Real Stories from a Former Phone Psychic: Weird Revelations and More

It's 1:30 in the morning and you can't sleep. You have a relationship problem, a work problem or a family problem and, try as you might, you just can't sleep. What do you do? Who do you talk to?

In many cases, you call your favorite 1-900 phone psychic promoted by those late-night infomercials and on the Internet.

Alas, I must admit, I used to be that person you called when you didn't think you had anyone else to talk to.

I spent 2 years doing phone psychic work part-time as a supplement to my income. I'd gotten divorced and needed something to help pay the bills and couldn't really afford a babysitter. I could, however, work for several hours after the kids went to bed...assuming I could work from home. And the phone psychic gig seemed like an ideal solution.

I signed a contract with an international company that forwarded phone calls directly to my home. I would call the 1-800 number and "sign in" when I was ready to work and again to "sign out" when I was done for the night. And, you know what? My phone rang constantly from 9:00 p.m. CST to 2:00 a.m. CST. And not just some nights. Every night I signed on. It just didn't matter what day of the week it was or, apparently, whether or not I wanted to work. I would hang up from one call and the next would come before I could even pick the phone back up to sign out.

And the scariest thing about it all was that I was good. And I don't have a psychic bone in my body.

Apparently, according to my contract, I need not be clairvoyant (be able to contact the dead) or practiced in the art of divination (be able to see the future). The definition of "psychic", according to my contract, was a person able to interpret tarot cards, give a numerology reading or interpret an astrology chart. With the web sites and complimentary computer software included in my "psychic start-up kit", I had no difficulty at all in interpreting a tarot spread. I was able to start working with no orientation or training. As soon as I received my "sign in" code, I was a working psychic. With a click of the mouse, the readings were all done for me on computer as I talked to people on the phone. Need to know whether or not you and your boyfriend are compatible for marriage? I input your names into the numerology program and the software determines your personality types and compatibility. Not me.

But that's not what you want to hear when you're paying $2.00 per minute to talk to me. You pay $120 per talk hour to talk to me (and many, many of you did talk to me for that long!) and what did I make out of the deal? $20.00. That was it. Per talk-hour. (I didn't get paid for the 2-4 minutes I was off the phone between calls.) The company I worked for made a phenomenal amount of money off my advice.

I had to admit to myself that being a 1-900 phone psychic was a pretty sleazy line of work. I had it justified in my brain that I wasn't actually lying to anyone. I never once told anyone I could see the future. But, by calling myself a psychic to people who were paying for one seemed dishonest. At that point in my life, though, the check made the difference between keeping the electricity connected and living in the dark. And, when I started, it was really a lot of fun. What other job will you ever be able to have where you can show up in your jammies, have a beer in one hand and a cigarrette in the other and get paid for it? Okay, what legal line of work???

I had just taken Psychology 101 and was listening to a lot of Dr. Laura during the daytime. I'd done some volunteer work with the local YWCA and had some experience with women who were victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Spiritually, I was finding myself drawn back to my Catholic roots (which made my part-time job even harder to justify). That all translated really well into my psychic job.

More than half the calls I took were from abused women wanting to know when their relationships were going to turn around and when their men were going to stop drinking. "He's so wonderful when he's not drinking" was their mantra. I can't tell you how many times I heard that. I actually had one woman call and ask me if she should take her abusive ex-boyfriend back now that he's getting released from prison.

"What is he in prison for?" I asked.

"He held a gun to my head and held me hostage during a stand-off with police."

"Why were the police after him?"

"My stupid neighbor called the police because she heard us fighting."

"Honey, I don't have to be a psychic to tell you that taking him back would be a phenomenally bad idea."

And so it would go.

I would get quite a few calls from people who really just wanted me to answer all their questions for them. Solve all their problems. Being a phone psychic was a lot like practicing psychology or counseling without a license. People wanted my opinion. They called to find out what I thought. Only about half even wanted the tarot reading. They just wanted to know what they should do. By the time people called me, they always knew what they wanted to do anyway. They just wanted someone to say they were right.

