u/PreparationCold1737

So my girlfriend after not much convincing agreed to let me try hypnosis on her for reasons I will not disclose here. I’m trained and researched but heavily out of practice and she’s presented a real challenge for me. I’m able to get her in trance somewhat easily but it’s seemingly never been more than a light one. Part of my problem I believe is she’s the type to always be thinking, she’s usually anxious about something and getting her to fully relax can be a challenge. I’ve found inductions involving confusion elements or fixation tend to work better but I’m just looking for any suggestions on more specific ones I might want to try. Thanks!

This story is going to make me sound insane and is going to be rather long as to give all details to show just how weird and bizzare everything has been. Even after writing all of this out I barely believe what I’ve seen, but after experiencing it with my own eyes I really have no other explanations to give. Im a 29 year old male and my girlfriend is 28. Through the almost year we’ve known each other she’s always been a normal quiet to herself kind of person. The only fault I can ever really find is her overly trusting personality. She’s the kind of person scammers and other sorts feed on as her empathy doesn’t allow for her to ignore people who seem to be in need or present themselves as trustworthy. For the sake of the story and protecting animimity lets call her Emily

About a month ago we went on vacation together to a small town outside of Boston. We planned to explore the city and take a couple day trips around the area just to the do the usual tourist sight seeing shit, stuff you usually do on vacation on a budget. Our first night was totally fine and normal, we flew in checked into our airbnb and grabbed a pizza and took the train to go check out Fenway park. The next day was when shit started to get weird. We headed into the city to get lunch at the fannuel hall market. If you've never been it's basically a suped up mall food court with about twice the people. Emily has always had a disliking of over crowded loud areas and on this particular day the place was jam packed to a point where even I was getting overwhelmed. We found a nice area outside to sit and eat and I ventured in to grab our food while she held down the fort. Some might give me shit for leaving her alone but she's always been one that can absolutely take care of herself if the situation arrised so I didn't think much of it at the time.

Getting food took what felt like an eternity as the sheer amount of people was completley overwhelming most of the options. About 20 minutes later I had ordered and was standing waiting for 2 sandwiches when I decided to text Emily apologizing for the long wait. She was sitting scrolling tik Tok when I left her so I was kinda surprised when I never heard anything back but I just figured maybe she was really locked in on a video or something.

10 minutes later I got the food and was headed back to where I had left Emily. I walked out the doors to the little outside area and was stopped dead in my tracks. I saw Emily but she wasn't scrolling on her phone like I left her, instead she was sitting with a man. He looked to be about 40 something and looked clean cut enough but his appearance isn't what bothered me. I noticed that he was holding Emily while she was slumped into his shoulder and looked asleep. I immediately thought something was wrong like maybe she passed out and this guy came to help or something. But upon getting closer I noticed a few odd things. The guy was speaking to her in almost a whisper, and it almost looked like she was responding to him. He was evidently very caught up in whatever was going on bc he didn't even notice me walk right up to them. After only a few seconds of this I finally broke his focus and blurted out “the fuck are you doing” he turned his head and looked at me and smiled. He slowly moved away and laid Emily down on the bench where they had been sitting and extended his hand to me. “You must be the boyfriend of this lovely lady” he said. I stood frozen unable to really do anything because I had no idea what was going on, I was split on whether I wanted to beat the shit out of this guy or figure out more. I said again but this time much more aggressively “what are you doing to her who are you?”. He introduced himself as Joel a local hypnotist. He said that he was in the area today and noticed a pretty girl sitting by herself and wanted to make sure she was okay. Apparently through their brief conversation he told her about how he was a hypnotist and she was eager to see if it was real. Unfortunately this explanation made sense to me. Like I said Emily has a tendency to trust people to a fault and if this guy gave her enough pressure she would unfortunately agree to just about anything. But there was something else that just didn't sit right.

