For many people, the idea of visiting a psychic might conjure up images of a fortune teller in a head scarf, sitting behind a curtain of beads while staring into a crystal ball or flipping over tarot cards by candlelight.
Likewise, the “medium” many people are most familiar with is Theresa Caputo, who became famous through her TLC series, Long Island Medium. With her big, blonde hairdo and New York accent, Caputo makes a dramatic show of delivering healing messages from departed loved ones to individuals who seek her services, as well as to random people she runs into during the course of her day.
While these representations may be exaggerated, they are not totally inaccurate, at least according to some local psychics and mediums.
Skeptics Welcome
Psychic Readings by Lisa, Pleasant Gap
At Psychic Readings by Lisa, Lisa (who prefers not to use her full name) wants her clients to have a good time.
“Coming into a session, I just want you to kick back, relax, and enjoy the show,” she says. “My favorite are the skeptics. Once I start reading them, I love to watch their faces change. They’re like, ‘How did you know that? Are you in my house?’ And I start laughing. It’s definitely fun.”
But just because she aims to make the experience fun does not mean Lisa is not serious about her readings or her psychic abilities.
Before beginning a reading, Lisa prefers to know nothing about a client beyond their first name. She connects with her clients’ psychic energies using various tools, including tarot cards, runestones, crystals, or even a crystal ball. She also does palm readings and psychic sessions through the eyes, among other things.
While there is a common misconception that psychics predict the future, Lisa says, “Nothing is written in stone except for the Ten Commandments. The future always has the option to change.”
Instead, Lisa says, she tells clients about their past and their present. Based on what she learns, she can then offer guidance about the future and what paths might lead to happiness.
Lisa is a third-generation psychic, following in the footsteps of her maternal grandfather and her late mother, who was a well-known psychic in California, with many celebrity clients. When Lisa began encountering “imaginary friends” as a young child, she says her mother recognized that she was communicating with spirits. Based on her own experiences, Lisa’s mother knew how to help Lisa control her psychic abilities through meditation and practice.
“I had a great teacher,” Lisa says.
Despite Lisa’s self-stated ability to communicate with the departed, she says she chose to stop practicing mediumship once she had children.
“When you connect with those who have passed on, there’s always a spirit that does not want to believe that they have passed on,” she explains. “The last thing I want to do is connect one of those spirits to anyone. It’s easier to bring a spirit than to get rid of a spirit.”
Lisa’s late mother-in-law was also a psychic who had her own shop in State College for years, and Lisa met her husband at a psychic convention in California. She says her siblings have psychic gifts, as well, although they don’t experience them as strongly as she does.
While her own family makes a strong case for the hereditary nature of psychic gifts, Lisa says, “Everybody has some psychic ability. It’s just that some of us are a little bit more in tune with it than others. Ever have dreams that have come true, or feelings of déjà vu? Those are your sixth sense kicking in. Mothers usually have it pretty strong—that intuition we have about our children.”
Lisa has been doing readings for twenty-five years and has had a shop in Pleasant Gap for three years. She is available to do readings at private parties and says, “It’s a great date night activity.” She participates at festivals and fairs throughout the year and will be offering readings at Penn’s Cave’s All Hallows Eve Celebration on October 26.
Sobriety and Spirituality
Amaris Starseed, State College
Like Lisa, Amaris Starseed believes her psychic gifts have been passed down to her through generations.
“I come from a very long line of healers and mediums,” she says, citing her African American and Native American roots and her paternal grandfather’s healing gift, known as “blowing out the fire.”
Although she says she experienced her spiritual gifts as a child, Starseed says, “I wasn’t taught how to energetically protect myself.”
As such, she found herself in a swirl of so much confusing spiritual energy that “I ended up turning to drugs and alcohol when I was probably about 14. They just allowed this break from all of this stuff that was going on. That was one of the main reasons I turned to drugs and alcohol.”
She struggled with addiction for many years, until finally, “In 2016, I had this spiritual experience that they talk about in all of the recovery material. I literally heard a voice, and all it said was, ‘It’s time.’ And I listened.”
Her sobriety has played a key factor in her spiritual journey ever since.
“What my recovery program allowed me to do was redefine what a ‘higher power’ meant to me—that it wasn’t this angry guy sitting on a throne; it was this bigger body of energy,” says Starseed, who was raised in the Pentecostal Christian faith.
Eventually, a random encounter with a store clerk who helped relieve her of chest pain in the checkout line led her to start exploring energy healing, chakras, and reiki. After seeking training, she is now certified in evidential mediumship, tarot reading, and Holy Fire Level 3 Reiki.
