“Out of Control” Hypnotist? Or Maybe Just a Case of Mass Hysteria

It was just anoth­er show for stage hyp­no­tist Miller Zam­bra­no Posa­da. Sev­er­al high school stu­dents were on stage, respond­ing to his sug­ges­tions just as oth­ers had in the past.

But once it was over and the audi­ence start­ed leav­ing, then it hap­pened. In what appears to be a case of mass hys­te­ria, over 40 of the stu­dents began act­ing odd­ly. First a few, then sev­er­al, then many of the stu­dents start­ed dis­play­ing abnor­mal reac­tions. They were all tak­en to a hos­pi­tal and all are report­ed to be okay. The hyp­no­tist him­self was tak­en into police cus­tody as par­ents accused him of witchcraft.

With very lit­tle to go on, its hard to come to any oth­er con­clu­sion than this being a case of mass hys­te­ria. It is known that only one of the stu­dents affect­ed were ever on stage. It does also demon­strate the pow­er of hys­te­ria as it devel­oped from just one per­son to a whole groyup. What I find inter­est­ing is the break­down: out of the 41 stu­dents, only 5 were boys while 36 were girls. The arti­cle does­n’t say which was the one who was actu­al­ly on stage but the odds are very much in favor of it being a girl.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly this sort of thing (and the report­ing that accom­pa­nied it) just fur­thers the stereo­types involved. Fur­ther­more, the stereo­types here, where the hyp­no­tist was accused of “Witch­craft”, are even worse than most here in the Us.

Ref­er­ence:

• “Columbian Magi­cian Arrest­ed After Hyp­no­tiz­ing 41 Kids” — A dou­bly-mis­lead­ing title, as he was­n’t arrest­ed, only tak­en into pro­tec­tive cus­tody, and only one of the kids was actu­al­ly hyp­no­tized by him.
• “Out-of-con­trol hyp­no­tism ruins high school fun day” — More stereotyping.