Truths Unfold Before a Psychic--and Not Always From the Tarot

Candles flicker and incense wafts as Elis Regina answers the phone in a singsong voice. “Psychic hotline. May I help you?”

Nobody human should be calling her at 1:30 on a Saturday morning, she says. But they do.

So she waits in a tiny New Age-themed Hollywood studio off Rossmore Avenue, like a beacon for the lonely and lovelorn across the country, and sometimes the world.

The calls come from unhappy homemakers in Pennsylvania, from abandoned dates as far away as Japan, from wannabes and “E.T.” watchers, from people entangled in affairs and excluded from careers, in crises large and small.

“You have to remember these people are messed up and they’re upset,” Regina says. “Otherwise, why are they calling you?”

Regina works while most of the city sleeps, another night owl toiling on the graveyard shift among a work force that includes all sorts of people: supermarket stockers, emergency room doctors, taxi drivers, nurses, cops, short-order cooks and the overnight police reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Regina’s tarot cards unfold on the tabletop like the chapters of a novel. What they tell her, and what she says her own clairvoyance divines, is available to all for $3.99 a minute.

On this Saturday morning, John from Orange County wants to know whether he should enter a business deal with a man he knows.

The potential business partner, she tells him, is moody and insecure but is smart and has good connections. John should enter the deal and seal it by appealing to the man’s ego “without being over-aggrandizing.”

What, John then ventures, can she tell about a woman he is dating? Regina’s eyes widen and her eyebrows rise as she turns over cards indicating an overpowering personality.

“This person, probably a Scorpio, is very intense,” she says. Rocky waters lie ahead.

The phone call lasts about 45 minutes. Occasionally, Regina says, fast-talking, breathless callers demand to know their fates in two minutes or less. Most, though, are in no rush.

Still, Regina talks nonstop and with authority as she shuffles and flips her cards. Occasionally, she has to reassure callers that yes, she is really reading their cards and no, she’s not making this stuff up.

Regina, 30, began reading cards at the age of 7. Clairvoyance runs in the family, she says. An aspiring musician/artist/writer, she supports herself by giving readings over the phone and in person 30 hours a week.

Phone calls to the psychic hotline are routed all night through the company’s headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla., to working psychics across the country.

Sometimes it’s hard for Regina to believe her callers aren’t fabricating their own stories. A woman who said she had been carrying on a years-long affair with a director in Hollywood was pregnant with another man’s child and wanted to know why her career as an actress was foundering.

“People are at such a level of denial about their daily lives it’s astounding,” Regina says. “They really don’t want the truth; they just want to pay someone to agree with them.”

Although she tries to be straightforward, there are subjects she won’t discuss, including premonitions of death, illness or accidents. The most important quality of a psychic, she says, is compassion.

“You should not see a psychic who’s having a lousy life,” Regina says. “Bad idea.”

As the wee hours tick by, another caller says he needs her help to contact space aliens. The last psychic he consulted told him to meditate for eight hours a day. So far, no aliens, he tells Regina.

Regina opts for compassion.

“I don’t see any imminent contact between you and the aliens,” she says. “When the time for the mission comes, they’ll call you.”

Another client has a more practical problem. Alex, an aspiring filmmaker from San Francisco, is discouraged about his career.

Maybe it’s because Regina has some experience working in Hollywood--she has sold a script--but this time the cards yield practical advice.

“To accomplish your dreams as a filmmaker, you need to keep the overhead down,” she tells him.

He should also enroll in a screenwriting class but avoid joining any writing groups--they are filled with people who don’t know what they’re doing who will try to tell you what to do, Regina says. She flips over the Magician card and tells Alex he needs to invest in a good digital camera.

“And don’t quit your day job,” she says. “Whatever you do, don’t do that.”