The theory behind reiki is in some ways like that of acupuncture. It involves a practitioner guiding the flow of energy using their hands above or on a person’s body to release blockages and promote healing. The relaxation can relieve some physical symptoms, but Starseed focuses on reiki’s other purported benefits.
“A lot of people come to me for emotional healing and spiritual recharging,” she explains.
“It’s like, ‘What’s blocking you from your truest, highest potential?’ It could be anything. And that’s what I help my clients with—standing in their own authenticity.”
As a medium, Starseed says she gets messages from beyond the grave, and her clients often are looking to confirm that a departed loved one is okay or to connect with them one more time.
To keep from being flooded by paranormal messages everywhere she goes, Starseed says she has learned to set boundaries and intentions every day. When she is open to messages, she says she communicates through what she calls “Spirit,” which she describes as a “general body of spirit loved ones.” This is different than what she refers to as “Source” or “Higher Power,” which she explains is what most people call God, depending on their faith.
Although she encounters those who feel that her spiritual practices are in contradiction with Christianity, she respectfully disagrees.
“I still believe in the spirit of Jesus, and I try to live by unconditional love,” she says. “The only way to harness that kind of energy is through Source—the god of your understanding.”
Her name is an alias. “Amaris” is her given middle name, and “Starseed” was the name of her first oracle deck (a card deck similar to tarot).
Starseed does tarot and mediumship readings via Zoom and in person at Evalyne’s Garden Gate in Bellefonte, where she also practices reiki. She also makes and sells anointing oils, candles, and other metaphysical products. She sets up a booth at local festivals and periodically organizes her own Starseed Festivals to bring metaphysical vendors together. She says she is waiting for confirmation from Source that the time is right before planning the next Starseed Festival.
Supporting the Local Metaphysical Community
Evalyne Hall
Evalyne’s Garden Gate, Bellefonte
Evalyne Hall’s journey into the metaphysical arts began fifty years ago, at the age of eleven, after having her fortune read for a dollar at a Campfire Girls jamboree in her hometown of Costa Mesa, California.
“I went in and watched the woman lay down the tarot cards and tell the story, and I thought, ‘I need to learn how to do this,’” she says.
She bought a deck of tarot cards and some books and started practicing, filling five journals with card layouts and figuring out how to match key words and use her intuition to piece together a story.
“Once you start doing this kind of stuff, other things start coming your way,” she says.
For Hall, those psychic “other things” included mediumship, which she tapped into as a teenager, mainly through the use of Ouija boards.
However, like Lisa, she stopped practicing mediumship because “there are other things that go on with that,” she says. “It makes me uncomfortable, so I don’t do it.”
Hall believes that everyone is born with psychic abilities, but, due to societal pressures, “Most of us lose it by the time we are five years old. … If the gift is not nurtured, it atrophies.”
One reason she opened her Bellefonte shop, Evalyne’s Garden Gate, was to give local practitioners a place to nurture their own gifts.
“One of the first problems I noticed when I moved to central Pennsylvania was that this has basically been a psychic dead zone,” she says.
Hall often resorted to doing readings in Wegmans Café before opening her shop two years ago. Today, she allows practitioners to use what she calls her “Metaphysical Community Centre” to work with clients in the tarot parlor or the reiki room. She also occasionally hosts classes for practitioners.
At the front of the space is “The Mystic Shoppe,” a store offering metaphysical products like oils, candles, crystals, handmade jewelry, tarot card decks, and a large selection of books on subjects ranging from astrology to Christian mysticism to herbalism and witchcraft.
In addition to opening her space to other practitioners, Hall offers her own services to clients. Many are seeking guidance regarding one of the “Big Three: love, money, or health,” she says.
“Tarot is my main tool, but I don’t really need it,” she says. “I use it to give me prompts. It’s amazing how accurate it can be.”
Hall, who also practices reiki, says she stops short of calling herself a “witch,” but she does use the word “magic” to describe a lot of what she does, and she wants the public to understand that “magic is not the tool of the devil. There are tons of healers and prophets in the Bible. … Jesus was a reiki master.”
Hall hopes her shop will encourage even more psychics to “come out of the closet” and share their gifts.
“There are lots of local practitioners around here, but so many of them don’t want to tell anyone who they are,” she says. “They need to not be afraid. Now I have a place for them to go privately to do their practices.”
Evalyne’s Garden Gate is open Wednesdays through Sundays when Hall is not attending festivals or metaphysical expos. T&G
Karen Walker is a freelance writer in State College.
