Christopher Carter

Mentalist Chris Carter ’87 is out to mess with your brains.
Story by Sarah Zeller ’07


A few hours before
his show at the
Hansen Student
Center, Chris Carter
’87 is already at work.
After baffling the
dinner crowd in the
Bertholf Commons,
he now catches the
attention of a group
of female friends
finishing their burgers
and fries in Tommy’s,
the lower-level eatery
inside Hansen.
“Write down the
name of someone you know,” he instructs one of the women, handing her a piece of
paper. Carter turns away and tightly shuts his eyes. “But make sure it isn’t someone
sitting at this table, or I’ll know right away.”
After she’s folded up the name, Carter turns back and begins a barrage of questions: Is
the name on the paper that of a male or female? Is it a friend? Does she attend school
here?
Finally, Carter smiles. “Next time you talk to Ellen,” he says, as the students at the
table react in shock, “tell her I read your mind.”
It was exactly for performing such feats that Carter was named Campus Activities
Magazine’s “Performing Arts Entertainer of the Year” in 2005. It’s the same reason he
was invited to perform at the Hansen Student Center — his second such appearance
— in conjunction with the center’s fifth-anniversary celebration in January. Carter now performs about 230 shows a year, most of them at colleges, making him perhaps the
busiest college entertainer in America. He has performed in all 50 states, with
upcoming shows in Alaska and Puerto Rico. “I’m just a big ping-pong ball,” he jokes.
Besides his apparent mind-reading abilities, Carter’s shows include his mastery of
magic and hypnosis. “I’ve taken a wide variety of skills and mixed them up,” he says.
“Most of what I do, I invented.”
After donning a blindfold and duct tape, Carter accurately names objects that students randomly pull from their pockets. Carter does not claim his powers come from ESP or
other psychic abilities. Instead, he calls himself a mentalist. “It’s a very old-fashioned term,”
he says. “I use it because it
conveys that what I do has to
do with mind stuff.”
His interest in mind reading
and magic began at as a child.
As he watched his uncle
playing poker with his friends,
Carter realized that he could
tell when a man was bluffing.
With more practice and the
help of a book about body
language his mother bought
him, Carter learned to guess what cards each person was holding. When he began
showing people this trick, “the reaction was more powerful” than he had ever experienced with traditional magic tricks.
“From that point on,” he says, “I pretty much knew what I wanted to do.”
Carter, who grew up in Springfield, Ill., came to Illinois Wesleyan intending to be a psychology major but later switched to theatre and business, knowing both majors
would be helpful in his future career. Carter also honed his skills as a hypnotist at IWU.
He spent four more years in graduate school studying theatre, but left before
completing his dissertation to devote himself to the task of becoming a full-time mentalist. Carter’s first two years — performing at private parties and small corporate events in the Chicago area — were lean. But when he discovered the college market, “I knew that I had found a home for my performing,” he says.
After several years focused on the college market, Carter has begun adding corporate
events back into his busy schedule. While custom-tailoring each show to suit the needs of specific clients, Carter’s basic message at those events is to encourage people to
imagine beyond the boundaries of what they are accustomed to think is possible. For college students who tend to be less stuck in such mental ruts, Carter has a simpler goal: “I just want to freak them out,” he says.
Carter starts his Hansen
performance by having
audience numbers try to
guess the three-digit number
he’s thinking of. When he
finds a student who has
guessed the same number he
has written down, she comes
onstage — and finds that
Carter enlisted a student helper who shuffled a pile of folders marked
with letters, and then randomly chose seven from that pile to give to seven students onstage. Then the helper was instructed to pick a number at random from a Chicago phone book. After that, the students revealed their folders’ contents: a sheet of paper, each showing a number that exactly coincided with the digits and order of
the chosen phone number.
Carter has already predicted
that she would be the one to
guess correctly. In a taperecorded message Carter
gave to Assistant Dean of
Students Kevin Clark several
hours earlier when he first
arrived on campus, the
performer spells out exactly
what the student is wearing
and even the color of her hair.
The crowd erupts in disbelief
as the message is played.
Carter’s next amazing feat is
performed without the benefit
of sight. Having duct-taped
silver dollars to his eyes, and
taping a blindfold over the
top, Carter has voluntee - Illinois Wesleyan Magazine

