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We’re all curious about the future. We can guess at it, make inferences about it, and hope or fear for it, but some people take this a step further and - or claim to belief - that they can tell the future. And people believe them. According to a recent study, 48.8% of New Zealanders believe in mind-reading and 32% think that psychics can predict the future.
If you are so inclined, there are a lot of options to choose from. There are tarot cards and tea leaves, palm readings and bird entrails. But whatever your method, it seems that some people just have the ability and some people don’t, so don’t be too disappointed if your cup of English Breakfast or Sunday’s roast chicken aren’t revealing anything to you just yet.

 
Critic spoke to one such person who claims to have the knack. Cassandra (not her real name) is a Dunedin clairvoyant who has had paranormal experiences since a young age. “I grew up in a haunted house. My parents weren’t in any way spiritual but odd things tended to happen to me all the time.” She got her first pack of tarot cards at the age of fifteen and now runs a business providing clients with psychic readings via phone calls. However, Cassandra identifies herself predominantly as a medium, someone with the ability to communicate with the dead, as opposed to a psychic or clairvoyant who can gain information about objects, locations or living people through extra-sensory perception. “Even now sometimes I get quite shocked about it. I often get the dead person first and then later, sometimes a year or so later, I meet the person they were trying to communicate with.”

 
Cassandra’s claims seemed genuine; I think she believed what she was describing. However, charging for this service raises some ethical issues. When looking for employees, Cassandra requires that applicants provide evidence of extensive experience. “It’s a way of life, a lifestyle rather than a job. It carries on into their private lives in a way that a job in a shop doesn’t.” She values her psychics’ roles as counsellors as much as their paranormal abilities and requires at least five years of experience in the psychics she employs, “but the average is twenty years.” Does she ever test her psychic’s abilities? “No, it’s not something you can quantify. I wait for feedback from clients.” So there’s not a lot of quality control but Cassandra stresses “it’s not an exact science” and there are a number of problems psychics can run into. “If it’s a very quick session it can be hard to develop a link. It is hard to develop a link with a person you don’t know.” Of course a longer session also entails a more expensive one. “After ten minutes a psychic should tell you whether or not they have a connection with you as your reader.” Cassandra’s final tip when approaching a psychic is “to have an open mind. If you go in with a closed mind and certain expectations, you won’t get the full benefit of a reading. It takes time for a reading to develop. Sometimes it will only make sense when everything falls into place a few weeks later.”

 
I kept this in mind when I proceeded with my next step: getting “read”. However, I think I may have been a little too open-minded when ringing “Lilly” from Grace’s Psychic Circle. Lilly reminded me of my hairdresser and the conversation proceeded on a similarly vaguely awkward note. She seemed to be expecting a more specific reason for my calling than my you-can-tell-me-whatever-you-like approach. So I regrouped and asked, “where do you see my career being at in twenty years time?” She paused. “The spirit guides don’t have the same concept of time to you and I.” She paused again. “But I see you as…successful.” She then got excited. “I think you’re going to make a successful lawyer.” Which would have been impressive if I hadn’t already told her I study law.
 

Our ten minutes was up and Lilly was clearly not going to admit, as Cassandra recommended, that we didn’t have a spiritual connection. We had run out of things to talk about so I decided to move on. Next I tried ringing Helena’s Psychics, but Lilly is clearly a more complicated person than I imagined because she picked up the phone for them as well. That was awkward.
 

I sighed a breath of relief when I rang Lisa’s Psychics and Lilly did not pick up. Instead I was read by Grace, a woman who understands business, and pay-by-the-minute business in particular. Even after twenty minutes I could not get her off the phone, despite the fact that she was saying absolutely nothing. She certainly sounded much more like a psychic then down-to-earth Lilly, her airy voice referring so often to “my guardian” that I soon forgot there were only two of us in the conversation. Statements of substance were not Grace’s strong point, although I can now confirm that there will soon be a man in my life and that Grace is “calling upon the spirits to send her guardian’s light to this man”. Thanks Grace, it’s nice to know your guardian’s got my back.

 
But I’m not the only one who’s cynical. The most famous sceptic is James Randi, a performance magician who has spent his retirement challenging supernatural claims. Since 1968 the James Randi Educational Foundation has offered a prize to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal ability. Since 1996 the prize has been US $1 million. So far no one has won.
 

This wouldn’t surprise Dr Brent Alsop from Otago University’s Department of Psychology. When asked how psychologists view the paranormal, his response was “scepticism would be a good word. It’s the sort of things psychologists joke about in the staffroom. My opinion,” - and he stresses he hasn’t looked very far into the issue, it seems not many psychologists have - “is that there is very limited scientific evidence for paranormal psychology.”

 
There have been attempts to prove paranormal phenomena on scientific grounds since the nineteenth century. However, as Brent Alsop points out, mainstream psychology has remained wary of the findings of so called “parapsychology”, often due to the biases and lapse of scientific standards in parapsychological studies and experiments.
 

Then in November of last year, Joachim Krueger, Professor of Psychology at Brown University, commented on a study that suggested events that have not yet happen could influence our present behaviours. “My personal view is that this is ridiculous and can’t be true. Going after the methodology and the experimental design is the first line of attack. But frankly, I didn’t see anything. Everything seemed to be in good order.”
 

The experiment was conducted by Daryl Bem, Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. A number of well-known psychological tests were carried out on more than 1000 volunteers, however the sequence of steps in the tests was reversed. For example, in one experiment participants were given a list of words and asked to recall words from it. Later they were given words randomly selected from the same list that they had to type. Participants were better at recalling words that they would later be supplied with. This certainly does not prove paranormal activity exists but, as New Scientist magazine observed, “well established phenomena such as the ability of low-dose aspirin to prevent heart attacks are based on similarly small effects.”
 

Less evidence than this is enough for some. Time magazine reported that the Pentagon spent US $20 million on a secret programme to employ psychics from 1985 to 1995. “Star Gate Psychics”, as they were dubbed, provided reports that were right about 25% of the time and when they were, they were “vague and general in nature” according to a CIA study of the unit.
 
Before we get the Eagle onto this one, Critic looked into whether New Zealand taxes are being spent on the similarly dubious pursuits. Despite what Sensing Murder may have had you believe, Vivien Pulling from the New Zealand Police had a fairly unequivocal response on the matter: “NZ Police do not engage psychics as part of their investigation approach. The police's role is to interview witnesses and gather physical evidence to piece together a case that leads to an offender being identified. Most complex crime inquiries are carried out with the help of modern policing tools. Intelligence-lead policing and analytical computer tools are increasingly used to help police detect and suppress crime.” 
 

We’ll leave the police to their “modern policing tools” but, as for the rest of us, the impulse to believe in the supernatural is harder to shake. Cassandra’s relatively modest Dunedin-based business receives over 250 calls a month, so it can be assumed that there’s a significant number of people New Zealand-wide who consult psychics, let alone those who wonder about it. It seems we really want to know how our futures are going to go. I’m just not convinced that Lilly is the best person to tell us.