The Psychic Next Door: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Powers

by Karen Zimmerman

  “I was working for Kaiser as a lab tech, and I thought that was what she meant (laughs) but that wasn’t it. Not even.”

  Anna told Mair that some of the help the guides offer would come from an unexpected source. “The first thing she said to me was… It’s funny, I still remember everything, even though I was only 18. It was so huge for me, this reading. I’ve had lots of readings since then that I couldn’t tell you what they said to save my life, but she really had a huge impact.

  “She said, ‘I see something about your mother’s heart.” I said, ‘Well, that’s funny, because today my mother had an EKG.” It was Mair’s adopted mother, but the psychic didn’t know that. Later in the reading, Anna told her that she was getting a strong message from the other side. “She told me,” Mair says, “that the message was from my mother, but that didn’t make sense to her ‘I’m going to give you the message and you can make of it what you will,’ Anna told me.

  “So she tells me that my mother said that she’s looking out for me and is proud of me and wants to help me, and she’s always there for me, etc. And the psychic still doesn’t understand this. And I said, ‘I’m adopted.’ And she said, ‘Ah, well, apparently your mother has passed over — your birth mother.’”

  Mair had no idea her birth mother had died, but she didn’t doubt it. “And, in fact, since then, I’ve seen my mother in spirit. She’s come. She came in a craniosacral session, and I know she’s with me often.”

  Anna then talked about the other guides helping Mair. “I have a strong Native American guide, and a wizard guide, and she described these people who were around me and would be helping me.”

  The way Mair moved on from her traditional laboratory job for Kaiser into alternative medicine was no less odd. “It was funny: everything changed because I had a two serious car accidents. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be working in the lab at Kaiser, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. Then, I had a car accident, and I was off work for a few months. And during that time I started reading all the Edgar Cayce material.” Edgar Cayce, known as the “sleeping prophet,” was a psychic who conveyed information on subjects including healing, Atlantis, and reincarnation while in a trance. “And I kept thinking, ‘I know this isn’t the right job for me, and I know I hate it there and I want out and I’m not contributing and it’s just paying the bills.’”

  The following year, she had another car accident, this one worse than the first. It was 1:30 a.m. and Mair had just gotten off work at the lab. Someone driving a dark-brown truck had stopped on the freeway in the fast lane, turned sideways, and turned his lights off. Mair ran right into him in her car. “And after that happened, he pulled off the road, and put his flashers on, was waving a flashlight, so when the cops got there, he pretended he always had been doing that.”

  The cops originally had blamed Mair for causing the accident, but an EMT, who had seen the entire accident, came to her rescue. “He got me out of the car, carried me across the freeway, the ambulance comes, and I’m laying in the ambulance thinking, ‘Okay, I guess I got the message!’”

  But she still wasn’t sure it was time to leave her dull night job and become herself. She was off work for a year recovering from the accident, and as part of her physical therapy, saw a chiropractor. She and Mair became friends. “She wanted me to go to this raw foods and wheatgrass juice convention in San Diego. She also said, ‘I think you should go to massage school.’ At the time, I thought, ‘I can’t even move, how can I do massage?’ And I didn’t like massage. I didn’t like to give it, I didn’t like to get massages.

  “But I went to this thing in San Diego. I was on disability, and couldn’t afford a hotel, so I stayed in a dorm. It was three people to a room. One other bed was filled with this woman from Alaska and the other bed changed every week. I stayed there three weeks, and so did Barbara, the woman in the other bed. It was always a massage therapist that filled the third bed! How many times did I have to get hit over the head that what I was doing needed to change?”

  Mair went to massage school and it transformed her life. She realized she was good at it, and it was revelatory. After she started working for the chiropractor her then-husband once worked for, she realized that this was more than just massage. It was a deeper connection with people than she ever had before. She started studying everything she could — every kind of bodywork. She went to hypnotherapy school and became a clinical hypnotherapist, and made a serious study of herbology, which she had been interested in since she was a teenager. Then, Mair tells me, she met someone who played a pivotal part in her life, and continues to do so.

  “I had this mentor, a physical therapist named Don Schwartz. He was blind, but was the most phenomenal healer. Before I ever went to massage school, I went to career counseling, and the woman who was the career counselor was his wife. We became very good friends, and I became really close to him. And every time I would go to his house, he would teach me something else. When he died, his wife, Mary Lou, and I had a falling-out and that was it. I never saw her again, never went to the house. It was like it was all about him. It was all about my connection with him. I needed him in my life. And he is one of my guides.”

  As for her other spirit guides — “There’s this big bear that’s with me. He’s there a lot; he’s very human to me. But, he’s a bear, a bear shape. I’ve seen him in meditation and hypnosis. I’ve seen the other guides, too. When I was in hypnosis school, I got in touch with that.

  “There’s an old woman, but I don’t know who that is. I don’t think it is my mother, because my mother was young when she died. I don’t know how many guides I have. Every now and then I’ll glimpse something in my mind. But I know I’ve done this work for many lifetimes, and I think we carry forward people who worked with you before. I was a Native American medicine woman. I was a veterinarian in Scotland, and I know I’ve been a witch. I know these have been lifetimes I’ve lived.”