Christopher grew up in Springfield,
Illinois and originally became interested
in mentalism and magic as a kid. His
parents would send him to spend his
summers with relatives in Arkansas,
where his Uncle Bud had poker games
every week. “I was sort of the official
ashtray emptier and pretzel fetcher.
When I was there, I would always watch
him when they were playing poker. I
would pay attention to my uncle’s body
language, which would always give him
away when he was bluffing. Technically,
gamblers would call this a tell, but I simply
noticed that he would twist his wedding
band when he was trying to bluff. I
am not the only person who noticed this;
everybody did.”
From there, Chris went home and talked
to his mom, who was a psychologist.
She explained what Chris witnessed was
only body language and she gave him a
book on the subject. “Within three
months time, I had developed a knack
for telling people what playing card they
were thinking of by interpreting body
language cues. People responded to that
so much more impressively than if I were
doing a simple card trick. They would
say ‘Wow! Your digging into my mind!’
From that point forward, I pretty much
knew where I wanted to go. “
In college, Chris was a theatre and business
double major. He had intended to
be a psychology major, but knew he
wanted to be a performer and that he
would need business skills to aid in that
endeavor. In the meantime though, he
started finding and studying anything he
could get his hands on relating to reading
people. He also studied hypnosis in
college. This is where he heavily honed
upon his skills. “That period is when I
made the greatest leaps and bounds in
becoming good at my craft.”
Chris then proceeded to graduate school,
where he spent four years working on a
doctorate in theatre. “I received my candidacy,
but never did my dissertation.
That was when I really dug in and began
performing.”
He made his initial break into performing
at a faculty wine and cheese party, of
all places. “I was showing some of the
thought reading skills I developed.
There was a member of the University of
Michigan’s School of Music there who
was so impressed with what he saw, he
invited me to emcee a program they
were hosting to feature some of my mind
reading. When I did the show, the
response was enormous, so from that
point forward, I knew I wanted to stay
out in front of an audience.”
Chris then focused on private party and
corporate events he found around the
Chicago area. He struggled for the first
couple of years. It took him a while to
develop his skills there before moving on
to the bigger and more widely varied
markets. “I had been performing for several
years before I learned that there really
was such a thing as the college market.
That was certainly a life changing event
for me. As soon as I discovered that, I
knew that I had found a home in performing.
I have focused on that area for
about the last eight years.”
Chris has also begun to refocus his
attention in the corporate market over
the last couple of years, but still loves
the college crowds as wholeheartedly
as ever. “I really love the enthusiasm
that the kids display. It is like a jolt
from a lightning bolt when you feel the
support and admiration from that
crowd. That probably is the singlemost
exciting factor of what I do.”
Here we have to make a clear distinction
between Chris and a plethora of
other performers out there. A lot of
entertainers say they love their job, as
they should. Many however are in it
for the money or fame, and most often,
the time they spend on stage in front of
their audiences. While this is all well
and good with Chris, he says that the best thing about it all is when people come up to him after the show to talk.
Many artists say they enjoy audience interaction, but this is true interaction we are talking about here. “The questions I am asked and the comments I
get are tremendously exciting. It truly lets me tap into what I am doing and who I am with. The one-on-one experience
is so gratifying. It is hard to
rank it above the actual stage show,
but I feel that it is at least equally gratifying.
It would be hard to find a significant
difference in the amount of
pleasure I get out of one or the other.”
“There are several key differences
between the two types of shows, but they are not radically unlike each other. The corporate groups tend to be slightly
shorter shows. I usually do about an hour time format for a typical corporate performance. Having said that, I also do some purely after dinner type of entertainment.
That doesn’t all have to be tailored
to a message. In a college show, I
do a lot more mind over matter, physical types of experiments, which I don’t do so much in the corporate group. I usually stay away from the bending spoons and lighting bulbs and focus more on the mind reading aspect of my performance.
For one reason or the o - Campus Activities Magazine

Mentalist Chris Carter ’87 is out to mess with your brains.
Story by Sarah Zeller ’07


