In this issue we are beginning a special treat which we hope will become a regular feature with different psychics across the country...an interview with Herb Dewey, a well known psychic out of Manchester, NH. Mr. Dewey, besides doing readings, has written many articles for such magazines as "Body, Mind & Spirit," and "Manchester." He is 53 years old.
This is the first interview we have ever done with a living entity, so we ask your understanding and patience.

1. First of all, Mr. Dewey, we would like to thank you for being interviewed on behalf of ourselves and our readers. And I'm sure the first thing they'd like to know is when you became interested in psychic phenomena? When did your abilities first show themselves, and how did you react to them?

A. I think that if you stop ten people on the street and you ask them to determine what a psychic is, or "Please describe a psychic," or, "What is a psychic?", you'd probably get ten different answers. I still don't know. In my readings I very seldom use the word psychic. In the Orient they didn't even have a WORD for psychic, so that they would call me a professor, or a doctor, or a fortune teller. But they did not have a word for psychic, which I found was interesting.
In all of my years of travel, I've never seen anyone that could levitate themself. I've never seen anyone that has physically come back from the dead, so I suppose that I am a reluctant psychic. I am a skeptical psychic, and I've gone one on one, head to head with most of the "famous psychics" in this country, and abroad, and I'm not thoroughly convinced that we know exactly what we're dealing with.
I had a very unhappy childhood. I had a mother that was mentally unbalanced, that was in and out of mental hospitals for most of her life, so as some children create invisible friends, I had to create an invisible world; a world where there was not a great deal of pain or suffering or hardships, or torment, because that's what I experienced within the reality of my own life. And in order to survive I found out that at an early age, that I had to somehow just not be able to touch reality, but to look beyond. And so that I suppose it all started when I would be sleeping in the livingroom on a couch, and my mother was in the bedroom sleeping, and I had two very young brothers, and I would be sleeping alone. My father and mother divorced when I was very young. And as I would lie in the livingroom, in this old tenement house in Charlestown, Massachusetts, I would gaze up at the ceiling. And I found that by doing that, I could concentrate on the cracks in the ceiling, because it was a form of self hypnosis, which I did not know at that time. Because that way, I was able to block out all of the rantings and ravings of my mother in the other room. I would be able to hyppnotize myself and get lost within these cracks on the ceiling because these cracks would form different images. One might form a train, and I would see myself on the train, and I would travel off, or on a plan or a rocket-ship, but it would be my way of self-hypnosis; basically to be able to live with the situation.
For the first twenty years I wasn't even aware of the word PSYCHIC. I would do character analysis, I would do dream interpretations, I would do things, but nobody ever said the word PSYCHIC to me. Then, one time during an interview, a radio show host said to me "Well, you're doing psychic readings! You are a PSYCHIC!" and over the years I've been introduced as a psychic, a psychotic, a physic. I've been introduced as many, many things by the media, and as far as abilities, I'm not even entirely sure....I believe all abilities are natural, cultivated abilities. I believe that if you are a bartender and you mix drinks for a living, it's reasonable to assume that after a long period of time you could mix drinks left-handed, right-handed, behind your back, and blindfolded....you would have CULTIVATED A NATURAL GIFT TO SUCH A POINT WHERE YOU WOULD BE THE BEST AT IT.
I've cultivated readings because at a very, very early age when I was living in Charlestown, Massachusettes, I would travel by streetcar to Revere Beach to go swimming. There, I would usually spend my car fare home on a hot dog or a Coke. And in those days a hotdog and Coke were probably altogether 15 cents, but in order to come home, I would approach a person and ask that person for directions how to get to Charelstown, which was probably 14-15 miles away. And they would very patiently, give me directions on which streetcars to take, and what transfers to get, and where to make changes and I would then say, "Oh, but you do not understand. I do not have any money, and I'm walking, and could you please give me directions how to walk?" And of course they would feel very sorry for me, and, in feeling sorry for me they would then give me 10 cents, or 20 cents, or 25 cents to pay for my car fare home.
Needless to say, I never used the 25 cents for car fare, but I would then approach another person, then another. And in the course of the day, I might gleen $3.00 or $4.00 that people would give me out of the goodness of their heart, to line my pockets.
In retrospect, I feel guilty about that, but the reality of the situation was I did not have any money. I did not have any food in the house, I was a poor boy, and it was my attempt at surviving, and over the years I've felt reather guilty about being that manipulative because I was probably eight or nine years old.
But the point of this dissertation is that I began to sense who would give me the car fare, and who would not give me the car fare. I began to sense who was a sensitive person, and who would tell me to get lost. So at a very, very early age I would create, in my mind, I would create the feeling of what person I was to create empathy with. So that's basically when I fist became in the phenomena of the unknown, or the psychic phenomena.
So I reacted to two of these things, these talents, or these gifts. I never saw them as a power. I have found over the years, that any psychic that believes that he truly possesses a power- either a super-human power, or anything beyond the norm, once they may determine they may lose that power, they fear for losing that particular power, they are NOT talented. So I feel that I am talented, because I have cultivated natural instincts. I've modified a 6th sense that we possess. And that's basically how I reacted.
I react to all of the things that have happened. I've done many different experiments, I've done many things relative to the psychic field, and I see these things as tongue-and-cheek. I take these things NOT terribly seriously. I take these things as one day at a time, and if something happens it happens, because I've been told that I am good at woat I do. And if that is the fact, shouldn't I be a millionaire? If that is the fact, shouldn't I be very famous or infamous? Shouldn't I have all the answers? In my readings shouldn't I be 100% at all times? So of course I'm not. Because if I was a millionaire I'd probably be living in Washington, D.C., and I wouldn't be doing this reading. Obviously, I'm not the millionaire.
So relative to how do I react to these things, I take them with pleasure, I like certainly asyou do, the adulation, I like the people that make of you because I've always had this intense desire to be an entertainer. I never could tell jokes or sing, or dance. So at a very early age I found that people like to be told about themselves, and I made some predictions that came true and so it goes!