Feverishly scribbling on the whiteboard on stage, he wrote numbers onto spaces on a 4×4 grid – random numbers, coming to him after finding out the audience member’s birthday.

As soon as the grid was filled, he turned to the audience and showed them how each row, each column, each individual square, contained the audience member’s lucky number: 36.

And that was just the beginning.

Returning to Eastern’s campus after his performance during Opening Weekend, hypnotist Rich Aimes took to the stage with a whole new act – this time revolving around his abilities as a mentalist.

Along with his partner, Marielle Aimes – whom Aimes said had “pseudo-psychic powers,” – Aimes helped kick off Family Weekend Friday in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Aimes addressed the audience, telling them to clear their minds so he could transfer a thought into their minds.

The thought, he said, would be an object from outside, nothing found inside. He clapped his hands in order to send the thought to the audience.

After Aimes revealed the object he was thinking of was a tree, gasps rippled across the audience and several raised their hands to let him know they thought of it, too.

Aimes then sent a second thought – this time, a car. The reaction was the same as before.

Aimes then narrowed his volunteers down form the entire audience to a specific member. The volunteer then had to flip through a book, which Aimes said he bought for a dollar, and find a singular word. The volunteer then attempted to transfer to the word to the audience, similar to his previous act.

However, the word picked out failed to reach the audience members, and so Aimes took it upon himself to pick out the word himself.

“Draw a picture in your mind,” he told the volunteer.

“Optometrist” was the word, which he picked out after only asking for the first letter of the word.

Throughout his show, Aimes did everything from guess words to know what people in the audience wanted from the future.

Aimes estimated several volunteers wanted to know how their current relationship would go, how their relationship with a sibling would be, and even guessed that two parents were wondering about when they would have grandchildren.

Aimes ended his show with an extreme act of mentalism. Closing his eyes off completely by having two volunteers first duct tape half-dollar coins to his eyes, followed by placing a black sleeping mask over his eyes. The black mask was then wrapped in more duct tape, which extended around his entire head.

“Only a sick-o like me would want to do this,” he said, laughing.

Marielle Aimes then passed out sketch paper to three audience members, and asked them to draw any kind of picture. They stepped up on stage and Aimes took his time pondering what they could be.

After some out-loud thinking, Aimes ticked off the three drawings: a flower, a face with square glasses similar to Aimes’ and finally a Mickey Mouse-style drawing with an eye patch.

“What you saw tonight was not accounted to supernatural powers,” he told the audience. “Just nonverbal communication.”

Bob Galuski can be reached at 581-2812 or rggaluski@eiu.edu.