Halloween might have New Yorkers hunting for ghosts, but New York City’s spirit mediums will tell you the dead don’t follow a calendar.
Instead, the city’s psychics and spirit mediums told The Post that our open-minded, “anything goes” vibes were what helped them embrace their gifts and practice tuning into the other side.
And despite the eerie reputation, these local mediums insist their spectral sit-downs are strictly meant for good.
The Post spoke with three New York-based psychics to find out how to best harness Halloween in the Big Apple — and what to do if you want to test your own psychic abilities in the city.
The ghost talker
NYC-based medium Juan Francisco found his gift in 2019, while visiting the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest surviving house, which was built in 1765.
He claimed he was able to speak to Eliza Jumel, the former wife of Aaron Burr.
He recalled entering the mansion carrying a REM-POD—a ghost-hunting device that links to electromagnetic fields and beeps wildly when it senses a paranormal presence.
Francisco claims that the long-dead Ms. Jumel spoke to him through the device.
“Eliza Jumel is known for not being very comfortable with men in her bedroom on the second floor, but when I was there by myself, I started talking to her in my head and the REM-POD started beeping in response,” Francisco recalled to The Post.
He said the telepathic conversation was a positive one.
“Contrary to popular belief that Eliza Jumel is an evil spirit, she is anything but that in my experience,” Francisco revealed. “She was lovely and I never felt bad vibes.”
After the experience, Francisco bought a tarot card deck in Bryant Park and started going to “mediumship practice circles” — gatherings where people are encouraged to meditate and strengthen their psychic instincts.
In 2021, he started working with a psychic mentor at the New Yorker Hotel on 34th St. to help interpret the ghostly images that sometimes flashed through his mind.
Francisco determined these visions were memories from a surrounding spirit, and learned how to open his mind to the images and how to close them off.
As he began working with clients throughout the city, he claimed to receive memories of the deceased and physically feel their traumas.
“It was so visceral that I freaked out,” he said.
But once he received confirmation that his visions corresponded to his clients’ real-life experiences, Francisco embraced his abilities, determined to use them for the “highest good” — connecting New Yorkers with deceased loved ones who need resolution and closure.
“I had a reading with someone who didn’t feel accepted by their father growing up, and their father came through to tell them that he loves and accepts them just the way they are,” Francisco said.
“Obviously, any medium could say that, but the reading came with evidential information — details about what the client was doing in life and specific shared memories that I couldn’t possibly have known.”
But talking to the dead in a controlled setting is not the same as talking to spirits for TikTok views, Francisco cautions. For Gothamites chasing ghostly content for clout alone, the results can be dismal.
“If you go into a supposedly haunted place trying to get ‘good content’ by provoking or cursing at spirits, they’re going to react with anger,” he warned. “And rightfully so.”
The energy reader
Nancy Stark is a longtime Manhattan tarot reader, best known for giving readings for almost three decades in SoHo’s iconic Raoul’s French Bistro.
When Stark arrived in NYC at 13 years old from Chile, she told The Post that the language barrier and lack of friends made her turn to tarot cards to form connections. As she practiced, she said, her intuition naturally took over.
Stark’s career took off after a chance meeting with bistro co-founder Serge Raoul at the doctor’s office. When Raoul asked about her work, she mentioned her skill with cards, so he invited her to the restaurant for a reading. He was so impressed that he stationed her on the second floor of his restaurant, where she remained for 30 years.
“People would come over and say, ‘Wow, that’s exactly what I needed to hear,’” Stark remembered. “They’d tell me I was better than their shrink.”
After leaving Raoul’s in 2013, Stark traveled to India, seeking guidance from a spiritual guru to explain her power. In South Asian traditions, revered spiritual teachers are often addressed as “Baba” — a term of endearment meaning “father” or “wise elder.” She referred to her guru as Baba and wept when she spoke about him.
“He opened my eyes to what is real,” she recalled through tears.
Stark said her guru even blessed her tarot cards to ensure they only carried positive intentions from spirits.
“I’m a regular person, not a saint, but this practice gives me clarity and compassion,” Stark said.
The séance steward
Nosy neighbors aren’t always welcome, but it was the “psychic intervention” of an East Village local that helped Jenson Smith start her spiritual journey.
Now an Astoria-based medium, Smith was warned by her neighbor, a practicing downtown psychic, that her paranormal abilities would cause trouble if she couldn’t harness them. He urged her to enroll at the Holistic Studies Institute, a kind of psychic training ground in Midtown.
Smith told The Post that her coursework covered the history of mediumship and the ability to read auras. She also claims that she learned how to channel spirits.
“I never felt less crazy than I did in a psychic class,” Smith reflected. To her, the most important part of training was the class séances, or “message circles.”
“When we were in the circle, a spirit would come to us and we wouldn’t always know who the message was intended for,” Smith recalled. “We’d feel a physical tug toward one individual and know that the spirit landed.”
Smith said that through the institute, she learned that her primary gift is clairvoyance, or spiritual sight, which she said manifests physically: maternal spirits settle on her right side, while paternal spirits linger on her left.
She sometimes receives flashes of visions and physical manifestations in her stomach — even when doing something as simple as riding the MTA.
Smith recalled boarding a packed Astoria-bound E train and spotting a single open seat. The moment she sat down, an overwhelming sense of gloom washed over her.
“When I got home, I realized a spirit had attached itself to me,” Smith said. “It was a British woman who lived in Hell’s Kitchen during the 1980s and struggled with addiction. She revealed that while driving high, she mistakenly drove on the wrong side of the road, thinking she was back in the U.K.”
Using techniques learned at the institute, Smith helped the spirit cross over by lighting candles and holding a clearing ceremony at home.
Even during labor at NYU Langone, she struggled to quiet the supernatural noise as multiple voices echoed in her mind.
Although surrounded by ghostly presence in the city, Smith has learned to master her gift and channel it into healing for others.
“People still think I am strange or even evil and sacrilegious,” Smith told The Post. “When I was little I thought it was scary, but now I think, ‘How lovely.’”
