A circus performer stood locked in a trance for hours after he accidentally hypnotised himself while practising his routine in a mirror.

Sword swallower Hannibal Helmurto, 38, whose real name is Helmut Kichmeier, stood transfixed in front of the mirror for five hours until his wife Joanna found him, The Daily Mail reports.

Unable to rouse him, she was forced to phone her husband’s mentor, hypnotherapist Dr Ray Roberts, who trained him on an intensive course recently.

Dr Roberts spoke to Helmut over the phone and he slowly came out of the trance. Helmut said a person under hypnosis only responds to a voice of authority.

“His pupils had gone really small, which is a sign of someone under hypnosis.’

Helmut, who has performed in the Circus of Horrors for four years, had recently learned how to put himself into a somnambulistic trance – a way of hypnotising yourself – to enable him to swallow multiple swords in the infamous circus.

The performer, who is originally from Germany but now lives in London, said: “I underestimated the techniques and how powerful they were. I put myself in a very deep state and lost all sense of time around me.”

Joanna, 22, said: ‘I was really shocked when I found him, he was just like a zombie starring at himself in the mirror.

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