Hypnotist Lee Darrow convinced about 40 people Saturday afternoon in McCormick Auditorium that their fingers were glued together, that they should laugh hysterically and that their neighbors never bathe.

But hey, it was for charity.

“DM is one of my pet charities,” said Darrow, who performed his 12th consecutive Dance Marathon show for free. “The first year I performed here, DM was benefitting a leukemia society, and my father was taken by leukemia.”

At Saturday’s show, Darrow said people are often hypnotized without even knowing it, giving an example of people who can’t hear voices of others while watching television.

He then showed the audience some tricks to play on their friends in order to hypnotize them.

In a slow, mesmerizing voice, Darrow showed how the brain can paralyze the body. He taught audience members to hold their fingers close to each another, imagining that glue was sticking them together. Darrow urged the audience to then picture the glue solidifying and locking their fingers tighter and tighter together.

When Darrow asked the audience members to try to separate their fingers, they could not easily accomplish the task because their minds had been tricked into thinking their fingers were stuck together. Darrow then told them to gently blow on their fingers and imagine the glue melting away, thus undoing the spell he had cast on the audience.