Nearly killed in recent storm

Mt. Airy psychic's storybook rise to top unforeseeable

by LEN LEAR

During the horrendous storm that flooded much of the Delaware Valley last month, one of the near-casualties was Mt. Airy psychic Vivienne McCarthy. Driving along Kelly Drive at the height of the torrential storm, Vivienne and her car were pulled into the Schuylkill River, where she came within a few breaths of drowning. A rescue boat eventually pulled her through the driver's side window to safety. Needless to say, the car was a total loss.

"I know what you're going to say," said Vivienne when the subject was raised. "Since I'm a psychic, why could I not predict that this was going to happen, and why didn't I then stay away from Kelly Drive?"

Let's just say that even psychics can't know everything. One thing we can know, however, is that the Mt. Airy resident's basic rags-to-riches (more or less) story may just motivate some people who are having a tough time paying the bills to pick up a deck of Tarot cards or learn palm reading and other aspects of the occult.

McCarthy, 54, and her husband, Kevin, a Mt. Airy native and teacher at the Carroll School in Port Richmond ("I asked him to marry me because he had a cute face and knew a lot of the answers to Jeopardy questions"), were living with his mom in Mt. Airy in 1990. They could not afford a place of their own because "traveling around the world had taken a toll on us financially."

Vivienne, who was unemployed at the time, was born in Dublin, Ireland, but spent her teenage years in Wollongong, Australia, a city of 200,000 about 50 miles south of Sydney that was "a bloody awful place." She always had an interest in the occult, even as a child.

"My grandmom, who practiced divination, taught me everything she knew," said McCarthy. "I never worked with this knowledge in Australia, though, because Australians are existential in their thinking. They don't care what's around the corner, but Americans are closet mystics. They want bigger and better answers to everything. Australians have a problem; they go surfing. Americans have a problem; they consult a psychic or a therapist."

After coming to the U.S. and settling in Mt. Airy, McCarthy began teaching a course, "Fortune Telling Made Easy," 14 years ago for Mt. Airy Learning Tree. It included Tarot cards, palm reading, numerology and psychometry (intuiting personal information about a subject by holding an object of his/hers, like a set of keys). The income was almost non-existent, however. "I knew I needed an avocation so we could get out of my mother-in-law's house and get a place of our own."

Fortunately for Vivienne, who has a degree in communications from an Australian university, a lightbulb went off in her head. She read in a newspaper about an upcoming fundraising event for the Pennsylvania Ballet. McCarthy contacted the Ballet and offered to do a Tarot card reading for a minimal fee per person and turn over all proceeds to the Ballet. Viv's offer was accepted, and she wound up with a long line of people waiting to have their future told.

Viv turned over the proceeds, more than $1,000, to the Ballet, but more importantly for her, the line of people waiting for predictions was shown on three local TV news broadcasts that night. The subsequent phone calls became a tsunami.

The Four Seasons Hotel hired her to do parties. A corporation hired her to do picnics. Individuals hired her to do "Sweet 16s," bar mitzvahs and private parties. Before you know it, there were not enough hours in the day to accommodate all the calls, and the McCarthys soon had their own big home in Mt. Airy with five fireplaces.

Viv's business kept growing. She was hired to be an "intuitive adviser" for a stockbroker and an operations director for a major health services company for three years.

Once she was hired by a group of women in Queen Village and placed in a spare room. A woman came in and cried that her mom had just died.

McCarthy said, "She is here." The woman replied, "All I need is a sign." The wind outside then blew against a Venetian blind, which hit a lamp, causing the lamp to go out (reminiscent of a Whoopi Goldberg scene in the movie, Ghosts). The woman went screaming out of the room and down the stairs. The other women were so frightened that none would come up.

On another occasion, a male customer came over wearing his wife's dress, jewelry, high-heeled shoes, nylon stockings, lipstick, long earrings and pocketbook. The cross-dresser said, "I could not resist coming over once like this." Vivienne's mother-in-law "told that story for months."

One year ago a lawyer from New Jersey called and said a key piece of evidence in a legal case, a videotape, was missing, and he hired Viv to "find it." She called her "spirit guides" and shuffled the Tarot cards, then told the lawyer that the tape was in a secret bottom drawer in the rear of his desk under a lunch box. The lawyer followed her directions, "found the bloody thing and paid off big-time."

Viv told one woman that she had to go to a gynecologist as soon as possible. The women did so, underwent tests and was diagnosed with uterine cancer. The cancerous growth was then surgically removed.

In addition to her individual and corporate clients, McCarthy does readings for $20 a pop every Wednesday night at The Robin's Nest in Mt. Holly, New Jersey, and every Thursday night at The Gypsy Rose in Collegeville. She is usually booked solid every week at both locations. She also has eight other "psychics" on call.

McCarthy is currently writing a book called What a Country because "when I come home with all this cash, my husband says, 'What a country!'"

Four years ago a young woman came to Vivienne for a reading. Viv told her, "You're going to move to California and get a job in television." The young woman replied, "That's crazy. I have a horse, a nice house and a great

job at the Art Museum. There's no way I would leave." McCarthy told her she would leave because of a man.

A few minutes later Viv's son, Patrick, now 30, who was visiting from Los Angeles, where he makes rock videos and documentaries, walked into the room. Patrick recognized the young woman as a former classmate at Germantown Friends School and asked her to go out for coffee. One thing led to another, and eventually the lass quit her job, sold the horse and the house, moved to L.A. and is now working in the TV industry and living with Patrick.