posted June 28, 2008 07:36 PM         

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When Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox, went searching for a consultant to run one of its management workshops in the fall of 2006, it bypassed the usual list of Silicon Valley gurus. Instead, Seagate's executive director of software engineering, Gabriel Lawson, invited Laura Day—a stylish New Yorker with no tech experience—to train his Colorado-based team. "She was amazing," Lawson tells NEWSWEEK, recalling Day's quick insights into the poor coordination between the company's research and marketing teams. "Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money's worth." What exactly is Day's expertise? While she likes to downplay it as mere "intuition," her clients prefer another explanation: she's a psychic.

Day's feel for the unknown has become a hot commodity among certain high-profile business people, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the 49-year-old mother in the process. The William Morris talent agency has used Day to help it decide whom to represent and how to help the company grow.

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It's impossible to objectively judge psychic powers. Are psychics just good listeners who pick up enough clues from their clients to provide seemingly insightful answers? Are they making lucky guesses? "It's kind of a dirty secret," Day says of business people who use psychics like herself. She declines to identify most of her clients, and almost all who spoke to NEWSWEEK also requested anonymity out of concern for their reputations.

Day is one of a small but expanding cadre of corporate psychic consultants—the professionalized face of an occupation better known for hokey headscarves and crystal balls. Rebranded as "intuitionists" or "mentalists"—terms more palatable to mainstream America—psychic advisers in recent years have been crossing over into the world of legitimate business, where they are used by decision makers in law, finance and entertainment looking for an edge in a down economy. "I specialize in nonbelievers," says Day, referring to her roster of "red-meat-eating, Barneys-shopping, Type A personalities."

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But just as there are no atheists in foxholes, a bleak business climate can make believers out of anyone. Carla Baron, the psychic star of Court TV's "Haunting Evidence"—a documentary about her work helping police investigators crack cold cases—says that roughly half the 20 to 30 readings she gives each week are now business-related. Mentalist Jon Stetson says that after years of performing on cruise ships and in the "saddest" comedy clubs, he now has a Rolodex of businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, that call him for Intuition Workshops—which differ only in name, he says, from psychic workshops. "There's a ton of interest," says the Boston-based 48-year-old. "It's a new frontier."

The relationship between psychics and the powerful has always been close. In the Bible, Joseph found favor with Pharaoh by uncannily interpreting the Egyptian leader's dreams. Centuries later, the supposed forecasting abilities of Nostradamus and the "mad monk" Rasputin endeared both men to the upper classes. In America, according to Catherine Albanese, a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, belief in metaphysical powers dates back to the country's founding and shows "every sign of flourishing into any future that can be foreseen." That's especially true during times of great change or distress—war and recession—when people are looking to make sense of the uncertainty, Albanese says. Surveys show that two out of three Americans believe in the value of psychic insight, according to Michael Shermer, author of "Why People Believe Weird Things."

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