Case History: Palle Hardwich
…the faith-curer of the grotto has this advantage over the endormeur of the platform or the hospital. He does not intrude his own personality and train his patient to subject his mental ego to that of his “operator.” The “mesmerizer” seeks to dominate his subject; he weakens the will power, which it is desirable to strengthen, and aims at becoming the master of a slave. I do not need further to emphasize the dangers of this practice… – Ernest Hart, Hypnotism, Mesmerism, & the New Witchcraft, 1898
The Predator: Nielsen
In January, 1947, Bjorn Schouw Nielsen was sentenced to Horsens State Prison (the facility for Denmark’s worst criminals) in Denmark for crimes committed during the Nazi occupation. Nielsen, a self-educated, street smart, talkative, and imaginative con man, was always looking for an easy profit. He had a previous conviction and commitment to the State Institution for Psychopathic Delinquents. His recent crimes were informing on a previous employer to the Germans and blackmailing Resistance Movement businessmen for large sums of money.
He had been occupying his mind while in Horsens by planning his next, “perfect” crime. He defined a perfect crime as one which would be impossible to trace back to him, a crime for which another person would inevitably serve the jail time, and he—even if accused—would inevitably be let off. He bragged, again and again, to other prisoners about his plan.
Nielsen may have heard of the 1936 case of criminal hypnosis in nearby Sweden. The press called it the “Sala affair.” A criminal hypnotist, called only “Th.” in newspaper reports, had developed a gang of young men and women who raised money by cocaine trade, prostitution, robbery, and murder. Every gang member was Th.’s hypnotic subject. He had conditioned each with an eclectic mix of occultism, yoga, and hypnosis.
Nielsen studied hypnosis. He learned which traits mark a susceptible person. He practiced his hypnotic techniques on other persons whenever he had an opportunity.
The Prey: Palle Hardwick
A few months after arriving at Horsens, Nielsen met Palle Hardwick in the prison workroom. He noticed the younger man’s spiritual interests (often characteristic of hypnotically susceptible persons). He saw how depressed Palle was, and how inclined he was to turn to religion for answers. Nielsen targeted Palle for remaking into an agent of his perfect crimes.
Palle’s Childhood and Youth – Palle Hardwick and his identical twin brother were their parents only children. They were raised in a middle-class Danish family before, and during, World War II. His father was good-natured, hard-working, and reliable. His mother was witty and ambitious. What Nielsen did to Palle broke their hearts.
In childhood, Palle was intelligent, sensitive, reliable, dutiful, good with his hands, ambitious, and goal-oriented. He later called his youth “a series of little five-year plans.” He planned to have a bright future. He was also introspective, quiet, and interested in religion. Palle never smoked or drank. With a few heterosexual exceptions, he was chaste.
From HIPOCORPS to Capture – In 1940, at age 16, Palle joined a volunteer rifle group organized by the Nazis who then occupied his homeland. (They appeared to be there to stay.) The party’s conveyer-belt system then carried him through the Youth Section of the Danish Nazi Party to the volunteer German Army Corps, and finally to the German Auxiliary Police (also known as Hipokorps).
Palle was in the Hipokorps only during the last three months of the war, but it ruined his life. He never participated in interrogations or mistreatment of detainees. In fact, he actively avoided assignments that would cause him to mistreat other persons. When assigned to be an interpreter for the Germans, he shot himself in the leg. When he became ambulatory again, they gave him a different assignment. Thus, he managed to avoid participation in the persecution of Danish Jews or of Danish Resistance members. Years later, Palle recalled his three months in the Hipokorps as one of the most unhappy periods of his life.
As the Allied army approached, he became disillusioned, despairing, disgusted. He was sure the Germans would lose the war, but he felt enough loyalty to his Hipocorps unit that he did not walk away from them. A force of combined Allies and Danish resistance fighters arrested Palle on May 8, 1945, together with German troops trying to retreat from Denmark. His captors took him to Horsens State Prison to be held for trial. The route ran by his parents’ home, which Palle had not seen for a year and a half.
He stared apathetically out the window of the train, grieving, until he arrived at prison. At Horsens, they placed him in solitary confinement in the cellar for a few days, then moved him to a tiny cell, shared with another “collaborator.” Miserable, hopeless, monotonous prison days followed, one after another. Faceless cellmates came and went.
Trial and Imprisonment – After sixteen months in prison, on September 9, 1946, Palle was finally tried. Postwar Denmark hated collaborators, especially Hipokorps members. Being caught in the company of Germans went hard with Palle also. He was sentenced to fourteen more years in Horsens. He was only 22.
