Dark Side Of Hypnosis

A nonsense phrase. A 2 AM call. A clean theft with no memory left behind. From that eerie setup, we pull a thread that unravels a high-stakes story about trust, manipulation, and the raw power of suggestion. We walk you through David’s ordinary morning routine, the shock of a ransacked safe, and the uneasy realization that nothing was forced—someone used a key and knew the combination. When a new infrared, motion-activated camera sends footage to the cloud, the truth gets stranger: the person on tape is David himself.

What follows isn’t a simple whodunit; it’s a how-could-that-happen. We dig into the arrest, the disbelief of coworkers, and the blank space in David’s memory. Searching for answers, we turn to hypnotherapy and uncover a chilling mechanism: a post-hypnotic trigger allegedly planted by a trusted practitioner during earlier weight-loss sessions. With a careful plan, the owner, police, and a second hypnotherapist run a controlled test. One late-night call and a single phrase set David in motion—drive, unlock, empty the safe, then deliver the cash to a suburban mailbox. He returns home and sleeps, unaware. Even then, skepticism holds, so detectives watch the mailbox and witness more drop-offs from other unsuspecting patients, night after night.

This case opens a wider lens on hypnosis, criminal intent, and the ethics of therapy. We explore how post-hypnotic suggestion can shape behavior, why cues like distinctive words can bypass ordinary awareness, and where professional boundaries must be ironclad. We also examine the role of surveillance technology—time-stamped cloud video and patient stakeouts—in transforming a mystery into evidence strong enough to topple a scheme tied to dozens of workplaces and years of quiet theft. Along the way, we raise hard questions about consent, memory, and accountability when someone’s actions and awareness split apart.

If stories about true crime, psychology, and the uneasy edges of control grip you, press play. Then tell us: do you trust your own memories as much as your eyes on a screen? Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help more curious listeners find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the Creepy Show, the exploration of unexplained encounters. And now your host, the Master of Creep.

