With tools like Google at your fingertips, consulting someone for insight should be a thing of the past.
Try telling that to the students who lined up at the college’s Psychic Fair Oct. 26 before the psychics even showed up.
Once they arrived, the Commons quickly filled with students looking to gain some spiritual insight into their lives.
From mediums to tarot card readers, the fair had it all.
Many students waiting to have their faces read by Steven Robert Morrison seemed unsure what that entailed.
A lot of touching, it turns out.
Morrison reads faces like a palm reader reads palms. This is less about predicting one’s future than it is about determining character traits through facial features. He gave little pats on foreheads, assessed the shapes of noses, and even measured the distance between ears and jaw bones to assess people’s personalities.
Second-year library and information technician student, Janna Soch, didn’t mind the invasiveness of the reading and said she was impressed by Morrison’s accuracy.
“It was interesting how he managed to pinpoint some stuff on me,” she said.
Another psychic who simply goes by Michele, did tarot card readings at the event, which is divination through cards pulled from a deck.
“I had open heart surgery when I was two,” said Michele of her reading skill. “When my heart was taken out to be repaired the gift had been ignited.”
By age five she was able to see spirits and was later trained by a psychic when she was 10 years old.
Michele says clients hire her for a variety of reasons. People come for fun and for guidance, with certain people enlisting her mediumship for closure.
Yet another psychic, Gabriella Studor, claims to commune with angels through angel cards.
Studor was introduced to the discipline after feeling a sense of hopelessness after having her second child in 2010. It was by chance she stumbled upon a metaphysical shop during that period and received her first card reading.
“I received many answers that I was seeking which led me on the path of becoming an intuitive healer and intuitive angel card reader,” said Studor. “The messages come through the angels, spirits, and God.”
Studor started attending card reading workshops and learning different healing modalities from teachers.
Michele notes that there are many skeptics against what she and colleagues do.
“You are always having to prove the authenticity of who you are,” she said.
There are many psychics on TV and other media, some of whom Studor believes give guidance honestly. However, she does feel that many of these psychic celebrities are merely trying to “deceive people and rob them.”
For instance, they instill fear in someone by telling them they have been cursed and need to pay them all this money to remove the curse,” she added.
Despite celebrity psychics and general skepticism nowadays, Studor is noticing a rise in people seeking her expertise.
“Most don’t even realize what is happening to them,” she said.
“People in general who are experiencing obstacles and blocks in their relationships and lives overall come to me for clarity and healing.”
There was a range of emotions throughout the Commons during the Psychic Fair. Concern flushed over the faces of people at the front of the line for the medium Jennifer Hall, when two women began sobbing at her table. Hall immediately rose from her seat to embrace them.
Not far off, a group of guffawing friends huddled so closely around the face reading table that Morrison was no longer visible.
Whether they took it seriously or not, students who packed the Commons for this edition of the Psychic Fair won’t have to look too far into the future before the next.
Another is planned for early next semester.