A video (here, here, and here) of a customer at a salon getting paralyzed after the barber breaks his neck during a head massage has been doing the rounds on social media lately. Users are sharing this video saying, “Barber Twists Neck During Head Massage, Leaves Customer Paralyzed“. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The person seen in this CCTV footage got paralyzed after getting a head massage at a salon.
Fact: This is a scripted video. This video was made by a YouTube channel called ‘3RD EYE’, which makes fictional videos like this one to bring awareness among people. Hence, the claim made in the viral post is False.
During the process of verifying the authenticity of this video, we found a few more social media posts with the same video. In those posts, we noticed that there was a tag under the post’s description that read, ‘Watch more original videos by: Sanjjanaa Galrani.‘
Sanjjanaa Galrani is an actress in the film industry. To check if the viral video was uploaded on her page, we looked through Sanjjanaa’s Facebook page and found that she had uploaded the same video on 7 November 2024.
Additionally, we found (archived link) the same video (with a wider aspect ratio) on the YouTube channel named “3RD EYE,” uploaded on 9 November 2024. 3rd Eye makes scripted videos on various topics for educational purposes. This video and its description state that it was made for entertainment and educational purposes only. From this, it is clear that the incident in this video did not happen, and is completely fictional.
In the past, when some users on social media shared fictional videos uploaded by 3rd Eye and Sanjjana as videos of real events, we published articles debunking those claims and clarifying that they were not videos of real events. You can see those articles here and here.
However, there have been many documented incidents in the past where people had gone through severe health complications after getting a massage/ neck-cracking from a barber.
The Times of India published an article in 2017 stating that getting your neck cracked during massage can damage nerves and cause paralysis. Reportedly, after undergoing such a massage, a man named Ajay Kumar’s nerves got damaged, and he had to be on ventilator support. Dr. Anand Jaiswal, the person who treated him, told TOI that “The neck massage and neck-crack that barbers ritually perform after a haircut can cause long-term damage to neck joints and surrounding tissues, muscles or nerves or even cause bilateral diaphragmatic paralysis like in this case.”
A physician named “Sunil Munshi” has uploaded a conference paper on the Research Gate website explaining that cracking the neck after such a massage puts us at risk of developing a condition called “arterial dissection.” Also, in September 2024, a barber in Bellary, Karnataka, twisted the neck of a 30-year-old man after giving him a head massage in his shop. As a result of this neck-crack, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalised for two months (here and here).
From these examples, it is clear that getting your neck cracked during a head massage is not safe and one needs to be careful. It is recommended that one consult a doctor about the potential complications of such massages at a barber shop and be vigilant during visits to the salon.
To sum up, a scripted video is shared as real CCTV footage depicting a man who becomes paralyzed after a head massage involving a neck twist.