The 1:45 AM Phone Call

Morning Routine And Workday Start

First Robbery Discovered

Cameras Installed And Calm Returns

Second Robbery And Cloud Video

The Arrest Of David

Seeking Help Through Hypnosis

The Midnight Trigger Experiment

Mailbox Money Trail

Arrest Of Dr. Madden And Fallout

Creepy Close And Subscribe

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Well, hello, my little creepies. It's time for another episode of The Creepy Show. Tonight's episode is called The Dark Side of Hypnosis. David's cell phone rings, waking him up at one forty five in the morning. Who in the hell is calling me at this time of the hour? He scrambles to find his glowing smartphone that was sitting on a small table next to the bed, and his eyes were too blurry to read the caller's ID that was flashing on the face of the phone. Hello? The voice on the other end of the line said Orange Pecans and that's it. Just orange pecans. Well that's strange. And then the call ended. David was way too tired to even question the call. He sat up on his bed for a minute. He put his phone back down on its charging base and he laid back down and drifted off to sleep. Well, the next morning David woke up to the sound of his alarm, reminding him that he still had a job and it was time to get ready to go to work. He shuffled his feet toward his bathroom with his eyes still half closed. Until he gets his first cup of coffee, David was still technically asleep. After going to the restroom, David grabbed his favorite coffee cup and wandered into the kitchen and stood in front of his single K cup coffee maker. He poured in some bottled water and opened up the drawer below his coffee maker where he kept all of his K cup coffee pods. He inserted one of the pods into the coffee maker and pushed the start button. He stood there just staring at the coffee maker with his blurred vision, waiting for hot coffee to start pouring out. Finally, after what seemed to take an hour, the coffee started to pour into his cup. Well, actually it only took about sixty seconds, but when you're waiting for that first cup of coffee, it could seem like a lifetime. As the coffee started pouring out, the first thing to hit David was the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Just the smell of coffee snapped his eyes wide open, and he could hardly wait to taste the hot coffee. It seemed like a drug to David. He can't function without his first cup of coffee. Well, David would continue to get ready to go to work, showering, shaving, brushing his teeth, and getting dressed for another dreaded day of work. David was the manager of a family-owned sporting goods store located in Dallas, Texas. The store sold fishing equipment and hunting supplies. And as David was starting out the door, he grabbed his cell phone, which is still sitting on the charger base. And that's when he noticed that someone had called him earlier, like at 145 in the morning. He barely remembers the phone ringing and just assumed that it was a prank call or maybe somebody had the wrong number. He didn't even remember what the caller wanted, he just remembers being pissed off because the call woke him up in the middle of the night. David arrived at the sporting goods store to open it up. He was always the first one there. After all he was the manager. David opened up the front door and went into the back office and set up the store's cash register. Now each cash register starts off with two hundred dollars in twenties, tens, fives and ones. But today it was going to be a little different. David opened up the safe where all the money is kept and notice that the money was gone. Wait, what? Yes, the money was missing. The store had been burglarized. He immediately called the police and reported the missing money. And at this point other employees started arriving. David met them outside and told them what had happened. We're waiting for the police to arrive so we can't go into the store until they get here. It's now a crime scene. He didn't want to disturb any of the evidence. Just a few minutes later the police arrived and David let them into the building. The police cleared the building and asked to see the video surveillance tape. David said, We don't have video cameras because we have never had a problem like this before. And David admitted that it would be time to install a video surveillance system. The police checked out all of the windows, the doors, and roof access, and it seemed that everything was in order. And they said, Well, whoever broke in must have had a key because nothing else is damaged, including the safe. Well that means that the person who robbed the store knew the safe combination. Now this news was very worrisome to David because he knew everyone who had a key, and there was only a handful of people. And these were his most trusted employees, and he had known these people for many years. The next week the owner of the shop installed a new surveillance system that automatically activated and recorded when it detected any motion. It was also equipped with an infrared feature so that it could record in complete darkness. The case was never solved and life went on. Several months passed and everything was back to normal. Then on a Wednesday morning, David opened up the door of the shop and found that the safe was cleaned out again. David exclaimed No, not again. He called the police and they arrived less than three minutes, but this time it was different. We have videotape, so now we can identify the person responsible for breaking in and stealing the money. This was a state-of-the-art video surveillance system, and it recorded everything and it saves it off-premise. That means in the cloud on the internet. So that way if somebody did break in, they couldn't simply steal or break the surveillance system. They would have to know how to get online and reach the actual video files. The owner of the sporting goods shop was the only person who had access to these files. The owner gave access to the Dallas police who started investigating the crime. The recording time stamped on the crime happened at 248 AM. And that's when you can see a person entering the front door, and yes, they seem to have a key. The police said, Well don't worry, we got them now. It's just a matter of time until we arrest somebody. And this news made David feel much better. Now we can go back to being normal, having that surveillance system really paid off. Later that day, the shop owner dropped by and right behind him were the police. The police said, David, can we have a little talk in the office? David said sure. David was thinking that someone must have been arrested in the case. And as soon as David reached the office, he asked, Well did you get him? And the police said, Yep, we did. Please put your hands behind your back, David. He said What? The police handcuffed David and read him his rights. The shop owner got the keys from David as he was being escorted through the store and into the squad car. The other employees watched in disbelief. It was David? No, that can't be right. David had a dumbfounded look on his face as the police drove him back to the Dallas police station. He was escorted into a small briefing room where he met a detective who had a laptop with the surveillance video on it. David saw the video for the first time and well sure enough, he witnessed himself entering the store and cleaning out the safe. David exclaimed, That mur that's not right. That no, that person must have a mask on. I didn't do that. The explanation fell on deaf ears as the police asked David if he wanted an attorney. And David just lowered his head and shook it yes. David was taken in front of a judge who determined a probable cause and set the bell at$5,000. A court date was set for David and it was scheduled to go about three months down the road. David had a rich uncle who put up the bail money and got him out of jail a couple of hours later. Now David was completely confused. He told his attorney, Well, maybe I'm just going crazy because I have no memory of doing anything like this. Besides, where's the money? Supposedly, I stole more than forty three hundred dollars, so where's the money? His attorney just stared back at him and said, You know, I've never had a case like this. David felt despondent. He had nowhere to go. He turned to a hypnotherapist, Dr. Chester Madden, who helped him lose weight earlier that same year. David thought, well, maybe Dr. Madden can unlock my mind and help me remember what I did. He made an appointment and started talking to Dr. Madden. But Dr. Madden declined the session. And he said, Well, I really don't do this kind of work. I usually deal with just people wanting to lose weight or maybe stop smoking. But that didn't stop David. He wanted answers. So he reached out to another hypnotherapist named Dr. Brent Lawson, and he agreed to help David. During the session, it was discovered that David was still under the influence of Dr. Madden, the first hypnotherapist. It was revealed that Dr. Madden had hypnotized David to perform the crime whenever he heard the term orange pecans. David's attorney said, You're never gonna get this through a court, you know that, right? David's attorney recommended that David should take a plea deal for a lesser jail term. David said no, and he talked to the owner of the sporting goods store and he asked for a meeting to explain what had happened. Well the owner of the store believed David's story because he had known David for more than twenty years and he knew him to be an honest person. The owner agreed and the two met with a police detective, and they decided to give a key to the shop back to David in order to try an experiment. This time it was Dr. Lawson who called David up in the middle of the night, and in a deep, hypnotic voice said Orange Pecans and hung up on the phone. Well, sure enough, David stood up and he got dressed. He drove himself to the sporting goods store and he unlocked the front door. But this time was different, because David was being followed by the Dallas police, Dr. Lawson, and the shop owner. But they watched in amazement as David robbed the store at three o'clock in the morning. He got back into his car and he drove across town to a mailbox and he put the cash inside. But this was the mailbox didn't stood in front of Dr. Madden's home. David seems to be in some sort of hypnotic trance during this entire incident. David went back home and went back to bed like nothing had ever happened. Finally, the case was solved. However, David's attorney said, No, not so fast. The prosecution is gonna claim that you are faking all of this, and there's still really no proof. Well, the police detective agreed with David's attorney, so they decided to stake out Dr. Madden's home, and to their surprise, a couple of nights later, another person showed up and they put money in Madden's mailbox, and then another and another. Over the course of several weeks, Dr. Madden's mailbox was used as a money drop-off for more than a dozen crimes. Well, it seems that Dr. Madden is not really into weight loss. He was hypnotizing his patients to steal money from their workplace and then giving it all back to him without their knowledge. He must be pretty good at hypnosis, but not too good in covering up crimes. All the charges were dropped on David and he went back to work at the sporting goods store. Dr. Madden was arrested and a warrant was served at his home, and it revealed a safe full of money missing from an estimated 250 crimes. Yet it seems that this has been going on for many years. In fact, there were still people serving time in jail for crimes that they didn't really commit. More than a dozen who were serving jail time can thank David for breaking this case. But I only have one question for you, my little creepies. Do you like to eat orange pecans? Well now, have you had enough? You know you could listen to another episode of Creep Radio. Oh, don't forget to subscribe and share.