Palle’s twin brother also was sentenced for collaboration, but he received a far lighter sentence. He soon got out of jail, found a job in the wholesale business, and did well from then on. Palle remained confined, believing he had many years left to serve.
Palle did not fit in at Horsens. A prison report dated December 27, 1946, said he was “Polite and well behaved. Young idealist. Works well.” Palle, himself, later wrote of this period:
For me there was no way back to my earliest youth, before the whole thing began. I did not think that there would be any future for me even on that distant day many years in the future when I might possibly be released….I tried to find a meaning in things from a religious point of view, by thinking that they were ordained by God. I wondered whether He even existed and how He could have created such a world as ours. But that only made matters worse. I began to doubt whether there was a God who directed the universe, or whether it was not merely one long string of fortuitous circumstances. I felt quite alone…as if I were in a diving-bell at the bottom of the sea which was never going to come up again. (Palle quoted in Reiter, 1958, p. 73)
Those depressed feelings all changed, however, the day that Palle experienced a spontaneous mystical encounter with a “guardian spirit.” The spirit declared that Palle’s long sentence to imprisonment was not an accidental misfortune, but was, indeed, part of God’s plan for him, intended to develop and strengthen him for fulfillment of a later task. From the moment he received it, that message became very dear to Palle, a source of hope and strength.
Nielsen the “Guru”
Soon after he met Palle, Nielsen began to tell the gullible young man a series of grandiose lies. Nielsen claimed to know all about religion, to have read lots on it, to have been a member of a society for psychical research. In fact, he said, he was a master yogi–a guru! He promised to get Palle books to study on religion, to initiate him into the mysteries he had learned. He would give Palle an apprenticeship in the arts of yoga mastery. The charming, smooth-talking sociopath promised Palle that his lessons in Indian “philosophy” and yoga training would reveal life’s true meaning, grant escape from his present misery, make him independent of this world, and guarantee a better one in an afterlife.
Palle resisted Nielsen’s aggressive overtures of friendship.
Nielsen did not give up. He pressured Palle, every day, in the workshop. Nielsen expounded on the reincarnation of souls. He said hypnosis was the way to learn about one’s past lives. He promised that, through “mind expansion,” Palle could become one with the “divine cosmic principle” and have direct communion with God. He chattered about levitation, channeling spirits, telepathy, and yogis who walked through walls or who could cure a broken leg in five minutes. He gave Palle books to read about yoga.
Palle read the books. He redefined his beliefs and his spiritual goal in terms of what he read and of what Nielsen was saying. He was challenged by the “great and difficult labor” of mind expansion. The books promoted the Eastern concept of learning psychic mind skills from a teacher. Nielsen purred that Palle obviously had talent and even he, the guru, could learn much from him–if Palle would let him become his teacher. Palle believed everything that Nielsen said.
Palle Learns “Yoga” – Reassured by Nielsen’s play-acting, the lonely young man finally accepted his proffered friendship. Palle and Nielsen were both accused of collaboration. Both were in prison, both assigned to the workroom. Their friendship seemed natural to Palle. Soon, he alsoaccepted Nielsen’s offer to teach meditation skills.
After that, in the workroom, every day, often in a corner by themselves, Nielsen did “spiritual” exercises with Palle. Like most covert hypnotists, Nielsen carefully avoided the word “hypnosis.” He always substituted occult terminology for the “H” word. He called hypnotic episodes, “concentrations.” He gave Palle “relaxation exercises,” or “magnetic strokings,” or “yogic training in how to cease thinking.”
Nielsen always began new induction routines by requiring Palle to try it on him first. Con artist Nielsen would then pretend to be completely, helplessly under Palle’s mental influence. Nielsen’s play acting banished any fear Palle might have that Nielsen could get power over him. Only then, did Nielsen let Palle, who was now very interested and confident, have a turn at being the subject of the “experiment.”
Thus, when Nielsen introduced a hand locking induction routine to Palle, Palle first did it to the guru. Nielsen only pretended to be unable to pull his hands apart when Palle said, “Try it. You cannot pull your hands apart.” Nielsen knew the routine was just a trick played on ignorant people who don’t realize that everybody’s knuckle size prevents them from pulling apart clasped hands–unless they spread their fingers to allow the larger knuckles to pass through. This is a test of hypnotic susceptibility. It’s also a hypnosis induction, because if a subject believes they have been compelled to obey by mental power, they may continue to obey suggestions.
