Death and hypnosis: two remarkable cases

The Journal of the American Medical Association reported The First Recorded Death in Hypnosis in its issue of October 27, 1894. Ninety-nine years later, on September 23, 1993 a healthy 24-year old mother of two was found dead at home, fully clothed and draped across the foot of one of her children's bed, 5 hours after volunteering as a subject for a stage hypnosis show. The suggestion given to terminate the trance had been that when the hypnotist said, "Goodnight", several subjects would feel 10,000 volts of electricity through the seat of their chairs. Unknown to the hypnotist, she had been phobic about electricity ever since a childhood shock, and would not even change a light bulb or plug in a cord. The coroner's verdict was death by natural causes.