We all like to imagine we aren’t superstitious. I enjoy a good ghost story, but they don’t keep me awake at night. In my teens, I was impressed with Ouija boards — until someone pointed out we were communing with the infinite using something manufactured by Parker Brothers. I collect and read tarot decks, but I think tarot spreads — and how someone reacts to them — are more likely to reflect a person’s inner life and expectations than the actual future.

Back in college, I used to perform cartomancy at parties, usually after a few drinks. At one, feeling especially confident (drunk) I decided to do a large, elaborate past/present/future tarot reading for a lesbian friend’s date. I had never met the date, who was a a rangy woman a little older than us, in her mid twenties, goodlooking, with long reddish hair. She sat on the sofa smoking a cigarette while I spread out the cards– probably Rider-Waite — on the cleared-off coffee table. Once I had laid them all out I sipped my drink, stared down at the spread, and tried to decide what to say.

Most of the time, you have to dig a meaning out of a spread, but in this case, the cards were absolutely, disturbingly clear. In her past were three men. All three had been important to her — lovers. All three had died violently.

Naaah. I couldn’t say that. So I didn’t. In my tipsy, befuddled way, I offered a generic reading about troubles in her past, but a better future, etc.

After I’d finished, She puffed on her cigarette, for a moment, her eyes on the cards. “I’m disappointed,” she said. “I though sure they’d say something about my three dead boyfriends.”

It turned out she was an ex motorcycle Mamma who’d had three biker boyfriends. Two had died in motor collisions, one after being shot. She’d decided after that she was a mankiller who should to stick to women.

I don’t recall my exact reaction, only being flabbergasted and alarmed, though I did have the presence of mind not to add to my humiliation by muttering “Oh, well, yes, of course I saw that,” as I gathered up the cards. For a long time afterwards, I remembered this as my own brush with The Unseen.

It took years for a very simple thought to occur to me.

Other people can read tarot cards.