When it was Nielsen’s turn to give the suggestion to Palle, Palle really “locked” his hands. He really believed that he could not pull his clasped hands apart when challenged to try it. Then Nielsen knew, for sure: Palle was a susceptible hypnotic subject, a proper candidate to be the agent of the guru’s perfect crimes.
After the hand-locking exercise, Nielsen led Palle in breathing exercises combined with various yoga postures and concentrations on various mental ideas. To Palle it was all just an amusing game, a toy, a prison pastime. He had no idea that Nielsen was covertly conditioning him for a mind-controlled life
Nielsen asked Palle, whose prison behavior record was better than his, to request to share a cell with him. Palle received permission. (That began a long series: Nielsen tells Palle what to say, or do; Palle obeys.) From the spring of 1947, to the fall of 1949, Palle and Bjorn Nielsen were always together in their cell or in the workroom.
From Trance to Hypnosis – Nielsen told Palle that he knew a short cut to the meditative high (trance depth) which Palle now yearned to reach. He led Palle through more hand lockings, and relaxation exercises. He made Palle’s arms or legs stiff (catatonic). He did magnetic strokings of a prone and resting Palle. All those were deepening exercises, training for automatism. Through that series of disguised inductions, Nielsen was carefully shaping Palle into a highly trained hypnotic subject. In the meantime, Nielsen kept Palle calm and confident, without suspicion.
Nielsen finally proposed hypnosis to Palle–actually using the H word. The guru made it seem nonthreatening by, as usual, having Palle first hypnotize him. Nielsen again pretended to be deeply affected. Palle again believed that Nielsen was easy to hypnotize and that he was difficult to hypnotize. The truth was the opposite: Palle was far more susceptible than Nielsen. Believing himself to be the more difficult person to hypnotize, Palle accepted being, most often, the subject of inductions. Nielsen explained that he was just trying to bring Palle up to his own yoga skill level.
Nielsen’s fertile imagination kept generating new mind-expansion exercises. Jail-weary Palle welcomed them all. They were easy entertainment, a mental escape. Soon, Nielsen was keeping Palle busy doing “yoga” almost around the clock–excepting when he was eating or sleeping. The ceaseless training made Palle’s hypnotic suggestibility constantly increase.
Nielsen, next, captured and redirected Palle’s sex drive for the purpose of powering his hypnotic control. Kundalini yoga requires celibacy outside of trance and channels sexual energy into intense, orgiastic trance experience. Palle’s kundalini concentrations did, one day, result in an intense climax enveloped in hallucination. Palle believed that he had, in that moment, experienced fusion of his body and spirit and had found unity with a divine essence. Now, joyfully, utterly in love with the trance trip (and perhaps somewhat so also with the guru who worked so hard to deliver these trance highs to him), Palle eagerly anticipated more such orgasmic fusions. He believed he was moving away from the mundane terrestrial world toward contact with a lofty spiritual force.
Social Isolation
Palle was now completely isolated, not only because he had become a space case, but also because Nielsen had used threats, flattery, and visual and auditory negative hallucinations to further isolate him. Under deep hypnosis, Nielsen had instructed:
“From this moment you will no longer speak to nor address your previous comrades…You will feel that all former ties have been broken. Day and night your entire consciousness will be directed towards the divine. If they approach you, you will not see them, and if they talk to you, you will not hear. They belong to a lower world, which you have nothing whatever to do with.” (Reiter, p. 110)
Palle’s former friends in prison thought his new condition of perpetual walking trance, and total ignoring of them, was very odd. Although they were upset by the change in Palle, none of them spoke to the prison authorities about it. Nielsen also programmed Palle against his parents and other relatives. Palle obeyed the secret regimen and, thus, became totally dependent upon Nielsen, now his only permitted associate.
Nielsen , however, was not isolated, and he couldn’t resist bragging about his control over Palle to some of the other prisoners.
Again and again, day after day, many times in one day, Nielsen pushed Palle to go into trance as deep as possible and to stay there as long as possible. He also taught Palle self-hypnotic techniques to make his state of lowered consciousness last longer. Nielsen never once dehypnotized Palle, never told him the trance was now over, and he could again be “awake.” Palle was now walking around in a state of constant trance, of varying depth, instead of his normal mental condition.
Nielsen explained away Palle’s awareness of being in a constant deep trance by saying it was evidence that he was in the presence of the divine. Palle believed him. He wanted to hang on to that divine connection—even if it meant losing contact with reality. In July, 1947, a psychiatrist (who happened to be studying war criminals at Horsens Prison) examined Palle. The doctor wrote in his report that Palle was an idealist with no psychotic traits, no abnormal characteristics at all—except “a tendency to parry questions with obscure oracular answers.” (Quoted in Reiter, 1958, p. 205) Obscure “oracular answers” can be evidence of a trance state.
