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My mother works at Caltech (California) and frequently gets fliers by mail advertising acts that are hosted by Caltech. Recently, we received one about a "thought reader" named Christopher Carter. I looked him up and, as with all personally owned (or so it seemed) websites, he looks like a god in it. The Caltech show is free, so I'm going to go, but first, does anyone here know whether he's good or not? I know he can wipe the floor with a newbie like me, but I don't want to be disappointed. I digress, so I'll cut off this horribly written request right here.

Didn't Chris Carter create the X Files? And Millennium? And Dark Realm? And The Lone gunmen?

I hear that he summons technicians to do a lot of work for him.

I suspect he is very good. I only saw a minute of him on video and you can be deceived by that sometimes because it doesn't always show the full context but having said that the minute was quite excellent.

My gut feeling is that he is a very strong mentalist.

Chris is one of the top rated College performers in all of North America and no... he's not the same Chris Carter from X-Files (I've asked and he was so very upset that this wasn't true...)

If you get the chance to watch this guy work, I'd not pass it up

Great, thanks. I look forward to seeing him.

I heard he is very good.

Christopher Carter writes, and writes well, in addition to performing. He doesn't tend to publish much, but what there is out there, is very good. He was due to appear at MindVention last year but was unfortunately unable to make it.

So....did you go? and what did you think??

*Magical Lady*

Whew, that was a while ago...

I went and met a couple of my friends there. One of them knew (from exposure stuff I don't condone it, but there's no way I can talk her out of doing it) a bunch of concepts of magic and mentalism. Not enough to do anything, but enough to deconstruct and "figure out" a lot of tricks. She helped for the effect where Chris described her clothing perfectly "yesterday" on a cassette tape. She noticed Chris watching her before the show and told me about it after the show. After a short discussion, we completely figured out how he did the cassette trick. I digress, I guess.

Chris Carter was technically very good. He switched a normal deck for a force deck very smoothly, but had a somewhat awkward TOD sequence involving a spectator on stage. His PK touches type routine was quick and flashy, but I caught him a few of the times he did the secret maneuver. He certainly fooled the hell out of the audience, and his patter was fun, but some things near the end got a bit on my nerves at the end. He credited many of his magic tricks as being psychological tricks. He spewed out pseudo-psychology at Caltech- a place where it doesn't belong IMO.

If it was performed anywhere outside of a college to people who accepted his pseudo-psychology explanations as fact, I would have been perfectly happy with his show. I even learned a neat stage mentalism concept from watching him. I'm still new to mentalism and magic, so there were a couple things that still fooled me completely. Overall, it was a fun evening and if you want more details, they were popping into my head one by one while I was writing this, so I'll probably know more later. Just ask, and I can add a few more details.

I understand that he is one of the better mentalists working today.

Chris Carter is someone I am proud to call a friend. He is one of the finest thought readers on the planet. He is also the busiest touring mentalist in the college business. Fast paced and exciting is the best I can sum up his show.