LITMIR.BIZ

       Edgar, thin as a rail after a year of laryngitis.

      On the night of his performance, Hart invited Edgar onto the stage. When the oil burning footlights were dimmed, Hart stood directly in front of Edgar and told him to concentrate on an object which he dangled in front of Edgar’s eyes. Edgar slipped easily into a trance.

      No record exists of what words Edgar spoke, only that he did. His laryngitis was gone. The audience gasped, then began to cheer wildly. Hart had performed his magic.

      Or had he? Once Edgar was released from Hart’s hypnotic suggestion, his voice once again became a whisper.

      After the show had ended, Hart took Edgar and Gertrude backstage and explained the problem. Edgar could not go deep enough into a trance to take “post-hypnotic suggestions.” More trance sessions would be necessary.

      Assured that he could affect a permanent cure, Hart promised that for $200 he would keep trying until Edgar had completely regained his voice. Edgar and his parents, and likely Gertrude, too, agreed to the arrangement even though they hadn’t the money to pay his exorbitant fee. The problem was apparently solved when the editors of the Kentucky New Era newspaper stepped forward. They met with Hart and a Hopkinsville throat specialist who agreed to examine Cayce both before and after the hypnotic sessions. In return for an exclusive, they would see that Hart was adequately compensated.

      The sessions did not go as expected. Hart could easily put Edgar into a trance, but the moment Edgar was commanded to wake up, he lost his voice again. Given future events, it is reasonable to conclude that Hart’s appraisal of Edgar’s condition was correct. Edgar’s laryngitis was psychosomatic, a condition which could be helped with hypnosis. However, his condition was also partly physiological. His vocal chords were constricted when he was in a waking state. This was perhaps because Edgar, in a waking state, was trying so hard to suppress his psychic gifts. With his desire to please Gertrude, earn a better income, and lead a normal life, he had strayed far from the promise he had made to the angel of his youth. The “voice” within him was trying to be heard, and the only way to suppress it was to constrict his vocal chords. This condition, too, may also have been treated with hypnosis, but Hart didn’t know how to put the correct suggestion to Edgar when he was under. When hypnotized, Edgar had powers over his own body that were far beyond what Hart, or anyone else, could imagine.

      Hart gave up on Edgar. But others took up where he left off. College professor William Girao, who had been in the audience at the Opera House, wrote to John Quackenboss in New York, who was considered one of the foremost experts in hypnotism. The fact that he was also an ardent believer that illness could be healed by a person learning to marshal the forces of the unconscious mind would prove to be most helpful.

      Quackenboss took the case on and made repeated visits to Hopkinsville. Before he began his experiments, he questioned Edgar and his parents at length, listened to Leslie’s account of Edgar’s childhood experiences, and took copious notes.

      In one experiment, when Edgar was asked to sleep for twenty-four hours, he immediately closed his eyes and went to sleep. Not just this, Edgar appeared to be comatose. He didn’t awaken for twenty-four hours—precisely to the minute. This was a modest breakthrough, as it showed that when Edgar was put into a deep trance, he truly did what was asked of him. However, it didn’t cure his condition.

      After Quackenboss gave up, Girao continued to experiment and engaged the help of Al Layne, the only person he knew in Hopkinsville who had training in hypnotism. A delicate middle-aged man with a pencil-thin gray mustache and a prominent bald spot on the top of his head, Layne weighed less than 120 pounds, in contrast to his wife, Ada, a heavy, large-breasted, robust woman. As would soon prove helpful, Layne was predisposed to assist Girao because he knew Edgar personally. Layne’s wife, Ada, employed Edgar’s younger sister Anne Cayce and Gertrude’s aunt Carrie Salter at Anderson’s Department Store.

      Though Layne called himself both a hypnotist and physician and operated a small office at the back of Anderson’s Department Store, he had little formal training. The extent of his certification was a correspondence course. Still, he had a modest following of dedicated clients, many of them people such as himself, who suffered stomach ailments and who had found no relief from standard allopathic medicine. Like Professor Girao, he was an ardent believer in a popular slogan of the day, “Every man his own doctor,” and was part of a groundswell of popular interest in what today would be called holistic health. Hypnotism was merely one aspect of a medical treatment that also included osteopathy, the science of manipulating or realigning human vertebrae to permit the body to heal itself, and homeopathy, a treatment based on the use of natural remedies to trigger the body’s own immune response.

       Al Layne, taken from a newspaper article, c. 1906.

       Al Layne’s newspaper ad, c. 1902.

      Edgar, as Layne concluded, was in desperate need of both osteopathy and homeopathy, but it was hypnotism that he and Girao applied first. As in the earlier experimentation with Quackenboss, Edgar went into trance easily and would speak in a normal voice. But as soon as Edgar came out of trance, the laryngitis returned. The only thing new they learned from their efforts was the observation that Edgar was unusually talkative in his trance state. Layne could actually carry on a conversation with him. Edgar would stop talking only when the suggestion was made that he go into a deeper trance, at which point communication would cease altogether.

      Layne and Girao put their findings into a letter to Quackenboss. In response, the New York hypnotist said that he had observed a similar tendency when working with Edgar. He noted a particular point in the hypnosis process when Edgar’s unconscious self seemed to “take charge.” An avenue to explore, Quackenboss suggested, was to put Edgar “under” and ask Edgar’s unconscious self what he thought should be done to restore his voice.

      Edgar’s parents were reluctant to let their son be hypnotized yet again. He had lost sixty pounds and as Edgar himself admitted, was a “nervous wreck.” Now, along with his Bible, he carried a pencil and pad, which was the only way he could communicate with the outside world.

      Gertrude, too, had suffered.

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