By Alisha Sabnis
Staff Writer

On Friday, April 3rd, the PAC was filled with people excited to see hypnotist Frank Santos Jr came to Westford Academy for his annual show. The event was a fundraiser for qualified students in DECA to go to Orlando for a world-national competition. In Orlando, students will be competing with 16,000 others from around the world . To help fund this trip, Santos puts on his hypnotic show every year at WA.

This year’s show consisted of many tricks that amazed the audience as they watched students get hypnotized. There were nine main performances conducted throughout the show. Each was filled with laughs and marveled by the audience.

At the beginning of the show, Santos Jr picked six boys and six girls from the audience to be hypnotized. These people were chosen based on how well they were manipulated to follow instructions by doing a trust fall with the hypnotist. The twelve chosen volunteers were seated in chairs on the stage and asked to close their eyes and concentrate on Santos. The auditorium was dark and silent with the exception of Santos and some music in the background. After Santos counted back from 5 to 0 and 10 to 0, all twelve students were in a hypnotic state.

The first trick that the hypnotist performed was telling all twelve people to put their arm out in front of them. After doing what they were told, they were woken from their sleep to find that their arm was stuck in that position. After being put to sleep again, Santos was able to return their arms back to normal, but made them all stick their tongue out. When they were woken for the second time, all twelve students found it impossible for them to put their tongue back in their mouth. The hypnotist prompted each person with a couple questions and they were forced to answer even when it was difficult to speak. The audience erupted in laughter at some of the attempted answers given.

Next, Santos called for an assistant from the audience. Sixth grader, Mikey, from Stony Brook was the lucky volunteer. When the twelve original were in a sleep like trance, Santos hypnotized them to act like Mickey passed gas whenever the hypnotist said “good”. The boys were expected to smell horrible odors while the girls were expected to smell their favorite scents. All worked as planned when they were woken and Santos carefully slid the word “good” in every sentence he spoke.

The third trick was by far one of the best ones that was presented. Santos picked five from the twelve and hypnotized them all so that they acted like they urgently had to go to the bathroom. Every one of the five had a unique twist. One person went to the bathroom but when he got there his hands got stuck in his pockets and he was forced to come back to the PAC for help. Another girl would start going to the bathroom, but when she got halfway down the aisle of the auditorium, she would forget what she was doing and come back to her seat and the cycle went on. Also, one student went to the bathroom and came back with rolls of toilet paper, thinking it was money. Another student forgot where the bathrooms were located and when he asked anyone, he would think they were talking in some foreign language. Lastly, one volunteer was stuck in his chair and could not leave no matter how badly he had to go.

The fourth trick performed was that all four of the girls from the twelve students were hypnotized into acting like the Avengers. While this was happening, all the boys were looking for their belly buttons and thought they got stolen by Mikey, the middle schooler assistant from the beginning.

Afterwards, the volunteers were fooled into reacting differently to common words used everyday. One student thought that the phrase“thank you” was the worst possible swear to say at a school event. Another thought the same about “sorry”. Other words like “relax” and “really” were set to different reactions and the stage was filled with different emotions by the end of this part of the show, from angry, to offended, to happy.

Other parts of the show included one girl thinking she was singer, Taylor Swift and sung hit song “Shake It Off’ with the other students as background dancers. Along with the girl, one boy was tricked into thinking he was Bruno Mars and sung “Uptown Funk,” also complete with background dancers. The last part of the event was Santos telling the students they were all ballerinas from the moon, and they performed some ballet moves on stage while being hypnotized.

The show concluded with Santos taking everyone out of their hypnotic trance. He made sure that the ones hypnotized forgot about the event until they left the auditorium. As soon as they got passed the doors, their memory started to come back to them and they were all amazed to find out how easily they were manipulated. This year’s show was a huge success, and the people who missed it this time should see it next year.