I don't know how to explain it but some people just feel off and Joel felt almost creepy. He looked like he could've been anywhere from early 30s to late 50s. He was dressed in nicer clothing but it was stained and just from where we were standing I was able to get the scent of stale coffee and cigarettes. Worst of all though his eyes were just evil. I don't know how else to explain it but if you've ever seen someone with almost dead eyes you know exactly what I'm talking about. The way he talked about Emily almost felt obsessive, he kept commenting on how “lovely” she was and how she was “one of the most suggestible people he's worked with”.

I quickly grew tired of our conversation and I asked him to undo whatever was going on. Emily was still slumped on the bench unmoving. I have never believed in hypnosis but seeing this made me question that. He uttered the stereotypical “when I count to 5 and snap your eyes will open and be completely out of trance” he quickly counted back and the second he snapped his fingers I saw her eyes flutter open and she sprang up. Joel apologized for the inconvenience and shook our hands, he thanked Emily for her participation and she gave him a solemn sounding “yeah”. I could tell immediately something was off with her. She looked completely dazed and out of it, almost like she was drugged.

The second Joel was far enough to be out of earshot I looked at Emily and said “what the hell was that what happened”. She explained that not long after I left Joel came up and asked if she was okay. She told him she was just holding a spot waiting for her boyfriend to get back to which he politely asked to wait with her. She stopped talking after that part and I asked “so how did that lead to you getting hypnotized?”. After a few seconds of silence she stuttered and said “I don't remember” I kinda laughed and said what do you mean. She said she literally couldn't recall anything after that part of the conversation. Her last memory before being woken up was him joking about protecting her from creeps and then next thing she knew she was being woken up. This creeped me out because I believed her fully, Emily isn't one to make things up like this and I could see she was also pretty unsettled by whatever just happened.

We ate our lunch and then meandered through the city for a while but the entire time Emily just seemed off. She seemed completely out of it, everything we did everywhere we went she just had this 1000 yard stare that never seemed to improve. We headed back to our Airbnb that night and decided to have another night in. We watched movies and decided to call it an early night around 11. Now my girlfriend is a notorious insomniac. In the year we had been together I’d never actually seen her fall asleep before me, usually she’d be up on her phone or reading. This night however it felt like the literal moment she put her head down she was out. And I’m not just talking lightly asleep I’m talking mouth wide open breathing heavy wouldn’t wake up to a train blowing through the place kinda asleep. This didn’t really register as odd and I wrote it off as exhaustion from the last few days finally catching up to her.

Around 2 am I woke up to pee. I laid back down and upon laying down I noticed Emily was gone. This wasn’t entirely out of the normal on account of the aforementioned insomnia so I decided to go see what she was up to. I walked into the living room and was confused to find all of the lights off, the only light in the entire room was coming through the window facing the street and that’s where I found her. Standing rigid and unmoving was Emily, she was staring directly out of the window with her back to me. I called out “Em what’re you doing” and got no response. I started walking closer and this is when I noticed the whispering. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying but as I got closer I was able to decipher “where is he”. Her eyes were locked on to the road in front of the home and she didn’t even seem to notice me. I put my hand on her shoulder and gently said “em?”. I wasn’t expecting her to just full on collapse but that’s exactly what happened. The second my hand touched her shoulder her body went completely limp and hit the ground. I was luckily able to save her from hitting her head on the fall but upon hitting the ground it seemed to snap her out of whatever was going on. She was freaking out claiming she had no idea how she got out here. She has never been one to sleep walk so this spooked the both of us pretty bad. We both went back to bed but neither of us were able to get much sleep that night.

