The Psychic Next Door: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Powers

by Karen Zimmerman

  She does readings by phone and in person. She considers things like tarot cards, and pendulums, etc., as tools to help her focus on the information she is receiving. Tea leaves are her favorite — “I love to read tea leaves because there are so many surprises in every cup,” she says. She seldom remembers the readings she gives, because the messages are not for her: “They are just too much to add to what I’m already carrying around.”

  Jason Lindo mentioned to me that Dee was “excellent with psychometry,” so I asked her about it. Psychometry is the ability to make relevant associations from, or “read,” an object of unknown history by making physical contact with it. It’s thought that objects have an energy field that transfers knowledge regarding their history. Sometimes they retain the energy of the person who owned them.

  “I like to ‘feel’ the environment I am in with my hands,” Dee says. “I get a lot of impressions and pictures telling a story. I think that is why I like this activity so much — it gives the history of a person or place. This helps me to truly understand that is happening at the time I am there, and gives me clues about how I can help with the situation at that particular location. When I quiet myself, pictures and information come to me when I touch something.”

  Dee has been inspired throughout her life by her grandmother, the witch Sybil Leek, and the author Marianne Williamson, as well as her husband, Russ, who goes with her on many of her adventures into the paranormal. “It is so good to have someone who understands what is happening and what he needs to do in order to see events come to a positive resolution.” She thinks her abilities may have helped to strengthen her marriage: “He’s a great sounding board and the strongest supporter in my life.” Her two daughters (she also has two stepchildren) have abilities, but only the youngest has any interest, and not much at that. “It’s a little sad, because I hate to die and let all I know not continue forward in new generations.”

  Ghost Hunting

  When Dee was very young, she started helping spirits cross over to the other side. No one called it ghost hunting back then, she says: “That’s a new label someone put on it. There have always been people doing the same thing I do without all the fanfare attached to it.” About fifteen or twenty years ago, she wanted to see if she could intentionally take pictures of spirits and other anomalies. Spirits, in the form of orbs or even apparitions, will sometimes show up randomly in photographs.

  “Amazingly,” she says, “the first time I asked the spirits for a photograph, I got one. It gave new dimensions to what I was able to do, and made it even more interesting for me.”

  Dee is a rarity among mediums in that she has materialized an apport — and on television, no less! An apport is the paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source, and is often associated with poltergeist activity or séances.

  The television series was Dead Famous, the location Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I’ll let Dee tell this astounding story in her own words:

  “I have to admit one of my favorite places to go is a mausoleum. There is so much activity there, even in the daylight hours, going unnoticed. After dark, when visitors have left, the games begin. If you want to talk to someone of the dearly departed persuasion, this is the time to go and the place to be.

  “There is something almost seductive about the feeling of all that cool marble around. The moonlight glistens off the white marble walls and the feeling of being in another time, in another civilization, can overwhelm you if you allow it. Suddenly you could be in ancient Greece, walking through a temple all alone …

  “The sound of someone walking in the next corridor brings you back to reality — no sense being in a marble crypt, complete with a production crew who are paying for the facilities, and not taking full advantage of the moment. Off we go — there is work to be done!

  “As if by magic, a table and four chairs appear, along with a candle and a lighter. Someone is busy putting camcorders on tripods, and there is hustle and bustle all around. The director is checking the battery of the hand-held camcorder. The séance is about to begin.

  “We take our seats and light the candle. The participants in the séance join hands, get comfortable, and off go the lights. An all-important prayer for protection is uttered, and we are off and running. The director then takes her place between us all, with a camcorder held in her hands to get those all-important close-ups.

  “We have been told we are looking for Rudolph Valentino, and he does not appear to be interested. For a good fifteen or twenty minutes we ask for Mr. Valentino to visit us but nothing — nary a word nor sign.

  “We change tactics and ask for a sign of anyone in the area who is with us from the other side. [Network actor] Peter Finch appeared before me, laughing like a man who had just been the originator of an excellent joke. He was certainly a cocky spirit and seemed full of himself.

  “Suddenly comes the sound of hushed male voices chattering as if they are in a men’s club — this went on for twenty or thirty seconds. I’ll mention here that there were crypts all the way to the ceiling, and the window was a huge stained glass one that neither opened nor closed. Behind us was the small production crew, and there was no way for the sound to have come at us from the direction it did unless it was from out of nowhere. At this point, it was really getting to be fun. And when you have a lucky streak going, you try to multiply your luck. And so we did.

  “Our director keeps asking to get more. Never timid when it comes to a challenge, we, in the circle, asked for more. We were once again treated to an otherworldly noise. A long, low, masculine, very loud moan began to usher forth from nowhere. How cool is that?

  “By this time Peter Finch was slapping his knees and laughing so hard he could barely stand. It was fun indeed for all of us. With a little push from the director, once again, we pushed forward for some ‘real proof.’

