Boston Globe

NEW YORK

Grief fills psychics' waiting rooms

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 10/6/2001

NEW YORK - Seated on a leopard-spot sofa, in a dimly lit room where grinning gargoyles and Egyptian busts create an otherworldly aura, psychic Gabe Frattalone considers the future 1 mile from ground zero.

''My feelings say we're OK right now,'' Frattalone said, eyes narrowed and voice lowered.

Frattalone's opinion is important to many people in Greenwich Village on the most tranquil of days. But now, in the angst-ridden aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, he finds his views more in demand within the sultry confines of his Psychic Cafe.

Over and over, Frattalone says, he is being asked: Will it happen again?

Frattalone is not alone. Across New York City, according to psychics and students of the paranormal, the anxious and the confused are seeking answers about their future, about the afterlife of loved ones who died in the assaults, and about guilt-racked reports of unspoken premonitions.

''People want to know if we're going to be all right, together, as a group,'' said Sue Real, a Greenwich Village astrologer and tarot reader who said her business has surged dramatically. ''Before, there were two questions: money and romance. Now, people are asking, `What does this mean, and why did this happen?'''

Outside the shadowy world of psychics and card readers, long-standing New York organizations devoted to study of the paranormal have also noted an increase in interest.

Lisette Coly, executive director of the Parapsychology Foundation, said her research institution has fielded a steady stream of inquiries since Sept. 11, and that many more are expected.

Patrice Keane, executive director of the American Society for Psychical Research, said she anticipates hundreds of calls within the next few weeks as the city's numbness eases and the grief-stricken seek answers.

Keane said that calls so far have included appeals for psychics to help locate the bodies of the missing, and questions about whether there is an afterlife. At the Parapsychology Foundation, Coly said, inquiries have come from as far as California. One man, who lost a family member and reported doors closing in his home without explanation, asked whether a soul could be trapped in an airplane.

The caller was told there are no definite answers regarding the paranormal. However, Coly said, she did tell the man that studies suggest that odd occurrences, such as clocks stopping or windows closing, usually are noted within 12 to 48 hours of death. After that time, she said, the deceased are believed by many to ''have made a transition to wherever they're headed.''

Other, painful reports have come from people who believe they had a premonition of the tragedy, Coly said. ''They feel guilty about it, because they didn't do anything about it, and they didn't understand it,'' she said.

That guilt is sometimes compounded by a fear that the person has developed a rare psychic skill that will preview other catastrophes. ''They feel, `I don't want the gift. If this is a gift, take it back,''' Coly said.

She stressed that her 50-year-old organization, with a 10,000-volume library and worldwide research grants, only investigates the ''possibility'' of paranormal explanations for the unexplained. And Keane's society, which has Boston roots dating to 1885, is likewise centered on a scientific approach to the psychic.

Still, in times of great conflict, science is sometimes skirted by a sorrowful public search for comfort, the psychics and researchers said. After the Civil War, World War I, and even Vietnam, interest in spiritualism increased dramatically, they noted. For many of the distressed, Coly said, ''The psychic world is like the last resort.''

As a result, Coly and Keane said, the emotionally vulnerable must be wary of charlatans. Both of them endorsed the notion that varying psychic powers exist in nearly everybody, but they also warned that hucksters might now try to prey on the desperate.

''Be very skeptical in a healthy way,'' Keane cautioned.

Frattalone says his cafe, a two-story restaurant, bar, and psychic emporium, attracts customers as diverse as actors, FBI agents, and police officers, as well as Greenwich Village regulars.

He appears uninterested in whether a stranger believes he has heightened psychic abilities. ''In no uncertain terms, I tell my clients I'm just giving them my opinion,'' he said.

This story ran on page A11 of the Boston Globe on 10/6/2001. © Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2001