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Campbell accepts appointments via her home phone number, 765-289-9767, but does not give directions to her office unless she determines the caller is serious.
She knows things are going to happen before they do.
Sherita Campbell said there is no fanfare to these visions — no trumpets or angels heralding — just a matter of fact knowledge that these events she has seen must come to pass.
Campbell operates in an unnamed office in downtown Muncie, offering people a range of psychic services, including tarot readings, group meditation and a palm healing method called “Reiki.”
She said she first became aware of her gift as a child. When she first “saw” what was going to happen in the future, she didn’t realize she had a gift at first. She was perplexed when people reacted with amazement at her predictions.
“I thought, ‘Well, how could you not know this was going to happen?’” Campbell said.
It wasn’t until the age of 9 or 10 when an older cousin recognized her ability, she said. She then received her first set of tarot cards and started on her path to helping people with her abilities.
Campbell speculated her enhanced intuition resulted from a Native American background, where she said many of her ancestors possessed psychic-like abilities. She recounted memories of her grandmother who read tea leaves.
“I remember whenever there was a crisis, grandma’s friend would come to the door carrying her own teapot and a sack of leaves saying, ‘I just knew something was wrong today, so I’ve come to help you,’” Campbell said. “They never called each other.”
While she acknowledged her proclivity for predicting future events, she does not see herself as a complete anomaly.
“I believe that everybody has intuition and psychic ability, and I think you just have to tap into it,” she said. “I was taught always follow your hunches, which is a form of psychic ability.”
Kristen Ritchey, a Ball State associate professor of psychological science, said there was no single definition of intuition, but defined it as “a gut feeling that you probably don’t know how it developed or what information it was based on.”
Ritchey said hunches and intuition are legitimate decision making strategies and can even go so far as to help humans predict the future.
“As humans, we perceive and process information without realizing it,” she said. “So when we have a hunch, that hunch is probably influenced by many experiences or pieces of information we’ve gathered over time. [Humans] try to predict events and plan for them all the time. In our conscious thinking, our daydreams and our dreams, we play out hypothetical scenarios. So just by chance, I think it’s likely that we will sometimes be able to predict future events.”
Ritchey said she tries to keep an open mind to the possibility that humans possess strong perceptual or cognitive abilities like Campbell’s, which she believes technology will eventually have the ability to measure. But Ritchey said she doesn’t see any scientific evidence for psychic abilities just yet.
Campbell has conducted readings in Muncie for a little more than 20 years. She counsels customers on problems ranging from affairs of the heart to medical issues.
“I have regular customers,” she said. “I have people that come when there’s a crisis like my grandmother and her friend with the teapot and the tea leaves. I have people I see once and never again for a problem, and I have people that come out of curiosity.”
When asked whether she ever attempts to read people in her daily life, Campbell said the practice is forbidden in the psychic world.
“People have to come to you and ask because you would upset them too much,” she said. “Now, if I know somebody very well — and it’s very pronounced and they’re a friend — I may call and try to get them to tell me something and then explain to them what I saw.”
Campbell said psychics like Theresa Caputo from the TLC show “Long Island Medium,” who conducts impromptu readings on the street, may do this and that is OK, but she has done so at parties and mass readings only.
Campbell offers up her services for special events and parties. She said while she likes to be accurate at mass readings, she attempts to avoid tidings of death.
“As my friend who sends people to me says, I have a way of telling people they’re going to die, and they’re real happy about it,” She said. “I don’t often tell people that they’re going to kick the bucket because I think that puts their mind in a stage that will make them die.”
If Campbell senses death or a serious medical problem, she recommends the person seek medical attention in the form of a doctor or get Reiki.
Reiki is hands on healing based on chakras in the body, she said. She identifies herself a Reiki master. She places her hands in a certain position and puts them on the body part that most needs healing. Her hands then produce a heat that facilitates the healing.
Campbell does not recommend Reiki in replacement of professional medical attention, but said it helps a person inflicted with an incurable disease to calm down, perhaps allowing them to receive the prescribed medication they need to help them.
Kendra Zenisek, a Ball State physical education instructor and licensed massage therapist, said she was trained to know about Eastern medicine practices, such as Reiki, and believes it can be beneficial for individuals experiencing pain.
She said the relief from pain could be a mixture of a psychological response and, to an extent, an actual physical removal of pain.
Another service Campbell offers is tarot card readings. Each card has a meaning subscribed to it that you must memorize, she said.
“That’s the first thing you learn,” she said. “And the second thing you learn is to forget it.”
Although all the card’s basic meanings remain the same, she said, identical combinations of cards entail different significance for different people.
“You steal, at least I do, from the person,” Campbell said. “I see their aura and I see the visions and I see things, and then the cards tell me. Am I always right? Probably not.”
She said her interpretations should be close to right at the very least..
“I may not say, ‘Oh, your left finger is going to break in a week,’ but I will be able to tell that there’s going to be something to go wrong,” she said.
“I think that the most important thing about being a reader is telling the truth, no matter how appalling.”