Can she see dead people?

I went to a work-sponsored luncheon yesterday and the speaker was a “fifth generation natural-born psychic.” She’s a 60-year-old dynamo with a mane of crazy black hair and some of the littlest chicken legs I’ve ever seen (she’s a staunch vegetarian) and when she spoke, she was energetic, passionate, and crass (she dropped the f-bomb a few times and—while wearing a short skirt, no less—occasionally sat very, um, UN-lady-like in her chair. Think Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct). She’s an unapologetic strong-willed product of the 60s who brought to mind the expression “full of spit and vinegar.” It seemed like every woman in the audience was intrigued.
After she told us about her life, and how she developed her sixth sense, she took questions from the audience. One woman asked how she could quiet the noise in her head in order to meditate (since this woman had grown up Catholic, the psychic suggested reciting an old Catholic prayer over and over), another asked how a woman can develop her intuition (start with small things, like the outcome of a baseball game, before trying to tackle big, personal issues), another asked if a baby was in her near future (eventually, the psychic told her, but not until she visits another country first). The moderator of the luncheon asked if she’s ever seen ghosts (yes) and HOW, exactly, she knew she had this rare sixth sense (“You know how some people are natural writers or artists or dancers? I was a natural psychic. I just knew. I had the gift.”)
And then it got really interesting. One of my coworkers asked the psychic if she could “invite her in” to “read her aura” (the psychic had explained early on that she won’t read someone’s aura or palm or cards unless first given permission) and the psychic told her that she sensed there was a lot of pressure to have a baby. She then told her that she kept hearing the name Mary. “I can’t think of anyone named Mary,” my coworker answered. “Do you mean my MARRIAGE? I’m MARRIED.” No, no, it was a woman named Mary.
Knowing this particular (adorable) coworker and knowing a little about her relationship, it sure seemed like she was looking for some type of validation ABOUT her marriage. Instead the psychic told her that her husband is “really cute” and “they’d have a baby girl together.” Not quite the answer she was hoping for.
Another coworker, who looks very Italian, was asked if she knows a Tony. (What Italian doesn’t know a Tony?) Her brother happens to be Tony. The psychic then said that her brother felt tormented by her when they were growing up (her brother is 13 years younger than she is, there was no tormenting/teasing, just babysitting). She also said this coworker wanted to be a lawyer because she was always asking questions (she said she has never been interested in law), mentioned a tennis racket (huh?) and said she was scared of doctors (on some level, who isn’t?)
Another coworker asked if her husband should open his own deli in the skyway (the answer was yes) and yet another was told to re-do her stairwell (um, not really possible, since she rents an apartment). When a CLEARLY foreign woman “invited her to read her aura,” the psychic immediately asked, “How many languages do you speak?” (anyone could’ve figured out she speaks at least two) and when the psychic asked another woman how many kids she has, and the woman said she doesn’t have kids, the psychic blamed it on the fact that the woman’s table-mate was sitting too close to her and her “aura was bleeding” over to the next chair, which is why she was picking up her aura instead of the woman in question.
I don’t want to sound TOO cynical (is it too late for that?) but I have a hard time believing that this woman could look at a total stranger and sum up her life in a matter of seconds. There’s a part of me that WANTS to believe she really can “read” a person’s aura somehow, and there’s a part of me that thinks maybe some people really do have the ability to tap into their sixth sense (Gary Spivey is not one of them, I’m thinking more along the lines of psychics who help solve police mysteries), and there’s an even bigger part of me that’s like: You believers are GULLIBLE. I can’t blame them for eating it up, though. I keep thinking about Whoopi’s character Oda May Brown in the movie Ghost. Who doesn’t want to believe that living people can somehow communicate with the dead? Who doesn’t want affirmation that their dearly departed loved ones are safely on the “other side”? Who doesn’t want to think that a stranger might have the uncanny ability to see into our future and read us better than even we can read ourselves?
I used to watch John Edwards’ show “Crossing Over” until my husband asked me why this LEGITIMATE psychic was on the Science Fiction channel? He had a point. And then I later read somewhere that all of his shows are heavily edited to get rid of the “misses” – leaving the viewer with a sense that he’s never wrong about anyone, when in reality he has just as many misses as he does “hits.”
On the flip side, the psychic was extremely entertaining AND she donated all proceeds to a wonderful children’s nonprofit organization in town, and for that I commend her.