HYPNOTISED LAIRD

Evening Star, Issue 21742, 9 June 1934, Page 13

HYPNOTISED LAIRD

CROOKS TAKE FORTUNE Tile strange case of a Scottish laird who declares he has been hypnotised into giving away a fortune is baffling the skill of London specialists. He iS Mr C. W. Fulton, laird of “ The Glen,” near Paisley. In twenty years lie has given away practically all he had. One man who influenced him was a criminal—and Mr Fulton knew it. And of this man a judge said when he was last in dock, that he had exercised a hypnotic influence over his victim. “I would give all I have left if someone would come and free me from this terrible control,” said Mr Fulton. The laird’s wife, who is still a much sought after hostess and sat proudly erect beside, her husband as he spoke, nodded a fervent ” Amen.” “It is sheer ignorance,” said the laird, “ to—to—bleat that only weak-minded people can be hypnotised. The greatest experts have, told me that the stronger the will the easier it is to hypnotise. This may seem aburd to you, but look at my case. I was never a weakling, but for the past twenty years .1 have come under the influence at different times of three mesmeric minds. The only parallel I can think of is the bird and the snake.

“ Sometimes I wake up feeling as if I had been drugged. I have even written to Sir Earnest Wallis Budge—l’m told that he knows a good deal about hypnotism and how it can change a person’s individuality. I am hoping that he may be able to tell me what to do. No doctor Can help me. I had the spending of a million pounds before I was thirty, and later the directorship of a great industry. I have also invented a number of processes used today in the textile factories and ono or two gadgets for motor cars.

“ Then out of the blue someone came to me—in the ordinary way of business at first—but gradually I found myself giving away large sums for some socalled humanitarian idea such as the transmutation of metals into gold in order to save humanity. My wife never realised until much later that I was acting under the control of another mind. She merely questioned my judgment. “ However, we went abroad for a time. When I returned to London I met someone else in just the same casual way, and again the same thing happened, and I became very poor indeed. With my wife’s help I made another fortune, but five years ago I met the third influence, much stronger than the other two, and from time to time I still came under its control. “ You will realise how dreadful it is when I tell you that when I met this third individual I knew that he had been in prison. I knew that he was a criminal, but I was made to feel that he was a much-wronged man and a wonderful soul. Again I had no will to act on any" other belief than that. One day my wife found me about to sign a paper which would have reduced us both to absolute penury, V She saved me, but she realised after this incident that there was something inexplicable about ,tho affair. When she found me in my study my eyes looked like a sleep-walker’s. It dawned on her then that I. had been hypnotised. After that she has never allowed me out of her sight.”

The laird now lives with his wife in a modest flat in London. ' A relation of the laird who lives in Brook street, W. 1., said: “My brother was a brilliant inventor, and a good business man. We have tried to help him to .cut this, influence. It passes our understanding and puzzles all the doctors as well. It is clearly a case 1 of one mind having another in complete control. My brother’s individuality seems in complete abeyance sometimes. Of course, we'are standing by him.”

_ Sir Ernest WalHs Budge, who, besides being an Egyptologist, is an authority on hypnotism as practised in the East, said when questioned on this particular instance: “I have known of stranger cases than this. I have met people who can make you believe that they can vanish before your eyes. They don’t vanish, but for the time being you are hypnotised into believing that they do, “ The laird’s only hope is the firm realisation that he will never free himself from hypnotic influence until he calls on the power that is in himself—and, indeed, in all of us. That power is the strength to say: I will. And man has no greater power than that.”