Ep. 109- Impressionable Minds and Hypnosis

A principal running hypnosis sessions for kids sounds like a quirky school story until the timeline turns grim. We’re Pearl and Holly, and we’re unpacking the George Kenney case out of Northport High School in Florida, where hypnosis meant for test anxiety, confidence, and athletic performance collides with tragedy and unanswered questions.

We walk through what’s known about Kenney’s “helpful” approach, how students describe the sessions, and why the details matter: unlicensed therapeutic hypnosis, minimal training, and private one-on-one time with teenagers. Then we lay out the three deaths that made national headlines. Marcus Freeman, a 16-year-old quarterback, dies in a crash after appearing frozen and trance-like behind the wheel. Wesley McKinley dies by suicide with Kenney acknowledging he hypnotized him the day before. Brittany Palumbo, stressed about SAT scores and school pressure, also dies by suicide, leaving friends and family asking what changed.

From there, we get into the uncomfortable but necessary conversation about suggestibility, adolescent brain development, and “power of suggestion” tactics that can drift from harmless pranks into manipulation. We also cover the legal aftermath, school district responsibility, and what mental health professionals say about whether hypnosis can trigger or worsen underlying anxiety, depression, or other dormant issues.

If you care about true crime podcasts, teen mental health, school safety, and ethical boundaries for authority figures, you’ll have a lot to think about here. Listen, then share your take with us, and if you’ve ever been hypnotized, email your story. Subscribe, leave a review, and send this to a friend who loves cases that live in the gray areas.

Transcript

A Chilly Daylight Saving Rant

SPEAKER_02 0:00

A Florida principal wanted to help students do better and be better. That's his job, right? But did it turn deadly? This is Hold My Sweet Tea.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I'm Pearl and I'm Holly. And I would really, really like to know why daylight savings time takes such a toll on the human body. Is it the circadian rhythm getting messed up? Like it literally hits you like a ton of bricks. Right. If if you know why, email us.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Right. Hold my sweet teapodcast at gmail.com because we are messed up.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Like it doesn't just change the time, it like literally takes a toll on your like your biological clock.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

And for the past couple of days, Pearl and I have been in a shit mood and our bodies hurt.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yeah. I mean, that's partially because of work, but we're exhausted. Right. And my ADHD. Mine's been flaring. Has been horrible. Yes. There's stuff like I didn't even realize I didn't finish and found it yesterday. And I was like, what was I even doing the other day? Did I do any of my job?

unknown 2:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I finally had to just sit down the other day because I I I couldn't focus and do anything at my house. So I was like, I I I give up. I give up. Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

I have said, damn it, Pearl, so many times. So many times.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

No, mine is, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

That's why I'd be screaming all the time. Everybody. But people around me, I'm glad nobody ever hears me, but maybe you or my daughter, because I'm like always, damn it, Pearl. Damn it. What are you doing? What is wrong with you? I know what's wrong with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Right. But if it's, you know, if you if you have the same feeling and it's messed up your rhythm or your day or your week. Or it's ruining your whole life. Exactly. Let us know, please, because we can't be the only ones that this happens to. Because I remember in fall when it changed in October. Was it October or the beginning of November? We we had a couple of rough days because the time changed. I just have a couple of rough days. All the time. All the time. Yeah. But this is rough days on top of like really rough days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

It's exponentially rougher.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Rough rough men. Oh my gosh. Yes. So that's my daylight savings time. Rant. I mean, it would be nice if they just did away with it.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Yeah, it would be great. I mean, you know, when I moved here when I was 12 from Arizona and people were talking about it, I was like, what's daylight savings time? Right, because they don't do it. They do not do it in Arizona. I had no idea what the hell y'all were talking about. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Like, what do you mean, fall back and spring forward? Y'all crazy. Right? And I have suffered since. Yep. And you're like, it's just an hour, but it's not. It's not. It's a whole body, mind, everything reset.

