The Search for Bridey Murphy

by Morey Bernstein

  I was beginning to realize that I was licked. I had always thought that the subjects of hypnotists were stooges—shills—or that the minds of the subjects were so simple that they could be shoved around at the will of the so-called hypnotist. But this girl was neither a fake nor a fool. On the contrary, she filled all the specifications for the intelligent, normal, healthy, wholesome female.

  “O.K., Thomas, you win; you can wake her up.” I sank into a chair, totally defeated, But there was more than defeat; there was an overwhelming sense of amazement, of wonder, almost of shock.

  Having finally learned that hypnosis is a reality, I machine-gunned a round of questions at our victorious hypnotist. If this thing is true, if this is a fact, then why is it not more widely used?… If the mind can be so detached, then aren’t the possibilities infinite?… If suggestion is so powerful in this state, then is this not a powerful weapon for good?… If the human mind can be so directed, so molded, so impressed, then why does not every doctor understand the fundamentals of hypnosis? Why is it not a “must” for every psychiatrist?… Why, at least, is it not a requisite for every student of psychology?… What is the reason that science does not show more interest?… Why do people like me have to become acquainted with hypnosis only through stage performances or as a result of accidents like this?… And what about practical applications in the fields of education, law, business, dramatics, advertising, and almost everything else under the sun? Why hasn’t more been done about it?

  I got my answer. It was the same answer I was to receive over and over again during the next ten years. It was a shrug of the shoulders.

  Driving slowly home through a storm that was now subsiding, Thomas explained how he had learned about hypnosis in the first place. A relative had been ill and he had sought a way to relieve her pain. He had, consequently, enrolled in a psychology course at a university; it was one of the few courses available which dealt with hypnosis to any extent. And even this course, he admitted, only briefly explored the subject. It had been expanded beyond the confines actually set by the textbook only because of the instructor’s personal interest in hypnotism.

  When we reached home we promptly retired, and I could hear Thomas snoring before a quarter of an hour had passed. As for me, there was no sleep that night. I was thinking about this stranger I had just met, hypnosis.

  Although I didn’t know it then, I had just stepped onto a long bridge, a bridge that was to span two continents, two eras in time. And at the far end of the bridge was a woman I was to know as Bridey Murphy.

  CHAPTER 2

  The next morning I was back at my office. Legally and commercially, it is known as Bernstein Brothers Equipment Company (in Pueblo, Colorado), but we in the family refer to it as Ulcers, Incorporated.

  My grandfather had started the place more than sixty years ago, which means that three generations have wrestled with it. I’m the third generation.

  When Granddad opened shop in 1890, it was nothing more than a junk yard. Grandfather would wreck practically anything just to salvage the scrap material. He admitted that his ancestors had not come over on the Mayflower but he was convinced that his forebears must have scrapped the big ship.

  With the second generation, my father and uncle, the company expanded vigorously. The accent shifted to buying and selling merchandise, anything from concrete mixers to diesel tractors, from bathtubs to oil tanks. Franchises for nationally advertised industrial and agricultural products were acquired, and both wholesale and retail outlets were opened. What had once been a scrap yard was now a merchandising power, a sort of industrial department store distributing more than one thousand items. “From the bottom of a pile of scrap iron to the top of Dun and Bradstreet,” a local reporter had written.

  By the time I was ready for college, our company was well known throughout the West. So it had never even occurred to me that I might do anything other than take my place in the family business. Accordingly, I chose a school that specializes in turning out executives, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of finance. There, for four years, I polished up on everything from business law to stock-market analysis. After that I returned to Colorado to put the theory into practice.

  I had been trained for my job, and I liked it. For several years I added new products and departments and intensified our advertising. I enjoyed every phase—choosing new products, buying trips, sales promotion, merchandising. So I should have been pleased, that morning after hypnosis had flown into my life, to get back to the slogan contest just where I had left off the previous night. But somehow I had rough going that day. My mind wouldn’t fix itself on the job at hand; it kept wandering back to the episode of the night before. Soon I was calling a bookstore to order a half dozen books dealing with hypnosis.

  When the books came, I stopped reading novels. Even magazines and trade journals were neglected to some extent. I just couldn’t tear myself away from the hypnotism books; I was utterly enchanted. Whether the book was concerned with the history of hypnosis, the technique of trance induction, medical hypnosis, the treatment of undesirable habits—whatever the topic—I gobbled it up. I was still overwhelmed by a single question: Why hasn’t science done more with this near miracle? In the years to come I was to learn why science was restrained in this field, and I was also to discover more proof that this phenomenon was, indeed, a near miracle.

  I read, studied, wondered, and then read some more. But still I had not hypnotized anyone. I had to find a subject, a guinea pig. Who would be willing to submit to an amateur hypnotist? I took the problem to my wife; perhaps she would have a suggestion. She did.

  “Why don’t you try this hypnosis stuff on me?” Hazel asked. “I’ve got another splitting headache; maybe you can do something about it. I’ll try anything!”

