Levitation

by Joseph Payne Brennan

A short story about the final performance of a hypnotist, and his unwilling volunteer who disrupted his act.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

Unknown Binding

About the author

Joseph Payne Brennan was an American writer of fantasy and horror fiction, and also a poet. Brennan's first professional sale came in December 1940 with the publication of the poem, "When Snow Is Hung", which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor Home Forum, and he continued writing poetry up until the time of his death.

He is the father of Noel-Anne Brennan who has published several fantasy novels.

Reviews

[Arthur Chappell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This classic horror story from 1958 had a big influence on me. I first read it in an anthology edited by Alfred Hitchcock. It tells of a stage magician / hypnotist at a carnival who has a bad heart, so when he collapses a volunteer he has entranced and set rising in levitation can't be brought down again.

So why was this so important to me? In the mid-1970's I was doing badly at English at school. I was told to write a story. I decided to plagiarize this one but as I wrote from memory, my characters started doing other stuff and by the time I had finished my story was utterly different. It was the beginning of my own creative writing career. I only recently tracked down the story and reread(actually listened to it on YouTube). A TV film version was made for Tales From The Darkside in 1984 too.

Arthur Chappell

[Martín · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps inspirational source for S.King's book?

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

weird horror short story