When I was nineteen, I visited a house near my college campus that had one of those lit neon palms and a sign that read, “Psychic readings $5.” I thought, “$5? What can it hurt?”

Inside I was given a short, but insightful reading by a brunette woman with a funny accent. After saying a few accurate things by looking at tarot cards and my palms, she grew serious and said, “Someone has put a curse on you. It must be removed in order for you to have your dreams come true.” My mind raced. A curse? Who did I know who would or could do such a thing? Did the curse explain the burglary in my Jetta just weeks before? Didn’t they only have curses in far off lands in ancient times? I know, it could be the creepy teacher’s assistant I had in my algebra class. He’s from some far off ancient land. So that’s why I was so bad at Algebra… Hmm. I had just recovered from my first serious illness, having almost lost an eye to an infection. Maybe there was something to this curse thing.

“What should I do?” I asked, leaning forward anxiously.
“I can do a special ceremony for you. It is very powerful. I will pray for you.”
Aw, that’s nice, I thought. What a sweetheart. She really cares.
“I will light a special candle,” she went on. “I have a sacred place I visit in the mountains. I have seen this kind of thing many times. You will see – you will feel like a new person.” Wow, this sounded like a big production. “It will just cost $100.”
Just $100? I didn’t have $100. I was a starving student. $100 was a lot of taco money. But seriously, I was cursed. I had an algebra mid-term in just a week. I had to do something quick. This wasn’t funny.

I called my parents. “She said what?” my mother cried – the same mother who had just watched me move away from home for the first time and almost lose an eye. The same mother who was spending a small fortune on my education in the hopes that those “dreams” the reader had referred to would come true. After a bit of begging, she gave me the money and permission to pay the nice, caring dark-haired lady.

I went back to the house with the money. “I went to the mountains for you and lit the candle and did the ceremony,” she said. Whew. What a relief. Any minute I’d start feeling different. “I dug up these magical crystals for you,” she went on, handing me a small package wrapped in paper towels. Magical crystals? Wow, she goes all the way. I’d never seen magical crystals before. Excited, I took off the tape and opened the paper towels. My face fell. Inside were bright blue small rocks. I smelled them. They were perfumed. “I dug these from deep in the Earth,” she said. What mountains did she mean, exactly? I tried picturing her high in the Himalayas digging with a hand-carved spear long into the night by the light of a yak dung candle, and then boiling the rocks in a cauldron of boiling, sweet smelling flowers.

OH MY GAWD. What a chump I was. My poor, sweet, sacrificing mother. I had just paid some stranger two months worth of taco money to go to Rite Aid and buy me bath salts. I slinked home and vowed I’d never be so young and naïve and foolish again.

Fast forward seventeen years, and I have been giving readings for a living for a long time myself. I have all but forgotten the gypsy duping of my youth when a lovely long-time client of mine said to me one day, “I went to see a psychic and she said someone had cursed me.” This client had just battled breast cancer and was very vulnerable. You guessed it – she went on to tell me that for the low, low price of $500, the reader had removed the curse, and wasn’t that so great? A few months later, the sweet Polish man who installed my kitchen tile got very excited when I told him I was an astrologer. He was going through a painful divorce and wanted my opinion on things. “I went to see a psychic,” he said, “and she said my wife left me because I have an entity attached to me that is blocking my energy.” Uh oh, a new twist on the Gypsy trick. “She said she’d remove it for $700. What do you think?”

Over the last year, I have heard from at least five clients who have had this happen to them. The price for “curse removal” and “entity cleansing” seems to keep going up. One woman was charged $2000 and actually paid it! These are not stupid people. These are all trusting, intelligent, educated people in vulnerable positions. And these readers have some talent. And they know how to hit people where they live.

So, if you’re ever driving down the streets of your fair city and you notice a very nice bungalow or swanky storefront offering to give readings for just $5 or $10, ask yourself, “How do they pay rent in this neighborhood with those prices?” and then think of my nice clients, and the trusting girl I once was at 19 and go inside if you must with only a $5 bill, or keep on driving.
The funny thing is, I did manage to pass Algebra…

And if your doctor ever tells you you have a serious illness that requires treatment but some healer or shaman or nutritionist tells you you don’t, please believe your doctor. I hear this a lot as well (with often tragic results). But that’s another story.