story by Alexandra Frisch

Junior Allie McDill has always been very intuitive. Ever since she was little, she’s had a sense of events before they occurred or has even felt a presence in the room. While looking at a house with her mom as a child, she knew without being told that the last residents had had a son die in car crash.

After beginning to wonder if she had psychic abilities herself, she visited a professional psychic to explore her potential ability. Once she was there, the psychic told McDill to close her eyes and see if any names came to mind. The four names she came up with were none other than four of the psychic’s family members.

McDill is one of a handful of girls in the STA community who has indulged in her curiosity to visit a psychic in recent months, bringing about questions from those who hear about her visit and surfacing curiosity in many.

McDill says that her psychic visit was both reassuring and fascinating, but clarifies that her “abilities” have definite limits.

“It was so weird, but in that moment, it me feel so much better to know I wasn’t making it up something really was there…” McDill said, “It’s just little stuff. It’s not super specific, I can’t just sit down and tell you [the future], I just might be near you or someone in the room. It’s not a switch I can just flip. I have to focus.”

Both McDill and junior Meg Duffy had visited multiple psychics in past and had varying results but both of them had separately visited area psychic Laura Myer and had positive results.

Myer has a studio on Woodson Road in Missouri and has been a professional for about 15 years.

Myer said she has been having psychic experiences since she was about 14 or 15 but didn’t pursue it professionally until after experiencing a chronic illness.

“That’s not unusual because when you slow yourself down, that’s what meditation is,” said Myer. “I psychically and mentally had to slow down. I was about 40-41 when someone just kinda turned on a bright light.”

photos by Cassie Hayes

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According to Myer, she started her career by first doing blind readings for people brought to her by her friends and family.

“I started reading for friends first I come from a big family…” Myer said. “There was a long time period where my family would bring what I call blind readings where you know nothing about [a person,] not even their first names and they come in and I do what I call a “reading” where you just sit and whatever comes, comes. My abilities go more towards pain and empathy. I concentrate on where the disharmony is where the pain is.”

Myer said that the first time she does readings they usually last about 90 minutes with about 30 minutes set aside for people to relax and become more open to the reading.

“ [The amount of time a reading takes] is getting less and less so I’m either being more efficient with the process or I don’t know what it is. It used to take me two hours,” Myer said.

Myer said that she believes that all people have the potential to have abilities like hers, but that it’s something that “takes practice” and that comes easier to some people than others.

“Anyone can do it; we all carry our intuition differently,” Myer said. “I use it everyday so for some people it’s more natural. It takes practice and you can build that muscle…just quiet yourself and see what you see and be playful with it. It’s not heavy it’s supposed to be about joy and light.”

McDill said that when she visited Myer, Myer was able to tell her things like the name of her mom’s past boyfriend and about a miscarriage her grandmother had that even McDill hadn’t known about a the time, which made McDill really believe in the process.

“She would just tell me all this stuff about my life that she should’ve had no way of knowing,” McDill said.

According to McDill she was also able to get in contact with deceased family members through Myer.

“She told me that my cousin who had died when he was young still hangs around my family sometimes,” McDill said. “She said my uncle came through too. She described it that they hang around because they love the same people you love. It was really interesting.”

Duffy also says she she and her family members were able to contact loved ones through the help of Myer who she says had known without being told the circumstances of her grandfather’s death.

“My grandma’s husband died and she wanted to talk to him and get some closure, so she went and talked to him through the medium and she got a lot out of it,” Duffy said. “She is seeing this new guy so it affirmed that she should be dating him that my grandpa was okay with it.”

Myer said that helping people heal their grief is a very important part of her job.

“Grief is not to be denied,” Myer said. “You can push it down and you can close that closet door it will just keep building up…By the end of your life nothing else will fit and you just feel heavy and stuck sometimes just connecting with that energy makes them feel lighter.”

According to Duffy, Myer may be a good psychic, but that doesn’t mean that every psychic is legitimate or strong. Duffy’s results have not always been as strong as those she found with Myer, but she believes many variables have to do with the differences between sessions.

“I think it depends on the amount of time you go,” Duffy said. “I went for 15 minutes one time and they were just spitballing, ‘you’re healthy, you like these colors…’ Then I went to [Myer] and she was telling me about my family, my sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles. So I think you can tell a lot by how in-depth they go.”

Because she has visited a fair amount of psychics during her life, Duffy feels that she is usually able to pick out psychics that she thinks are “real” and the ones that aren’t.

“I’m not a very skeptical person, but I can always tell when it’s a fake psychic just trying to get money versus a real one with an ability to do it,” Duffy said. “I’ve been to four or five psychics.”

Duffy has also had patterns in her predictions from various psychics for her distant future, allowing her to believe in “psychics” as a phenomenon even further. According to psychics, Duffy will meet her husband at 27 and become as speech pathologist. She warns others, however, not to always take every psychic’s words as gospel.

“I recommend it because I think it can really help you if you need closure with something but I don’t think people should go to psychics for major life decisions or base their whole life off of it, because they can get stuff wrong,” Duffy said.

Myer also says that skepticism is healthy because like all professions, among psychics there will be people who are proficient and those that won’t be.

“I’d want details…I’m about details,” Myer said. “The small things that connect us all like a nickname. It’s in the details If you don’t get a detailed reading probably within the first fifteen minutes of sitting with somebody you need to say, ‘if this doesn’t proceed in a more detailed manner this isn’t what I was looking for.”

For those who feel curious about getting to know themselves a little deeper, McDill recommends visiting a psychic if “you’re curious about the future.”

“If you’re not afraid to just know more about yourself or about your life or even if you’re just curious I think it’s definitely something you should go do,” McDill said.