Tom Deluca bewildered and amazed students in the University Museum. First, Engineering freshman Tyler Mullins lost complete control of his tongue muscles. Then he translated an entire "alien" language into English. In front of a packed house in the University Museum, Mullins and about 20 other volunteers found themselves under the control of hypnotist Tom Deluca as part of his two-hour program of hypnosis and mental magic tricks sponsored by the Freshman Class Board. By the time the session had ended, the volunteers had staged a dance party, a weight lifting competition and a kindergarten class -- and most of the participants still claimed the hypnosis didn't work on them. Deluca, featured recently in People magazine and The Wall Street Journal, split his show into two parts. During the first, he performed a variety of mind-reading tricks. "I'm going to put thoughts in people's heads and they will not know how they got there," Deluca said in his introduction. "Soon enough this audience is going to be reduced into a mass of fetal thumbsucking jelly." The tricks mainly involved calling up members of the audience and seemingly predicting things the person would do or think. During one of his acts, Deluca appeared to lose his magic skills when he incorrectly predicted a random word that a volunteer selected from a newspaper. But as soon as he sent the participant back to his seat in the audience, Deluca turned the sheet of paper that held his predictions around to the other side, to reveal "baseball," the word the student had selected. Deluca started to develop his show as a graduate student in a behavior center that treated people's problems through the power of suggestion. His showmanship got him fired, but his act started selling tickets at magic shows shortly after. Audience participation is an integral part of Deluca's show, especially during his hypnosis session. For the session, Deluca selected over 20 volunteers to participate. The only criterion for participation was to display eagerness during the selection process. While some audience members politely raised their hands, others shouted and stood up in their seats. To attract more students, Deluca claimed that hypnosis helped volunteers increase their rest. "If you come up to the stage and volunteer, afterwards you'll feel like you have had nine or 10 hours of sleep and you won't even have bad breath," he quipped. Although over 20 audience members were initially selected, some were soon after sent back to their seats as Deluca realized they were not hypnotized. During the hypnosis exercise, Deluca used gestures, snaps, foot stomping, phrases, counting and clicking noises to trigger specific responses from his volunteers. One student even felt like he cut himself shaving whenever Deluca said the word "nick." Mullins, one of the volunteers to remain on stage throughout the whole session, claimed to remember some of the activities. "I thought I was naked, and I got really hot and cold," Mullins said. "It felt weird." Several other participants declined to comment on their experience.
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