A Florida Principal With A Trick

SPEAKER_02 4:26

And you're like, no. It has thrown my entire everything off. All of it. I've like been late when I'm not late because duh, I still think it's 7:30. And no, it's not. It's 8:30. Yep. I know. But now we get to move on. To Florida? To a Florida man who happens to also be or used to be a high school principal.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

You just love those Florida people, huh?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

I think it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

A Florida man. That always makes me laugh. So. But and it it like raises attention. People are like, wait, what? Because they want to hear what happened. What happened? They're like, you cannot def you definitely can't top the last Florida man and then all of a sudden bam. Yes, I can. I don't know what's going on in Florida. But y'all the sunshine.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

The dudes be crazy.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

It's all the D. Vitamin D.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Well, I am deficient. So here we go. Here we are. That is that what's keeping me out of trouble. My my vitamin D deficiency.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

I don't know. It makes you kind of like lethargic.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

So it does. I'm too tired to do bad things.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

No, I really don't feel like going out and doing that. I can't get in trouble if I'm too tired to keep in trouble. That's right. That vitamin B12 and that vitamin D keep us out of trouble. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

So we're going to talk about George Kenny. He was a principal of Northport High School. Some reports say from 2001 to 2011. Others say 2006 to 2011. I think the time where he was practicing his hypnosis stuff was 2006 to 2011. So that may be the discrepancy there. Not positive. Don't quote me on it. I did my best. Right. But it was just not clear. In what would be the last year of his career as a high school principal, Kenny had performed hypnosis on students, parents, faculty, and family members at the school, at parties outside of school, and even on field trips.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Right. He's like, hey, let me show you my party trick.

The Quarterback Crash And Trance

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Now the problem arises in 2011 when three students that had participated in this hypnosis died. So the question remains, was the hypnosis to blame? And that is what we're going to explore. Oh, okay. So Kenny had been using hypnosis for many years untrained. He had even made podcasts on how to reduce test anxiety and improve athletic performance using hypnosis. He had a website that promoted these techniques, and one of the quotes on his website was banish fear and insecurity from your life. So he's like, I got the cure for your everything that ails you. Everything. The first teenager to lose his life was Marcus Freeman. He was a 16-year-old sophomore, and he was the quarterback of the football team. Living that quintessential teen life, you know, the football quarterback with the cheerleader girlfriend, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

What is that song called? I'm popular. If you're Gen X, you know.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Yeah. He had started participating in hypnosis before his games because he wanted to be able to tolerate pain during the games. Meaning he wanted to make sure that even if he got injured, but it wasn't like a serious take him off the field injury because this could end his career injury or end his life injury. He wanted to make sure that he could just play mildly injured and not be affected by the pain. So he could just stay in the game.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

And I will tell you that I watched like part of a documentary on this, um, and I fell asleep. But it's called Look Into My Eyes. And like people talk about this high school before they go into what happened, and they're like, you know, there it was an unremarkable place. Like they weren't winning football games, they weren't like there, they weren't known for anything really great. There wasn't any of that going on. It was just very typical.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

And but they say when Marcus came and was playing, it changed everything.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

They're like, oh, we're winning some games, we're we're getting a little popular.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Like team member, you know, all the team members actually felt like a team because they had a good leader and all of that. But on March 15th, 2011, Marcus and his girlfriend Carly were in Marcus's father's truck. He had gone to the dentist. Do I I don't know what happened at the dentist? It said it was a painful appointment. I'm sitting here going, should he have been the one driving if he just got a procedure done at the dentist? No, probably not. So I just wanted to put that out there. But Carly recalls that Marcus was all of a sudden just like frozen behind the wheel of the truck. She said his arms were outstretched and he had a very firm grasp on the steering wheel, and that his head tilted slightly back, and it appeared that his eyes had rolled back in his head as well. She said she was screaming at him because they were drifting across the lane.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

And it was like he couldn't hear her.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

That sounds more like a seizure than that.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah. She said it seemed like he was in a trance. She they ended up going off the road and hitting a tree, but Carly doesn't recall much else as everything went black. And then when she woke up in the hospital is when she learned that Marcus had passed away.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Oh wow.

