Author: We need to listen to our psychic powers

PITTSBURGH— Mary Ann Bohrer was 25 when shemet Nancy Myer, a teacher and psychic, while bothwere appearing on KDKA-TV’s “Pittsburgh 2Day” in the early 1980s.

Bohrer had her first personal reading a few years later at Myer’s home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Bohrer had just been offered a public relations job with Ketchum in New York City. She hoped to work there for six months, then transfer to Ketchum’s Pittsburgh office.

“Iwas nervous. I had never talked to a psychic before,” she said.

“Mary Ann, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re going to live in New York for several years,” Myer said.

“Thatwas not what I wanted to hear. I did not want to leave Pittsburgh,” Bohrer said.

Between 1986 and 2000, when a round-trip plane ticket from New York to Pittsburgh cost $110, she logged 14 years at Ketchum and other firms, often flying home onweekends.

One particular project led her to further explore psychic ability and changed her life.

As 2000 loomed, fear of major computer glitches and Y2K fever spawned books, movies and television shows. To promote a digital Millennium Clock at 34th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York City, Bohrer gathered 24 psychics who offered predictions tomore than 70 journalists at a T.G.I.Friday’s in Manhattan.

That event planted the seed for her book, published in March.

“The Gift Within Us: Intuition, Spirituality and the Power of Our Own Inner Voice” features 33 interviews with “gifted intuitives” fromthe United States, Australia, Berlin and India. Earlier this year, itwas named the top new release in the spiritual self-help category for severalweeks on Amazon. com.

The author prefers the phrase “gifted intuitives” because words like psychic or medium often scare people. The book looks at how psychics have been treated historically and makes a case formore scientific research into psychic ability.

“In the scientific community, it is taboo to study this,” Bohrer said. “It’s just a highly amazing form of communication thatwe all have access to. People shy away from it because they don’t want to be considered ‘woo-woo.’ ”

Mediocre psychics and mediums are “pretty much picking up on your hopes and dreams,” she said. They reinforce negative stereotypes. Madame Vivelda’s outlandish costume for a satirical reading on a recent “Saturday Night Live” is just one example. “Over the years, it annoyed me how they were misperceived by people as fakes or charlatans. Theywere born that way. Many were bullied as kids. Somewere closeted well into adulthood,” Bohrer said.

One she interviewed, Eddie Conner, was regularly beaten up for being gay while growing up in North Carolina. Whenhe talked openly about his psychic ability, the abuse got worse.

Myer, whowas interviewed for the book, grew up in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Afghanistan and Lebanon with a father who was in the U.S. Foreign Service. He, too, was psychic but understood that his daughter’s gift was much stronger than his, she said. He told her “not to discuss it with people outside of the family because they would be uncomfortable.”

In the 1970s, Myer began working with the Delaware State Police. Since then, she has consulted with various lawenforcement agencies on more than 1,000 criminal cases. One murder case she worked onwas featured on the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries.”

She starts by looking at crime scene photos.

“When I visualize a missing person case or a murder case, I live it inmy mind,” Myer said.

In the mid-1990s, she predicted that Bohrer would write a book about psychics.

Back then, the public relations executive balked at the idea. Nowshe is writing a second book on the subject.

“Itwill be a continuation of this book. I’m also interviewing luminaries like James Van Praagh and brave scientists who are continuing to study intuition and human consciousness,” she said.

‘The Gift Within Us: Intuition, Spirituality and the Power of Our Own Inner Voice’ By MaryAnn Bohrer; Waterside Productions, 268 pages,$16.95