“You’re never unconscious, and I don’t control you,” Frederick Winters, a comedy hypnotist voted Entertainer of the Year for 2006, said to UW-Platteville students Sept. 22. “We have the power of suggestion.”

Over 300 people attended Campus Programming and Relation’s hypnotist show in the Pioneer Student Center.

Winters said he performed in over 2,000 shows and hypnotized over 125,000 people.

“I love entertaining college students, they’re the best,” Winters said. “I only use two ingredients when hypnotizing someone: imagination and suggestion. The rest is up to them.”

During the show, 14 audience members were asked to go up on stage to participate. Winters lit a flame in the center of the stage. The participants were told to look at it and listen to his voice. Within a few moments students were hunched over in their chairs completely mesmerized.

Students were hypnotized into thinking they were watching movies, holding strange animals with unusual names, racing horses in the Kentucky Derby, seeing Winters’ butt naked, having a tiny person inside their watch and some male students even believed they were exotic dancers.

Lucas Ward, a sophomore civil engineering major, was one of the guests to be hypnotized.

“I just remember watching him, I don’t remember what I did,” Ward said. “I just feel so relaxed now.”

A friend of Ward watched as he danced about the stage.

“My favorite part is when he was afraid of a plastic worm,” sophomore Jaclyn Williams said. “He really was afraid. It was amazing.”

Winters was surprised by the reaction of his subjects too.

“Twenty-five years of performing on stage and I’ve never had a Power Ranger,” Winters said, referring to a gift hidden in an egg one guest produced like a chicken. “That just goes to show you it’s all about who is being hypnotized.”

The PSC was filled with laughter throughout the entire show.

“It was hilarious!” Sharri Valosek, sophomore biology major, said. “I would definitely recommend going to see him.”

CDs are available through Winters’ Web site, frederickwinters.com. Winters said it’s rare if no result is achieved from his eight CDs.

“Just don’t listen to them in your car,” Winters said.