A mind bending experience
By Mel Jones
Wingspan Online
A mind bending experience
By Mel Jones
The mentalist grasped the fork between his thumb and index finger and began to rotate. The fork blurred as he twirled and twisted the cold metal handle, shaping it to his whim.
When he finished and handed the utensil to an astonished audience member, onlookers issued audible gasps of amazement. The mentalist had shaped the metal into a corkscrew halfway up the fork’s handle.
Did the mentalist have special mind reading and telekinesis abilities, or was his show just an elaborate sleight of hand deception?
Banachek is a magician, a trickster and an entertainer, and this mentalist held his Laramie County Community College audience enthralled. He never claimed extrasensory perception (ESP) nor any psychic abilities, only the knowledge of human nature. He professed to use his five senses to create the illusion of a sixth sense. Sleight of hand, verbal prompting and the ability to read body language were only a few of the tricks-of-the-trade he revealed.
Although the audience seemed to enjoy the night’s entertainment, some were skeptical and perhaps philosophical about how Banachek fooled them into accepting the impossible.
LCCC student Levi Paisley said about Banachek’s performance: “It was wicked. He is not normal.” However, Paisley also said Banachek used the power of the audience’s believing in what he was doing. “We accepted what he said was truth,” he said.
The Student Activities Board hosted the famous mentalist Banachek in the LCCC Playhouse on Jan. 26. Even though less than 30 people showed to enjoy the show, Student Activities Director Janet Carter said he was well worth the $2,000 spent to bring him to LCCC. She said SAB members were not too sure just what a mentalist was, but, after the show left the audience shaking their heads in wonder, Carter would like to bring him back for a repeat
next fall.
After years of “people watching” and mastering the artifice of magic and
illusion, Banachek began a successful career in the entertainment business.
Voted college campus entertainer of the year for 1998–1999 by the Association
for the Promotion of Campus Activities (APCA), he has been lauded as the No. 1
act on the college circuit.
At LCCC, Banachek started the magic evening with elementary mind reading tricks.
He guessed various audience members’ names and birth dates simply by the way
they reacted to his questions. Banachek said people expose things about
themselves with their body language. He also said their voices modulate with
their answers and reveal yet another hidden door into their minds.
Later in the show, five audience members were chosen to assist Banachek in the
ultimate mind reading spectacle—and they saved him from an unintentional,
life-threatening knife wound. Wrapping two knives and three knife handles in
paper so no one could tell which was which, Banachek let each student pick a
package. He supposedly “read the minds” of the knife wielders and chose the
three who had only metal hilts.
These three students were instructed to stab him. Of course, no blood flowed on
the Playhouse stage that night.
At the conclusion of the mentalist’s performance, some of the audience members
gathered around Banachek to ask the all-important question, “How do you do
it?”
Banachek countered with his own question, “Can you keep a secret?” The
listeners eagerly nodded their heads in unison. “So can I,” he said.
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