Two More Deaths Raise Alarms

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Now within weeks of each other, there were two more incidents that happen. Two more students die. One of those is Wesley McKinley. He was also 16 years old, but he dies by suicide. He was a well-liked kid, but he was like into like BMXing and those competitions. Like, but he was like they all say he was really humble. They like some people said he was the selfie king and that he had like really great hair. Um he had like Justin Bieber hair, you know, that wispy do. And he was also a talented guitarist. Oh, okay. So he had a um audition at Juilliard, which would have happened had he not died the day before. By all accounts, he was happy. No one said he seemed sad, depressed, or anything of that nature. The only thing that anybody knew was obviously that he was feeling a little anxious about his audition. His mom says that he came home, walked in the house, set down his book bag that day, and was telling her that friends were coming over. She was asking what time. He didn't answer. She said he just walked basically in one door and went right back out the other. So he goes out the back door, doesn't respond to her at all. Then all of a sudden she hears sirens, and apparently there was a abandoned house nearby where they found him and he had hung himself inside this abandoned house. Oh gosh. Now, Dr. Kenny, as he's referred to, acknowledged that the day before the teen had committed suicide, he had in fact hypnotized him.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

So this is some dark psychological stuff, like coercion and mind control. But is it? That's the question here. I mean, I think you can like manipulate and persuade somebody and put that thought in their mind, kind of like a an NLP.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Well, I mean, like they talked about a J R O T C trip where they had done this hypnosis for fun at the hotel. Yeah. And that he had actually convinced one kid that he was putting sunscreen on. And when he came out of hypnosis, he he had lipstick smeared all over his face. Um, there was another kid he convinced that uh when he tried to go to his room, he was gonna be challenged and couldn't really find it because all the numbers would appear in Chinese. Yeah. And the kid admits to wandering around for like 20 minutes not knowing where the heck his room was because of this hypnosis. So I mean, and and it is of a suggestive nature, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:09

And I just finished the dark psychology manipulation audiobook, and they talk about that a lot, and they're about you know, hypnotists, how they can, you know, have groups of people and they do funny things or whatever, but they can use it as a manipulation technique and have them do things. But is it a thing where you know at this trigger point you'll do this? Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

And and that's a thing. Did he did he set triggers for kids? Nobody knows because most of his these were like personal sessions with these kids. Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

And he used to only do groups, so it transitioned to per like just one-on-one. So he could say or do what he wanted to do, and nobody was the wiser. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

A spokesman for the school district told ABC News that when the executive director of Sarasota High Schools had told uh had learned about what he was doing there, he had told Kenny to restrict the hypnosis to psychology class and that he could only hypnotize students with parental permission. I would say so too. Like you shouldn't be alone with them anyway. And this was before these kids had these one-on-ones with him. Now, the principal himself was well liked and had a lot of student support. A former student from the class of 2007 was one of many parents and students who posted on Facebook in support of the principal, stating, quote, Dr. Kenny was a great guy who helped me out a lot. He continued to say that many students volunteered to be hypnotized, even at his own graduation party, stating it was fun and nothing serious. They just did silly things.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Right, until you take it to a dark place and start doing these like suggestions and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

A former coworker of Kenny's recalled, quote, he's not really the type of person who would try to harm a child. And that's exactly the type of person that probably would.

unknown 17:23

Right?

SPEAKER_02 17:26

The only training that Kenny received was at the Omni Hypnosis Training Center in Florida. And director Gerald King would tell ABC News that the program was 100 hours of training that included all safety and parameters. He would comment on Kenny specifically as a person, saying, quote, he was terrific. He was one of the most compassionate people I ever met. He felt it was, quote, ludicrous to think that hypnosis could have led to a teenager suicide.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Well, I mean, yeah, it is like a legitimate therapeutic use, and you can use it for, like you said, pain management or breaking habits or doing something funny.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

But when you're people do it to quit smoking all the time.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

But, you know, when you focus on the darker aspects of it, then it's an application for control. You're controlling people.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

