Life > September 29, 2005

By Perry Del Favero

Contributing Reporter

According to Craig Karges, humans only use 10-20 percent of their brains. Craig Karges is a “mentalist”, a sort of magician-psychic combination, who performed Sept. 22 in Wait Chapel.

His claim provides an explanation of sorts for how he is able to guess numbers and thoughts, makes objects move and see things that can’t possibly be psychically seen.

The theory is that if we open the rest of our minds, we can guess peoples’ favorite foods just like Karges, without the aid of the Facebook.

Craig Karges has made countless television appearances, including the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Larry King Live. He had been named Entertainer of the Year six times by the National Association for College Activities, and he is the top performer in his field according to the International Psychic Entertainers Association. He is also the author of two books. However, these awards and accomplishments prove only that he is entertaining, and not that he has mental powers beyond yours or mine.

Karges’ performance was at 8 p.m. on a Thursday, which for many of us means only one thing: Seth Cohen and the rest of the gang in the Orange County. This, and a lack of publicity, may have contributed to the serious shortage of people in the audience. Karges began his performance by selecting a member of the audience to randomly choose a word from a decently-sized book. He guessed the first two letters, “d” and “r”, and after some thoughtful scribbling wrote down the whole word: drugstore.

Next, he guessed details about objects placed in front of him, despite being blindfolded with two coins taped over his eyes underneath. Members of the audience also wrote down information like their names and random thoughts, which he was able to guess. Most amazingly, he wrote down a participant’s favorite food: pineapple orange banana juice.

Besides all of the mental magic, he also orchestrated physical phenomena on stage. He made a piece of wood fall off a table, caused audience members’ rings to interlock and made a table levitate rather violently under his fingertips.

Overall, the performance was highly entertaining and left everyone in the room with chills.

But have we been duped? Aside from random superstitious traits such as knocking on wood and freaking out when those around me open umbrellas inside, I would consider myself to be a skeptic. I have trouble believing in things I can’t physically see and have a general distrust of God, religion and the government.

However, I left this performance with a little less certainty about the existence of supernatural events and the unexplained. Despite some of the unbelievable acts Karges performed, there were some holes in his ability to completely convince me of his powers.

He had no random guesses. Everyone and everything he supposedly “saw” in his mind’s eye was also written down beforehand. The weird part is that he was never in possession of the slips of paper.

It seems to me that there is no clear way to me that he ever could have seen them. Again, this is just the skeptic in me talking. All I can say is that you have to experience this amazing act to make your own judgments and analysis.

What made Karges most enjoyable was his personality and his insistence on being an entertainer first and foremost. He didn’t try to tell us that there wasn’t an element of illusion or any twist of the truth in his act.

He does promise, however, that if anyone can prove that he uses deception, by purposefully planting informed audience members or otherwise, that he will donate $100,000 to a charity. No one has gotten him to cash in yet.

But if you’re a non-believer, try to catch him next year and see if you can be the first to collect.