A magic show with a comedic twist kicked off Freak Week at Cabrini, with Saleish the hypnotist.
On Monday, Oct. 26, Campus Activities and Planning Board presented the well-known hypnotist to Cabrini’s campus. Although Saleish was scheduled last year, CAP Board thought they should keep him on for this year.
“One of the girls on CAP last year recommended him and this year everyone wanted a hypnotist. Plus, it’s not something you see every day,” Lauren Sliva, sophomore communication major, said. Sliva, who is a member of CAP Board, planned the event.
Sliva and the CAP Board provided attendees with popcorn, coffee and soda. Though this event took a lot of planning, admission was free. Sliva made sure the word got around campus with the help of flyers and advertisements.
Saleish told the audience that his show would be based purely on audience participation and the more cooperative the audience was the better the show would be. Almost all of the seats were filled as Saleish took the stage and provided the audience with the three rules of his show.
“You will not get naked, you will not reveal your deepest secrets and everything else is fair game,” Saleish said. “Afterwards you will feel amazing, I promise you this.”
About 15 Cabrini students volunteered and took the stage sitting down behind Saleish. He told them to close their eyes and to listen to the sound of his voice. He assured them they would remember everything they do while hypnotized. As the audience watched the volunteers fall into Saleish’s trance and begin to feel “warm and tingly.”
“This is something different, not like a singer like they usually have and it goes with the Halloween, freaky theme,” Emily Fiore, sophomore secondary education major, said.
The show lasted about an hour and throughout the duration of Saleish’s show he put them to sleep and woke them multiple times. The code word he used to put the volunteers back into a trance was, “sleep.”
While they were asleep, Saleish would describe situations that they were in. For example, he would say the temperature was dropping outside and the volunteers would start shivering. Another scenario he gave was that they were about to blast off in a rocket ship. Some participants got very into the hypnosis even holding onto their seats as he yelled “blast off!”
The reactions of the volunteers varied, some looked concentrated, while others were laughing uncontrollably. Saleish compared the process to ‘being stoned because sometimes people get the giggles.’
“Getting hypnotized was definitely the most out of this world experience, I’ve never experienced anything like it before. It was really cool to be so out-of-control over my own body,” Cristin Joy, junior elementary education major, said.
Saleish’s combination of comedy and hypnosis won over the crowd at Cabrini College.
