I see dead people.

I went as a lark in college with a group of friends. She seemed reasonably versed in cold readings and was telling people stuff like, "you'll marry late but have five children etc." When she got to me, she stopped after flipping like the third tarot card or so, started to tremble and looked pale. She folded the deck together in some way that seemed odd to me at the time and said calmly, "Take your money off the table."
"What?" I said, or something like that, which was pretty much the extent of all that I said there.
"There are demons pusuing you," she said, "and I don't want them following your trail here. You are pivotal (or maybe it was a fulcrum, or maybe axis, I don't remember). "Listen to the voices in your heart, not in your head. They are real. They are all very real."

I've always been fascinated by the paranormal, so one day, when I saw a psychic's shingle hanging outside a house, I pulled over. Almost immediately after I'd handed over my $15.00, the psychic told me that someone had put a terrible and powerful curse on me, but that she could take it off for a mere $500.00. I was disgusted.

I was with friends in the Atlanta Underground once, a man and a woman, and they both wanted to see a vendor psychic. The psychic told the man, "You have a very strong female influence in your life, blah, blah, blah, blah." She told the woman, "You have a very strong male influence in your life, the same blah, blah, blah, blah." And both friends were absolutely thrilled with their readings.

Another time, a boyfriend and I stopped at a pair of vendor psychics for fun. He said his psychic sounded very natural, but I could not say the same. Mine was clearly reciting a memorized spiel.

So disappointing.

I'm not in any way discounting genuine psychic phenomena. I believe it exists. I've experienced it, in fact, just never when I've paid to.

I've never been to a psychic but my gran used to go to a woman who lived down the street from her. She didn't ask for money and didn't broadcast what she 'was'. My gran would take her things the grandchildren had touched recently... and she was always right about the things she saw. She told my gran I would suffer from the shoulders up all my life. I broke my neck, sustained several brain injuries, wisdom teeth requiring surgery, sinus infections constantly, ear infections so bad I'm almost deaf in one ear, and I've had strep throat so many times I can't even count.

In fact, one of the last things she told my gran was that I would have two great romantic loves in my life. I was married sixteen years before divorcing and eventually remarrying. My mom reminded of this a couple weeks ago.

On the other hand, my great-grandmother, my gran, and my mother all saw dead people. My great-grandmother used to see her husband who was beaten to death in a drunk tank when he was 26 (she used to rage about the fact that the son of a bitch stayed young while she got old). My gran also saw him as did my mother. My mother also used to see a little boy on our swing set who was too small to get into our yard or up there by himself and she said there was an old man in my grandmother's basement.

When we were looking at old farm houses because they wanted to move out to the country, I remember one that she loved until she walked into the barn. It wasn't until years later I knew why she'd acted so strangely. There was 'something' in the barn. Something malicious (her word). We passed up several houses because mom didn't 'feel good' about them.

My grandfather is psychic. For instance, I was sitting on his couch ostensibly watching TV. I was really thinking about religion, and how mine was different from my grandfathers...how I could respect his views, but he couldn't respect mine.

He sat up and said my name in that way he only does when he's really angry. "I don't care what you do in your house, in your own time, but here..." and he proceeded to lecture me on religion.

That is, until I thought "And what does your religion say about spying on people's minds?" at which point he abruptly said, "Now you go on back to watching your show."

LOL. That's grandpa for you. He does that sort of thing with amazing frequency. He also tells all the women in the family when they're going to have a baby, and what gender it'll be. My mother knew she was pregnant when grandpa called and said, "You're going to have a blue-eyed, blonde-haired boy." She did. Brother's hair darkened as he aged--it was brown by about age ten--but he definitely was a blue-eyed blonde haired boy, despite both our parents having dark hair.

I read the tarot. I don't do it often...I really use it almost like a party trick, now. I go back and forth about how much I really believe in it. But the thing is, I've done some very in-depth, spot-on readings. I never ask a person their question; instead, I do the reading and see what question it seems to be answering. I tell the questioner what each card means in its position, then put all those bits together in a way that makes sense, then say, "So this is your answer. I'm assuming your question was ______?"

I'm pretty sure I'm not just reading the person, because, like I said, I start by giving a card-by-card breakdown. I'm not making any conscious attempt to read the questioner, and I don't know their question. I try to be as specific as possible, and very rarely ask any questions during the reading. (No "is it about a man?" sort of questions.)

I have a hard time doing readings for myself--too close to the material, I guess. But when I was learning the tarot, I'd write all my readings down. I found that even if I screwed up the interpretation at the time, in hindsight, I could see exactly what the cards were saying.

My readings can occasionally be incredibly specific, and I've never been wrong on a reading I did for someone else (although I have had readings where the cards pretty much refused to answer the question asked--and that's what I told the questioner. "The cards say, 'I'm not telling'." )

And yet, I'm something less than a firm believer, even so.

There are several old threads on psychic phenomena. I don't believe in it myself, so I had to say that in those threads, but there's lots of spooky stuff here if you skip over my naysaying
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80887
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90617

But it's still an interesting idea to use in a story - here's a short one I wrote for the Flash Fiction Challenge a few years back (the password in the FF forum is: flashed)
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84639

Sometimes I know things before they happen. One of my teachers who was never absent the whole year was absent one day in school. It was about 2 periods before my class and I had this feeling I can't describe, that my teacher wasn't there.

