Going under the spell

Now that you are in a deep trance, you are about to learn what happened during Carthage's Fourth of July event at the community's courthouse square Tuesday.
Kent Sorrells, a performer from Petersburg, Ill. who uses the power of hypnosis for his traveling comedy show, had onlookers in stitches as he had some volunteers act in ways they probably wouldn't regularly act in public.
Sorrells started with some minor hypnotic tricks, asking people to close their eyes and stick out their left hands ' palms up ' and their right hands ' palms down. He then told them there was a heavy cinderblock in their left hands and a helium balloon tied to their right.
Some of the participants' left hands started to go down, while their right hands started to lift up.
Later, Sorrells invited a group of people onto the stage so he could hypnotize them.
Once they were "under," Sorrells had some of the people believing they were sitting on a hot beach in Florida, which caused some of the participants to believe they were sweating and hot.
Later, Sorrells told participants their hands were glued to their legs and that a huge horsefly landed on their noses.
"They're having a fly party right there on your face," Sorrells declared, as the participants tried desperately to remove the flies by twitching their faces in all sorts of odd manners.
At one point, Sorrells had the participants acting as though they were driving motorcycles 750 miles per hour down a highway and getting chased by a police.
Six audience members acted as though they were members of the 1970s musical group the Village People, and Sorrell had them dancing to one of that group's songs, "YMCA."
Before bringing them out of the spell, Sorrells placed subliminal messages in the minds of some of the participants so that when he said certain words, they would act in a certain way.
At the word "jungle," Carthage resident David Walker would stand up and pound on his chest and roar like King Kong.
Carthage resident Bonnie Bentzinger believed she was getting pinched when Sorrells said "chair" and Carthage resident Ramo Stott stood up and howled like a wolf every time he heard the word "moon."
While some of the participants said at the end of the routine that they were just acting, others said they didn't remember anything.
Alice Dean, of Carthage, said she felt tired, but that she was never truly hypnotized.