Psychics as clairvoyants, fortunetellers, and earth-bound connections to the spirit world can be traced back thousands of years and as far away as ancient Egypt. As an element of American popular culture in the 1990s, the Psychic Friends Network is as close as a 1-900-phone call, though some who claim to be more serious clairvoyants scorn these $3.99-a-minute fortunetellers as charlatans.

The psychic movement in the United States followed closely on the tails of the Mesmeric and Spiritualist movements of the nineteenth century. Austrian doctor Franz Antoine Mesmer (1766-1815) captured followers' attention with his reports of psychic phenomenon such as "thought transference, clairvoyance and 'eyeless vision"' in subjects who came to be referred to as "mesmerized." Mesmer's popularity opened the door for acceptance of the Spiritualist movement by acknowledging the concepts of clairvoyance and communication with the dead. The mesmeric trance, as it had come to...