  Every doctor who had examined her, every clinic she had gone through (including the Mayo) assured her that her headaches had no organic basis—no tumor, no kidney disease, no high blood pressure. Strictly psychological, they all insisted; and her last physical check-up had been taken only a few days previously. So what was I waiting for?

  “Give me some time to make an outline,” I told her, “and I’ll tackle that headache.” Then I went into another room with a stack of textbooks and started my outline. When I had finished I went back to Hazel.

  But it was too easy! I didn’t believe it.

  Hazel responded just as the texts had assured one and all that a good subject should respond. And when I awakened her, she insisted that her headache, much to her amazement, had somehow faded away.

  But even though her astonishment seemed genuine enough, I felt that my good wife was reacting in the same way that I sometimes feel obliged to do with one of her new recipes—just swallowing hard and forcing a big smile. I had to find out.

  So I hypnotized her again and this time I had her extend her right arm straight out from her body, telling her that the arm would become rigid, “just like a steel rod welded to her body.” I assured her, furthermore, that the “steel rod” could remain in that position indefinitely, that it would feel surprisingly pleasant, that it would not bring her any discomfort at any time.

  I sat down opposite her and just watched for several minutes. Then, noticing that there was a Readers Digest near my chair, I picked it up and thumbed through it. Later I glanced over at Hazel. Holy Mahoney! This girl wasn’t bluffing. Her arm was still stiffly extended in the same position.

  After giving her a post-hypnotic suggestion in order to check further the reality of the trance, I awakened her. There seemed to be practically no doubt about it: my first subject, my own wife, had been hypnotized.

  Soon thereafter the most potent of all advertising agencies, the grapevine, went to work. Friends and neighbors began to bring their problems. And what was most surprising to me was that this hypnosis business really helped them.

  A case in point, for instance, developed one day after an old friend had telephoned me. He was worried about his nephew, and
he went on to add up his nephew’s good points: The boy was captain of his basketball team; he had made the all-state high school team; he was being scouted by several college coaches; he was husky, handsome, intelligent, and a nice person.

  “Then what in the world are you worried about?” I asked.

  Finally he told me. “I have reason to believe that he might have been considering suicide. You see, he stutters. Bad.”

  The uncle made it plain that if the matter had not become genuinely serious he would not be calling me. (This was a sort of backhanded compliment to which I soon became accustomed; hypnosis was always the last resort.) He was not exaggerating the case, he insisted, and he wanted me to promise that I would see his nephew as soon as possible. So I suggested that we all get together the following Thursday evening.

  When I met the boy, it was soon evident that his uncle had accurately stated the facts. The lad was, indeed, a fine, handsome specimen. But his stuttering had him coming apart at the seams. He couldn’t remember a time when he had been free from this affliction; apparently he had never in all his life known normal speech.

  He said that looking forward to each new day was a terrifying prospect. He dreaded going to classes for fear of being called upon for a recitation; as captain of the basketball team, he would be called upon for a speech, and the very thought was paralyzing. And as far as girls were concerned, he was sure that even when they asked him to parties they really only wanted to laugh at his efforts to answer.

  What is more, he had recently met a fifty-year-old man who stuttered; the man had told him that he had talked that way all his life. The lad admitted that if he too should be forced to stutter through all those years he would rather not go on. Obviously he had reason to be in bad shape.

  Nevertheless, after we had had only four one-hour sessions together, he telephoned—using a telephone in the past would have been quite a stunt for him—to tell me that he wouldn’t need me any longer. In a clear, smooth voice he unhesitatingly assured me that he no longer stuttered; he thanked me and told me that his new life was a thrilling one.

  Apparently he had been cured. More than a year later I checked with his uncle. At first he almost forgot that his nephew had ever stuttered, then he assured me that the boy had never experienced any difficulty after our sessions together.

  But all this was not quite so simple as it might sound. Even though each session with the subject lasted only one hour or less, there were many hours devoted to advance research, preparation, outlining, and rehearsing. For one forty-five-minute session with a hysterical paralysis victim I spent several hours in preparation. Everything from my entrance into the room with the subject to the final words of departure was outlined and rehearsed in advance.1

  There followed a number of gratifying experiences with disturbed cases, including some concerned with migraine, insomnia, excessive smoking, and bad habits. And then a really significant opportunity presented itself. A well-known local doctor who knew of my interest in hypnosis told me of a current problem with a polio victim. The woman, he explained, had real polio involvement in both legs, but the case had been complicated by the development of hysterical paralysis in the right arm. (Hysterical paralysis is the result of a neurosis rather than an organic cause.)

  The doctor did not have to ask me twice for assistance. The chance to do some good on a real hospital case was too alluring. Besides, all the books assured me that this type of paralysis—that is, the symptom itself—was routine work for a competent hypnotist.

  The woman, about thirty-five, had lost a ten-year-old daughter with polio at the same time that she herself contracted the disease. This, together with still other grave difficulties, understandably left the woman in serious condition, both emotionally and physically. It was no wonder she had developed the hysterical contracture.

