Found this interesting link while doing some “recreational reading” on the internet.

There’s a magician in the UK named Derren Brown who is essentially their response to David Blaine. Specializing in “Mentalism” and Hypnotism, his “stunts” seem to consist of primarily hypnotizing people without their knowledge to do strange things or hypnotizing himself to do unusual things like memorizing entire decks of cards. You can find some neat video clips of his work Here.

What really intruiged me, however, was a segment about a “Real Life Zombie Video Game”. Essentially, he creates an arcade game of a zombie horror experience (a la Resident Evil) and waits for someone to play it. When they do, he uses carefully timed strobes to induce a catatonic state. While they player is out cold, they transfer him to a nearby building which is a duplicate of the environment in the game, and when they snap out of their trance they find themselves living the video game. This poor guy loses it after a few minutes. Then even more interestingly, they induce another catatonic state and transfer him back to the pub with the arcade cabinet and wake him up, and he things the whole thing was in the game.

It’s an interesting example of Suspension of Disbelief, where he’s absolutely terrified while it’s happening but quickly justifies it as “fun” once it’s over. But, more interestingly, is it real or is this a scam? First impressions had me thinking it’s a scam, but checking this guys previous stunts it just might be real. I’m still undecided, but I have to wonder why I haven’t heard of stuff like this before? If it’s so trivial for a street magician to do this, then why haven’t I ever heard about it in the news or in school?

Update Slightly better video, with a little bit of the “intro” to the show, is here

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