Forget about fearing rejection by colleges; my biggest fear in the midst of writing this article was being rejected by yet another psychic.

I went to five different psychics within Fairfield County in the span of three days for this article. Five. Whenever I mentioned I was writing a narrative about psychics for my school newspaper, I was usually shut down right away. One psychic even went as far as to tell me she was attending a “spiritual retreat” at the end of the month, so she needed to “cleanse her soul” beforehand and not read anyone until then […] including me.

However, a man by the name of George Eli was my lucky sixth shot in the psychic hunt and agreed to read me. George owns Clairvoyant Consultant, a spiritual life coaching business located right here in Westport on Wilton Road.

I arrived at his quaint house alongside the Merritt Parkway at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night. Beside his door was a sign that read, “Faith makes things possible […] not easy.”  The sun was starting to set, and my nerves were acting up.

I walked into his house and went up a narrow staircase. With each step, the wood beneath my beat-up Converse creaked. I tightened my grasp on the railing. After passing a bedroom and a bathroom, I then entered what seemed to have been the second bedroom in the house, which had been converted into a spiritual guidance room.

A curtain separated the room into two parts. On one side, there was a spiritual haven with plush white pillows for visitors who were seeking what George called, “spiritual life coaching.” On my side of the curtain, a round table with two wooden chairs sat in the moon’s light,  which cast through a nearby window. In the middle of the table sat a deck of tarot cards.

“You should shuffle them so they can become familiar with you,” George said to me, easing back into his chair. I shuffled the tarot cards between my fingers, their worn corners gracing my skin.

He made sure to emphasize that he was not only a psychic but a spiritual life coach and clairvoyant. “My work is different […] there’s more insight in it,” George clarified to me. “Most psychics are just carnival and they do a flat reading […] they put the cards down for weekly or daily readings, which are fun but not very insightful.”

Before attending my session with George, I had learned that psychics are most known for what’s called a “cold reading.” Cold readings are used when the psychic has no information or knowledge on a first-time client.  Instead, they use body language cues to help derive information from their client without the client even knowing. Clairvoyants, on the other hand, have the ability to quickly and intuitively know information that isn’t visible to the eye. Instead of relying on a more faith-based knowledge, like psychics do, clairvoyants use two realms for their predictions: spiritual and logic.

“We’re going to break this down into past, present  and future. Now, the tarot card reading gives you a projection of the future. Meaning it’s not prophecy, it’s prediction.  So you have the power to change it.”

George spoke with a calm voice that put me at ease. “Now let’s start your reading.”

I handed the deck of cards over to George and he separated them into three equal piles face down: one for my past, one for my present and one for my future.  He gently lifted my past from the table and laid four cards in a row face up in front of me,  each uniquely beautiful with intricate and colorful drawings. George read each drawing on each card as if the four of them created the first sentence in the book of my life. Forty minutes later, at the end of the session, George looked me in the eyes and his voice shifted to a more serious tone. “Every human being, Maialie, that is born in this world, has the ability to see beyond normal human vision,” he said. “You have a better chance to have insight than to have sight.”