories.
A personal favourite of this ilk was an odd, fictional firsthand confession from an imprisoned hypnotist. He’d realised his powers at an early age; lacking a school lunch each day due to his parents’ neglect, he stole a schoolgirl’s lunch pail – hypnotising her each day to believe she’d eaten it, leaving her confused and chastened by teachers for her hunger. As an adult, he lured his parents on a picnic and had them believe themselves to be fierce beasts who fought one another to a brutal death. Such was the crime for which he was being published.
But there are also stories of accidental deaths and suicides related to hypnosis, and other hypno-mishaps…
For instance, a mesmerised seaman thought dead and given a sea burial is later found in the body of a shark months later, and recovers with the removal of the trance. The transference of will between hypnotist and subject causes apparent death in the subject when the hypnotist carks it, in another tale, with the first incision of the autopsy blade fortunately rousing the subject. While more than one subject of a story wills their suicide from someone later exonerated of murder.
It’s a genuinely interesting anthology. I hadn’t heard of most of the authors, but hypno-fan Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pops up with one. And if you’re curious as to what helped fuelled these anxieties and tall tales, Hartman includes three real-life cases of crimes linked to hypnotism from the period.
Right! It’s lunchtime! Time to fire up my female mesmeric powers and penetrating eyes, and go find some kids to rob…