  Mair says she has known from a young age that she’s been here before. She was kicked out of Catholic catechism classes when she was ten years old for talking to her classmates about reincarnation.

  Mair was adopted before birth, and knew from the get-go because her adoptive mother told her. She said she better understands her relationship with her adoptive mother after past-life regression showed her how they related to each other in those past lives. She said her grandmother, who treated her as her favorite grandchild, had treated her that way before: “She was my nanny in another life. I was actually a prince and she was my nanny. And my mother was her real son. I was the favorite.”

  Except for Don and her mother, Mair has no sense of knowing any of her other guides in past or current lifetimes, but she knows they are there. “I ask for help,” she says. “I know that Merlin is one of my guides that’s come to me again and again. And my Native American guide, I think his name is something Eagle. I really connect with the eagle part. It’s something like Running Eagle, which is weird, since eagles aren’t exactly known for their running!

  “And I know I have other people who are there with me, but I believe in God, and to me, God is the goddess or the universe. God is not this guy who is here, but is the force of the universe. And I think these guides are all part of that, and we’re all connected, and that’s what the God connection is, no matter what plane you’re on. That we’re all here to do the work that we’re here to do and we’re helping each other and we’re interconnected in an interdependent kind of way.”

  Sometimes, she says, she will be in a session with someone and won’t know how to help them. So she connects with her guides, saying to them, “You’re always here helping me, so please help me because I don’t know what to do.’ And immediately, it comes, and I never worry that I’m not going to know how to treat someone, because I’m never alone with it.”

  Mair describes it as not like a voice, but more a “knowing.” It doesn’t always come from the same guide; people bring their own guides, and she depends on that as well. Sh
e thinks everyone’s guide or guides will come in with them and they will know what that person needs. “From the minute the patient walks in the door, I have my radar on. And that radar is helped by these other entities.”

  Keeping Things Clear, Clean, and Separate

  Mair’s work involves energy — from plants, light, the universe, and the people who are her patients. This energy can be good, but it can be bad as well.

  “I do cleansing rituals,” she says. “Some people who come in, I really have to cleanse when they leave. I have to sage and salt, really go around and get everything out. There are people who come in who might be toxic — we all meet those people. I feel like I can just let it go. I feel like I have an evil eye on the front door— okay, leave your stuff at the door. I don’t feel like I absorb negative energy.”

  Separating her own emotions from those of the people she is treating is essential to her own well-being. I can attest that a lot of emotions come to the surface during a craniosacral therapy session, and it can be tricky for practitioners to let go of what they are absorbing emotionally. “When I do craniosacral work on somebody, I know information is going to come to me, and I know I don’t have to hang on to that,” Mair says. “I know I’m going to feel things, I’m going to get the info in my head, and I’m going to feel emotional and I’m going to feel pain and it’s going to pass, because it’s not about me. … I’m really clear about that. And I think that’s something some practitioners can’t do — to let go. I do need time to recharge; I do need to be alone a lot to recharge. I would get burned out if I didn’t have a lot of time to myself.”

  Sometimes there is clearing work to be done on the psychic level as well. Mair recalls that the angel Gabriel once appeared to her. It was during a particularly difficult relationship, and she was having a tough time. She had gone to hypnosis school and past-life regression, and knew there were a lot of issues between them. “But then I found out his ex-girlfriend had gone to this black magician and put a curse on me. It was ugly and all kinds of bad things were happening and I didn’t know why, and then I found out that was why.”

  One morning Mair woke up out of a sound sleep and saw an angel at the end of her bed. The angel told her that he was Gabriel and that she needed to let go of her fear and everything would be fine. Mair couldn’t speak, and the angel disappeared. “It still sends shivers down my spine to think about it,” she says. I asked myself, ‘Did that just happen?’ I don’t tell many people about it because they think I’m crazy.

  “For days, I was walking around wondering about what happened. Even now, when I look back on it, it’s like it was a shock to my system. It was incredible. And I am so grateful because it was just what I needed at the time. It was a life-changing experience.”

  Being Mair and Advice for Others

  “I feel like I’ve been reincarnated a lot,” Mair says. “I feel like I’ve been around the block a few times, and I feel like my acuity about things is pretty good. Not always about myself, but about what’s happening with other people. I feel I have a job to do, and my job is to be a kind of balancing force for what’s happening with people’s health. I think it’s mostly about health for me, I think that’s my job here, and I accept it.”

  Mair says it’s very frustrating to her when she knows something that will help somebody and they choose to do something else.

  “But it’s their path, and I know that, so I can let that go, and say ‘Okay, I’m here, I’m doing my job, I’m available if they get a message that their choice is not right.”

  And for Mair, having unusual abilities is her path to walk: “You just have to do what you have to do and not expect that everyone is going to honor that. If you’re outside of the norm, you’re not going to ever be accepted by the majority of the people.

