Word: hocus
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Atlanta, before the war, was headquarters for a profitable national business in hocus-pocus for race-prejudiced joiners: the Ku Klux Klan. Since the war, it has been no secret in Georgia that the Klan was trying to come back in a big way. In the past eight months there have been cross-burnings atop Stone Mountain. But secrecy is a part of the Klan's appeal-and the Kluxers kept their affairs to themselves...
Last week Tom Sawyer's amiable hocus-pocus got a nod of approval from a scientific quarter. Said Dr. Hermann Vollmer of New York in the current Psychosomatic Medicine: suggestion is "at least as effective" a cure for warts as X ray or surgery. He documented his case with the findings of French, German and Swiss dermatologists, outlined his own experiments with over 100 children...
...Toughest sound to fake is applause. And no hocus-pocus has yet matched the true click of a closing door. Result: studios keep large collections of various-sized doors to open & shut...
...ever conclusively explained hypnotism. This week a successful practicing hypnotist, Andrew Salter, made a plausible try (What Is Hypnosis- Richard R. Smith, $2). Frowning severely at the hocus-pocus that has surrounded his clouded calling, Salter argued that hypnosis is just another conditioned reflex. No "trance," no "suggestion," no "mind over matter...
Most chillers overcrowd the screen with werewolves or explain away all supernatural antics as the deliberate hocus-pocus of a mad scientist, estate-grabber or Axis agent. The Uninvited blends the everyday with the inexplicable, gets a lot of its best scares out of the everyday. The skittering of a squirrel across the drumhead floors of the vacant house suddenly gives vacancy a cold portentousness. The scraping of a wine glass against a table, during the seance, is more scary than the seance itself. The unexpected smashing of a window while you are watching a rather good Paramount ghost rasps...