As the leaves fall and parents craft costumes out of bedsheets, October summons in us a perennial urge to believe in a world full of mysterious powers beyond our understanding. People who would elsewhen never be caught dead (so to speak) attending a séance, indulge in tarot readings and drift through haunted houses with enthusiastic abandon.

What better time for a magic act? Better yet, what if you were the magician?

"A magical moment, a moment of wonder, is where someone opens up their eyes to new ideas in the world," says Las Vegas magician and mentalist Paul Draper. "As adults, we start to see pattern recognition rather than seeing everything fresh. We see table, fence, rather than wrought-iron fence, wooden table, looking at the [wood] grains. Magic makes people free to re-examine for a moment and say, 'Wait, I don't have a pattern recognition for that.' "

Draper, 30, grew up in Holladay. He now performs regularly at the Venetian in Las Vegas and has done shows all over the world. He has worked his magic at Hugh Hefner's birthday party, for celebrities in their hotel suites, and in deserts in front of native tribes. He is returning to his home state of Utah for "Mysteries of the Mind": three evenings of entertainment and wonder.

Draper's shows are distinctive in that he encourages his audience to come along for the mind-reading process.

"I teach them that it doesn't take some paranormal psychic to be able to find truth; that it's something we can all do and become observers in reality around us, if we look for human universals," he says.

Draper sees his show as an act of empowerment.

"Harry Potter, 'The Illusionist,' 'The Prestige' -- people are fascinated with these skills they wish they could have, and the funny thing is that they have them," he says. "That's what the show is about."

This is not to say Draper gives away all his secrets. This is not a lecture, and there will plenty of awe-inspiring stuff to go around.

"The question comes," he says, " 'If we all have these skills, why do we come see your show, Paul?' The answer is, we can all learn to play the piano, sing, and paint, but when there's someone who's spent over 10,000 hours perfecting that skill, it's fascinating to watch."

Draper is at least as much storyteller as magician. His Weber State University anthropology degree and his breadth of experience with different cultures helps him understand his audience to the point of preternatural perception.

"My skills are like Sherlock Holmes," Draper says. "I mix magic, anthropology, psychology, theater, together to create a conversation about the powers of the human mind and the richness of human consciousness."

Draper timed his show to jibe with the mystical interest that people -- especially people here -- develop as Halloween approaches.

"Utahns have always had an interest in Ouija boards and Halloween," he says, "and the idea that the spirit world is right here with us. Mysticism sprung in upstate New York in the same time period and place as Mormonism, so there are pieces of that that have carried, not religiously but culturally, with the people. And that's why our haunted houses are the best in the world, and one of the reasons I think a mentalism show around Halloween will be very popular."

Bring a sense of wonder, but leave home small children -- and the ghost of your great-grandmother.

"People will often come up to me and ask if I can talk to their dead relatives, or if I know when they're going to get pregnant," Draper says. "That's not my skill set. I'm a trained anthropologist. My education has taught me to drop into a culture that I know nothing about, come to some understanding of who they are -- their society, belief structure, symbols -- then write those down and come back to my own culture and explain it to people. Same in my show, except instead of studying a whole society, I study a society of one: the one individual standing in front of me."