  “This next portion is hard to believe unless you have been someplace and had it happen to you. So here it goes…

  “I am asking for more proof. The director is in my face and then moves to the other side of the table. Our hands are still all upon the top of the table, joined. Our feet can be seen, and Mr. Finch is beginning to develop a gleam in his eyes. I should have known we were headed for rocky waters!

  “As soon as the director was standing opposite me at the table, something came out of thin air just above us and ever so gently touched me on the shoulder, then fell to the ground. It was so gentle there was no way it could have been thrown, like someone tapping you on the shoulder. Mayhem ensued and we had to break the circle to calm the director. She was screaming and hopping around. Good old Mr. Finch was about doubled over with laughter. We calmed down the director, sat back down, and our production crew decided it was time to pack up and leave. I guess we had supplied enough ‘proof’ for one evening.

  “To this day, I still have the wonderful quarter moon with a star in my possession. That is what came down from the air that night, the apport that was given to me by a Hollywood movie star. It is blue with sequins, and the star is light in color dangling down from the moon. It will be with me forever to remind me of what can happen when you ask for it.”

  Since then, Dee says, several things have showed up, and her husband even had an apport while taking a shower — three quarters just fell on him from nowhere!

  Another memorable ghost-hunting experience for Dee was an investigation at the Joseph D. Grant house in Grant Ranch Park in Santa Clara County, Calif. A historian accompanying the crew as a docent asked Dee to tell her something about a soldier in a painting. “I heard a very British voice say, ‘I am a faggot, you silly cow,’” Dee recalls. “Well, I told the historian that she didn’t really want to hear what I had been told.” The docent, however, was eager to hear, so Dee told her that the man in the painting was gay. The stunned woman says she was indeed correct, but that wasn’t part of the tour and very few people knew it.

  While working to resolve
a haunting in the California gold country, Dee was shown a vision of a shaman performing a ceremony. He was chanting and shaking a rattle, and smoke was heavy in the air. There was a heavy, hairy thing opposite the shaman. “I couldn’t figure out if it was a bear or a Bigfoot.” She described the vision to an anthropologist, who was quite excited — it seems that there is a little-known Cherokee ceremony involving Bigfoot.

  “It’s so rewarding when you get confirmation you are correct regarding a person or place,” Dee says. “It keeps you on track and moving forward.”

  Haunted Homes

  Some of us have lived in haunted houses. Many would not want to do it again. But for Dee, it seems to come with the psychic territory — only one house she has lived in was not haunted. “When we move in, we already have a family waiting for us,” she says. “We just set certain ground rules and let them know there is room for all of us. I do insist that our bedroom and bathroom remain off-limits.”

  Dee and Russ’s last house reportedly had “haints,” as she describes them, from the time it was built. They heard people milling around the attic during certain times of the month, and saw colored lights there as well. “Interviewing people who had grown up in the area and had spent the night in the house, we found that many of the stories of the hauntings were the same types of experiences we were having,” she says.

  “After we left the house, we received the weirdest phone call from our real estate agent. It seems he was showing the house and a client wanted to take a look at the attic. The agent waited downstairs and was greeted by a screaming client leaving the house post-haste. It seems a glowing green mask had come after the client as he was taking a look at the attic. Apparently the spirits didn’t want him to buy the house! We also discovered handwritten information in pencil on the beams in the attic. It included a warning that the house was haunted. This was left by the first children who lived in the house.”

  Dee and Russ have ghosts in their current home in North Carolina. “We have an elderly gentleman who smells like he has not had a bath in a while. He likes to linger in the hall, and moves back and forth trying to be where the action is. There is a little old lady who likes to cook and bang pots and pans around in the wee hours of the morning. She waits until the house is quiet before she begins her kitchen chores and is not visible when you go to check on what is happening. You can certainly feel her, though; you could cut the air with a knife, the air is so heavy when she is out and about. We also have a ghost dog that likes to climb up the stairs with its nails clicking, and then it scratches on the upstairs door wanting into the top floor. When you open the door, nothing is there.”

  Dee continues, “When we first moved into this house, I slept several nights in a chair because of my allergies. I can breathe better in a recliner sometimes. One night, a man came forward threatening me and screaming he was going to send me to hell. He somehow created all kinds of hellfire and brimstone, along with pictures for me so he could scare me. I explained this was all very interesting; however, it was not scary. He moved back and quit being active. He is still around from time to time.”

  On another occasion, Dee and her family were checking out a historic house in a small town near their own. There were rumors the house was haunted, and curiosity got the better of the owner. As they sat at the dining room table, a young woman dressed in the style of the late 19th century was going back and forth from that room and the kitchen. “She had such a saucy attitude and I was telling the owner about her. At the same time, my daughter was taking pictures and took three of the door to the kitchen. On the second picture she captured a female mooning me. It has provided us with a few laughs!”

  When dealing with the paranormal, protection is important. Like many mediums, Dee uses white light. This is a visualization technique whereby you close your eyes and see yourself surrounded by white light that chases away darkness and negativity.