In the morning Emily seemed to be back to normal, her bubbly personality had come back and she seemed eager to go to today’s plans. We had a tour scheduled for Fenway park and were both very excited to see it as we were huge baseball fans. It didn’t take long for the day to get weird though. We had to take the train from the town we were in to the park and it was about as crowded as public transportation can be. Emily was able to get a seat and I stood in front of her doing my best to keep my balance on a moving train with 1000 other people on it. I zoned out while holding Emily’s hand for a few minutes partly due to the exhaustion of not sleeping the night before. I was lost in thought of what that all was and if that guy from yesterday had anything to do with it when I noticed Emily’s hand go limp. I looked at her and that same stare was back but this time it was directed across the train. I couldn’t believe my eyes but it was Joel. He was standing at the far end just and was directly in Emily’s line of site. I almost wanted to go say something but stopped due to not wanting to cause a scene on an already packed and loud train. Instead I focused on Emily and after a few pokes she came back to. I asked what had happened and once again she said she had no idea it felt like she had fallen asleep and woken up to me poking her. I looked for that creep when we got to our stop but couldn’t spot him in the crowd. We went on with our day and had no more sightings or weird occurrences.

That night Emily once again fell asleep faster then I’ve ever seen but luckily this time she stayed that way. In the morning we headed toward her aunts cottage in cape cod where we were going to be spending the last few days of our trip. We got there around mid afternoon and were blown away by how nice it was. The cottage was right on the beach in a little development. The area we were in was secluded and quiet and was honestly perfect. When we got there Emily had to take a couple work calls so I decided to run to the nearby grocery store to grab some stuff for the next few days. While I was at the store Emily texted and asked how long I was gonna be. I responded quickly and said hopefully no more then half an hour why what’s up. I got no response after that which I chocked up to het being on another call. I quickly grabbed everything I needed and headed back. Upon getting back to the cottage I noticed Emily was no where to be found. I called out for her and couldn’t find her anywhere. I checked the rooms, the beach basically everywhere she could’ve been and could not find her. I decided to call her phone and see if I could find her that way but my heart sank when I heard the vibrating coming from the under some papers on the table. Emily would never leave to go somewhere without her phone and this to me was enough of a red flag to start to get pretty freaked out. I started frantically walking around looking for any sign of her. I called out her name a few times and got no response. Eventually I made my way toward the front desk building to see if maybe they had seen or heard from her. I was about to cross the street when I saw them. Two guys walking. One in front and one behind and in the middle of them a woman. It took me only a few seconds to immediately recognize that woman as Emily. I sprinted over towards them just as they reached an old beat up SUV. I shouted “hey hold on” and they immediately seemed to go on alert. The one in front jumped into the drivers seat while the other tried for a moment to get Emily in the back of the car but upon realizing he didn’t have the time he jumped into himself and they peeled off. I reached the area right as the door was slammed and from it I got a whiff of a familiar scent. Stale coffee and cigarettes. I never saw his face but I knew it had to have been Joel. Somehow and for some reason he had followed us over 2 hours from where we just were and seemed to know exactly where we were staying. I grabbed Emily and she freaked out. The started pushing me away and screaming but calmed down quickly once she saw it was me. I of course immediately asked what was going on to which she answered once again “I don’t know”. She was in tears at this point scared of how she went from taking a work call to standing in the parking lot nearly about to get into a car with two complete strangers, all while having no memory of doing so. She was emotionally a wreck and we won’t back to the cottage where she went to lay down. I sat at the table just thinking of everything that had happened when I heard a vibrate. Emily’s phone was still sitting out in the kitchen and I noticed an unsaved number had texted her. Before you judge Emily has given me and trusts me with her password so I decided to take a look at what she had just received. I was confused for a moment but when it all clicked my blood when absolutely cold. The text was one simple word “sleep” and I knew exactly what that meant. I quickly went to see if there was more when I noticed that was all this number had said. I quickly went to the rest of the chats and saw one from a couple hours earlier. Reading it filled me with more rage than I’ve ever experienced.

