Channeling your inner psychic, skeptic or not

Depending on whom you speak with it can be either a gift or a gag. But to Dan Valkos it's a career.

But for someone who both hosts a psychic show every Sunday and teaches psychic development workshops across the country, he started out as a non-believer.

“I got involved originally as a skeptic,” explained Valkos, the host of ‘The Universal Psychic' on Rogers Television, cable 13. “[I was] thinking everything in the psychic world was basically a bunch of garbage, and everyone was running a hustle on everyone else. [But] I ran into some people who proved me wrong very quickly, and I learned how to develop my intuitive abilities.”

Valkos was both the founder and director of the Paranormal Enlightenment Centre in Michigan and was the chief investigator for the Association of Psychic Investigative Researchers, and has been involved with psychic research since 1969.

“I went through an evolutionary process,” Valkos said regarding his transition from skeptic to psychic. “I went from ‘the psychic world doesn't exist' to ‘perhaps the psychic world does exist', to ‘some people are psychic', to ‘most people are psychic' to ‘everybody in the whole world is psychic and that I'm just as intuitive as the next person.'”

Valkos, who has provided his services at Fanshawe in the past, says that he doesn't predict a persons future; he can only act as a guide of sorts when it comes to how we live our lives.

“My job as a psychic is to give people some insight and direction,” he explained. “But you still control your own destiny.

“If I told you that you were going to be hit by a bus on Wellington the day after tomorrow, then you'd make that an invalid prophecy by not going [by] Wellington for a couple days.”

But being a psychic doesn't come lightly, because Valkos holds himself to a strict moral and ethical code, which includes reading confidentiality, that any information gained during a session can't be used for profit, no blackmail, and not to cater a reading towards what they think the person wants to hear.

When it comes to the profession, Valkos is of the belief that the media is actually helping give it credibility.

“Thirty years ago when they would portray a psychic on television and in movies it would be as the gypsy with the crystal ball,” Valkos said. “Now you've got shows like ‘Medium' and ‘Ghost Whisperer.' You've got all sorts of different shows on television and the movies that are portraying psychics basically as normal people with a special ability.”

And what's the most popular question students tend to ask? Surprisingly it's not how they're going to do on their midterms.

“Actually one of the most irritating but important questions is a lot of the young ladies' first question is ‘am I going to marry my boyfriend?' And then it's how am I going to do on my classes,” Valkos said laughingly. “But a lot of them [are] love-life questions, and that's understandable.

“I don't claim to be right all the time, I give you some advice, some insight, if you take it, fine. If you don't, that's ok. I can't be 100 per cent accurate because you still have control over your own destiny.”

“I'm just a road map,” Valkos said. “I can tell you what's going to happen if you travel down path A or path B, but you still have to make the choices and decisions yourself.”