  Being psychic, Dee is more vulnerable than most, so she also shuts herself down and then opens herself to outside energies in increments. Even so, spirits do sometimes come home with her, and she must explain that they are not allowed in certain places or rooms. She says they soon get bored and leave in a day or two.

  Dee treats these visitors with the nonchalance born of experience. For others, it can be quite traumatic.

  “Once we were visiting a graveyard in San Antonio, where a young man was filming a documentary about us on ghost hunting. Before we went to investigate, I was kidding around about looking in the rearview mirror and seeing eyes looking back at you even though you are all alone,” Dee says with a chuckle. “When the young man left to go home, a great electrical storm blew into the area. He wouldn’t answer his phone for a couple of days, and when he did, he explained he would not be finishing his film or going investigating again, period. As he was driving home, he looked up and saw eyes looking at him from the backseat in his rearview mirror. We’ll never know if his imagination ran wild or he had a guest!”

  Spirituality

  Dee grew up in north Texas; her father was an electrician and her mother a designer and dance instructor. Both of them largely ignored her psychic abilities. They were Christians and also members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). She has chosen to embrace the Universe and God as opposed to any particular religion. “I believe in God and see the Universe as sacred,” she says. “I do not believe in religion — to me it seems more a business than anything else.” Dee doesn’t see her abilities as coming from a divine source, but believes that being psychic is taking what you have been given naturally and by inheritance and working with it. “But who really knows?” she says. For those who are just discovering they have psychic abilities, she advises, “Meditate, meditate, meditate. And pay attention to your hunches. This is the best thing you can do for yourself to tune into what you may be receiving.”

  Dee is a believer in reincarnation and feels it is a basic tenet of most religions and cultures, and that it was part of the Christian belief system until church elders decided it no longer had a place. She surmises that if you have only one life to live, you will be more likely to tithe and follow the teachings of the church for your salvation. If you have more than one chance, though, why live a life as limited as your church demands?

  “I remember the last life before this one,” she says. “Primarily the death is what I remember. I was running in London and all was dark. Bombs began to fall and I was crushed to death by a structure falling on me. My mother told me when I was very young, if I heard a large plane overhead, I would find a ditch. Seems I threw myself into the ditch and would put my hands on the back of my neck to protect myself.”

  Dee adds that when she was a baby and just learning to talk, a neighbor noticed she was speaking Hebrew, rather than English, as though Hebrew was her first language. No one in her family or their circle of friends spoke Hebrew.

  As with the other psychics I interviewed, spirit guides play a part in Dee’s life. “We all have spirit guides to help us navigate this physical world,” she says. “As our needs change, our guides change. We always have guides who can help us in our current situations. In some cases, the spirit guide has lived life or lives in the physical world and some have never occupied a physical body. They are not there to change anything so much as help us steer in the proper direction. They also often help us through perilous times.”

  There are times when a guide influences you more than you could possibly imagine, Dee says. About fifteen years ago, a female guide from India come came through to her. She Dee was unaware of her presence until she saw a certain pin in a store. Dee had to have that pin, and had no idea why. It was a Victorian-era gold sari pin. She bought the pin, and then became aware of the guide. “She was always happy I purchased the pin for her,” she says. “I still have the pin, and it brings a smile to my face every time I see it.”

  On Being Psychic

  For Dee, being psychic is normal, and what would dismay many people frightens her not at all. She feels she can b
est use her powers to help others understand theirs and prodding them to use them. She also hopes to give people the tools they need to resolve any problem they might have in their lives, and enjoys healing and helping spirits cross over.

  In her classes, she teaches on topics including spiritual subject matter, dowsing, and learning how to investigate the paranormal. All sorts of people attend. They are generally there, she says, to answer questions they have. “The classes are very rewarding, as they allow people to look at their lives and the big picture in a different way,” she says. “It opens doors in their minds, allowing them to search, to think about what they have uncovered, and how it can be integrated into their worldview.”

  Dee sees herself as someone just like everyone else, with a slightly different approach to life. “It’s the frauds who give us bad names and make people feel we are strange or scary,” she says. “There’s nothing magical, mysterious, or scary about us. We are everyday folks and most of us have our feet on the ground. I really dislike the ‘Madame Whatevers’ who tell the world they are psychic and use the public’s needs to take advantage.”

  What she does, she says, is just what she does, “just like a mechanic fixes things mechanical and a painter paints. I just do something a little different.”

  You can contact Dee at deedisparti@gmail.com

  Chapter 6

  Mediums, Psychics,

  and Sensitives (Oh, my!)

  Some psychics are mediums. But not all mediums are psychics. But all mediums and psychics are sensitives.

  Psychics are people who perceive information via a “sixth sense,” that is, a sense hidden from the normal five senses. This information is gained via what is commonly called extrasensory perception, or ESP. Psychics convey information through various means – tarot or other types of cards, palmistry, crystal balls, and mirror scrying, or by simply concentrating, meditating or praying. They can see or predict events to come.