'Skeptics? I Love Them'

While many people today might look askance at the power of psychic ability, these readers swear by their ability to convince doubters that there is truth to these concepts.

"Skeptics? I love them," Brown says. "They say `Prove it and I'll believe it,' so them I show them, and they become a believer through experience."

Brown, who had a science-engineering education, says he was once a skeptic but adds, "I reached a point where I couldn't deny it" after he had seen several friends demonstrate their psychic powers.

One woman who had a reading done on a recent weekend says she thinks societal skepticism stems from fear. "It seems like people are afraid of feelings in general, and any system based on an emotional state, like counseling or this, evokes fear. Anything that's powerful is scary," she says.

Lynch denounces societal skepticism, saying that these powers of visualization are not weird, but are powers everyone possesses, though few recognize them. "People equate the word `psychic' with the occult or witchcraft when it's simply that energy that we create on a daily basis. We all do psychic things, we just don't call it that," she says.

Brown says he thinks people's attitudes are influenced by what they are taught to accept as normal. "Because of your upbringing or programming, if you're brought up to be a Christian, you'll believe in that, but you'll `pooh-pooh' anything labeled as psychic," he says.

"I'm tossing around the possibility of the existence of some other force, some life energy," says Judy F. Abrams '90, who came to the fair because it was "something different to investigate."

Loreen D. Costa '90, who accompanied Abrams to the fair, says, "I don't know if the energy is something outside of us, or within us, but I'm trying harder to understand it."

The readers try to help people overcome their skepticism, and most teach psychic awareness courses out of their homes or in local community centers. Brown and McPherson recently began doing "psychic entertainment" where Brown says they hire themselves out to businesses or private parties to "entertain and educate" guests by "explaining' concept of psychic awareness, and then proceeding to do it."

Healers

Many of the psychics also claim to use psychic powers to physically heal people. "There is a strong connection between readings and healing," says Sadeh, who is a registered nurse and used to work in a mental hospital. She says she attended a workshop on the healing powers of the mind in 1980, and has been a believer ever since.

In fact, every Sunday night the Healers' Resource Center runs a drop-in "healing circle" where members practice massage, and other forms of touch and mental healing on each other.

"When each of us heal ourselves, we help to heal the earth because we effect everything around us. The earth is in need of healing," Sadeh says.

Brown explained the principle of touch-healing, where the hands are run over, but do not touch, a body to smooth the person's energy out. "The body is a movement of energy; a healer is someone who can sense where the movement of energy is blocked, and go to the source of the problem and cure it, rather than just treating the symptom," Brown says. "All health is really psychosomatic. A change in your attitude can make your problems go away." He says he has cured people of arthritis, and cites examples of people who have used mental energy to cure themselves of cancer.

Though Brown deals mostly within the realm of the mind and its effect on the body, he has lately been experimenting with the effects of mental powers on physical objects. He has found that he can magnetize rocks by focussing his mental energies on a certain frequency, and then transmitting this energy to the rocks.