So it was claimed that Kenny had actually taught Marcus, the football player, how to self-hypnotize. And that is why his girlfriend believed that he had to have been in a trance when he drove off the highway. It was also suggested that Kenny's treatments left Wesley and another student, 17-year-old Brittany Palumbo, vulnerable. Brittany was a senior and was struggling with some test anxiety. Like she wasn't scoring well. And so like her SATs were low. She was upset. She was having a hard time getting into college because of it. Putting too much pressure on herself and probably like stressed herself to the max. And so she participates in some hypnosis. And it said actually that she retests after, and it didn't, her scores were still not any better.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Um, but her best friend had said that Brittany never showed any signs of depression before being hypnotized. And so, of course, she's still living with the question did the hypnosis cause her to want to kill herself? Yeah. Because she again, she came home from school, told her parents, I'm going to take a nap. They try to go tell her, you know, dinner's ready, whatever, trying to get her to come out of the room. And when she doesn't answer, they go into her room and they found that she had hung herself in her walkie-closet.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

So then you're running into, well, this is a little bit coincidental.

Charges Settlements And School Responsibility

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Right. So now we have three kids dying under weird circumstances. So Kenny gets charged in 2012 with practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license and he pleads no contest. So he serves a year on probation but doesn't do any jail time. Now the reason he did this this way is so that he could retire and keep his benefits. So he could still keep his retirement because if he were convicted of a felony, he would lose all benefits. Oh, of course. A wrongful death suit was filed against the school board, and those three families each receive a$200,000 settlement from the school board. And most of the details up until the point that this lawsuit occurred came from like either people who supported Kenny or families of the teens that had passed away. So the Herald Tribune had obtained testimony from this lawsuit that appears to point a pretty clear picture of an admin untrained in mental health was just seeking to hone his hypnosis techniques.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Right. He's like, oh, here's all these vulnerable children with their prefrontal cortex hasn't even developed. Let me manipulate them. And that's what I was about to say.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

You know, their brains are not fully developed. There's things that are still thickening and all this other stuff while you're a teenager. Makes them very susceptible, very easy to hypnotize.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

That's their dumb years where they're very uh Uh, easily influenced.

Training Gaps And What He Knew

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Right. I was I've been that's why all the crazy stuff happens while you're a teenager and and your parents are like, what is wrong with you? Well, my brain's not finished. Right. Even up into your like early 20s, you're still like, it's crazy. So deposition findings show that Kenny himself testified that he had only five days of hypnosis training in a formal classroom setting, but he had performed hypnosis on students, parents, and staff members for three years before he went to this training. Wow. He stated that he had initially learned how to hypnotize people by watching DVDs.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

I taught my infant, you know, how to do sign language by watching a DVD when he was little. Like he turned to a toddler and he could he could do sign language, but he ain't messing with people's brains. That ain't messing with people's brains.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Yeah. And then he admits that he did not know that hypnosis could be harmful in situations where someone may be depressed, and that he never even asked any of these students about their medical or mental health before hypnotizing them.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

BS, and you should be held 100% accountable. And that's my opinion. Let me throw that in.

Can Hypnosis Trigger A Crisis

SPEAKER_02 23:26

But he didn't even get charged with anything for that. Like he literally just pled no contest to practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license. So the Washington Post has a little article that said hypnotizing someone with underlying mental health issues can cause problems. And the Tampa Bay Times reports on this in 2011. And this is a quote out of the Tampa Bay Times. If a student or person is needing something to help them relax, there's usually some underlying issue causing that anxiety, and they probably should see a mental health professional. This is a quote from Richard Spana, a Tampa psychologist. So he's the one saying they need to seek some some mental help, not get hypnotized. But anyway. Does hypnosis cause suicide in and of itself? That is not really likely, says Dr. Spana. Can it trigger some sort of mental health problem that was dormant?

