The temperature in Goldstein Auditorium on Friday night was average, but to the volunteers onstage stuck in a deep, hypnotic trance, it went from being sweltering to freezing to perfect in a matter of seconds.

Comedic hypnotist Doug MacCraw had the volunteers and audience quite literally under his spell as he performed his annual show at Syracuse University on Friday night.

The show, hosted by fraternity ACACIA, began with MacCraw striding out on stage asking the audience: “Is everyone awake? Are you ready to be put to sleep?”

MacCraw started the show by educating the audience on hypnosis. He stressed the fact that hypnosis is entirely voluntary — he can’t hypnotize people to do anything they truly don’t want to do. He described hypnosis as the end result of suggestion, and by putting people into a very relaxed state, they become very open to suggestion.

He took 25 volunteers who were willing to be hypnotized without knowing what he would have them do for the enjoyment of the audience. Throughout the show, MacCraw weeded out participants who were less susceptible to hypnosis and occasionally replaced them with others from the audience.

MacCraw encouraged the audience members to let themselves slip into hypnosis along with the volunteers so he could find the people who were in the deepest trance, to whom he could suggest his crazy ideas.

A few of his antics involved convincing some of the volunteers that he had a donkey tail, having some of them bow and curtsey whenever there was applause and making them think they were aliens who were seeing the humans in the audience for the first time.

The show lasted about two and a half hours, and once MacCraw got the main volunteers in a hypnotic trance, he kept the audience laughing as he thought up crazy things for the volunteers to do.

Freshman Becca Volk, a magazine major and one of the onstage volunteers, didn’t remember much of the experience.

“I remember going onstage, and then I was smelling my feet a lot,” said Volk, referring to when MacCraw had the volunteers think that their shoe was a cellphone, and then had them think that their shoe cellphone smelled amazing.

Despite not remembering a lot of the hour or so she spent hypnotized, Volk had a good time.

“It was kind of fun. It feels kind of good,” she said. “It’s very calming.”

The experience wasn’t just fun for the onstage volunteers. The audience watched them as MacCraw had them go from one crazy suggestion to the next. At one point, he even hypnotized the volunteers to not believe in hypnosis, causing them to shout about how the volunteers onstage were actors and that hypnosis is all fake.

MacCraw put the volunteers back to normal by the end of the show, and thanked them, telling them they were the real stars of the evening.

Jeff Goldberg, a freshman broadcast and digital journalism major, came with Volk because he had seen a hypnotist perform previously and had enjoyed it. He wasn’t disappointed by MacCraw’s performance.

Said Goldberg: “I thought he did a great job. Everyone was hypnotized so well. It was very funny.”

Published on September 24, 2012 at 1:56 am

Contact Anna: amhider@syr.edu