Now, I worked pretty hard at keeping you talking, but I really did care what was going on in your life and really did try to help. And, with all the talk about how secular our society is becoming, the people who would call me really wanted me to tell them to go to their churches, go to their pastors and priests. They wanted me to tell them to start praying, go back to their families, listen to their parents. They wanted the Judeo-Christian advice Dr. Laura dispenses, they just wanted to pay $2.00 per minute to get it one-on-one.

I still have to wonder how most people could afford to talk to me. And if the majority of them were abused women, what happened when their abusers got the bill? I'd developed quite an extensive resource list for the abused and never hung up before making sure that the women who called me had access to emergency resources in their areas, but eventually, the guilt about it all really started getting to me and I started looking for other at-home work to do.

Then, I got the call from "Ted" that creeped me out badly enough, I hung up, signed out and never signed back on again. "Ted" called one warm summer evening with a "unique" problem, as he termed it.

"I'm in love with my neighbor's son, 'Bobby', and all I can think about is having sex with him," Ted told me.

"Is 'Bobby' seeing someone right now?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Ted replied. "He's only 11 years old. And I REALLY want to have him."

I sat on my end of the phone, stunned. The voice on the other end of the phone sounded like I was talking to a man at least in his thirties. "Well, Ted, you don't have to be a psychic to know that if you have sex with Bobby, you're going to go to jail and Bobby will never have a normal life. If you love him like you say, you won't touch him."

"But I waaaaant him," Ted whined.

Over the next grueling hour, I tried to cajole, talk, and trick identifying information out of Ted about himself, about Bobby, about where they were located, anything. And Ted was one tough nut to crack. He would always steer the conversation back to how he desired this eleven-year-old boy and became very graphic in his description of what he wanted and what he was thinking of doing. I took as much of it as I could and had to realize the futility in finding out anything specific about Ted or Bobby.

About an hour after Ted and I started talking, I just couldn't take any more and ended the conversation. I immediately signed out and called my "boss" and told her what happened. She asked me if I found anything out about the child in question and the gentleman that called. When I told her that I was unable to get any indentifiers from the caller, she told me that there was nothing she would do about the situation. As I remember, the company was not willing to do anything about a caller that didn't give any specifics because they might be lying, might just be spouting off, might just be fantasizing and none of that is illegal. Perhaps it was just some sicko trying to freak me out.

Well, he did. And that effectively ended my psychic career.

I don't know how many people actually took my advice and I don't know, in many cases, how well that worked out for them. What I do know, though, is that "Mary", "Betty" and "Lisa" each called me one night a week for months and spent thousands of dollars just to call me and get my advice about what jobs they should take, where they should go on vacation and whether or not they should rent or buy. They asked for advice in every arena in their lives and seemed to truly value my opinion.

So, at times being a psychic made me feel very valued and important to others. At other times, I felt like a liar and a cheat, no matter how matter-of-fact I was with my clientele. Still other times, I felt guilty about participating in promoting the occult, which is very much against the Catholic faith. Sometimes I just felt excited to share the Gospels with people over the phone. I read people Bible passages and asked "What would Jesus do?" long before someone thought to put it on a tee shirt.

Regardless of the outcome, I really believe that my time as a 1-900 phone psychic taught me a lot and, overall, really I'm glad I did it. I still think of my old callers of all those years ago and the time and circumstances of my life that made me need those callers almost as badly as they needed me. In the end, I think I worked out more of my own problems through the callers than they ever realized. I was able to reconcile so many issues from my own past by laughing, crying and sharing with those strangers on the phone, night after night.

It's funny how the Holy Spirit moves. Even through the "occult", I could find God and His infinite goodness.

Would I go back to being a 1-900 phone psychic? I don't think they've printed enough money to pay me to do that. I just can't entice people to spend a small fortune to spend more time then they'd planned talking to me. But, I do think now that there is room in our society for people who read the tarot, for people who read palms and the like. Because it's not the tarot or the palms that they read. It's you. Whether they do that in person or over the phone is immaterial, really. The fact of the matter is that when you need someone to talk to, someone to unload on, someone to relieve your conscience and give you guidance, they are there waiting for you to call. They really do want to help you. I just hope you can afford it.

And, ten years later, my advice still holds. "You shouldn't be spending $200 talking to me. You should take that money, give it to your church and ask your pastor all the things that you're asking me."