Second Sights : Psychics Supply ‘Answers’ but Writer’s Future Still a Puzzle

The Yellow Pages, Madison Avenue, friends and even common sense navigate us most of the time. They tell us where to eat, shop and get our teeth pulled. They tell us where to fix the alternator, or find the best bargains on VCRs.

But who counsels us about the future? When will I win the Pulitzer? Will I ever find the right woman? Will I become rich, or go to In-and-Out for the rest of my life?

Such curiosity can send the adventurous (or naive) among us on the trail of those who might know the answers.

The San Fernando Valley is full of psychics, and they’re full of predictions.

Some say they’re full of a lot more.

In November, Laura Johns, a Sherman Oaks fortuneteller, was sentenced to one year in County Jail for swindling four customers out of more than $40,000. One of Johns’ customers had given her $27,000 because she foretold that he would die of cancer if he didn’t pay.

Undaunted, this writer crisscrossed the Valley in search of his future. Some of the psychics along the way looked at palms, others at Tarot cards. Others searched the stars or checked the crystals.

At Valley Astrologer in Sherman Oaks, the reception area looks like a doctor’s office--comfortable and unintimidating, with a beige carpet and gold blinds. Several dozen Tarot cards decorate the window. Dora is dressed in a casual brown skirt.

Time for business.

I have two choices--the cards, which tell the present and future, and the regular psychic evaluation, which merges past, present and future. I take the latter; I want it all. Dora has me cut the cards in three different ways. She studies the cards I’ve chosen and maps out my life:

I will be betrayed by a close friend.

My wife will be the daughter of a professional family, and there will be no divorce.

I will achieve fame by writing for films.

A tall man somewhere doesn’t believe in me.

And the longing I still have for an ex-girlfriend affects all my other relationships.

Thank you, Dora.

Forty dollars poorer, I leave confused. I need a second opinion.

The surroundings are less elegant at the Reader and Advisor at the Reseda Swap Meet. As shoppers scan the meet’s bargain clothes and jewelry, I step into a little room in the front. That’s where I meet Anna, nicely dressed in her long red and white dress and brown fur coat. No seclusion here. We are observed occasionally by consumers walking by, and the statuettes of Jesus in the window.

Anna tells me to put $20 in my hands, place them on the table, and make two wishes. She wants to hear one of them. “To be famous,” I say.

She delivers the bad news.

My life has been stalled by a rash of poor luck, keeping me from finding a “soul mate,” and advancing my career. My enemies include three people (two women, one man) who are extremely jealous of me and a woman in my own family who has zero confidence in me.

Fortunately, Anna has a cure.

She’ll light nine candles in my honor, which will shatter the bad luck. For this, she requires a donation.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have enough money,” I say.

“I thought you wanted me to help you. I need a donation,” Anna responds.

“I can give you a couple of dollars.”

No go. No candles. No cure.

Bye, Anna.

Enough of palms and Tarot cards. Time to get into some of that deep stuff. Next stop: Psychic Master in Van Nuys.

The master is a tall blonde named Alexandra. We meet on the second floor of her apartment building and walk slowly down a long and creepy corridor. I sit on the green couch in her spotless apartment and realize I am being observed. She just stares at me in silence.

Soft, eerie music plays in the background. Alexandra tells me I have a third eye, and that I possess the capacity to attain higher consciousness.

The best way to accomplish that, she advises, is for me to connect with 2,000 spirits she’d contact in a special two-hour session. I’d be reunited with all my past lives and would find how my current and future lives relate to them. Total value of the deal: $200.

I just say no.

I choose the $40 crystal treatment. Alexandra tells me to take off my shoes and lay down on the couch. One by one, she places crystals of different shapes and sizes on my body. Closing her eyes as if she’s connecting with the spirits, she grabs a piece of crystal which she calls the ray gun. It looks like a gun.

Alexandra tells me to conjure up the most painful experiences of my life and put them into an imaginary water balloon. She takes the crystal gun and shoots the balloon into oblivion. We repeat this twice more until all my negative energy has been extinguished.

I’m relaxed but know nothing about my future.

So I’m off to Astrology Readings in Woodland Hills to see how the stars shine on me. This time, their representative is Betty, whose home epitomizes the American Dream: quiet neighborhood, fireplace and ample pictures of the kids. Betty is tall, muscular and down-to-earth.

“I’m just a normal person who happens to have some talent,” she says.

Her talent, with some help from the stars, tells her my writing will draw many people to me, especially women. She says my Saturn-Neptune conjunction will come together in March, 1989, producing the “ultimate” in November, 1989. What’s the ultimate? That’s how Betty talks, using fancy words like conjunction and configuration. I’m sure I’ll never understand what she’s talking about.

She says my moon is in Libra, which means I’m a careful judge. Also, because I’m a Virgo, I’ll always act young. Like Alexandra, Betty tells me I have the psychic gift. Her gift, however, disappears when she wrongly observes: “You’re an extremely good lover.”

I give her $30 and leave.

I decide to end my search in Canoga Park, with one final check of my palms. This brings me to Rose, a chunky but cheery delight. She ushers me into her newly decorated house, the smell of paint fresh in the air.

For $20, Rose tells me that an unfortunate incident of three years ago still plagues me, causing chaos and confusion. I’ve been living in the “twilight zone,” she says. Rose gives me hope, though, promising a September surprise to turn things around. But she warns me to stay away from a man with a “black complexion” who may try to hurt me.

Rose says I’ve never found the woman of my dreams--no great revelation there--but that it will happen someday. I must first straighten out my life.

So I leave the healers of the mind perhaps more puzzled than ever. Do I believe Dora, Anna, Alexandra, Betty or Rose? Or none of them? Or all of them? Is Dora right when she says I’ll write film scripts? Is Anna right when she says I have a third eye? Is Betty right when she says I’ll achieve the “ultimate?” Is Rose right when she sees me in the “twilight zone?”

I don’t know. I’m not psychic.

I do know I spent $150, and there’s nothing psychic about that.