Mentalist Christopher Carter enjoys freaking out the audience during his performances, and that is certainly what he did when he performed for the students of Seward County Community College on March 30 in the Showcase Theater. “I like it when I make people scream,” Carter said. “I love it when I freak people out.” A crowd of about 150 attended Carter’s show which is composed of many acts, including him being able to read and answer audience member’s questions while blindfolded and having duct tape over his eyes, lighting two fluorescent light bulbs without any electricity, hypnotizing an audience member and spelling the word “miracle” from letters that were shuffled and kept hidden from him. “I like how he plays with your mind,” freshman Janette Contreras said. Carter has been performing professionally for 19 years, and about 16 years for college campuses. Carter has also been featured in “American Entertainment” magazine and “Campus Activities” magazine. Along with performing for more than 180 college campuses a year, Carter also performs for companies. “I have to be a lot more buttoned down when I work for businesses, I can’t be as loose with the humor as I can be with the college kids. I enjoy working for businesses, but I enjoy working with colleges much more,” Carter said. One of Carter’s most memorable acts included him picking two completely random audience members, giving them two fluorescent light bulbs and having the two members light the bulbs without any electricity. “It was amazing and very creepy,” freshman Jennifer Thach said. “I didn’t think he was going to light it, I thought he was going to break it.” Carter’s time performing has taught him that sometimes audience participation is all that is needed in order to make any show fun and entertaining. “I don’t do any preparation before the shows. The show is kind of the preparation itself. It allows me to keep warming up for harder, more challenging things. So, I don’t have any special process that I go through. I just sort of set up my show and wait for the audience to come,” Carter said. The last act of the show was similar to a game of Scrabble. Seven audience members were picked to go on stage and were given a randomly shuffled letter. Carter started out by spelling the word “mile” and then decided to get more points by choosing letters in order to spell “miracle”, all of this being done without knowing who had what letter. “I was freaked out after he revealed the letter R was behind the number 3,” Valentin Borunda said. Carter’s show was entertaining because it involved many members of the audience whether they had their phones called in an act that involved having numbers drawn from a bag and asking a person on stage to think of the number without looking at it and then having Carter point at the person whose phone would ring, or having their questions answered while he was blindfolded. “I did enjoy being on the stage. I was a little nervous because that was my first time being asked to go on stage by a performer,” Borunda said. “I had no clue what trick he was going to do, but I was glad to be a part of it.”