SALEM ― In 2021, the city’s businesses successfully bounced back from a COVID-19-induced lull (Item, Oct. 12), which was a relief to proprietors and the tourism board alike. For practicing psychics, mediums, and clairvoyants ― professions that enjoy certain advantages in the Witch City ― the initial shutdown of 2020 was only a temporary setback.
“I don’t know if it’s my intuition but I knew it was gonna be really really busy (in 2020),” said Lorelei Staphopoulos, a love clairvoyant and practicing witch who provides palm readings, tarot and other psychic services out of Crow Haven Corner on Essex Street. “I told Destination Salem that it’s going to be really busy, and everyone said ‘No, it’s going to take three years to recover,’ and I was like ‘I disagree in full.’ And sure enough I was right.“
Many psychic readers and spiritual advisers in Salem operate out of other businesses, which is why Staphopoulos and others have more concerns on their minds than their individual practices.
Crow Haven Corner, which bills itself as the oldest “witch shop” in the city, is responsible for a witch-themed walking tour and a not-for-profit animal welfare fund called Salem Saves Animals, in addition to offering witchy wares and psychic services. All aspects of the business, according to Staphopoulos, have flourished since quarantine ended. But there was a period where the future wasn’t clear, and pivoting was necessary.
“The tour companies took a big, big loss but I didn’t,” said Staphopoulos, who noted that she had to refund some 4,000 walking-tour tickets around the beginning of the pandemic. “I made a profit because I have my beautiful, magical garden and I did things for (clients) that were personal. So we raised the energy for those who have passed, giving messages to them. I pivoted where I needed to and asked the spirit to guide me.”
From post-lockdown 2020 onward, Staphopoulos has seen “lines around the corner and down the street” for her clairvoyant services and others’, so it’s safe to say that psychics and the businesses that house them have come back even stronger after the shutdown. But aspects of the psychic practice have changed significantly, and some believe the changes could be permanent.
“Zoom is new; it’s definitely an adjustment for sure,” said Debra Lori, a psychic medium and coven priestess who performs readings out of Omen and Hex, two witch shops in downtown Salem. “I would say I probably do five or six Zoom sessions a week which, considering most of my readings are in person, that’s a good amount.”
Both Lori and Staphopoulos performed phone readings before the pandemic, and Lori believes that appointments conducted via Zoom are a big improvement on the phone format.
“Zoom makes it more personal because you do have that one-on-one basis of intimacy. Whereas a phone reading, you don’t know who you’re looking at or talking with and it just takes a personalization out of it,” said Lori, who has also enjoyed more international clients since offering Zoom services. “For me, especially if I’m doing the mediumship, I want to be able to look at my client.”
According to Lori, technological adaptations are less significant than other shifts she’s witnessed, chiefly regarding the subject matter of her sessions. As a medium, Lori communicates with the deceased, and COVID left no shortage of bereavement over the loss of loved ones. It’s tremendously significant, according to Lori, to be able to offer comfort.
“I had COVID last March when it was first announced, so knowing what I went through and knowing the people coming to me have lost somebody that went through a similar hell, but obviously worse, it really touched me that I’m able to give something back to them,” she said, “and to let them know that their loved ones could still hear them, and were aware of the prayers that were being said on their behalf. I could really feel the love.”
Staphopoulos mentioned similar experiences with clients, noting that she hasn’t seen this level of devastation since Sept. 11, 2001.
“No one has really healed from it yet,” she said. “They’re coping and they’re going through the stages of grief.”
And it’s perhaps the changing needs and priorities of clients which constitutes the biggest change seen in the psychic profession.
“They’re reprioritizing,” Lori said. “Before it used to be money, now it’s family. COVID has definitely put our mortality right in our faces and people are starting to realize that we’re only on this planet once. So we need to live, because there isn’t gonna be another chance.”
According to Staphopoulos, the changes she’s noticed in her profession belie a larger cultural shift toward spirituality and psychic healing.
“There are so many people now that talk about things turning around,” she said. “They’re coming more to witches and using crystals and using different tools of the universe and the earth to help them cope.”
“I almost feel like the universe picked us up like a giant snow globe and shook it,” Lori added. “And everything is falling in a completely different area where people’s viewpoints are different.”
Even those whose practices seem fundamentally opposed to spiritual belief are changing their minds.
“I’ve had doctors visit me and open up to more holistic (practices) because of everything they went through, and they didn’t get to hide behind the curtain like they do sometimes,” she said. “They did become more attracted to psychics, readers, spiritual advisers, all the above, and more open to using crystals, recharging, all of that.”
While COVID-19 was responsible for a tremendous amount of grief and trauma in people’s lives, Lori is adamant that the pandemic did not incur a spiritual crisis, but rather, a “spiritual awakening.”
“People who did not have any real belief system found themselves praying or asking something for help and strength for a loved one that was ill,” she said, adding “Everybody has to have something they believe in, something to hold onto… Especially when we reach scary times like a pandemic when we’re all in this together and free falling.”
Maybe the increase in the need for psychic services can be boiled down to what psychics provide their clients, as both Lori and Staphopoulos affirm they are healers above all else. In times of crisis, when people look beyond themselves ― perhaps to a higher power ― for advice, clairvoyants and mediums are standing by.
“I don’t call myself a psychic because no one is 100-percent psychic,” Staphopoulos admitted. “I try not to be 100 percent because 100 percent means that you take hope away from someone, and you don’t have to leave it that way.”
