"Hypnotized"

When “Rhiannon” was a brand new number in the Fleetwood Mac set list, Stevie Nicks would often introduce the tune by saying, “This is a song about a Welsh witch.”  Dig back through the band’s catalog, and you’ll discover that this wasn’t the first time the group had done a song on a supernatural theme.  One of  Fleetwood Mac’s first hits was a single that founding member Peter Green wrote in 1968, “Black Magic Woman.”

But over the years between those two numbers, Fleetwood Mac’s albums have frequently made a nod to the otherworldly.

In 1971, the Mac’s latest frontman Bob Welch contributed the ethereal “Future Games.”  On their next album, he wrote a song called “The Ghost.”  And the following album featured a song chock full of Biblical imagery, “Revelation.”

But Welch hit his stride on the album Mystery to Me when he gathered together a handful of different threads and wove them into the song “Hypnotized.”

He told Fleetwood Mac fans in a Q and A on the band’s website in 1999 that a story about an encounter with a UFO was in the news at the time he wrote “Hypnotized.”  And then on Whitney Streiber’s radio show Dreamland, Bob admitted that he himself had been having coffee with a friend in a cafe when “something [flew] by their window.”

But in the second verse, he delves into a story that is part of the lore of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  In 1969, four friends rode dirt bikes deep into the woods where there were no roads, only trails.  Unexpectedly they came upon a clearing with a huge depression in it, 80 to 100 feet across, perfectly round, unnaturally smooth.  To the bikers, it looked like had been excavated by machines.  But there was no way for a bulldozer or anything comparable to reach that remote location.  The more they thought about it, the more they got spooked.  And soon they were hightailing it back to civilization fast.

Nothing conclusive about this phenomenon was ever photographed or published in those pre-social media days.  All that exists are the anecdotes told by friends and acquaintances on various forums on the internet.  And the tales all agree that whatever they saw, it disappeared not long afterwards.

But Bob Welch combined these Fortean legends into one of the dreamiest and most popular FM radio hits of the pre-Lindsey and Stevie era.  (The song was so popular, it was one of the ones that Lindsey Buckingham had to sing as Bob Welch’s replacement.)

For his part, Bob wasn’t yet done with the weird and uncanny.  The very next album featured a song he wrote about the “Bermuda Triangle.”