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Yes. Yes. But it also, did he record these sessions? Did he, you know, to say what he exactly said? Probably not. So therefore, his power of suggestion, you can gaslight somebody while they're under hypnosis throughout hypnosis. You can, you know, coerce them into things that they think when they wake up is real. So you're using like neurolinguistic programming and a trigger point. So when the that trigger point happens, they can revert to something else. Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

And like, you know, they said there was like no um signs that any of these like teenagers were experiencing any like suicidal ideation. And like they all seemed to be seeking help for things that were simple enough, like not directly related to something like that. But were they being completely truthful as to where their anxiety was coming from? Or I just want, I just want to um use this self-hypnosis so that I can not be in pain during my football stuff. And then I mean, does that lead you to believe he left a a painful dentist appointment and that he would be silly enough to self-hypnotize during driving? Like when I said he shouldn't have been driving at all, but if he was using hypnosis to control pain, yeah, did he think that it was okay to do it during driving because he was he was hypnotized before his football games?

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Like should you really be teaching a kid how to sit self-hypnotize?

SPEAKER_01 27:04

No.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

So does that still kind of make it your fault? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. So but that is the question that remains, and people continue to s to go back and forth on that issue. Did his private sessions of hypnosis lead to these other two kids killing themselves? We won't know. I guess we don't know. We won't know.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Because they can't tell us if I said he wasn't like a a licensed, was he a licensed hypnotist? Or he's he was he was a recreational hypnotist.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Yeah, he had gone to that class that was a hundred hours slash five days and learned off a DVD. So the only formal training was that class, but he was not a licensed therapeutic hypnotist. Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

So therefore he is still at fault for negligence because he performed these things on undeveloped or underdeveloped minds, and yeah, and I understand the school's stance on that situation is kind of bothersome to me.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Like if you know that he's been doing this for several years without a license, and then you tell him, oh, keep it to psychology class, and only if the parents allow it, I don't think it should have been allowed at all. No, like not at all. Cool party trick, dude.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Don't do it at school. Yeah, go do these to your adult friends if they are willing and and and understand like what's going on.

Write Us Your Hypnosis Stories

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Not to people with fully formed brains. Yeah, kids do that that don't be like. All the parts are fully formed. Yeah. You know, everything's thickened, everything's what it's supposed to be, so that you make rational decisions, you know, like it should have never been allowed at school. Should not have been at school, guys. Nope. So tell us what you think. Yeah. You can send those responses to hold my sweet tea podcast at gmail.com. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

And if you have ever been hypnotized, let us know like your experience. And if you have like a weird or cool or whatever, send that in for sweet tea after dark.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Because we can read that on tell us the story about your friend who got hypnotized that you watched.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yep. Whether it was funny or creepy or he said something really like, whoa, like, what is that? Let us know. I mean great.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah. Did he have some sort of stir of echoes situation happen?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

I love that movie, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

That is such a good movie.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

So yeah. Tell us, tell us, tell us. Yes. And we will have a sweet tea after dark episode this coming Thursday.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Mm-hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

I know y'all impatiently waiting for the next, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Right. And sending those letters in real quick, like emails. Yep.

unknown 30:10

Send them.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

So we can read them on the pod.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Again, that email address, because I know that's gotta be the reason. I'm not saying it enough. Hold my sweet tea podcast at gmail.com. Right. That's why we're just like trickling. Because only some of you catch it the first time, right? So no, I've said it three times in this one. Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

But you can also go into show notes and find it there. Email address. Click.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

You can go on our website and click to email us. There is a link to email us.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Yes. Do it. So easy. We want to hear your stories. We want to hear your thoughts and your opinions.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

We like opinions.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Don't agree. We'll still listen to those. We might not agree with them, but we will listen and read and answer you. And we take everything in. Some with a grain of salt. Some with a bag of sugar.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Right. But either way, I mean if you say something negative, but it's true, we we will adjust. Right. Exactly. Now, if it's just ridiculous and you're just being petty, that's different.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

You know who you know who's not petty?

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Patty Salzetta. It could be confusing. Petty Patty. She's not. She's not. And she's so not petty that she made our theme music. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

She's she's very kind and giving. That's right. Yeah. So send all that stuff in. And remember, as always, hold my sweet tea is a drunken bee production. And you guys stay safe out there. Don't let anybody into your head. And just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep dipping.