Carter aims to freak out

You can't pull talent out of a hat.

Freak-out artist Chris Carter, who is coming to the University on Friday, decided he wanted to be a professional entertainer in high school. As an avid amateur magician, he gravitated toward mind-oriented effects, he said.

"I was in the psychology club in high school and actually began to learn hypnosis when I was in high school," Carter said. "I'm not a hypnotist exactly, but I do use a lot of hypnotic techniques in my show."

After high school, Carter attended Illinois Wesleyan University, receiving his undergraduate degree in theatre and business. He went to graduate school at the University of Michigan for theatre.

Carter said his family was a little apprehensive about his goal to perform magical acts for a living.

"They're very supportive now," he said. "When I first started to go in this direction, they were supportive, but I could tell that they were pretty nervous about me becoming a professional entertainer."

Carter said his interest in magic started when he was young. He said he performed the grab-a-bunny-out-of-a-hat kind of magic.

His parents were concerned for his future and sent him to his uncle's house in Arkansas during the summer. The time he spent with his uncle spurred his interest in the psychological.

"I used to watch him play poker, and his body language was always giving away when he would bluff," Carter said. "He was horrible at it."

After arriving back at his home in Springfield, Ill., Carter confronted his psychologist mother who gave him a book about body language, he said. Three months later, he developed a routine where he could guess what playing cards people were thinking of by watching their body language, he said.

"I did this on people, and it completely flipped them out," he said. "It was much more impressive than the regular magician tricks. ... And I realized at that moment what I wanted to do. I wanted to do a kind of magic that is based on human psychology and human behavior."

Carter said he knew what he wanted to do for a living at 17, but he did not develop the courage to pursue it until he was 24.

If he was not a professional entertainer, he said he would have liked to be a tour operator for adventure travel.

Practicing mind tricks can be tricky, and a human volunteer is vital to his success, he said.

"I have three ways to do it," he said. "Number one ­- my wife is my guinea pig. She's very patient. Number two - after the show, people will come up to me and want to talk, and very often I will say 'Hey, let me try this.' ... The number three is. ... I do it on random strangers in airports."

Carter has been performing on the road for 17 years. He comes to Truman after performing in Palm Beach, Fla., and will be in Aurora, Ill., for his next show.

He said he spends the majority of his time on college campuses.

"About two-thirds of my work is on college campuses," he said. "I will, on an average year, get to the vicinity of 170 and sometimes even more college campuses."

His act is an hour and 20 minutes long and full of freaky tricks as well as the mind-reading of dozens of audience members, he said.

"Basically what it consists of is progressively cooler, more amazing and freakier stunts that deal with the way you think," Carter said.

He said he is able to tell people funny things that happened in their lives, important dates, numbers, names and embarrassing secrets without even knowing them beforehand.

He does not tell people up front that he plans to hypnotize them, but rather he shapes people to think the way he wants them to think, he said. He also uses mind-over-matter illusions and an audience clothing prediction trick.

Carter said he has received many interesting responses to his abilities.

"Probably my favorite kind of response - sometimes football players will do this - [is when people] swear and go screaming out of the room ... And then they come back. ... I've had guys do this two or three times in a show," he said. "It's actually pretty funny."

Carter said he does not want people to think that they have to believe what he does.

He said he wants people to be freaked out and have a great time. On a freaky scale of one to 10, he said he would give his act a 9.5.