Tom DeLuca To Hypnotize Hampton Bays

Whether it’s an audience of 75 or 7,000, Tom DeLuca always calls 20 volunteers to the stage. He quickly gains their trust and lets them know that everything will be okay.

What happens next is a mix of magic and art, he said, not to mention a little science.

Welcome to “The Best Hypnosis Show in The World”—a performance Mr. DeLuca has been perfecting for more than three decades at colleges, conferences, conventions and clubs across the country. And for the first time ever, on Friday, March 16, he’s adding the Hampton Bays High School to his list of venues.

Most come to Mr. DeLuca’s show as skeptics, he said during a telephone interview last week, and 99 percent leave as believers, he added. Mr. DeLuca, and the tens of thousands of people he said he’s hypnotized over his career, can attest that he’s the real deal. And audience members will not see one performer barking like a dog or clucking like a chicken, he said.

“Hey, this can be a sketchy business,” Mr. DeLuca said. “And it shouldn’t be about pressuring people to act like idiots, like it is with so many other guys in this industry. It should be an art. It should bring out the creativity in people, but not by making a man think he’s having a baby or all that other crappy, cheesy junk you see them do. You want to see unusual, funny things, and you will, but you don’t need to embarrass the guys on stage. There’s a fine line.”

Mr. DeLuca was hard-pressed to give much away about the upcoming show. He kept his lips sealed about a skit during which he tells a hypnotized participant that fruit have feelings—a college campus favorite year after year. But there were a few routines that he said he’d let slide.

“The body-building competition, that’s a funny one,” he said. “They have to get ready for the competition, don’t they? They have to pump, grease up. They have to pose.”

The Tampa-based performer is constantly coming up with new material, he said, and finds himself retiring routines when they’re played out, such as one where he’d tell a girl that she was the chief of the “Fun Police.” And, of course, the audience was having way too much fun.

“One of the audience members would laugh and she’d start getting angry,” Mr. DeLuca said, and then reenacted a typical scene, “‘Shut up! You’re going down. I need backup.’ They’d get aggressive. It’s always funnier with women. ‘How many people have you arrested?’ I’d ask. ‘8,015.’ ‘Where are they now?’ ‘In jail.’ ‘Are they having fun?’ ‘No! They’re in jail!’”

The show’s closer always wows the crowd, Mr. DeLuca said. He tells the hypnotized participants that any time he says a given word, they’ll think the show is the worst act they’ve ever seen. But when he stomps his foot twice, it becomes the best performance on the planet.

“It’ll start, ‘You suck, get out of here. You’re a fake. You’re a bum. You’ve been ripped off, everyone!’” Mr. DeLuca said. “Then I’ll stomp my foot twice and it’s, ‘I love you. You’re my hero.’ I go back and forth really fast. You can’t fake it. ‘I want you to leave. Walk out that door.’ Stomp, stomp. ‘Come here! I want you to do the show for three hours.’”

Under hypnosis, the subject pushes aside a normal way of looking at the world. But instead of being sent into a trancelike sleep, experts say that the person who is hypnotized shifts into a state of extreme concentration. Mr. DeLuca compared it to a deep meditation.

In order to properly hypnotize a subject, Mr. DeLuca, who earned his master’s degree in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1980, said he has to put the conscious—the analytical part of the mind—to sleep and out of the way so he can talk and deal directly with the imagination and subconscious. The critical facility is no longer making decisions, he said.

Mr. DeLuca said he hypnotizes his participants in the way that he talks to them—his pitch, speed and the way he asks them to use their senses.

“One size doesn’t fit all,” he said. “But eventually, the conscious evaporates. If you have a dream, when you’re sleeping, you believe it. You wake up and it was a dream. But boy, when you’re having your dream, it’s real. Hypnosis is like I’m directing a dream.”

Generally speaking, it doesn’t take much for Mr. DeLuca to lure his participants on stage. On some college campuses, such as the University of Virginia, students turn up in droves, by the thousands, and make signs to catch Mr. DeLuca’s attention.

But once on stage, nerves can set in for even the most confident participant.

“In order for it to work, they have to have confidence in me. And they should because I’m good at this,” Mr. DeLuca said. “They have to feel you’re going to take care of them. They have to feel that it’s an adventure. You have to take their fears away really, really quickly. To do that, you have to engross them, make them interested and have it all make sense.

“Between you and me, it doesn’t make any sense at all,” he continued. “It’s like in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ when you see some of the stuff they’re doing. It’s like, ‘How do you get to this point from that point?’ But it makes sense to them. You’re dealing with a part of the mind that’s illogical. It does make sense, but to the people in the audience, it’s like, ‘Holy god, I can’t believe that’s happening.’”

When the participants come to, some don’t remember anything, some remember bits and pieces, and others remember everything but couldn’t control themselves, Mr. DeLuca said of the hypnotic experience.

“It’s weird. It’s fascinated me forever. I’m still doing it,” he said. “To the Hampton Bays audience, you can see the show or be the show. Your choice.”

“The Best Hypnosis Show in The World” with Tom DeLuca will be held on Friday, March 16, at 7 p.m. in the Hampton Bays High School Auditorium. Tickets are $10 and available at the high school. For more information, call 723-2110, ext. 3208.