“Make two good wishes. Now tell me one.”

These are the first words Sylvia Nicholas tells her clients during a psychic reading.

Nicholas owns Psychic Readings by Sylvia, which is north of Bowling Green, on State Route 25. She has been working as a psychic for 25 years, and said she first noticed her “gift” when she was 12.

“I would see dreams, I would see things happen visually,” Nicholas said. “I feel things; it’s just something I know.”

When doing a reading for clients, Nicholas said she just knows their future and their present. She knows what their boyfriend looks like, what their lucky number is, how many kids they will have one day. The information flows out of Nicholas as she looks at her client, asking them the occasional question, comforting them when she senses it is needed.

Though seemingly comfortable with it now, Nicholas didn’t tell people about her gift right away. Having what she calls “God-given” feelings and seeing dreams and seeing things happen visually wasn’t that strange for Nicholas, she said. She kept seeing things for a few years before she told her friends and family.

“I wanted to be an architect [before I knew about it],” Nicholas said. “After I got so powerful, I found [telling the future]more interesting.”

At first, Nicholas used her gift to help her friends, and then she began telling the future and using it more. Her friends and family weren’t surprised to find out she had a gift, and were accepting, she said. Nicholas’ mother has the gift as well, though she chose to be an interior designer instead of using her gift to make a living, Nicholas said. For Nicholas, finding out about her gift changed her life.

Once Nicholas graduated from high school, she developed her psychic ability into a career and has been practicing ever since. For most of her life, she practiced in North Carolina, but she moved to northwest Ohio a few years ago because she likes the change of seasons. Talking to people is Nicholas’ favorite part of the job.

“I like when I see improvement in them,” she said.

Nicholas calls her gift “spiritual,” which means she works through God, she said.

“I feel the moment and lead them in the right direction,” Nicholas said. “It’s all through Jesus, the feeling, the talking, the profile.”

Nicholas works out of her home, where she has a small sitting area set up in the dining room. A corner table, filled with a wishing well, crystals, books and tarot cards, is Nicholas’ workspace.

Readings can take anywhere from one hour to 30 minutes, depending on the client, Nicholas said.

Nicholas offers different kinds of readings, such as a psychic reading, a séance, a tarot reading, a palm reading, a water reading, a crystal reading and a romance reading.

“Career, love, business, past life, what’s going on in their life right now – it depends on what they want to know about,” Nicholas said.

Curious people of all ages come to Nicholas, but she said she does get quite a few college students. With the TV blaring in the other room, and Nicholas’ young daughter scampering around, she welcomes customers into her dining room where she gives readings at a corner table. One afternoon in January, Abby Welsh, a junior at the University, got a psychic reading from Nicholas.

“It was weird because she knew stuff about my personality that I didn’t even know about,” Welsh said. “But then I sat there and thought about it and I was like, wow, I do do that.”

Nicholas was able to tell Welsh’s future because, when doing a reading, she is able to “relax and feel God.” Nicholas doesn’t fidget, she’s not reading from cards or examining Welsh’s palm. She sits in her chair, relaxed, calm and tucks her blonde shoulder-length hair behind her ear once before leaning back and beginning the reading.

While telling the future is part of her gift, Nicholas said her job is “more consulting and hearing the heart and the mind.”

Nicholas, who was raised Greek Orthodox, uses prayer and said she is more of a spiritual healer.

While Nicholas said her gift is from God, the Greek Orthodox religion rejects psychics, said Rev. Father Ignatius Warren, of St. Elias Orthodox Church in Sylvania, Ohio.

“We believe there’s no need for secret knowledge,” Warren said. “Everything we need for growth and life and faith and spiritual understanding has been revealed to us and it’s available to us without a fee.”

One of the views among the monotheistic religions is that “for some within those religions, psychic ability doesn’t exist,” said Anna Hawley, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University, who studies psychology of religion.

While some religions may reject psychics today, there are mentions of psychics historically within religious traditions, said Donna Burdzy, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University.

“That’s a huge tradition,” Burdzy said. “Just about any religion you want to point your finger at has examples of either people who have visions or who have revelations.”

Nicholas’ church is in Cleveland, and she said her pastor encourages her to go with her “God-gifted feelings.”

“Only God predicts the future. I teach people to be closer to him, to understand him more,” Nicholas said.

Nicholas goes to all churches, not one specifically, she said.

“We all pray to one God,” she said.

Nicholas wants to help people talk about their problems.

“Instead of going to the doctor and getting Zoloft or Prozac, you teach them how to cope with their difficulties,” Nicholas said.

While the church may reject the idea of psychics, Nicholas has made believers of some of her clients.

Welsh had never been to a psychic before and didn’t previously believe in psychic ability, but the psychic reading Nicholas did with Welsh made her believe.

“It was definitely an eye-opener,” Welsh said. “It gave me a new perspective on the whole concept of it.”

Nicholas said people always believe her.

“They always cry,” she said. “They can’t believe it because I tell them what all they’ve been through – past, present, future.”

Nicholas’ knowledge about Welsh’s past further convinced Welsh of the authenticity of Nicholas’ psychic ability.

“She actually knew facts about my life,” Welsh said. “She knew stuff about my past relationship. What she was telling me wasn’t what I expected at all.”

As Nicholas talks, Welsh seems uncomfortable, laughing nervously and giving noncommittal answers to Nicholas’ occasional appeals for confirmation.

“From your past love, the love you had from the past, it’s broken up,” Nicholas said with a heavy accent. “They say the past is behind you but your past leads to your present because you was very hurt, and you’re very scared. You can’t be scared, you’re still young, you’re still learning, you’re still exploring.”

Nicholas and Welsh talk for about twenty minutes, which consist mostly of Nicholas talking of Welsh’s future.

“Am I right?” Nicholas asks occasionally, causing Welsh to laugh nervously or cautiously respond “I guess, yeah.”

At the end of the reading, Nicholas is reassuring Welsh.

“Always listen to that little voice, always listen to your elders,” she said. “You want to take your own advice and you fall from that.”

Welsh responded agreeably.

“I know,” she said, somewhat guiltily.

And then the reading is over, and Nicholas is ushering Welsh out through the living room and the kitchen to the door.

“Goodbye and God bless,” she said.

Nicholas plans to offer her abilities for the rest of her life, despite the fact that psychologists may still be debating the existence of psychics.

Burdzy teaches in an introduction to psychology class, that, “in a way all people are sort of amateur psychologists.”

“We’re always picking up information when we’re interacting with people,” she said. “I think people who are psychics, I think they’re probably very good at being able to infer or make predictions about other people’s life with just information they’re presented with.”

Psychologists have also researched other possible ways psychics can tell the future – if they do. Psi, or abnormal processes of information or energy transfer that are unexplained, are the topic of Daryl J. Bem’s research. Bem is a professor of psychology at Cornell University. Two variants of psi are precognition and premonition, he said.

“If psi exists, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that it might have been acquired through evolution by conferring survival and reproductive advantage on the species,” Bem said, in his article titled “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect.”

Nicholas, 41, doesn’t care what psychologists say, the local psychic plans to keep telling fortunes for the rest of her life.

“I like when I get to know [people], I like to give them satisfaction to head in the right direction,” she said.