Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Afterwards, Ron demonstrated a surprising talent as a hypnotist with a repertoire of parlour tricks.
He hypnotised almost everyone in the clubroom: one young man looked at his hand with utter
astonishment, convinced he was holding a pair of miniature kangaroos in his palm; another rapidly
removed his shoes when he felt the floor getting hot and a third spent a hysterically funny ten
minutes on an imaginary telephone trying to fend off a persistent and non-existent car salesman.
It was probable that Hubbard had learned hypnosis from Jack Parsons and he appeared to have
no difficulty inducing hypnotic trances - all he needed to do, with some people, was count to three
and snap his fingers. But he sometimes forgot to bring a subject out of hypnosis. He told Cox's
younger brother, Bill, that he would fall asleep every time he (Hubbard) scratched his nose. Under
hypnosis, Bill dutifully obeyed. But later in the evening Hubbard absent-mindedly scratched his
nose while he was standing in the centre of a group of fans and Bill Cox instantly collapsed,
fortunately falling into the arms of Forrest Ackerman, who was standing behind him.
Hubbard also played a cruel, post-hypnotic trick on Bill Cox. He took him to one side at the meeting
and told him that the following afternoon, at two o'clock, he would drop whatever he was doing and
meet Hubbard at a building site on the corner of Wilshire and Lucas. Hubbard was waiting there
next day when, at precisely two o'clock, Cox showed up. Under Hubbard's instructions,Cox first
found he could not take his hands of his pockets. Then he was ordered to take hold of a nearby
railing and discovered he could not let go. As he struggled to release his grip, Hubbard told him the
rail would get hotter and hotter until it was red hot. Considerably distressed, Cox writhed in agony
until at last Hubbard laughed, patted him on the shoulder, told him he could go home and that he
would not remember anything that had happened.
This incident only later came to light because a fellow science fiction writer, A.E. van Vogt, shared
Hubbard's interest in hypnotism. One night at a Lasfas meeting, someone described a particularly
vivid dream and Hubbard immediately claimed responsibility for it, saying it was a hallucination he
had caused while he was 'out strolling in Astral form'.
Van Vogt did not necessarily disbelieve Hubbard but thought it was more likely that he had induced
the dream by post-hypnotic suggestion. With the help of a professional hypnotist friend, he decided
to check if any members of the club had been hypnotized by Hubbard without being able to
remember it. They started with Bill Cox, put him in a deep trance and quickly learned of the ordeal
that Hubbard had put him through. Although van Vogt gravely disapproved, he continued, curiously,
to hold Hubbard in the highest esteem.
In the world of science fiction, A.E. van Vogt was considered to be in the very top rank of writers and
it was Hubbard who requested that they should meet at the end of the war. Van was invited to
dinner with Hubbard at Jack Parsons's house in Pasadena and was instantly dazzled by the force
of his personality; like everyone else around Hubbard, he rapidly found himself in a vaguely
supplicant position. Very soon he would be running around at Hubbard's beck and call.
'When we were first introduced, a hand of steel grabbed mine and squeezed it so hard that I braced
myself. He was physically very strong and in fine physical condition. He had been in command of a
gunboat in the Pacific. Once he sailed right into the harbour of a Japanese occupied island in the
Dutch East Indies. His attitude was that if you took your flag down the Japanese would not know
one boat from another, so he tied up at the dock, went ashore and wandered around by himself for
three days. Everyone else was scared except Hubbard; he was a brave man, no question about it.
'I knew his work as a writer, of course, and enjoyed it. He wrote about a million words a year,
straight on to the typewriter at incredible speed. My guess was that he typed at about seventy words