Esther McCarthy: Believe in the ghost realm if you want — but avoid the middlemen
Esther McCarthy. Picture: Emily Quinn
Halloween is officially over. Farewell, ridiculous costumes, see ya pumpkin spices, and a cheery bye to the close shave of type-two diabetes for the kiddies from the sugary rubbish they menaced from the neighbours.
For today is All Hallows’ Day. That special time when the very air seems charged with memories and magic, when the idea the living and the dead may be sharing space feels possible.
The swirl of an unexpected breeze through the leaves; the scent of a loved one’s favourite perfume; the smell of cigarettes in a car of nonsmokers; or a friendly robin holding your gaze from a garden perch.
It gets me thinking about the thin veil between this reality and the next, and more importantly, about all the times I’ve been idiotic enough to have paid good money to people who claim to peek through it.
Of course, the idea that our loved ones might be able to send us whispers from the other side is alluring. I want to believe in signs and spirits, to hope that there’s something beyond this realm.
Alas! Every encounter I’ve had with a fortune teller or medium has left me not enlightened, but embarrassed, and quite frankly, galled at their neck.
I was in my late teens when I visited the White Witch of Cobh. A renowned fortune teller in Cork in the 1980s and 90s, it was near impossible to get an appointment.
I felt it was meaningful, then, when the date she gave me was the anniversary of my mother’s death. My father came with me, the two of us an unlikely duo, timidly entering the little house on the hill.
I think we both allowed ourselves to hope that, maybe, just maybe, we would get a message from the woman who meant so much to us both.
We came out stifling sniggers, our moods and wallets a lot lighter. She made no mention of my mother, but told himself he’d save someone from an earthquake... in Macroom.
I was destined to have an affair with a married man. Neither has come true, and now that Hugh Jackman is divorced, I think I’m out of the woods.
The next time I gave it a shot was with a clairvoyant in 2010.
Melinda claimed she once gave the winning Lotto numbers to a client in a community hall in Staffordshire. I was skint, about to get married, and ready to receive six magic numbers, baby.
As I made my way over to sit down to cross her palm with silver, I tripped over the lead of her recording device (I still have the tape) grabbing the table to steady myself and tipping her crystal ball off the table.
“You didn’t see that one coming,” I panted as we surveyed the carnage. She looked unsurprised when I revealed my star sign was Taurus — bull in a hall, we shouted — then told me I’m probably not easy to live with, and not a slave to housework.
Spot on, to be fair. I’m prepared to keep an open mind. From my notes I took at the time, she told me: “I don’t see any children in your aura at the moment, but there is a want for children. I see two girls in your future. Possibly twins. And the letters A and J.”
At the time, I had a baby boy and the floppy belly to prove it, if she’d used the two peepers in her head instead of her third eye. I’ve since had two more sons, neither with the initial A or J.
Although, I do frequently sigh Ah, Jay-sus whenever they’re wreaking the place, but that’s a stretch, come on.
She told me my partner would travel for work. You’ll be in Australia in two years’ time, she told me with the confidence of someone who didn’t think the rube across from her would take meticulous notes and use them 15 years later in a revenge column.
AHA! ALL WRONG. Got you, Melinda, you fraud! God, that felt good.
The third time, I was dragged to a large hotel on the outskirts of Cork to a psychic medium.
It would have been one of the most entertaining evenings of my life, as he was so dastardly bad, but for the real yearning in the room, some of the people in there would have done anything to get a message from their loved ones.
Even paid extra for a gold ticket so they could sit up front.
My aunt was with me, a bigbeliever, and lo and behold, he felt someone on the other side wanted to communicate with her, so he gave her the mic.
That was his first mistake. I took notes there, too.
Here’s an extract from their interaction. Your man on stage squinting at her mystically, hand outstretched towards her, while she looked at him expectantly.
His assistant yanked the mic back, and I scoffed into my scarf.
So believe in ghosts, if you must, but not in the charlatans who charge by the hour pretending to connect you to them.
