Dawn Carr, C.Ht. - International Psychic Medium

A spiritual center in Lyndhurst recently added extra healing classes to its schedule, and the wait for a tarot card reading at a Paterson botanica now averages two hours. In Paramus, more than two-thirds of a psychic's customers now ask about their financial security.

As the global financial crisis roils though North Jersey, clairvoyants, psychics and tarot card readers say a growing number of people are seeking their services.

"They want to know, 'Am I able to pay the mortgage? Am I able to take a vacation the following year? Can I continue putting my son or daughter through college?' " said Gloria Thomson of Secaucus, a professional psychic and licensed clinical social worker. "They also want to know 'Am I keeping my job?' That's one of the biggies."

And if the answer is no, Thomson said she doesn't withhold the truth. It doesn't help the client solve the problem, she said. Instead, she encourages them to reconnect with their chosen faith or belief systems.

"One of the things I'm not going to do is sugarcoat things," Thomson said.

Thomson practices at the Mystical World Bookstore and Enlightenment Center in Lyndhurst, where owner Sara Spano said she added another healing meditation class to the center's schedule because of demand. The center, which sells items such as healing candles, aromatic spiritual baths and spiritual books, said more people have been coming in for services to reduce stress brought on by financial woes.

"I see a lot more people coming in to buy candles and books for stress management," Spano said. "We try to teach people how to cope with it."

At the Botánica Caridad del Cobre in Paterson, customers now wait for as long as two hours for a spiritual consultation with Ayana Luz Sacervotiza. The botanica, which offers tarot card readings, religious statues, herbs, baths and other spiritual items, has been inundated by people in dire financial straits who are seeking relief, Sacervotiza said.

"I have many people calling me for help," said Sacervotiza, who said she is a Santeria priestess. "People are asking about jobs — they are asking me for rituals to get jobs. Clearly, the economy is hurting everyone."

Many began turning to them last fall, psychics say, after stock markets plunged, housing values declined while foreclosure rates soared, unemployment skyrocketed and several banks and businesses failed.

Hanna Stevens, a Little Falls psychic who operates out of a storefront on the Newark-Pompton Turnpike, said she's noticed that many of her clients have stopped asking questions about issues such as love in favor of questions concerning financial security.

"Everybody is fighting to pay their bills and go forward," Stevens said. "A lot of people are suffering. They want to know 'when things will get better,' " Stevens said. "I speak the truth to people, whether they like it or not. But I try to comfort them."

Although he keeps a crystal ball in his office, Phillip Cook, spokesman for the National Financial Planners Association's Los Angeles Chapter, said taking financial advice from psychics is a bad idea. Cook said visiting a psychic is often an emotional experience, and emotions are inappropriate when making financial decisions.

"Money has no emotions so you need to remove that when you make decisions about money," he said.

But, since he didn't sense the impending financial crisis, visiting a clairvoyant for advice won't hurt, Cook said.

"You might as well go to a soothsayer, because I didn't see this one coming," Cook joked.

Psychics across the country are reporting similar increases in business, Dawn Carr, a founding member of the American Association of Psychics and Mediums, a national collective of two dozen psychics. Carr, of Boston, said her client base has increased by 50 to 60 percent since last fall.

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in the association have seen an increase in clientele," Carr said. "And the 1 percent that didn't were in rural areas."

When asked why she believed people were turning to psychics, Carr said simply, "They figure they have nothing to lose."

"Haunted Chapel"

“There are more things under heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”

- William Shakespeare

PLYMOUTH - The two pugs stared at the bureau in the darkened room, their eyes transfixed by a circle of translucent light about the size of a fist with fuzzy edges. The circle of light was right in front of the bureau, sort of hanging there.

I was staring, too. It was Sunday morning and I had slept in, waking to the sound of a mower next door. I didn’t think much of the light at first; I figured it was a reflection of the sunlight outside dancing off something in the room.
 

But then I realized the shade was drawn, the door was closed. This was no reflection.

So, what was it?

It was a question I couldn’t answer. And, just as my mind was circling around this odd event, a plastic bottle of medication on the bedside table went flying across the room. It didn’t just fall off the table; it flew, the way it would if a hand slapped it. The dogs flipped out, and I frowned in thought.