The first text was the same. It simply said “sleep” to which Emily responded “yes”. I knew who it was that was sending these and that somehow Joel had gotten Emily’s number so I kept reading. The next text explained some of what I had seen but didn’t leave me feeling any less terrified by what could have happened. It said “come down to the beach and leave your phone, you’ll see me and another man and you’re going to follow us. Come slowly and make sure no one sees you. Emily responded saying “yes” but there was one more text that said “you won’t remember anything between being put to sleep and waking up”. My blood ran cold. This creep somehow had my girlfriend in his control and was using for god knows what reason. This is already long enough and I’m getting tired of typing so if you want more please let me know and I’ll post a part two as we are still actively dealing with the ramifications of this encounter. Thank you for reading and stay safe out there

This story is going to make me sound insane and is going to be rather long as to give all details to show just how weird and bizzare everything has been. Even after writing all of this out I barely believe what I’ve seen, but after experiencing it with my own eyes I really have no other explanations to give. Im a 29 year old male and my girlfriend is 28. Through the almost year we’ve known each other she’s always been a normal quiet to herself kind of person. The only fault I can ever really find is her overly trusting personality. She’s the kind of person scammers and other sorts feed on as her empathy doesn’t allow for her to ignore people who seem to be in need or present themselves as trustworthy. For the sake of the story and protecting animimity lets call her Emily

About a month ago we went on vacation together to a small town outside of Boston. We planned to explore the city and take a couple day trips around the area just to the do the usual tourist sight seeing shit, stuff you usually do on vacation on a budget. Our first night was totally fine and normal, we flew in checked into our airbnb and grabbed a pizza and took the train to go check out Fenway park. The next day was when shit started to get weird. We headed into the city to get lunch at the fannuel hall market. If you've never been it's basically a suped up mall food court with about twice the people. Emily has always had a disliking of over crowded loud areas and on this particular day the place was jam packed to a point where even I was getting overwhelmed. We found a nice area outside to sit and eat and I ventured in to grab our food while she held down the fort. Some might give me shit for leaving her alone but she's always been one that can absolutely take care of herself if the situation arrised so I didn't think much of it at the time.

Getting food took what felt like an eternity as the sheer amount of people was completley overwhelming most of the options. About 20 minutes later I had ordered and was standing waiting for 2 sandwiches when I decided to text Emily apologizing for the long wait. She was sitting scrolling tik Tok when I left her so I was kinda surprised when I never heard anything back but I just figured maybe she was really locked in on a video or something.

10 minutes later I got the food and was headed back to where I had left Emily. I walked out the doors to the little outside area and was stopped dead in my tracks. I saw Emily but she wasn't scrolling on her phone like I left her, instead she was sitting with a man. He looked to be about 40 something and looked clean cut enough but his appearance isn't what bothered me. I noticed that he was holding Emily while she was slumped into his shoulder and looked asleep. I immediately thought something was wrong like maybe she passed out and this guy came to help or something. But upon getting closer I noticed a few odd things. The guy was speaking to her in almost a whisper, and it almost looked like she was responding to him. He was evidently very caught up in whatever was going on bc he didn't even notice me walk right up to them. After only a few seconds of this I finally broke his focus and blurted out “the fuck are you doing” he turned his head and looked at me and smiled. He slowly moved away and laid Emily down on the bench where they had been sitting and extended his hand to me. “You must be the boyfriend of this lovely lady” he said. I stood frozen unable to really do anything because I had no idea what was going on, I was split on whether I wanted to beat the shit out of this guy or figure out more. I said again but this time much more aggressively “what are you doing to her who are you?”. He introduced himself as Joel a local hypnotist. He said that he was in the area today and noticed a pretty girl sitting by herself and wanted to make sure she was okay. Apparently through their brief conversation he told her about how he was a hypnotist and she was eager to see if it was real. Unfortunately this explanation made sense to me. Like I said Emily has a tendency to trust people to a fault and if this guy gave her enough pressure she would unfortunately agree to just about anything. But there was something else that just didn't sit right.

I don't know how to explain it but some people just feel off and Joel felt almost creepy. He looked like he could've been anywhere from early 30s to late 50s. He was dressed in nicer clothing but it was stained and just from where we were standing I was able to get the scent of stale coffee and cigarettes. Worst of all though his eyes were just evil. I don't know how else to explain it but if you've ever seen someone with almost dead eyes you know exactly what I'm talking about. The way he talked about Emily almost felt obsessive, he kept commenting on how “lovely” she was and how she was “one of the most suggestible people he's worked with”.