A few hours before
his show at the
Hansen Student
Center, Chris Carter
’87 is already at work.
After baffling the
dinner crowd in the
Bertholf Commons,
he now catches the
attention of a group
of female friends
finishing their burgers
and fries in Tommy’s,
the lower-level eatery
inside Hansen.
“Write down the
name of someone you know,” he instructs one of the women, handing her a piece of
paper. Carter turns away and tightly shuts his eyes. “But make sure it isn’t someone
sitting at this table, or I’ll know right away.”
After she’s folded up the name, Carter turns back and begins a barrage of questions: Is
the name on the paper that of a male or female? Is it a friend? Does she attend school
here?
Finally, Carter smiles. “Next time you talk to Ellen,” he says, as the students at the
table react in shock, “tell her I read your mind.”
It was exactly for performing such feats that Carter was named Campus Activities
Magazine’s “Performing Arts Entertainer of the Year” in 2005. It’s the same reason he
was invited to perform at the Hansen Student Center — his second such appearance
— in conjunction with the center’s fifth-anniversary celebration in January. Carter now performs about 230 shows a year, most of them at colleges, making him perhaps the
busiest college entertainer in America. He has performed in all 50 states, with
upcoming shows in Alaska and Puerto Rico. “I’m just a big ping-pong ball,” he jokes.
Besides his apparent mind-reading abilities, Carter’s shows include his mastery of
magic and hypnosis. “I’ve taken a wide variety of skills and mixed them up,” he says.
“Most of what I do, I invented.”
After donning a blindfold and duct tape, Carter accurately names objects that students randomly pull from their pockets. Carter does not claim his powers come from ESP or
other psychic abilities. Instead, he calls himself a mentalist. “It’s a very old-fashioned term,”
he says. “I use it because it
conveys that what I do has to
do with mind stuff.”
His interest in mind reading
and magic began at as a child.
As he watched his uncle
playing poker with his friends,
Carter realized that he could
tell when a man was bluffing.
With more practice and the
help of a book about body
language his mother bought
him, Carter learned to guess what cards each person was holding. When he began
showing people this trick, “the reaction was more powerful” than he had ever experienced with traditional magic tricks.
“From that point on,” he says, “I pretty much knew what I wanted to do.”
Carter, who grew up in Springfield, Ill., came to Illinois Wesleyan intending to be a psychology major but later switched to theatre and business, knowing both majors
would be helpful in his future career. Carter also honed his skills as a hypnotist at IWU.
He spent four more years in graduate school studying theatre, but left before
completing his dissertation to devote himself to the task of becoming a full-time mentalist. Carter’s first two years — performing at private parties and small corporate events in the Chicago area — were lean. But when he discovered the college market, “I knew that I had found a home for my performing,” he says.
After several years focused on the college market, Carter has begun adding corporate
events back into his busy schedule. While custom-tailoring each show to suit the needs of specific clients, Carter’s basic message at those events is to encourage people to
imagine beyond the boundaries of what they are accustomed to think is possible. For college students who tend to be less stuck in such mental ruts, Carter has a simpler goal: “I just want to freak them out,” he says.
Carter starts his Hansen
performance by having
audience numbers try to
guess the three-digit number
he’s thinking of. When he
finds a student who has
guessed the same number he
has written down, she comes
onstage — and finds that
Carter enlisted a student helper who shuffled a pile of folders marked
with letters, and then randomly chose seven from that pile to give to seven students onstage. Then the helper was instructed to pick a number at random from a Chicago phone book. After that, the students revealed their folders’ contents: a sheet of paper, each showing a number that exactly coincided with the digits and order of
the chosen phone number.
Carter has already predicted
that she would be the one to
guess correctly. In a taperecorded message Carter
gave to Assistant Dean of
Students Kevin Clark several
hours earlier when he first
arrived on campus, the
performer spells out exactly
what the student is wearing
and even the color of her hair.
The crowd erupts in disbelief
as the message is played.
Carter’s next amazing feat is
performed without the benefit
of sight. Having duct-taped
silver dollars to his eyes, and
taping a blindfold over the
top, Carter has voluntee - Illinois Wesleyan Magazine