By Darcy Gervais
Staff Writer
On December 16, 2010 during second and third period, the PAC filled up with juniors and seniors currently taking or having previously taken psychology. All students eagerly awaited the arrival of world renowned hypnotist Jerry Valley to take the stage and entertain them with his powers of hypnosis.
After his introduction, including him hypnotizing the audience by persuading them into thinking that their clasped hands were permanently locked together (it only worked with about six students), he began putting the twenty three students that sat down on the stage to sleep.
After having successfully put about twelve students under hypnosis, Valley began giving the students different scenarios to play out in their minds and really getting them to believe that they were actually happening.
One of the more humorous scenarios that the students took part in was one in which Valley put them under the impression that they were Martians and told them to speak in their native Martian language.
As Valley traveled around the stage, he held up his microphone to each of the student’s mouths as they spoke how they thought a Martian would sound like. When Valley came to the end of the line of students he picked Junior Tommy Kolek as the Martian leader. Valley then handed off the microphone to Kolek, asking him to sing the infamous and heart-felt Martian national anthem.
As Kolek belted out the anthem he began to cry in connection to the powerful emotion that the anthem held. While he was doing this the rest of the students on the stage saluted him with a special Martian salute in tribute to the anthem.
Another scenario, arguably the funniest as well as the most memorable, was when Valley told all of the students on stage that they had come to school without any clothes on. As the flabbergasted students covered up in humiliation, senior Karya Bowen hid behind the stage curtain only to pop her head out when Valley asked her what she was doing.
“I’m naked!,” Bowen said, still in shock and disbelief. When Valley asked her why she was naked Bowen answered the she didn’t know.
In reference to the fact that her father is a teacher here at WA in the science department, Bowen said, “My dad’s gonna get so mad!”
At the end of the show, Valley made an impressionable exit as he walked up the stairs to exit the PAC saying, “Remember, life’s too short to be too serious, develop a sense of humor. God bless you.”
As the audience cheered and hollered their cheeks were still red after having laughed non-stop for the past hour and a half. As they left the PAC they reminisced amongst themselves and their friends about all of the events that had gone on during the show.
Friends of those who were put under deep hypnosis anxiously gave them a full play-by-play of all of the events and scenarios that those who were hypnotized endured.
“I remember not having legs,” Kyle Russo shared with his two friends Eric Cajolet and Christie McLean, referring to a time in the show when Valley told Russo that both of his legs were wooden. Russo remembered having to walk across the stage on his hands and drag his lifeless legs.
Valley’s sixteenth appearance here at Westford Academy was truly unforgettable and undeniably entertaining to most everybody involved. He inevitably made a lasting impression on all students taking part and witnessing his powerful gift of hypnosis. The demand for him to return in years to come is uncanny, and his willingness to do what he does for a living is what makes him a fabulous, impressionable hypnotist.
