Tom Deluca, who put on a hypnosis show Wednesday night at the Rec Center, has been putting on hypnosis shows since he was in college.
He said he got started when one of his professors, who happened to be a psychologist, trained him to hypnotize people in his clinic.
Since then, Deluca said, he has been doing shows because he has a fascination with people, and it’s nice to see them have a good time.
“For me it’s so people have a great fun experience and walk away with a kind of sense of wonderment and amazement,” he said.
“Think about it, talk about it, see something very different, that’s my goal, and at the same time, not to humiliate anybody, try not to make them feel bad about being up there. It’s a fine line, you know.”
He said that his ability to hypnotize people is a real one.
“I hypnotize volunteers. You know I take volunteers; I take as many as I have chairs up there,” Deluca said. “I’m not going to hypnotize every person that comes up there, probably hypnotize two-thirds of them. You know if I have 20 of them, I’ll end up (hypnotizing) 13.”
Caroline Roberson, an accounting major from Dallas, was one of those who was hypnotized on stage. She said she didn’t remember what happened, but that if she did, she’d probably die of embarrassment.
“I remember walking on stage and sitting down and talking to a guy beside me, and I remember counting to 237 and then I don’t remember what happened,” Roberson said. “I just woke up in a different chair.”
She said after the show she felt like she had been sleeping the entire time.
Deluca said there are multiple uses for hypnosis, including helping people quit smoking or to lose weight.
“Sometimes, it depends on the hypnotist, depends on the person, if they really want to quit,” he said. “What they say to them — there are a lot of variables. They have to have support. It’s a good tool to start you out.”
He said he does it more for the enjoyment of an audience.
“People are suspicious of it. They’re like, is it real? Is it fake? I would be too, I’m not saying I wouldn’t be,” Deluca said.
“But when it’s real, and people go ‘Holy, I know that guy — there’s no way I’d be doing that,’ that keeps me in it. I like the amazement factor, people dropping their jaw.”
Lucia Davila, an education major, said she and a friend wanted to on stage to see if it was real. Though Deluca only picked her, she said she got to see for herself that it was real.
Davila said she encourages other people to have the experience for themselves and that she would do it again.
She said, “I would advise them to participate just let go and do it because you’re not really going to get that experience ever. Just go for it.”
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