Castleton students are under the control of Eric Mina in the 1787 room.
Jimmy Britt/Castleton Spartan

If you met Eric Mina for the first time, you’d think he was just an ordinary guy. He uses old spice deodorant, forgets where he parked his car, and has a tattoo on his back that represents his mother. But Mina has a couple tricks up his sleeve – literally.
He graduated from Penn State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and became a certified hypnotherapist. He started out as a magician, but found hypnosis was more for him.
Senior David Ievoli, director of campus activities, invited him back to Castleton after his show last semester because it was such a hit.
“It was packed last show. He’s really good,” said Ievoli.
Mina started the show with a trick that illustrated how powerful the mind is. He told everybody to make a circle with their fingers, and hold it up against your chin, fooling everybody into touching their cheek instead simply because he did it too.
“The body is a slave to the mind,” said Mina.
He then invited 17 students to join him on stage for hypnosis, including Tony Sawyer and his unique mustache-handle septum ring, who Mina loved!
“I wasn’t expecting that,” said Mina as he cracked up on stage.
He then began his hypnosis by relaxing the students’ entire bodies, starting at the feet and ending with the head.
Once everybody was hypnotized, including some students in the audience, he asked them to imagine they were part of an orchestra. Suddenly, students began to play their imaginary flutes and violins. Then he told them they were part of a rock n’ roll band, and their imaginary instruments changed to guitars and drums and was accompanied by head banging.
Mina performed more tricks including convincing the hypnotized that it was 125 degrees in the room, then below freezing. Students stripped their clothes off at first and then huddled for warmth as he changed the scenario.
The crowd was in full force laughter when Mina put each individual student under different hypnosis. One girl was convinced her butt was being pinched while another got a bad case of the giggles every time Mina shook his hand.  
Sophomore Matthew Ocker was convinced his name was Tinkerbelle.
“I just remember bits and pieces,” said Ocker. “I was on the edge about believing that kind of stuff before, but I do now!”
During the show, sophomore Jared Ungar was cracking up.
“This is great,” he said.