![['Kelley Muise provides spiritual readings to those brave enough to hear their future… and how their past has shaped them.\nCarla Allen photo\n']](https://saltwire.imgix.net/a-fortune-telling-tale-375898.jpg?cs=srgb&fit=crop&h=568&w=847&dpr=1&auto=format%2Ccompress%2Cenhance)
YARMOUTH, N.S. – When somebody walks through her door, they’ve already accepted the contract of being told.
“This is not something you do, like going grocery shopping. It is a decision. Some people look at it as entertainment. But what I do here I take very seriously,” said spiritual reader Kelley Muise. “I know what I do is not mine and thus I treat it with respect,” she said.
She says her ability to see things that others cannot, has not been a choice. It’s been a process in making. At the age of seven she began to realize she was different when she could look at people and visualize pictures involuntarily. At that age, she had no concept of why. It was just the way she saw things.
A particularly frightening ability was that of being able to see someone’s “hat’. She describes the image as being similar to the cover of a teapot. “It would tell me that the time frame for that person was soon ending,” said Muise.
Innocent at that early age of the repercussions, she told some people when they were going to die, only later realizing that this may be a prediction some preferred not to hear.
There were those that ridiculed her abilities. Her parents cautioned her to hide her talent to protect her. That’s when she became more internal, trying very hard not to be visible.
She became the little girl in the back, trying hard not to be chosen. “It was kind of a challenge. For a good part of my life I was able to hide it well but it took a lot of energy,” said Muise.
The “talent” also had drawbacks. When she was 10, Muise remembers fetching her sleeping younger sister Suzanne to lie in bed with her for company “I could see dead people. They came to talk. I was petrified and I didn’t know how to deal with it,” she said.
In her mid-teens people began calling her for readings. These she would conduct secretly – going in back doors and imploring clients not to tell a soul.
Close to 25 years ago Muise was browsing a flea market in Revere, Massachusetts with a friend. A Hindu woman in traditional dress with a tilak mark on her forehead stopped her and handed her a pack of ancient tarot cards “These are yours,” she said.
The first time she used them there was an instant connection. This tool, combined with the pictures she sees from looking at a client’s energy, enables her to provide a reading. “When I look at you I see what emanates around you. I see where you’ve been, your lessons learned, how often you’ve repeated them. I see where you are, where you are going and how long you have,” she said.
A pivotal point in her life occurred after she attended a Nature of Your Soul conference in Truro. She volunteered to be hypnotized in an attempt to recall her life before the age of seven. Instead, she slipped back in time to 1605.
Her name was Ann. She could smell the ocean and somehow knew she was in Edinburgh, Scotland and that she was 35-years-old.
To enter the cottage behind her she had to descend three steps to a dirt-packed floor, where herbs wrapped in burlap hung from the beams. She wore a white linen dress and was hanging clothes on the line. She saw her husband running towards her over the glen. He was screaming, “Run!” “I was looking at him and realizing, I had no where to run,” said Muise.
Behind him a mounted clergyman surrounded by a band of men was coming towards her. “I knew they were coming for me and even though my husband told me I’ll protect you, I knew it was time for me to go,” she said.
The group took her to the center of the town and proceeded to stone her to death in front of a rock wall for being a witch. “I came home from that seminar changed. I became aware that it was time for me to come out. It’s been a long, amazing journey. I am very privileged to be living in a time where I do not have to worry about being burned at the stake for being different. I realized the fear I had been feeling did not belong in this life, but belonged to the past. And I let it go. It was the beginning of my life,” she said.
Muise obtained her certification to become a hypnotherapist and now does this as well as spiritual readings at The Whole You, Mind, Body and Soul, the business she owns, and operates with four other women on Water Street.
She also cleans houses, though not with a broom, she says with a wink. She advises against the use of ouija boards and séances. “You don’t mess with them unless you know how to protect yourself. People delve in these things and they open the doorway. I’ve seen things that would scare people. But darkness cannot go in light. I use dowsing rods and my spiritual abilities along with what my grandmother gave me,” she said.
Her grandmother was one of the Veilleurs des morts (Watchers over the dead), called
to the homes of people who had lost loved ones. She stayed up all night doing the double rosary to make sure the body was protected so the spirit could pass over. Muise inherited her bible, her rosary and a cruet bottle that she kept her holy water in.
She’s encountered those who are skeptical of what she does and remembers one incident in particular. During most readings she invites the spirits of deceased who have close ties to the subject to pass on messages.
The best friend of one man appeared beside him during the reading. “He had died in a horrific accident. He was holding his head, in a helmet, under his arm. He was saying, ‘Tell him, I’m okay’,” said Muise.
She told the man what she saw and he was shocked. “There was no way you could have known that,” he said.
Her readings can leave people infused with good feelings, regardless of the information delivered. “Rarely does anyone leave here without feeling that they have connected to something in themselves and they are better for it, and that’s my intention. I can’t change the world, but I can change the perception of how you feel about the world and thus maybe make things a little different in your world. It’s all about positivity,” she said. “Because we’re human we try to mold what we perceive as being so important in our lives, and yet the reality is it’s already been molded. It’s right there, you just need to go on and walk towards it. Most people don’t realize it though. They spend a lifetime trying. Trying so hard. It’s a waste of time,” she said.
Muise will not provide readings to those under 16 because she doesn’t want to be too influential on their decisions. Her oldest client is 89. “That’s absolutely amazing. Who would think? You realize what that says about this person, at 89, coming to somebody like me who will talk about the future? They’re opening the door to more. They’re not saying it’s ending, they’re saying there’s more. I just get such a thrill sitting across from these people," she said.