Palle’s constant effort, now, was focused on soaring higher and higher (lower and lower trance depths) in each new “concentration” that Nielsen assigned to him. Palle hoped to attain the highest yoga condition and achieve his dream of ecstatic and mystical union with divinity, with the universe’s “vital principle.” Nielsen’s goal, on the other hand, was complete control of Palle’s mind by repeated inductions, increased trance depth, and obedience drills. It usually takes much trance training for a subject to reach the deepest levels of trance. A large number of hypnotic sessions “increases the possibility of criminally exploiting the depth of hypnosis.” (Hammerschlag, p. 30)
Palle Accepts “X” As God – The guru then began a new “spiritual exercise.” As usual, first Palle hypnotized Nielsen, who pretended to be deeply affected. In his sham state of hypnosis, Nielsen “channeled” the voice of a spirit. He made clear which spirit it was. He was supposedly speaking with the voice of the angel who had appeared to Palle and reassured him. Nielsen said,
“I am your guardian spirit. You believe that what has happened to you is a great misfortune for you. But that is not the case. It has all been to strengthen you and test you, in order that you may carry out the mission which it is your destiny to fulfil.” (Reiter, 1958, p. 108)
To Palle, Nielsen’s bogus channeling was a true and precious revelation, and he hoped for more. Palle never doubted that he should obey the “divine power” who had bestowed those words upon him. Nielsen told Palle that his guardian spirit was named “X.”
It was, then, Palle’s turn to be hypnotized. When Palle was in deep trance, Nielsen told him that X was the same person as God. He designated X as Palle’s induction cue to a deep, amnesic trance. From that moment on, Palle had complete amnesia for all his time spent in X-related trance. Under the cover of that amnesia, Nielsen hammered into Palle’s unconscious the belief that Palle’s guardian spirit–who was supposedly God and was named X– would hereafter deliver all his orders to Palle via Nielsen.
At first, X’s orders, via Nielsen, came in phony seances during which Nielsen pretended he was hypnotized and channeling the spirit’s voice. Soon, however, Nielsen developed a wider variety of X communication systems. Palle soon gave the same obedient response to words that Nielsen said while making an X with his body—such as having his legs or arms crossed in the sign of an X–or to the words written following the symbol X in a letter.
Eventually, all Nielsen had to do was say, “X says…” It was a convenient setup, informal and unrecognizable to any random persons who might overhear the guru in the process of implanting new hypnotic commands in Palle. It worked in any social situation. It worked even when Palle seemed to be in a normal waking state. Nielsen would say, “The guardian spirit wants…” or “X wants you to…” Palle would obey, as a hypnotic compulsion, whatever followed those cue phrases.
Sometimes, Nielsen completely concealed his role in X’s messages by causing Palle to have posthypnotic hallucinations in which X materialized before him and spoke the predator’s instructions. In the first of these post-hypnotically hallucinated scenes, Nielsen instructed Palle’s unconscious that the spirit would act the same as Palle’s spontaneous experience of a guardian spirit had. So it comforted him, and seemed protective and loving. Over time, however, Nielsen weaned Palle from comfort and protection. X was more and more likely to simply show up and give orders. Being completely amnesic for the trance sessions during which Nielsen programmed him to experience these posthypnotic visions, Palle accepted the apparitions with complete faith.
Nielsen made Palle deeply terrified of the slightest failure to give unconditional, absolute obedience to any command from X. He did that by threatening banishment to spiritual darkness in this life and to hell in the next–and then concealing the threat under amnesia. The number one rule to which X demanded obedience was the rule of Secret, Don’t Tell. Nielsen indelibly impressed on Palle’s unconscious several corollary admonitions that supported the basic rule of secrecy. X told Palle never to speak of X, or of his “revelations” from X, or of Nielsen, who was X’s “instrument.” In fact, Palle was never to speak to any other prisoners at all.
The threats, if Palle should weaken and tell, were as bad as those for imperfect obedience. He would be judged as having failed in his mission in this life, as having failed all his guardian spirit’s tests. He would have no chance whatsoever of salvation and would be damned forever.
Preparation for a “Mission” – X (Nielsen) now told Palle’s unconscious more about his “mission.” He made it sound lofty and righteous. X said that God was personally ordering Palle to end all wars and to develop and lead a world government in which God and Mankind would be spiritually one. He said that Palle had been designated by God to be the savior of humanity who would “help, cure, and redeem” them, and lead them from suffering into happiness.
