SOMERS, N.Y. - On Friday, May 8, Somers SEPTA once again brought a little mystery and wonder to the high school auditorium.
“The littles will be impressed, but so will the adults,” said co-president Tara Tierney ahead of the organization’s annual magic show fundraiser.
She wasn’t wrong.
One of the rising stars in the world of magic, Eric Wilzig wasted no time getting the audience involved. Early in the show, he called a young student named Matthew to the stage to inspect a large magic box.
“Make sure there are no trap doors or any way to escape,” Wilzig instructed.
Matthew kicked and prodded the box before giving it his seal of approval. Wilzig’s assistant then climbed inside, the doors were locked, and the magician stepped on top of the box. Raising a curtain above his head, he dropped the fabric moments later — and suddenly the assistant had taken his place.
But the illusion didn’t end there. When the box was reopened, a handcuffed Wilzig was somehow inside.
“How did that happen?” Matthew asked as he left the stage, echoing the thoughts of much of the audience.
Wilzig then turned to mentalism, asking the crowd whether they had ever heard of “twin telepathy.” The children enthusiastically answered yes, and volunteers Stacy and Brian were brought to the stage.
Blindfolded and supposedly “connected,” Stacy was instructed to raise her left or right hand depending on which side of her body Wilzig touched. The twist? Wilzig was actually touching Brian, yet Stacy consistently responded correctly.
The act soon turned comedic. At one point, Brian mistakenly raised his foot instead of his hand, prompting laughter from the crowd. Wilzig escalated the joke by lightly poking Stacy with a fork, causing Brian to leap from his chair in exaggerated alarm.
“You’ll be connected for seven more hours,” Wilzig joked to the audience.
Still, the mind games were only beginning.
Looking for skeptics, Wilzig invited a woman named Victoria to participate in a prediction trick. First came a warm-up: he scribbled something onto a small chalkboard and asked if there was any way he could know what word she would say next.
“No,” she answered confidently.
When Wilzig turned the chalkboard around, it simply read: “No.”
The audience erupted.
Next, Victoria selected a word from a Harry Potter novel. After Wilzig made another prediction, she revealed her chosen word: “Monster.” Written on the board was the exact same word.
Then came perhaps the evening’s most impressive reveal.
Another volunteer selected the phrase “half-heartedly.” Instead of writing the word itself, Wilzig revealed only a series of numbers: “329.1.13.”
Pulling out a dictionary, he directed the audience to page 329, column one, word 13 — where “half-heartedly” appeared exactly as predicted.
Barbara, another audience volunteer, found herself at the center of one of the show’s funniest moments when Wilzig claimed spinning a cellphone could somehow change the time displayed on it.
After placing her phone into a bag attached to a string, he began swinging it dramatically through the air before it crashed loudly into a chair.
“Do you have Apple Care?” he joked as the crowd laughed nervously.
Fortunately, the phone was unharmed — and somehow the displayed time had changed to 5:42, leaving the audience equally amused and bewildered.
While the evening was full of laughs and amazement, there was no mystery surrounding SEPTA’s mission. Kristy Urgo, whose child is a special education student, said the organization’s welcoming spirit was clear from the start.
“We’re very lucky,” she said. “We were welcomed from the moment we got here.”
And unlike the illusions on stage, Somers SEPTA’s commitment to supporting every child is no trick at all.
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