Scratch that, it was a fact. Similar to how you know the sky is blue and take it for granted, that's how I felt. It's happened several times like that before but that was the most recent one I can remember.

Ex-girlfriend took me to one in New York on my eighteenth birthday. The woman couldn't cold read me. I was cracking up inside. They're all phonies, but this one couldn't even fake it well.

_Richard

This is just one of those subjects that you have to either be blessed with the gift, or the old "seeing is believing" to believe. Even then religion can get in the way or pure skepticism. Some people wouldn't believe it was real regardless of whether the psychic person was gifted or not . There are a bunch of fakes out there, but if you have just a drop of psychic ability in you, you'll be able to feel a fake a mile away. There are people who truly have psychic abilities, as well as many other gifts...as I call them. I've visited a psychic town in the area called Cassadaga. I've never felt compelled to defend my beliefs or experiences though. I understand that if you've never experienced something like this, you can't be expected to believe in it. Actually, I've always thought the world would be a little happier if everyone could take a look on the other side just once.

I do tarot readings - far less than I used to - and I make it very clear I am NOT a psychic. Mostly I've only read for "my own," people who read tarot or use divination themselves. The attitude and outlook is completely different from what you get when you deal with people there to be entertained.

I'm a big believer in free will, and the "tall dark handsome stranger stuff" is as boring as it is silly. I don't think I've ever encountered a curse - unless you count the querent's own personality, of course.

jkababy said:

ALL of them are phonies Rich?

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Yes.

Every single one?

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Yes.

What that your feeling before you went in there and it was confirmed once she couldn't read you?

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I do not believe in the supernatural. Great fodder for stories, though. And I'd sure love to have some magical powers -- wish that stuff was real, but it's not. It's all bunk, is what I say. Divination, tarot, telekinesis, astral projection (I used to do that. It's called sleep apnea -- get a c-pap), telepathy, Jesus, Allah, Satan, Wicca, Gaea, angels, miracles, the Silver Surfer ... it's all fiction to me.

_Richard

I had a psychic once tell me to slow down, that I was sure to get a huge ticket in the next day or two - she went on to describe details (time of day, how much money, etc)

That following Monday, I was trucking along, about 90 in a 65, when out of the blue I remembered what she'd said. Took my foot off the gas. About the time my car had slowed itself to about 70, there was the cop, waiting in the median, where there usually wasn't one. Same time of day as the psychic had described and a lot of the other details were spot on as well. No ticket, but I definitely would have had one if I hadn't taken my foot off the gas.

I've been to psychics at the fair, who told me pretty general things. In public places such as this, they listen and people watch. They were never able to tell me anything specific to me, but these were fun experiences.

I was at a party about a month ago when a mystic woman came up to me. I'd never met her before. She told me something specific from my past that she had no way of knowing. No generalities here, she was right on.

I was at a cross-walk about a year ago. I got this feeling not to step into the cross-walk. The man next to me started out and I said, "No, not yet." From out of nowhere a car came speeding toward where we would have been crossing and ran the red light. I just knew.

Years ago, my mother came to visit me in the neighboring town where I lived. All of the sudden, she said she didn't feel good and wanted to go home. I got a strange feeling and talked her out of leaving right then. We had lunch, did a bit more shopping, and she drove the half hour home. When she got home, she called me. While she was out, the house had been robbed.

I tell you these things, because I believe psychic ability is within us all. Just think about your own strange experiences and you will see...and they make some great stories too!

I used to walk by a Psychic's place when back from the place I worked. I would send her *thoughts* like, "Clean up your flower bed." It looks horrible and dried out. Never worked. Guess she wasn't psychic.

People should also remember that there is intuition and also "hot readings." Often because intuition is put down, I think people confuse it for psychic. I have really good intuition, but I'm not Psychic.

Example of a Hot reading:
- Psychic knows a cop.
- Psychic finds out about your driving route. 1+1...

Hot readings aren't that hard to do.

I've always been tempted to ask a Psychic, "What's my name?" And then say they are wrong no matter what answer they give.

This girl I knew wanted to be a Tarot reader, said she was really good at it, too. I asked her to do a reading for me once, and she freaked out, wouldn't tell me what it was, and then told me in no uncertain terms never to ask her to read my fortune again. This was concerning past lives, and I know what she saw now because I found a pretty good therapist who focuses on past lives, and she put everything into perspective. And yeah, it really wasn't pretty. But even the first one, she absolutely got it. Just couldn't deal with it.

I do believe in it, but I also believe that too many people exploit it. My mom would read fortunes and so did my grandpa but they would never ask for money. To me paying isn't the issue, I figure, the person is putting in a great amount of work (it is pretty taxing if done right) but at the same time, if people exploit it, I think it's wrong.

I've had some readings done that were pure fabrication, others that were better and some that just missed the essentials before I found this past life therapist. You have to be sure you're in good hands. Like with a shrink.