Belief and practice of the metaphysical is blossoming today. Custom-art tarot cards are easy to find and many antique stores, including Springfield’s A Cricket in the House, sport specialized sections for essential oils, gemstones and color-coded candles.

Psychics can be seen as a joke to many. They rose back to popularity in Victorian England, when psychics and seances provided a spectacle – and a sense of hope – to the wealthy and lower-class alike.

There is no shortage of them in Springfield, either. Yelp and YellowPages rank the top 10 psychics around town, and they populate all areas of the city.

I’ve only visited a professional psychic once with a friend (I wasn’t allowed to go back with her), but I sat for a tarot reading at Drury’s medieval faire last year. It was an interesting experience and it does require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. I did not agree with my reading at all, but I had been warned beforehand that it was a “warm-up,” so the deck might not be active.

During the visit with my friend, I was shocked at the cost of the reading – 60 dollars for half an hour. I loafed around in the lobby and flipped through the standard magazines on the table, ready to leave and excited to hear my friend’s review. When she got out, she didn’t say anything until we left the building. She seemed awed about what the woman had told her. The psychic knew that my friend had lost her father and alluded to a current relationship bringing lasting happiness after the ending of an old one. She had recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend and was with another – and ended up breaking up with him not even a month later. The reading had said enough to be legitimate but… it didn’t hold any real weight.

According to a Gallup survey, more than a quarter of Americans believe that people can have psychic abilities, and three-fourths believe in some aspect of the paranormal. A New York Times article from Feb. 2019 follows Susan Gerbic, a woman who leads “sting operations” against celebrity psychics by exposing them through fake Facebook profiles. The Internet era makes it easier than ever to gather information about an individual before they show up for a reading or to a venue – and people share a lot more online than can be gleaned from “cold readings” of clothing and body language.

Overall, belief in the supernatural and our ability to interact with it is not the major issue when it comes to psychics, mediums or anyone else who claims to operate beyond the physical plane. But it can exploit those who have lost a loved one or are at desperate ends to find answers or hope. There is a fine line between providing a silver lining and making monetary gain off the pain of others.

Article written by Maclen Johnson.