Ever wondered who's manning those '''psychic'' hotlines? - News about religious cults and sects

If you watch any amount of late-night TV, you've seen her: Miss Cleo. For those of us with a remote attached to our hand like a sixth digit, she seems to be everywhere on that dial-that-no-longer-exists. Her lilting West Indian accent works its way into your subconscious, its authority and certainty at once compelling and repellent.

She is large, she is loud, she is imperious. She has the power to divine the secrets of your heart--secrets you haven't told anyone. She is the anima of your subconscious, telling you the truths you hide from even yourself.

You don't mess with Miss Cleo. A full-time, honest-to-goodness psychic, she is exotic, tapped into the folk traditions of the Caribbean that we--urban, industrialized, air-conditioned--have lost touch with. But in her all-knowing, commanding authority, she also recalls the worst of those impossibly old grade-school teachers we had when we were kids--always hectoring, always telling us when we were wrong. For sure, she has those eyes in the back of her head, but Miss Cleo also has eyes that see into the future.

What if--just maybe--she does know something? It would be nice to find out the truth about the future, to stop guessing, to be on the inside track. Just for once, it would be nice not to be wrong. So, deep down in the recesses of your mind, you think about calling her (although this is, of course, not something you would admit to anyone). What would happen if you did? Would you get to talk to Miss Cleo or someone equally compelling?

Nope. You'd get me: White. Middle-class. Believer in the scientific method. Not intuitive. No connection to the soil. Only tenuously connected to my own subconscious, much less the collective one. No voodoo dolls on my mantel or dashikis in my closet.

How did this happen? How did I become a teenage mutant ninja psychic? Simple. I answered an ad in the employment section of that august oracle of Nashville's New South hopes, dreams, and reality: The Tennessean. It wasn't an ad for a psychic, because I wouldn't have answered it. Instead, it was a call for counselors on the telephone, no experience needed.
(...)

The pay was good: $12 an hour, about $2 to $4 more than you'd expect from these pick-up jobs. I'd get to work from home, so I could, theoretically, do something else at the same time. Plus, it didn't require experience (I may have mentioned that before), and even more important, they were hiring.
(...)

All efficiency, she matter-of-factly handed me a sheaf of papers. There was no discussion of whether or not I was suited for the job. I didn't have to qualify or prove my ability in any way. She never asked if I had psychic abilities, or even if I believed in a psychic's ability to foretell the future. I would do it, if I was so inclined, and I could continue if I followed a few simple guidelines.

The papers listed the rules of the business (no call-waiting on your phone, no explicit discussion of sex, no putting someone on hold), and then my new boss drew up the guidelines of a typical call.

Athe heart of each conversation are the 22 cards of the tarot deck; each of the cards is assigned an arbitrary number. A "psychic" puts a caller at ease, as much as possible, then asks for seven numbers between zero and 21, each one corresponding to a specific card.

In the packet of information, one page described the cards and their possible meanings. Those meanings are generic, monumentally unspecific, and usually hopeful. For example, the number 3 card is "The Empress" and carries the following explanation: "A young fertile female. Can also represent material gifts. Maybe a mother having a baby or fertility in your financial situation. Gifts and money in progress. A good money card, or a female influence." A lot of ground covered here, a wealth of possibilities.

Money and sex are two fairly consistent threads throughout the interpretations of the deck, with a sub-theme of addiction (drugs, alcohol, sex, tobacco) providing a negative area of discussion. But most--about 80 percent--of the cards are optimistic; wealth and happiness are the most common upshot.

Typically, each description ends with a leading question, something designed to elicit callers to speak about themselves, and card No. 3 is no different: "Do you know which one (female or money) it is?" Hey, you may be psychic, but a few clues don't hurt. If the caller responds, you can usually tie in the remaining cards to the situation he or she discloses. The whole conversation then seems coherent, meaningful...and you are rendered clairvoyant.

The goal here is to keep the caller on the line for an average of 19 minutes. This isn't particularly easy because the first three minutes are free, so many callers hope to get a lot of information without paying. There are a fair number of hang-up clicks as the first three minutes draw to a close. That brings down the average length of your calls. To counter the three-minute giveaway, I was told to ask each caller for his or her name, address, and e-mail address, so that "we can send you a free, personalized tarot card in the mail." I assume some advertising must go along with that gift. I was also required to give out the company's 900 number, together with my personal five-digit ID number, so that the customer could call back "in case we get disconnected." All of that, of course, takes up most of the free three minutes.

Most of my training meeting was supposed to be devoted to figuring the average length of calls. My trainer had found that most of the psychics had trouble with this concept--after all, we aren't supposed to be numbers people. The training session was scheduled to take an hour--we also had to fill out forms and discuss the calls themselves--but mine took less because I caught on quickly to the average-call-length concept. After all, I support the scientific method.

In a typical call, my trainer told me to consult my watch after I had discussed the first set of seven cards. If we had already spent 10 minutes on the line, I could take another list of seven numbers to predict the future. If I was going too fast, I had to draw out the call by interjecting seven numbers as a commentary on the present.
(...)

"Remember," I was told, "they're just looking for something to hang on to, some little bit of hope. If you give that to them, they can turn their lives around. Attitude changes everything. Change their attitudes, and you've changed their lives."
(...)

For this nonsense, the caller paid a whopping $4.99 a minute. So a call of 19 minutes (minus three free ones) costs a substantial $80. I was told to remind callers at the end of the conversation, "This call is for entertainment purposes only," but how could I remind someone I'd just talked to for one-third of an hour that they'd been had, and good?

Moreover (how should I put this? I am dangerously close to falling off the precipice of political correctness), the grammar, questions, and concerns--in short, the overall mien--of the callers didn't create the picture of mental giants figuring out their future fortunes. By and large, they seemed to be mostly working-class people, the usual victims of highly promoted scams. This didn't help my growing sense of guilt over providing nothing for a very large sum of money.

One caller told me that she had received several calls and e-mails, all telling her that "Miss Cleo really wants to speak with you" or "Miss Cleo has a message for you." But when she called, she never spoke to Miss Cleo, only the maestro's minions, people like me.
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A peek inside the crystal ball

Ever wondered who's manning those "psychic" hotlines?