You are getting very, very sleepy … and also a bit murderous. Mesmerism, also called animal magnetism and later hypnosis, spread in popularity throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries as doctors, hobbyists, and stage performers demonstrated their ability to control the actions of others through mere suggestion. The Victorians and Edwardians were fascinated by this new discipline, but also, understandably, quite anxious. Without knowing what the limitations were of this power, they imagined scenarios in which one could be mesmerized to commit crimes, betray loved ones, and even kill. Death by Suggestion: An Anthology of 19th and Early 20th-Century Tales of Hypnotically Induced Murder, Suicide, and Accidental Death edited by Donald K. Hartman brings together twenty-two tales by authors both well-known and obscure that explore the darker side of suggestion.
The book opens with a brief but informative introduction that outlines the history of hypnotism and lays out a few real-life cases in which this practice was linked to death. Then we get to the stories. Some are by familiar authors—including Arthur Conan Doyle and Ambrose Bierce, but most are by far more obscure writers or even published anonymously. They vary widely in quality—some show an amateurish writing style and a clear desire to capitalize on a trend, while others still hold up well as horror tales today—but taken together the stories in this collection show the breadth of fears that people had about mesmerism. Some of these fears are about how such a powerful tool as mesmerism could be used to exacerbate the violence already often committed by jilted lovers, feuding friends, and simple crooks. But other fears have to do with the nature of hypnotism itself. Many of the stories betray the Victorian belief that hypnotism is based on one’s strength of will—and that some people just naturally have stronger wills than others. Rather than emphasizing hypnosis as a tool or skill that anyone can train in, these stories present it as an innate trait—one that often physically manifests as particularly intense and piercing eyes, but is otherwise undetectable and allows one to act without consequences. Such stories ask us to imagine what it would feel like to confront an antagonist who is just naturally superior to ourselves, whose power we cannot escape. Interspersed between the stories are black-and-white illustrations and photographs from the period. A common theme among these images—as in the stories—are intensely staring eyes.
My favorite stories in the collection were mainly those that dealt with femme fatales. While the biological determinist take on hypnotism tends to present men as having naturally stronger wills than women, there are a few stories in which female characters exercise their mental powers over men, whether for profit or revenge. An example of the former is the title character in B. L. Farjeon’s tale “Philip Darrell’s Wife.” In this story, the narrator looks on helplessly as his friend Philip marries a woman whose two previous husbands died by suicide, leaving their fortunes and life insurance money in her hands. Arthur Conan Doyle utilizes a similar premise in “John Barrington Cowles,” though his antagonist has slightly different motivations. In this story, the narrator begins to investigate his friend’s fiancée, Kate Northcott, who appears to have been previously engaged to two other men. He learns that she revealed some dark secret to her intendeds just before the wedding, and when they fled from her, she took her revenge by driving them to their deaths through the power of her mind. The villainess in “A Scientific Revenge” by Marie Madison is a little more sympathetic. When she discovers one of her suitors murdered her father, she learns hypnotism to get her revenge. The story comes with a moral: “Never teach a woman the power of hypnotism again”—because apparently women are too impulsive to be trusted with such power.
The other stories I enjoyed the most were those that presented particularly bizarre beliefs about the power of hypnotism. One of the most outlandish tales in the collection is “Hypnotism with a Vengeance” by Ichor, in which a ship’s doctor hypnotizes a cabin boy and accidentally leaves him in a trance. The boy is taken for dead and thrown overboard, only to be swallowed by a shark. When the shark is caught many months later and the boy is pulled from its belly, he is awakened from his trance entirely unharmed. In Hugh Conway’s story “Paul Vargas: A Mystery,” the title character somehow uses hypnotism to suck the life from another person to extend his own. Julian Hawthorne (yes, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne) explores the potential fun side of hypnotism in “The Mystery of Turkentyne.” In this story, the title character cannot digest alcohol, so he gets hypnotized to experience drunkenness whenever his heavy-drinking friend Tom does. Things go downhill, however, when Tom goes on a bender and forgets that he is drinking for two…
The stories described above are only a small handful of those found in Death by Suggestion. If you’ve ever been fascinated (or terrified) by hypnotism, then this anthology is not one to miss! You can find it on shelves at your local retailer or purchase it online and support The Gothic Library in the process by clicking this Bookshop.org affiliate link.