Just in case anyone is still on the fence about the possibility that a commercial phone psychic is likely to be for real, this article posted over the weekend at Salon should be required reading. As it turns out, "psychic hotlines" don't even cast around looking for psychics, but rather for actors to play them on the phone.
"Phone actors wanted. Work from home. Make your own hours."
Could it be true? Or was this some sort of telemarketing scheme? I called the number. A friendly man assured me that this was completely legit.
"You've heard of the Psychic Friends Network, haven't you?" he asked. "This is just like that."
Yes, I had seen the commercials. My brothers and I mocked the company's spokeswoman Dionne Warwick. When we were little kids, our parents took us to one of her performances at a Lake Tahoe hotel. She sang a few songs, coughed and asked for water. It was a short show, and my parents were disappointed they had wasted money on it.
"The thing is, I'm not sure that I'm psychic," I confessed. There were times I suspected things were going to happen before they did. But did knowing my family was going to throw me a surprise party for my 15th birthday count as mystic instinct?
"That's OK," he said. "We'll give you everything you need for the job."
And just like that, the author was on her way to being hired.
She explains that the company trained her to do basic card readings without even much instruction about what the cards meant. The goal was not to predict the future, but to shower the clients with as much positive information as possible to keep them on the phone regardless of the cards drawn. In fact, she turned out to not be particularly good at the job, simply because she didn't relish faking people out as much as some of her colleagues.
But I began to realize why I got rejected from the theater program in college. My role-playing skills sucked. This job came more easily to others. My friend Russ, a talented actor, worked for another psychic hotline. He thoroughly enjoyed perpetrating a fraud. He told me that he started each call by saying that he just drank a vial of lamb's blood to give him fortune-telling superpowers.
"You can't be serious. Does that really work?"
"Some idiots believe me," he said. "But most people just think I'm funny, and we wind up having a nice talk."
And, presumably, an expensive one to boot. Without any real psychic insight at all. One of the problems with a society in which most people don't really believe in paranormal powers is companies like this one, who figure that since it's all fake anyway it doesn't really matter who they hire as long as they sound good on the phone. But I have to say, I'll take that any day in exchange for the freedom to write about magick without having to worry about being hunted by angry mobs.
And yes, I take full responsibility for the terrible pun that is the title of this article. I just couldn't resist.
