Alyx Hilshey performs a magic act on "Penn and Teller: Fool Us" in April.

LAKE PLACID — Alyx Hilshey can contort forks into odd shapes with her mind. Or at least, that’s what she’d have you believe. She can turn a deck of playing cards into a deck of blank cards and can make a billiard ball and a cold, metal ball fall out of a solid cup that definitely shouldn’t fit both of them.

And that’s just the beginning.

Hilshey performed her first show as a seven-year-old for her kindergarten class. She was paid handsomely for her work, receiving a yellow check for $20 from the principal. She’s been doing magic ever since, although it has only been her full-time career since 2021. Now, she’s coming to the Olympic Center for four shows this winter, with her act, “Miracles & Mystery Comedy Show.”

The shows will be in the Edelweiss Room at the Lake Placid Conference Center at 7 p.m. Dec. 28 and 29. The second set of shows will be Feb. 21 and 22. Tickets are available at tinyurl.com/yckjphr5.

From side-gig to career

Alyx Hilshey performs at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles.

For her entire life, magic has been a hobby and sometimes a side hustle, but it took a while for Hilshey to consider it as a serious career. She went to college for engineering, worked as an engineer designing mining equipment and even returned to the University of Vermont for a Master’s degree in electrical engineering. For a time, when she worked as a server, she would do magic tricks at her tables.

“I had so many regular, who would bring friends every week, and they’d want to see the latest, greatest magic trick,” Hilshey said. “And it made a ton of business for the restaurant and they absolutely loved it.”

As an engineer, she would do shows at corporate parties and bars. The summer before she went back to graduate school, she decided to see what would happen if she did magic on Church Street — an outdoor pedestrian mall — in Burlington. She got a permit and within 25 minutes, she had made $50 dollars from two short shows. That summer, she ended up doing about 800 shows on that street.

After graduate school, she taught at Penn State Altoona for five years but found herself wanting more flexibility in her work to be able to spend time with her family, including her three children. Around that same time, she also moved to the Adirondacks to be closer to her in-laws.

The gig at the Olympic Center has been more than a year in the making. Hilshey said that a magic act only makes sense for a place with the idea of miracles at its core.

Learning new tricks

Hilshey learned her first magic trick from her grandfather, who would buy pocket tricks from a magic shop and show them to her.

“He took a stack of nickels and he covered them up, and when he took his hand away, they were all dimes,” Hilshey said. “They just changed right in front of me and there was no explanation. The nickels were gone. His hands had nothing in them. It didn’t make any sense.”

He taught her the same trick and she started performing it. More than thirty years later, Hilshey is still learning and honing her craft. She’s traveled around the world to study with respected magicians, such as Tom Stone, a magician from Sweden.

Her craft is part muscle memory, practicing small bits of her act like folding a playing card into fourths, incorporating comedic bits and anecdotes to maximize the entertainment value of her act, and of course, mastering misdirection. Sometimes learning a new trick means buying thousands of forks, or thousands of Ritz crackers.

That’s how she ended up on the CW Network’s “Penn & Teller: Fool Us,” a moment that helped her capture the national spotlight. She had refined a coin act, but didn’t think it would be unique enough for the show.

“I sent them the video of the coins, and I’m like, ‘P.S., if you want, I can do it with Ritz crackers.'” Hilshey said. “And they’re like, ‘that’s what we want.'”

She spent months practicing with the buttery, crumbly crackers — an utterly inconvenient prop that can break at any minute. She had piles of cracker crumbs that would accumulate in piles on the floor, but the opportunity to meet her heroes on a Vegas stage made it all worth it.

‘Miracles and mystery’

Hilshey said she is known for being a performer who can appeal to all ages, so the Olympic Center shows are guaranteed to be fun for the whole family. Although she is a magician primarily, she also works comedy into her routine. She pulls funny stories from her own life, such as her experiences raising children, and leverages them to broaden the appeal of her shows.

Magic, in large part, is the art of misdirection, Hilshey said.

“One of the best types of misdirection is laughter,” she said. “If people are laughing for a minute, you can get ready to create some really awesome mystery in that misdirection.”

So if you make it out to one of her four shows at the Olympic Center, get ready to laugh a lot. And then see what kind of magic Hilshey can create while you do.