This image was lost some time after publication.

This city is full of psychics, both high-end and low-end. But can any of them actually foretell what's tk? We'll only know when we all go back and reread this occasional feature in twenty years. Do you have a psychic you'd recommend we see? Let us know.

Last night was the inaugural 'A Night With The News,' a new lecture series that the New York Daily News is starting in order to "empower, entertain, and enrich you. The world's leading experts come to you LIVE and IN PERSON! Everyone needs some guidance and A Night with the News will be your personal roadmap." One of last night's courses was taught by professional sportsplayer Chad Pennington. It was about sports and whatnot. The other one was taught by Francesca Kimpton, a medium and healer who wanted us to know that the spirits of dead people are all around us all the time, trying to guide our lives or just make catty remarks about our interior decor choices. Now that's what I call enrichment!

Francesca Kimpton is a stern, shiny-faced British lady who is maybe in her early 40s (Botox!). She's hot in that "If I didn't have a great plummy British accent, I wouldn't be hot" way. For the first two thirds of the class, she just lectured like an actual schoolteacher, using classic teacher tricks like "Can anyone tell me what [X] means?" I began to have that annoying and oddly sensual falling asleep in class feeling, where you repeatedly catch yourself just as you're about to drift off because your body twitches involuntarily. Also, it was odd to hear someone so smart and reasonable-sounding spout such incredibly ridiculous bullshit. Such as: "Spirits are showing themselves to us every day."

Francesca, it turns out, believes in a religion called spiritualism, which she finds combines well with the Church of England, which she has "retained." People in the audience began to pipe up, telling Francesca about times when something hadn't felt quite right or a presence had revealed itself to them via touch, sound, or thought. Francesca nodded sagely. "Spirits are never wrong. It can be quite uncanny." Later, when talking about how the spirits give her a break sometimes, she made a funny! "I do like to go out and have spirits of a different kind without their interference!" I wondered how many times, over the course of her career, she'd made that joke.

By the fifteen-minute intermission, I was feeling seriously depressed, sad on behalf of all the teased-haired Jerzmoms who had turned out in order to settle things with their dead exhusbands or find out when their estranged sons were going to call them. I was also insanely, ravenously hungry because the event had already gone on for an hour longer than I'd expected it to. So I almost didn't stay for the final segment of the evening, when Francesca would go into the audience and deliver messages from the spirit world.

The first spirit Francesca heard from was a woman who'd died of stomach cancer. She had a message for her daughter-in-law about that lady's daughter, whose name she guessed to be "Jan." It turned out to be "Jen." "I see an event coming up on a Saturday." "Jen's wedding," quaked the lady, bursting into tears. "There's some concern that it might not happen, not because of anything that's wrong with the relationship, but because of Jen's poor health," Francesca spat rapid-fire, a steely look in her wide blue eyes. "Yes," the lady wailed. "A small procedure will improve her health soon." The lady shook and sighed. She either wasn't faking, or was Oscar material.

Francesca then went on to deliver similarly miraculous-seeming messages to another family in the room. By that point, the entire audience was nodding credulously. Oddly, though, in spite of the evidence in front of me, I still couldn't quite buy it. One departed spirit told his wife to buy new drapes. If spirits existed, my companion wondered, would they really waste their time doling out decorating tips? Why not tell your beloved wife who's going to win the election, or at the very least what the winning Powerball numbers are? "I feel like dead people are sort of boring," my companion complained. "Dead people are lame," I agreed. "I feel like I'll only ever be able to get into this shit if someone I really care about dies young, a la 'Ghost,' and that's just pathetic. All these people just need to let go."

Previously: Alexandra, Spiritual/Psychic Counselor of Staten Island