  I had agreed to tackle the case before I had even seen the condition of the patient. But when I walked into the hospital room and saw the woman’s horribly knotted arm, my first impulse was to turn around and make for the door. How, I asked myself, had I ever talked myself into this? That arm was something to behold! It was like a chunk of gnarled, petrified wood with twigs, which used to be fingers, jutting out at the end.

  I was stuck. I had promised the doctor that I would try. But had he known how scared I was at that moment, I’m sure that he would not only have excused me, he would even have helped me out of the room. As it was, though, he showed me the arm in a manner which clearly indicated that this was old stuff to him. So I pretended that it was old stuff to me too.

  The doctor explained that her arm had been in this condition for more than four months and that nothing seemed to help. It did not respond to any sort of therapy, and of course there is no medicine for that sort of thing. “Well, now let’s see what you can do,” he told me.

  Shakily I went to work. A trance was induced rather easily, and then, after eliciting ordinary hypnotic phenomena, I finally suggested that she could move her fingers in rhythm with my slow counting. She could. Nobody was more surprised than the hypnotist. I repeated this exercise several times, left some post-hypnotic suggestions, awakened the subject, and called it a day.

  In three subsequent weekly sessions I repeated the same general technique, each time getting more of the arm to move until, during the fourth session, the entire arm was freed from paralysis. After that she once more began to use the arm, and within a short time it appeared to be completely normal. My fourth session with her was the last one necessary.

  The post-hypnotic suggestions given to the subject were concerned primarily with instruction in the use of autosuggestion: the intimation that the hospital therapy would prove surprisingly more effective in the future; that she would be capable of responding more fully to the directions given by the physiotherapist; that she would now employ to a greater extent her native gifts of cheerfulness and a sense of humor; that she could optimistically look forward to total recovery.

  The efficacy of autosuggestion in these cases proves once again how much we can all do with our own minds by simply utilizing the power of suggestion. With all of my subjects I have advised the application of self-suggestion at night just before retiring, in the morning upon awakening, and sometimes during the middle of the day, perhaps just before lunch. During these specified times the stutterer, for instance, repeated his key sentence, “When I speak slowly I speak perfectly.” He also imagined himself making speeches to large groups, or as a lawyer making dramatic appearances before a jury. The paralysis victim was told that she would at these fixed times repeat certain simple exercises performed during the trance; also that she would imagine that she was once again using her arm in a normal manner. All these subjects, in short, were taught to combine autosuggestion with the creation of vivid mental pictures. The persistent use of these mental images is astonishingly effective.

  As my studies continued, I began to experiment with one of the most fascinating phenomena in the field of hypnosis—the marvel of age regression. This refers, as we have already seen, to the ability of the subject, while under hypnosis, to relive or recall detailed incidents of the past even though such incidents may have taken place during infancy. There are two general types of age regression. In one the subject recalls a particular experience as though remembering or witnessing it.

  The other is called true or total regression, and is one in which the subject appears to be actually reliving some past episode. The subject, while under hypnosis, is usually told that his mind will turn back through time and space and actually relive a certain scene; that he will speak in the very same voice as he did then; that he will experience the same sensations, the same emotions, the same reactions, the same total experience as he did upon, let us say, his third birthday.

  I have kept tape recordings of experiments with both types of regression, and I am continuously confronted with gasps of astonishment from audiences listening to the recordings. Many, I am sure, simply do not believe what they hear. Remembering my ow
n amazement during my earlier experiments, I am not surprised that listeners are dumfounded by simple age regressions which hundreds of hypnotists, psychologists, and doctors are performing every day.

  Let us admit that it is a stunning spectacle to watch a grown man return to the scene of his third birthday, recalling the events of the day in minute detail and perhaps even speaking in the voice of a three-year-old. Indeed, he might accurately describe every present he had received on that day. The wealth of remembered detail is awesome.

  It is interesting to note, furthermore, that changes in handwriting, behavior, vision, and reflexes all take place during hypnotic age regression. For instance, the signature of one of my subjects, told that he is eight years old, will be substantially different from that of the same person when he is told that he is only six years old. When the five-year-old level is reached, perhaps the subject can print his name; and at an earlier suggested age he will be capable neither of printing nor writing his name. Handwriting experts will usually confirm that these samples of writing, when compared with specimens which were actually produced during the childhood of the subject, are practically identical.

  I also learned that intelligence tests and reading tests given at various levels during an age regression confirm its reality. Moreover, a person who stuttered at, say, the age of seven, will likely do so once again when regressed to that level; and then the defect will disappear as earlier periods are suggested. Regressed subjects will also re-experience traumatic events, illnesses, and earlier episodes of almost every nature.

  An especially convincing proof of the verity of hypnotic age regression has been demonstrated in experiments concerning the stroking (tickling) of the sole of the foot. If the bottom of the foot of a normal adult is stroked, the big toe tends to turn downward; this is known as flexion. However, in infants up to about seven months of age the toes will turn upward (dorsiflexion) in response to this same stimulation.