I had session with psychic and surprise, surprise — I’m cursed

Here’s something few might have predicted: the market for the services of psychics is booming in Ukraine, with hundreds of advertisements online and on the streets featuring mysterious people wearing weird cloaks, kerchiefs, and jewelry, holding cards and amulets and promising supernatural aid for the ills in people’s lives.

“A clairvoyant and healer, I came to this world to help people with their unenlightened, Earthly ways,” the website of one psychic reads.

The range of services on offer runs from a simple prediction of one’s future fate, to bewitching a person one desires, or lifting a curse.

Those who claim to have the seventh sense keep a busy schedule, and charge anything from Hr 200 ($7.40) to Hr 6,000 ($220) per session.

They call themselves healers, clairvoyants, mediums, tarologists, time lords, witches, and magicians. They claim to use the so-called white and black magic in order to read fortunes, attract money or career success to a person, remove bad spells, bring back a spouse that has left the family, cure infertility, set up defenses against the Evil Eye, diagnose auras, and much more.

Some of the psychics are extremely popular, having their session schedule booked up for at least a week ahead. These are mostly the participants of the television show “Psychic Challenge” that airs on STB TV channel, who are believed to have proven their skills on camera. However, many in Ukraine doubt the honesty of the show, which often seems scripted.

Last year “Psychic Challenge” had its 19th season, and it has produced dozens of “graduates,” or supposedly proven psychics, since the show was launched in 2007. There is also another show made by STB’s team, called “Psychics Lead the Investigation,” in which the stars of “Psychic Challenge” allegedly solve crimes and investigate mysterious events.

The shows popularize the psychic and extrasensory industry in Ukraine. Its participants and winners always add a notice that they have taken part in the show on their websites, social media profiles, and ads — this apparently adds to their credibility. They tour around the country or talk to people online and charge Hr 1,500–6,000 ($55–220) for a 30–40-minute session.

I decided to try a psychic’s service myself to see how they work, and test their skills.

I was skeptical about these supernatural services, so I decided to not spend much on this experiment, and lowered the bar to people who haven’t appeared on the show charging significantly less.

There were so many people offering psychic services that selecting one was a problem — in the end I let fate decide and picked one of the cheaper ones at random.

Fortune decreed that I should choose an Odesa-based psychic, who, conveniently, holds online sessions with customers for Hr 300 ($11). She had one open spot for the next day, so I booked it.

The psychic works through messenger apps. She tells me to send her my photographs, date of birth and full name through one of them before the session. After I message her right before our appointment, she sends me her bankcard information, asking that I send her the money first. I transfer the arranged payment, send her my photographs, a fake name, and a fake date of birth, half expecting her to disappear as soon as she receives the money.

She tells me she needs around 30–40 minutes for laying out (Tarot cards, apparently) but calls back only after an-hour-and-a-half. I speculate that she might use this time to look up a person’s profiles on social media, so looking for a woman with my face and made-up name online took her longer than she expected.

The psychic doesn’t bother to ask for what reason I sought her help and what exactly I wanted to find out. And of course, she was unable to divine that the personal information I had provided was fake.

She starts off on safe ground talking about personal life and family matters — the things that most of people deal with. She uses general and vague phrases, like “personal life,” rather than the more specific “marriage” or “relationship with a boyfriend/girlfriend.”

She doesn’t really reveal anything but asks questions and quickly adapts her line of questions to my answers. It seemed like she had set responses or follow-up questions that depended on my answers.

The first thing she says is that I have problems with my personal life. Well, just don’t tell that to the guy I’ve been happily dating for three years, I’m thinking to myself.

She proceeds to confidently assert that “you’re either in a relationship or single,” and I have to restrain a giggle at this absurdly obvious “revelation.” I lie that I am single.

“I see that there’s some guy. He’s kind of there but not really,” the psychic continues. “It might be someone you think about.”

The chances that a single woman thinks about some man, whether she has ever dated him before or not, ever met him in person or only knows him from online, are pretty high, so this looks like another safe bet from the psychic.

She continues by saying that I “sort of have two homes,” explaining that there’s another family I care for. She asks me what family that might be, and waits until I myself provide more information for her to work on.

I do, indeed, have two homes, the one where my parents live, and the one I live in. However, how likely is it that a 25-year-old (that was my age, according to my fake date of birth) hasn’t moved out, or doesn’t have parents, or have at least one sibling or family member that lives separately? Pretty low, I suppose.

She tells me that there soon will be some bad news from this other family, as well as claims there’s a woman whose name has a letter “L,” who wishes bad for me. At this point, I’m feeling like she’s trying to scare me and wait to find out why she’s doing it.

After another round of other vague suggestions about surgery and addiction to alcohol, the psychic sums up the session with an entirely predictable pronouncement.

“On your maternal line there is a very strong curse, but not the Evil Eye,” she says.

In my head, I can see the scene from the “Friends” TV series when one of the characters, Chandler Bing, yells “I knew it!”

“Nothing will work out in your life until you get rid of this curse,” the psychic adds. Of course, with every day it’s getting worse, she says.

And surprise, surprise, the psychic can help take the curse off for only Hr 3,500 ($130).

Pretending to be eager to get help as soon as possible, I ask her when she can start the procedure, and she says that for at least the next three days she will be busy lifting other curses.

She doesn’t seem able to predict, however, that I won’t be using her services again.