Nielsen spent the next year eroding all the moral values that Palle had internalized up to that point in his life, his original superego. Palle’s belief in X was made the basis of a new superego system which displaced the old values. Nielsen did that by training Palle to unconsciously judge his behavior as good or bad based only on his X programming—what would cause X pleasure or displeasure. In a condition of obedience to X, Palle would feel happy and peaceful. Resisting X’s commands resulted in feelings of misery, fear, and guilt.
Nielsen waited until Palle was conditioned to shift instantly to deep trance on cue and to have total amnesia for time spent in trance before he began giving him really noxious suggestions. That conditioning, combined with the comforting fantasy of world omnipotence and a savior’s mission, unconsciously counterbalanced Palle’s amnesic reality of humiliating submission to ever more cruel and humiliating demands by Nielsen.
The guru told Palle that his spiritual exercises were now going to teach independence from all physical and material ties. They all involved self denial because X said that Palle must now practice indifference to whatever was dear to him. The training exercises in “independence,” however, always involved Palle giving Nielsen his worldly goods. Thus, Palle yielded up his daily meat ration to Nielsen, then his watch, then his accordion. If Palle resisted any concept or command, Nielsen explained that the student’s inner resistance was caused by “matter” fighting “spirit.” And he would urge Palle to overcome that rebellious “body resistance to the spirit.”
Nielsen prepared Palle to commit robbery and murder for him by means of a classic series of desensitization exercises. He said Palle was “above” the usual moral principles such as right of property, or respect for life. X ordered Palle to free himself from all those “middle class morals.” In deep trance visualizations, Nielsen gave Palle systematic training in criminal acts. At first, he induced Palle to hallucinate only minor crimes. The guru acted as if it were all a joke–just a little thievery. However, the acts which Nielsen made the hypnotized Palle visualize gradually worsened: robbery, safe cracking, murders, then murdering Palle’s own mother. That last item was agonizing for Palle, so Nielsen made him experience it, in hallucination, over and over.
X also instructed Palle to never reveal Nielsen’s involvement in any crime that Palle might commit. And he told him to never be hypnotized by anybody but Nielsen.
Palle now walked around in a near-constant trance. He believed that he had direct, daily instructions from God (via X). He was forbidden to tell what was really going on in his life to his conscious mind or to anybody else. He was sealed against induction by any other hypnotist. He believed he had been designated the messiah who would unite the Scandinavian peoples and found an ideal society, because X had told him so. He believed he was founding a new patriotic underground. (Having been long and severely punished for joining the occupier, Palle now was the “resistance.”) His mixture of religious and political delusions was an artificial psychosis, created by means of hypnosis. To the casual onlooker, however, Palle would seem merely insane.
Nielsen was finished hypnoprogramming Palle. It was early in 1949. He gave Palle instructions, via X, to escape from Horsens prison–and then to return and free his guru. Palle carried out the escape exactly as ordered, but he was recaptured before he could return and attempt to free the guru. Nobody knew that Nielsen was behind it. Palle was sentenced to serve extra prison time because of his escape.
Palle Out of Prison
Horsens Prison was now shortening the sentences of all prisoners accused of collaboration. Nielsen got out a few months before Palle. After the guru was gone, Palle was not walking around in a trance any more. As Palle’s release date neared, however, Nielsen began sending letters to him. They always closed: “Greetings from X.” Seeing those words thrilled Palle. They meant that X had not forgotten him. For a moment, he felt the old rush of contact with the divine.
Palle walked out of Horsens, a free man, on October 29, 1949. That day might have been the beginning of a new, better life for him, but his freedom was a cue that Nielsen had pounded in for years. Old hypnotic suggestions activated by that cue now poured into Palle’s consciousness. He later wrote:
The moment I heard I was to be released…I felt at last God had given me my marching orders…I felt exactly like a soldier ready to leave for the front…everything which had happened up to now was only testing which had been designed to bring me up to the peak of my powers and ability…My earthly incarnation was now practically at an end and only the final short step remained to be taken… (Reiter, 1958, p. 124)
As soon as Palle arrived at his parent’s home in Copenhagen, he called Nielsen (obeying a posthypnotic suggestion) to hear X’s next instructions. Nielsen told Palle to relax, talk to his family, and call in the morning to arrange a meeting time. At six o’clock the next morning, Palle called. Nielsen said to come at three in the afternoon.
Too long to list here.
Please read the rest in Carla Emery’s “Secret, Don’t Tell”.
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