I quickly grew tired of our conversation and I asked him to undo whatever was going on. Emily was still slumped on the bench unmoving. I have never believed in hypnosis but seeing this made me question that. He uttered the stereotypical “when I count to 5 and snap your eyes will open and be completely out of trance” he quickly counted back and the second he snapped his fingers I saw her eyes flutter open and she sprang up. Joel apologized for the inconvenience and shook our hands, he thanked Emily for her participation and she gave him a solemn sounding “yeah”. I could tell immediately something was off with her. She looked completely dazed and out of it, almost like she was drugged.

The second Joel was far enough to be out of earshot I looked at Emily and said “what the hell was that what happened”. She explained that not long after I left Joel came up and asked if she was okay. She told him she was just holding a spot waiting for her boyfriend to get back to which he politely asked to wait with her. She stopped talking after that part and I asked “so how did that lead to you getting hypnotized?”. After a few seconds of silence she stuttered and said “I don't remember” I kinda laughed and said what do you mean. She said she literally couldn't recall anything after that part of the conversation. Her last memory before being woken up was him joking about protecting her from creeps and then next thing she knew she was being woken up. This creeped me out because I believed her fully, Emily isn't one to make things up like this and I could see she was also pretty unsettled by whatever just happened.

We ate our lunch and then meandered through the city for a while but the entire time Emily just seemed off. She seemed completely out of it, everything we did everywhere we went she just had this 1000 yard stare that never seemed to improve. We headed back to our Airbnb that night and decided to have another night in. We watched movies and decided to call it an early night around 11. Now my girlfriend is a notorious insomniac. In the year we had been together I’d never actually seen her fall asleep before me, usually she’d be up on her phone or reading. This night however it felt like the literal moment she put her head down she was out. And I’m not just talking lightly asleep I’m talking mouth wide open breathing heavy wouldn’t wake up to a train blowing through the place kinda asleep. This didn’t really register as odd and I wrote it off as exhaustion from the last few days finally catching up to her.

Around 2 am I woke up to pee. I laid back down and upon laying down I noticed Emily was gone. This wasn’t entirely out of the normal on account of the aforementioned insomnia so I decided to go see what she was up to. I walked into the living room and was confused to find all of the lights off, the only light in the entire room was coming through the window facing the street and that’s where I found her. Standing rigid and unmoving was Emily, she was staring directly out of the window with her back to me. I called out “Em what’re you doing” and got no response. I started walking closer and this is when I noticed the whispering. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying but as I got closer I was able to decipher “where is he”. Her eyes were locked on to the road in front of the home and she didn’t even seem to notice me. I put my hand on her shoulder and gently said “em?”. I wasn’t expecting her to just full on collapse but that’s exactly what happened. The second my hand touched her shoulder her body went completely limp and hit the ground. I was luckily able to save her from hitting her head on the fall but upon hitting the ground it seemed to snap her out of whatever was going on. She was freaking out claiming she had no idea how she got out here. She has never been one to sleep walk so this spooked the both of us pretty bad. We both went back to bed but neither of us were able to get much sleep that night.

In the morning Emily seemed to be back to normal, her bubbly personality had come back and she seemed eager to go to today’s plans. We had a tour scheduled for Fenway park and were both very excited to see it as we were huge baseball fans. It didn’t take long for the day to get weird though. We had to take the train from the town we were in to the park and it was about as crowded as public transportation can be. Emily was able to get a seat and I stood in front of her doing my best to keep my balance on a moving train with 1000 other people on it. I zoned out while holding Emily’s hand for a few minutes partly due to the exhaustion of not sleeping the night before. I was lost in thought of what that all was and if that guy from yesterday had anything to do with it when I noticed Emily’s hand go limp. I looked at her and that same stare was back but this time it was directed across the train. I couldn’t believe my eyes but it was Joel. He was standing at the far end just and was directly in Emily’s line of site. I almost wanted to go say something but stopped due to not wanting to cause a scene on an already packed and loud train. Instead I focused on Emily and after a few pokes she came back to. I asked what had happened and once again she said she had no idea it felt like she had fallen asleep and woken up to me poking her. I looked for that creep when we got to our stop but couldn’t spot him in the crowd. We went on with our day and had no more sightings or weird occurrences.

