'Audience real star of the show,' hypnotist says

special to viewTerry Stokes performs in Las Vegas at the Harmon Theater. When not starring in Las Vegas, he entertains on the cruise ship circuit. special to viewAudience members can expect to be at the mercy of hypnotist Terry Stokes when he performs.

Imagine yourself on a 15-day cruise from Los Angeles to Hawaii and back, aboard the Diamond Princess, including five days of hopping from one island to another.

Then imagine that the ship's headline entertainer one evening is a hypnotist, a guy named Terry Stokes, who chooses your wife to be one of the 10 participants for his show. Imagine some more that he places her under hypnosis and tells her to give you the most passionate kiss of her life whenever he touches his forehead.

Well, that's the way it happened. And best of all, he touched his forehead about 10 times during the course of the one-hour show.

So, you get to talking to Stokes immediately following the show. After all, you want to know how he did it. That's so you can do it. But he laughs and doesn't tell.

And this is when you learn Terry Stokes lives in Henderson. He also said he lives part of the time on a boat that's moored at Lake Mead. Best of all, you learn that he does a show on the Las Vegas Strip seven nights a week when he's not working on cruise ships.

Naturally, you and your wife make it your business to attend his nightly show at the Harmon Theater, next to Planet Hollywood, after you return home from the cruise.

By now, you're convinced that Stokes is not only a master hypnotist, he's a master showman.

"I learned from a man named Jack Berry back in Atlanta while I was attending the University of Georgia," Stokes said. That was 37 years ago.

"Jack was a great hypnotist. His first instruction to me was to become a showman hypnotist," Stokes said, adding that he took Berry's advice and never looked back.

The third meeting with Stokes was at his Henderson home. The interview ranged from his nightly show "Hypnosis Unleashed" through a career in hypnosis that will soon include his son, Terry Stokes Jr., in an occasional show titled "The Old Guy and The Kid."

He earned his degree in behavior modification and delved into the science of hypnosis immediately after his college days. "But I learned more from performing stage shows over the years -- enough to convince me that 80 percent of what I learned about hypnosis in college is wrong."

He emphasized that one thing he has learned successfully is to make people laugh. "I'm proud of all my shows because every one of them is original. If anyone else does one of my acts, they're borrowing it from my creativity."

Stokes explained that all of his shows are designed to include audience participants. "I bring them up to the stage. That's the fun in showtime hypnosis. Participants from the audience are the real stars of all my shows," he said.

He demonstrated that quite well aboard the cruise ship. He had one woman hypnotized to sing the Mickey Mouse song as loud as she could, periodically, from wherever she was sitting in the audience, after hearing the command word from Stokes. He had another woman hypnotized to believe she had 11 fingers and 11 toes after he told her that the number six no longer existed in her mental lexicon. Thus, she was shocked after counting her toes and fingers on the stage. She then looked toward the guy sitting next to her, who was asleep under hypnosis. She slowly removed his sandals and counted his toes. Then she yelled out, "He has 11 toes, also!"

There was the rugged young man who looked like a weight lifter.

Under hypnosis, Stokes told him he was a 6-year-old who has just found his mother's cosmetic case and he would have a good time using its contents on his own face, which he proceeded to do. Then he was told to use the same cosmetics -- lipstick, facial powder and rouge -- on the guy sitting next to him, who was asleep at the time.

Stokes snapped his fingers and the two men were brought out of hypnosis, only to be totally baffled by their facial appearances after looking into a mirror.

"Those are the kinds of things I can do with an audience in a family setting, such as on a cruise ship," he laughed.

"Unfortunately, if you advertise that you're doing a family show in Las Vegas, you don't draw the crowds on a consistent basis. That's why my show at the Harmon Theater is a nighttime, adult show," he explained.

Stokes authored a book titled "Understanding Hypnosis," and he has made almost three dozen CDs to help people overcome various addictions and other problems.

"I have a 96 percent success rate with my hypnosis CD, which helps control weight and improve your self-image," he said. "I have an 85 percent success rate with my CD to help you stop smoking, and I have a 71 percent success rate with my CD to stop substance abuse."

He has produced similar CDs for pain control, putting a stop to nail biting, improving memory, ending the habit of procrastinating, and even a CD designed to stop bed-wetting.

"One thing I'm not very good at is staying married," Stokes said.

He added that he already has been through five wives.