  “When I start to get frustrated, I think, ‘I can’t be upset at them.’ They can’t tell – they aren’t doing this on purpose, they can’t tell. It releases me from any judgment I have about them. They are who they are, and they can’t do anything about that, just like me.”

  You can reach Mair through her website:

  http://web.me.com/mairmackinnon/www.mairmackinnon.com/Welcome.html

  Chapter 9

  Gypse Jacquaar

  I met Gypse Jacquaar when I advertised for a Tarot reader to do readings every other Sunday in my bookstore. We’ve since become great friends. For this book, she doesn’t want her real name used, so Gypse she shall be. I didn’t know her real name for months after I met her. Gypse suits her. She is a free spirit, unafraid to be who she is.

  She spends a lot of time exploring the Tarot and the more arcane areas of spirituality, with personal growth for herself and others as her focus. She says she remembers me from a previous life, when we were Gypsies together in France. She guides her work and personal life by message from spirits and the Tarot. While on the earthly plane, she owns and operates a business that provides computer-aided design (CAD) for architects, engineers, and contractors.

  Gypse Jacqaar grew up in upstate New York, the daughter of scientists. There were no psychics in her family, but she credits her parents with giving her a good grounding for investigation. Although they were not into the occult, they liked learning and intellectual exploration.

  Today, Gypse uses her communication with advanced spirits to guide her life and her business.

  “I started as a medium with spirits who had been incarnated as human beings, and I wouldn’t say they were extremely enlightened,” she says. “They were human beings who had psychic abilities and knew how to communicate with people who are still here.”

  Her foray into the world of spirit began when she was a freshman in high school. Her mother was an alcoholic, and the teenager struggled for a way to cope.

  “I don’t even remember where I heard about automatic writing,” she says. “I think I read a book about a psychic or someone who talked with the spirits, and from that book, I realized spirit communication was possible.”

  The messages Gypse received via automatic writing explained to her why her mother was an alcoholic, how to deal with it, and showed her that there was more to life than what she was experiencing on the physical plane. They also told her that there are such things as spirit guides. In fact, the messages told her, the spirits who came through via automatic writing were her guides.

  “I want to stress that people receive and transmit psychic information in different ways, and I was very gifted verbally,” Gypse says. “I had a high IQ for writing and reading, so it was natural for me to do automatic writing as a way for my psychic ability to manifest itself.”

  She receives information verbally in her head, and she’s noticed over the years that people who are psychic receive information very differently. Some say that things fall off the wall, or lights go on and off. “I will get a message verbally — ‘I’m a ghost, I’m here.’ I might get a message telepathically. And I notice, for me, the spirit might not even be speaking English, but the message will still come through in fairly articulate terms.”

  The teenage Gypse kept her automatic writing notebook in a drawer, and in doing the writing, something psychically opened up in her. When she went to college, she felt very strongly that she had to go to one particular school. And when she got there, she found out it was very haunted.

  Early Mediumistic Experiences

  Gypse attended Wells College in Aurora, New York. There are many stories of campus hauntings, including that of Max, the spirit who came through to her during several séances in dark dorm rooms.

  The college would not give me permission to use any of the stories from their website, but according to Gypse, Max was a security guard who perished in a fire while rescuing some girls trapped in a campus building that stood where Morgan Hall now stands - it houses the art department. Perhaps Max communicated through Gypse because she was an art history major and spent a lot of time in Morgan Hall? A spirit claiming to be a music professor also made himself known at the séances she
conducted.

  Studying with the Witches

  After college, Gypse threw herself into the world of art and artists, which taught her to see life much differently than her conservative upbringing had taught her. And, in that world, she met her husband, whom she describes as “crazy, and really, really open.”

  It was after getting married that Gypse decided to study witchcraft. She took a course from the “Witches of New Bern,” Gavin and Yvonne Frost. If you ever read any comic books or fan magazines as a kid, back there among the ads for magic tricks and black soap, hidden among the classifieds, was one proclaiming “Learn to Be a Witch!” Writing to the address therein introduced you to Gavin and Yvonne, and the Church and School of Wicca. Taught by correspondence, you could (and still can) learn about developing psychic power, telepathy, psychic healing, herbs, and reincarnation, among other esoterica, in the Essential Witchcraft course.

  The course opened Gypse up more than she could handle, in the psychic sense, and she kept having strange and unsettling experiences, so she never finished the course.

  “Those witches are fantastic,” she says. “They did an astral course and were working with students on the astral plane. It was very easy for me to go out on the astral at the time. Unfortunately, I found this ability is one thing that goes away with age. The astral is where you get a lot of your best training (from discarnate entities and people traveling by astral projection) — you get to talk with those who were and are psychics and others with great knowledge. I learned that from Gavin and Yvonne Frost.”

  Gypse said she had to learn to pay attention to supernatural things that seem mundane now (because they happen so often ) but were very important to her personal growth. “It was a correspondence course. It just opened me up to the fact that there is a whole different system, and one thing the witches impressed upon me was that their course was very rigorous and there was a lot of responsibility.