I’d heard of this sort of thing before. Odd, whitish see-through blobs I can handle, but I’d prefer it if vials of medicine didn’t fly about on their own volition. I have a serious co-pay.

Independent filmmaker and producer Dominick Arena has been filming ghosts for almost two years, and he’s as skeptical as the next guy. But he has a hard time explaining these motes of light, like the one in my bedroom last month. The day after Thanksgiving, last year, he grabbed his infrared and movement-activated cameras and filmed all night at The Antwiques Chapel on State Road in Manomet. The store’s owner, Trish Machaby, was there along with camera crew and psychic medium Dawn Carr of Brockton. Arena had stumbled upon Carr’s Web site, www.angelsofdawn.net, and contacted her about a possible story on the chapel. Carr, who gives psychic readings during The Antwique Chapel’s Medium Night, asked Machaby if she’d be interested. Customers and workers had reported sightings. The next thing they knew, Arena was setting up his cameras.

They filmed all night, last Nov. 26, and Arena taped Carr’s reading of the building and its spirits.

Carr says a 19th century woman who died in a fire haunts the Antwiques Chapel, continually replaying the scene of walking into the chapel supported on either side by her father and husband, grieving the loss of her son, Matthew. It’s what Carr described as an “imprint” from the past, the imprint of a funeral procession that others claim to have seen shadows of. They particularly note seeing the grieving woman in the bonnet, who later died in a fire. Standing in the dark while the cameras recorded the scene, one of the film crew said she felt someone pass by. Seconds later, Arena caught a tiny mote of light on film. The light was circling around a crew member. It wasn’t a dust particle, he said, because it didn’t behave like one. This tiny circle of light entered the gathering just as Carr was picking up on the presence of a little boy who had died young.

“Her spirit was there because she was earthbound,” Carr said of the mother. “I was channeling her. I was repeating everything I knew about her. After a few minutes, one of the other people in the crew said, ’Something is next to me.’ At the same time, I could feel something coming in on that side. Her son, who had died as a child. He had passed and he had crossed. We got his orb on film.”

It’s hard to see this tiny light, but, as Arena replayed the footage on his computer, it was absolutely there, moving in a very deliberate way around the crew member and Carr. It didn’t float the way a dust particle does, and it wasn’t an insect. It was like a tiny version of the fist-sized thing I’d see in my room last month.

So, is the Antwiques Chapel haunted?

Arena said he’s a skeptical, too, and makes sure he rules out all rational explanations before considering a picture might have captured a spirit’s orb. He showed countless pictures taken just weeks ago in a historic restaurant in Nashua, N.H., which featured the same kind of orbs in several rooms. He said his electromagnetic meter spiked when he stood in a corner of an upstairs room where he felt a presence. He could feel the charged electricity in the air. But when he returned to the corner later, the meter stayed at zero.

Arena said he’s compiling the footage from the New Hampshire and Manomet sites for a documentary on ghosts he plans to sell to local stations. Stay tuned for info about the films official release.

To Carr, none of this is terribly freaky. Before the face-to-face interview we had Wednesday, she calmly informed me during our phone call that my mother was “in spirit” and was with her son, my brother, and wanted me to know this. I hadn’t asked for a reading; we were talking about the Chapel taping. Carr simply offered it. Yes, my mother and brother passed away, I told her.

Carr finally stopped fighting life as a psychic sometime in her 40s and began giving readings.

Medium night at The Antwiques Chapel is all about these kinds of messages from the great beyond. The event is scheduled for every other Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m.; it’s $20 for a reading. Participants sit in a circle in the back of the old chapel and a medium goes around the room, from one to another, offering readings.

As far as my orb is concerned, I haven’t seen it since, and no vials have flown about lately. It’s not a big deal, really. It’s actually a little comforting to know there’s another dimension out there that my limited senses can’t perceive. I’ll worry when this “energy” decides to chuck knives about or my pugs break into a chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody.

The Antwique Chapel is located at 631 State Road in Manomet. Aside from ghostbusting, the building also functions as an antique store.***