That night Emily once again fell asleep faster then I’ve ever seen but luckily this time she stayed that way. In the morning we headed toward her aunts cottage in cape cod where we were going to be spending the last few days of our trip. We got there around mid afternoon and were blown away by how nice it was. The cottage was right on the beach in a little development. The area we were in was secluded and quiet and was honestly perfect. When we got there Emily had to take a couple work calls so I decided to run to the nearby grocery store to grab some stuff for the next few days. While I was at the store Emily texted and asked how long I was gonna be. I responded quickly and said hopefully no more then half an hour why what’s up. I got no response after that which I chocked up to het being on another call. I quickly grabbed everything I needed and headed back. Upon getting back to the cottage I noticed Emily was no where to be found. I called out for her and couldn’t find her anywhere. I checked the rooms, the beach basically everywhere she could’ve been and could not find her. I decided to call her phone and see if I could find her that way but my heart sank when I heard the vibrating coming from the under some papers on the table. Emily would never leave to go somewhere without her phone and this to me was enough of a red flag to start to get pretty freaked out. I started frantically walking around looking for any sign of her. I called out her name a few times and got no response. Eventually I made my way toward the front desk building to see if maybe they had seen or heard from her. I was about to cross the street when I saw them. Two guys walking. One in front and one behind and in the middle of them a woman. It took me only a few seconds to immediately recognize that woman as Emily. I sprinted over towards them just as they reached an old beat up SUV. I shouted “hey hold on” and they immediately seemed to go on alert. The one in front jumped into the drivers seat while the other tried for a moment to get Emily in the back of the car but upon realizing he didn’t have the time he jumped into himself and they peeled off. I reached the area right as the door was slammed and from it I got a whiff of a familiar scent. Stale coffee and cigarettes. I never saw his face but I knew it had to have been Joel. Somehow and for some reason he had followed us over 2 hours from where we just were and seemed to know exactly where we were staying. I grabbed Emily and she freaked out. The started pushing me away and screaming but calmed down quickly once she saw it was me. I of course immediately asked what was going on to which she answered once again “I don’t know”. She was in tears at this point scared of how she went from taking a work call to standing in the parking lot nearly about to get into a car with two complete strangers, all while having no memory of doing so. She was emotionally a wreck and we won’t back to the cottage where she went to lay down. I sat at the table just thinking of everything that had happened when I heard a vibrate. Emily’s phone was still sitting out in the kitchen and I noticed an unsaved number had texted her. Before you judge Emily has given me and trusts me with her password so I decided to take a look at what she had just received. I was confused for a moment but when it all clicked my blood when absolutely cold. The text was one simple word “sleep” and I knew exactly what that meant. I quickly went to see if there was more when I noticed that was all this number had said. I quickly went to the rest of the chats and saw one from a couple hours earlier. Reading it filled me with more rage than I’ve ever experienced.

The first text was the same. It simply said “sleep” to which Emily responded “yes”. I knew who it was that was sending these and that somehow Joel had gotten Emily’s number so I kept reading. The next text explained some of what I had seen but didn’t leave me feeling any less terrified by what could have happened. It said “come down to the beach and leave your phone, you’ll see me and another man and you’re going to follow us. Come slowly and make sure no one sees you. Emily responded saying “yes” but there was one more text that said “you won’t remember anything between being put to sleep and waking up”. My blood ran cold. This creep somehow had my girlfriend in his control and was using for god knows what reason. This is already long enough and I’m getting tired of typing so if you want more please let me know and I’ll post a part two as we are still actively dealing with the ramifications of this encounter. Thank you for reading and stay safe out there