Although performing card tricks, communicating with the dead, reading minds, shoving nails from cheek to cheek or escaping from chains may be unusual for some, this is business as usual for David der Geist, or Jace Hoppes, if referred to by his real name.

One simple title could not sum up all that this 33-year-old Texas native does. He’s a musician, a magician, a mentalist, an escape artist, a lecturer; the list goes on and on.

“I basically play with people’s heads,” der Geist said. “If I’m doing stage work, I go out there and I read people’s minds. I make it look like I’m contacting the dead. I do all sorts of stuff to make people uncomfortable, to make it appear that I’m doing things that shouldn’t be humanly possible, and then I’m doing things that scare the hell out of people.”

Although der Geist started doing magic in 2002, he was exposed to spiritualism — a belief system that focuses on communication with the dead — through his grandparents when he was a kid.

“As far as sideshow and geek performance … eating bugs for money in elementary school was kind of the start of that. I just never stopped,” der Geist said.

Alchemy, astrology and tarot card reading are among a number of the subjects der Geist studied for years under various scholars and practitioners. Not only has he incorporated what he’s learned into his performances, but he has taught various lectures and workshops across the country.

One of the hardest aspects of his work is the unpredictable nature of mentalism.

“When you’re a magician, you can practice the moves over and over and over and over again until your hands cannot not do them,” der Geist said. “When you’re a mentalist, you don’t know what they’re going to say. Every single show is different, and because of that, there’s a lot of preparation that you just can’t do.”

Although he acknowledges that men such as David Blaine, David Copperfield and Criss Angel are certainly talented, der Geist looks up to less famous men such as Joseph Dunninger and George Joseph Kresge, “The Amazing Kreskin,” as sources of inspiration.

“(Dunninger) carried magic from the stage during the ’30s, when it was vaudeville through radio into television before anybody else ever thought of it,” der Geist said.

Der Geist has a number of techniques he employs when performing, which he has learned through his own study, from others in the U.S., in addition to fakirs, or ascetics in India, when he studied there in college. Some techniques include meditation and visualization, as well as pain control and blood flow control.

“There’s techniques that I’ve learned … so I can control my blood sometimes, which is hilarious when I go to doctors because I’ll make my blood pressure go up and down and I’ll stop and start my pulse,” der Geist said.

He is also an escape artist. Not only has he managed to get out of a straitjacket multiple times, but he is currently working on an escape in which he will be chained, then locked into a bag and thrown off of a bridge into a river.

“It becomes worth it,” der Geist said. “No matter how grueling it is, no matter how hard it is, no matter how terrifying it is, because sometimes it’s scary thinking I might not be able to get out of this. It always ends up being worth it.”

Although much of what he does is illusion, a great deal is real, he said.

“I’m not going to deny that there’s an element of magic and illusion in what I do. … But I’ll never tell somebody where that stops. When you watch me perform, a good portion of what I am doing is real, a good portion of what I am doing is not, and it’s up to the audience to decide where that line is,” he said.

Der Geist works for Psychic Joker Entertainment, a Champaign-based business he and friends Lisa Cerezo and Jason Cerezo started about four years ago.

Lisa Cerezo noted the wonder and awe that can be observed in the audience when der Geist performs, a major reason for their decision to go into business together.

“To go from a sense of wonder to this explosive disbelief that ‘I really can’t have actually seen what I just saw, but obviously I did, I just saw it.’ So, there’s this huge crazy disconnect, and it’s a fun thing to experience. It’s just this wondrous sense of ‘I can’t explain that,’” Lisa Cerezo said.

As der Geist continues to work locally and do more corporate events, he dreams of becoming a household name and performing for as long as possible.

“I’m hoping to become very well-known for doing escape magic and for doing mentalism, and for doing these types of things in a way that nobody’s ever done them,” he said.

For more information, go online at daviddergeist.com or psychicjoker.com.

Julia can be reached at [email protected]