Talking to dead people and stuff       February 21 -27, 2002

 

Patricia Mischell is a psychic. Even now she's channeling into your mind while you read, finding out your deepest darkest secrets. OK, there is no incense burning or tarot cards lying around Mischell's office. In fact, her office is decorated in pastels.

Mischell "reads" clients. Perhaps she will one day read my book: She says I will write one.

She tells me what an old friend is doing in God's world, and she is pretty close to accurate about how he died. She gives the first initial of his name.

Coincidence, maybe. But even if Mischell has no special powers, believing she might gives a certain comfort: If my friend is really thinking the things Mischell says he is, I am glad.

Mischell's story would be interesting even if she weren't a psychic. It includes trips to Egypt, near-death experiences and starting her own ministry.

Mischell was different from the time she left the womb.

"I was first born with a veil on my face," she says.

The "veil," also known as a caul, is part of the membrane that surrounds a fetus, occasionally covering the head at birth. In the past, the "veil" would be sold to ship captains, who believed it would save their ships.

Mischell's grandmother said the veil meant she would prophesy the future.

When Mischell was very young, she lived in West Virginia. Her uncle told her to take a bucket down the hill they lived on to retrieve some spring water. When she spilled it, he spanked her. Upset and crying, she went to bed. When she woke, she saw a man sitting on the edge of her bed: her guardian angel, no less.

Mischell says this was her first experience with her guardian angel, who to her looked like the pictures of Jesus she was familiar with from Sunday school.

"I was very calm," she says. "My first experience with my angel was very calming."

At age 9, Mischell saw the guardian angel again when she nearly drowned while playing in a river. This time she heard music and bells ringing as her guardian angel lifted her out of the water. A man had jumped in the river to save her.

As a result of the near drowning, Mischell developed a mastoid infection that caused her to become deaf in one ear, leaving only partial hearing in the other.

During surgery to repair the damage, she had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia and "died" for five minutes. Mischell says she "went into the world of God."

Flying with her guardian angel, she looked down at the ocean and witnessed a being that was all sparkles.

"He told me it wasn't time," Mischell says.

Once returned to her earthly life, she was able to "see" things that others could not.

"I didn't want it," she says. "It just started happening."

Mischell says she was able to know details of her teacher's relationship with a boyfriend.

"I even had to stay after school because the teacher thought I was reading her letter from her boyfriend," she says.

Mischell was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was 19. By her late 30s she could barely walk. With three kids to raise and a husband who had disappeared, Mischell had to quit her job due to illness and was forced to go on public assistance.

Then her sister suggested she go to a "seer" for a $5 reading. The seer told Mischell he could see her traveling, appearing on television and doing his work.

Mischell thought he was crazy. He offered to train her as a psychic, and she began meeting with him every week.

"It's not a voice that you hear," she says. "It's a thought that's very strong. All of a sudden, it just comes -- and then you know."

She started meditating and focusing on God in an effort to help her arthritis in 1972. Within six months, she felt a difference.

"My body went from so ill to so healthy it was unreal," she says.

Mischell sensed her grandmother would die shortly before it happened, and after her death felt a connectedness with the next life.

"All of a sudden I could be sitting and actually move my mind into that world and communicate," she says.

The source of this power? Mischell has always felt her life was directed by something outside herself.

"It's almost like my whole life has been a vehicle for some purpose that God has for me," she says.